Sober Since Sunday

Actually I was sober Saturday too, which was part of the problem. The night before (Friday), Curt and I had gone to McNellies after pre-gaming. He recognized a friend of his, John Doe. So we went over, and three hours later, we and the women folk had hardly said anything as we listened to stories between John Doe and a friend about water balloons and who was fucking who (especially when they were involved) and all sorts of miscellaneous douche-bag things that I'm positive you have to take classes and do practice drills in order to adequately perform in such manners. Don't get me wrong, they were nice enough. It was a waste of a perfectly good night though, and we should have left and gone and visited his hipster friend Seth. Next night, we went back...

At first everything was good, I particularly enjoyed hanging with Shane. Made a new friend at the bar, I was just smoking minding my own business. The guy over at the other end had done a friendly but insecure head nod that I didn't think anything of. All of a sudden "Time to Pretend" came on, and he got up. He asked, "WHO IS THIS?" Without blinking or turning my eyes from the London Porter tap, I reply Management. All of a sudden he banged his hand on the table startling me, his friend, and the bartender. He's like, who is this? I mumble, "Management or MGMT." He then proceeds to tell him how relieved he was cause he heard it on the radio for 6 months when his alarm clock goes off, had even called the radio station and couldn't figure it out. He was glowing like... well I don't know but he was glowing all get out. Told the bartender his hand hurt, and she replied he probably shouldn't have hit the counter so hard (he actually wasn't drunk at all).

Anyways, things were going well, we eventually left our group to go hang out with Annie and Marie, who never showed up. I had had two beers at this point over well an hour. Annie shows up and is immediately immersed in her favorite subject, herself. I listened and over the next half-hour tried to engage politely, but she was oblivious to my existence. At one point I dismissed myself to go to the rest room, and decided it was time to leave. I was planning on walking back and checking out the time and politely excusing myself. Got back and it was 9:30. Shit, I had been there only 30 minutes, and it felt like hours. Already having an extreme bias against her as a person, I decided to revert to my natural asshole-self to salvage my time. I then proceed to spend the next hour engaging more proactively by throwing out incessant jabs. Curtis acted like he didn't notice. Annie was oblivious to most of them. (I did find out later that even he thought it was amusing when she was trying to explain to me that she was intelligent cause she could bs and that they're essentially the same thing.). When she did, she seemed to give me the benefit of the doubt that I actually wasn't attacking her. It actually wasn't that hard, since she basically dismisses me as a drunken idiot. Okay, so she's right on with that assessment, except while not less than also not just that. Moreover, she seems to be incredibly un-self-aware and overcompensates for her insecurities with a shallow facade of having a higher opinion of herself that she wants to convince you of. Over the next hour I went home. I felt like myself, full of hatred and disgust and proud of myself. I had enjoyed attacking her thoroughly; it had not been the boring event I dreaded. As the night progressed though, I felt horrible about who I was reverting to. The next day I went to church and repented. Curtis and I talked a little about it, he was surprised she picked up on them as little as she did. He was also shocked I could act like that sober. I told him there's a lot about me he doesn't know.

Something clicked though, and I haven't been drinking for some reason, and been reading a lot more and deeply pondering some directions... like what it means to be more fully human.