Whiskey and Guns: Always a Good Idea

It was a hot humid summer day down in South Carolina; Rex had traveled all the way down here from his home in Washington to hangout with his old war buddy Dale.  Dale had invited Rex down to his house out in the middle of the styx because he knew the man could use a little vacation time.  Rex gladly agreed to the invite, and went down as soon as he could.  The two had been the best of friends ever since they went through Special Forces training together.

            Sitting on the back porch enjoying nature with a bottle of Jack Daniels in between them, the two were having a grand old time.  It didn’t take long for their old competitive nature to kick in.

            “I bet I can drink you under the table, you always were a little Nancy boy when it came to handling your alcohol,” challenged Dale

           

“I’ll take that bet you stupid hick,” Rex said as he grabbed the bottle poured himself a shot and immediately downed it.  After about half an hour the bottle was entirely gone and both were plenty drunk by this point.

“Well that didn’t settle anything, we both had twelve shots and are still standing,” said Rex.

“Clearly we should settle this like the gentleman we are, I’ll go grab some guns.  You grab some cans, we’ll see who has better aim” said Dale.

 Now Rex knew alcohol and guns were not a smart idea, for regular people at least.  But this was not his first rodeo, he had shot firearms while trashed plenty of times before with his old war buddies.  They reasoned they were trained to handle their firearms after going days on end without sleeping, and it only takes three days without sleep before you are legally considered drunk, so this activity was perfectly safe for them.

Well Dale got the guns and Rex set up the cans deep in the woods were they usually went.  Rex was up first, and managed to perfectly shoot down all ten cans with ten shots.

“Well it looks like I still got it,” Rex managed to drunkenly say.

“It appears your not completely useless after all.  Be a dear and set up the next round for me?”  Dale asked, and Rex cordially agreed.

He stumbled over to the rack that held the cans and attempted to hop over the ditch that was right and front of it but drunkenly failed and fell in.  He could hear Dale laughing his ass off at the sight while he was sitting in the ditch then suddenly he felt an extremely sharp pain in his neck.  It was rattlesnake, an eastern diamondback to be more precise.  The little bastard must have been hunting, that’s why it never made a sound.

Rex let out a sigh of pain but Dale didn’t pay it any mind and continued laughing his ass off.  Rex knew he was fucked.  The bastard had bit him in the neck, right near a main vein, he could hope that it was only a dry bight, and no venom would come out, but he could somehow feel it running through him.  If it bit him anywhere else he knew he would live but that bastard had hit him in the sweet spot.

             

Procrastination

Sitting there staring at the blank page on his computer screen, Blake couldn’t figure out what to write.  This always happens, at the worst possible time his mind would just freeze up and he could no longer think.  To make matters worse the paper was due the next day. 

Blake always did this, it was like clockwork, whenever something was due he would wait to the last minute in order to get it done.  Some call it lazy and an extremely stupid thing to do but he saw it as a motivator, something to force him to actually sit down and get work done instead of only doing it half ass a week ahead of time.  Most of the time it never steered him wrong, sure he wouldn’t be getting a full night’s sleep, but he would usually get an A on the paper.   

It was nights like these though that showed him the stupidity of his actions, writer’s block it always seemed to show up at the worst possible time.  He just sat there staring blankly at the screen wondering how to start this paper.  He knew the intro was the most important part and therefore the part he had to have absolutely perfect.  He never understood how people could just sit there and bang out an entire paper with little to know effort, he had to sit and put thought into each and every line.  Focusing on every line slowed him down but it always helped make a better paper that had a good argument.

Looking up at the clock he grimaced in horror, two hours had gone by it was 2 a.m. already.  “How is this possible!” He thought to himself, “I literally just sat down to write this.”  He began to panic and have a nervous breakdown.  Quickly he realized this was not helping him to write the paper what so ever.  “Quality be damned,” he said aloud to no one in particular, “I will finish this paper tonight!”

Mark Doty

Going to the poetry reading by Mark Doty I was first surprised to see how many people were there for the event, with the room well above maximum capacity, and second I was definitely most surprised with how interesting a writer he turned out to be.  His poems spanned a variety of topics from one of the first ones he read about the writing in a used book and how the simple explanation for complex lines of poetry could really be the answer, to one of the later ones about being on a plane making an emergency landing.

However some of his strongest poems were the ones he had written about animals.  He said he really enjoyed writing poems about animals because, “it is the art of the poet to put words to the wordless,” and he found animals to be the best for this.  He read several poems about animals, from one about his dog to one about a baby mammoth.

One of the most interesting things was definitely when he was telling us about how he was publishing a new book and his editor asked to include some of his older poems from his earlier work.  Doty told us that it was hard for him to look at some of these poems because he was amazed at just how bad some of them actually were and he was embarrassed to actually release some of them.  Some how I found it nice to hear that even a poet of this guy’s caliber could be embarrassed at his work, because it showed we are all rookies at some point.

A Dead Hooker

I don’t know why but as soon as I had heard the news from those two the first thing that popped into my head was, “oh please god don’t let it be a dead hooker.”  Those two had a history of doing very stupid things and doing them very hammered as well.  Jack had been feeling extremely lonely and depressed since his fiancé had cheated on him and left.  Since then he had also been getting into fits of extreme rage and got into a lot of fights.  We had warned him against dating a stripper, saying she would never be faithful but he never listened.  Dan wanted to cheer him up so he took Jack out for a night out on the town; god only knows the things that they could have been up too.  I would have gladly gone but unfortunately I had work early in the morning.

I knew this had to be serious business to meet them in that spot, it was located deep within the mountainous backwoods and required taking a long dusty old road to get there, if you could even call it that.  We used that spot back in high school to go to every other weekend to get trashed.  It was perfect because no one knew about it and absolutely no cops ever went there.  We knew it was the perfect place so far removed from civilization, so that’s why we made our drunken pact, “If shit ever hits the fan we will come here and figure out what to do, whether it be zombie apocalypse or to bury a dead body this is where we will meet.”  Dan didn’t tell me to grab my twelve gauge and all the supplies I could fit in my truck so I knew he wasn’t calling about the zombie apocalypse.

Even though it was dark I was lucky enough to be able to find the dirt road and it was just as bad I remember.  Bumpy as all hell nearly destroying my car’s shocks and so windy it felt like I was turning every five seconds.  No wonder our beer cans always exploded on us when we opened them after driving up this road.  Eventually the road the road began to smooth but as it did it only began to grow steeper as I entered the mountains.

Soon I reached the spot where we had made the pact all those years ago.  It was a small clearing mid-way up the mountain and as I pulled up my head lights showed both Jack and Dan sitting on the hood of Jack’s car waiting for me with beers in hand.  As I got out they jumped up and greeted me, “took you long enough asshole.”  They got up and began to stumble moving toward the back of Jack’s car, “So why did you call me here in such a hurry?  You didn’t kill a hooker did you?” I asked jokingly.  “Kill a hooker? What are you talking about we would never do such a thing,” said Jack.  He opened up the trunk and I immediately knew why they had called, “we did kill a stripper though” said Dan.

Wrist Watch

It is small and light as a feather.

The green colors around the face are scratched and warn from use.

With the press of a button its gives off an eerie green light to see the time in the dark.

The leather straps are cracked and broken in from use.

The straps reek from the sweat soaked in them from working out.

The smell of a locker room from the straps reminds me of all the miles I have run.

The stop watch shows me how much faster I have gotten.

The small size and dark green coloring make it look cheap.

It still ticks even with all the scratches and damage.

The time is set ahead so I am never late.