Booze Clues

If we can put sex in politics, I can put booze in my blog that’s supposed to be about work.

As a result of many of my friends — both friends in the flesh and cyber chums — getting roundly sauced over Labor Day weekend, I constructed a post in list form: Things That Are Almost Like Being Drunk, But Aren’t.

Also, blogging about work is redundant when you’re always looking for the next gig. If you — or your company, sister, neighbor, high-school nemeses — are looking for a copywriting team to revamp your website, advertising, bio, or whitepapers, we’re for hire. Contact information can be found here.

Introduction: For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, I’m in recovery for a less-than-positive attachment to alcohol. In other words, I’m sober and one of those AA cultists who talks about “HP” and doesn’t mean the (literal) sauce. The liquid love affair with my pharynx started at age seventeen, and ended at twenty-six. As a result, I’ve had to relearn how to do everything from talk to strangers to enjoy oral sex.

In nearly all countries two things are held standard: work sucks and drinking rules. Except in a few places ruled by religious law, but they’re also usually allowed to have more than one wife, and they can’t hock loogies on the street, so I can’t criticize.

That said, if you took the happy out of happy hour it just becomes some more time. And I hated my desk job enough that I celebrated the end of every work day. The problem was that I didn’t stop celebrating. I mean, unless you count passing out, vomiting, or sleeping with your ex.

Things That Are Almost Like Being Drunk, But Aren’t

Sleep deprivation.
I have a touch of insomnia that rises up a few times a month. After one night on minimal shut-eye, I am shall we say, a bit off. After two nights, well, it’s time to party! And by party I mean become tearfully frustrated on simple tasks and wholly devoid of common sense.

I will be riding my bike home and I will forget where I’m going.
My depth perception reaches a nadir where I’m using the wall as a cane.
One of my eyes attempts its best Shannen Doherty impression.
I become fixated on the patterns of air.
I watch way too much porn.

All of these things harken back to a less simple era, when I would also be pulling the labels off of a twelve pack of beer, one bottle at a time. (I probably have always been, and will always be, a connoisseur of videotaped flesh, however.) And, as a freelancer, I have to say that the paralysis of anxiety that comes with the four AM realization that you still haven’t dozed off isn’t any easier. Work is work, and you want to do a good job on it. Having two luggage racks under your eyes combated by six mugs of coffee and a Red Bull chaser still sucks.

Politics.
Okay, okay, okay…so, like, you know when you go to a friend’s party? And, like, there are all these people there who have been drinking way longer than you? And somebody’s hooking up with somebody else, and there‘s a fight on the lawn, and then everbody tells you that that girl is pregnant! And, like, it’s pretty awkward and uncomfortable and you just want to go home and listen to Portishead and eat pizza bagels and, fuck, is it that long until Christmas?

The current presidential race has made me remember drinking six pack after six pack of Zima in college while watching the Bush/Gore debates.

So I suppose it would be more appropriate to say that recent politics have made me want to get drunk, but fortunately or unfortunately, I haven’t.

Watching Joel Osteen.
Euphoria in a bottle. And I mean a bottle of tooth whitener.

Girls.
At risk of sounding like more of a misogynist than Sarah Palin, girls are pretty ridiculous, sober or drunk. (And by that I mean regardless of whether I am sober or drunk.) Talking to ‘em usually makes me feel embarrassed or confused or just kind of uneasy. Double that discomfort if there‘s visible cleavage or low-cut denim. I can’t count how many times I said, “Uh-huh” and nodded when I was drunk at a bar, responding with vague affirmative statements to a lady’s lipglossy pout, simply because I was unable to hear above the throbbing base of Erasure or Jay-Z. It turns out that those women were probably talking about how their IUD made their ovaries twitch or how Foucault subverted the patriarchal paradigm* which, even when completely capable of operating heavy machinery or a vehicle, makes me feel like I’m a few fabric softener sheets to the wind.

Gotta add here that the response to the inevitable question, “What do you do?” when fielded by a broad is not as impressive nowadays.
“I’m a copywriter,” mumbled as I sip my Diet Coke is a helluva lot less bombastic than, “I can show you after we do these lemon drops.”

*[Note: This was a literal discussion I was subjected to after one too many Goldschläger shots at Sarah Lawrence College in 1999.]

Laughing.
Releasing endorphins feels pretty good, both when rated G or if you’re like David Duchovny in a chat room. Orgasms aside, the oxygen deprivation that comes from a serious giggle fit reminds me of one too many shots of vodka. Granted, I’m as much a giggle factory as I am a cuddle machine (no, not like these Cuddle Machines) and most of my gasping-for-air, hit-the-floor, pee-my-pants-no-seriously-I-pee-my-pants laugh sessions come from rolling around in bed with choice company. Not everybody is as lucky as I am. For as many times as I chuckled maniacally at bathroom graffiti when bowing down to the porcelain god, I now am often in bed, nearly incontinent with laughter, as a result of a joke about what to name a starfish or my boyfriend being gay. Before getting up I’m usually laughing until I spit up. Fortunately I don’t sweat gin anymore.

Mondays.
(More like something that’s almost like being hung-over, but isn’t.)

Lastly, I must warn all of you, Simon is coming to meet my family. This pilgrimage to Long Island commences this Sunday, and be ready for all of the vowel-and-hairspray-infused action to be documented here on Jerk Ethic and on its sister blog, Shows I Missed.

Gross. Blog incest.

Write to me: AinsleyDrew at the gmail one.

Thank you to everyone who donates. I toast my nightly six pack of Diet Pepsi to you.

For hire.
For ire.

Completely unrelated to being off the sauce and out of work, I’ve got to say, I want my vice president to be able to administer a spanking. All the better if they look like a slutty librarian.

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I’m still a woman of my word, and Simon still hasn’t delivered his post, therefore I present this to you.

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