the year of the whore (part ii)

so, where was we?

…oh yeah, going back to new years eve.

so, i get home, both headlights go out at once as i hit the drive way, and then the car wouldn’t start the next morning…i think we covered that. did i explain why i see this as the year of the whore so far even though i’ve dropped a total of (adds it up real quick) $170 on my car unexpectedly in the first three days of this year? yeah, we’ll get back to that…

…you know how i loves to jump around and shit.

so we head out to san marcos unsure of what bar to hit. i’d been bar hopping with my girl benita recently and liked rocky’s (what’s not to like about cheap booze and a bar so crowded that pretty college girls will pounce in the booth with you just to take a load off their four in heels?) but as we crossed under the interstate shane all of a sudden had a craving for guiness, and the one place i KNOW they have it is the tap, so to the tap i went.

plus, as you may recall, i have an around the world beer card to fill from there. buy, anywho…we go in and not only do they have guiness on tap, but even though it’s new years eve they still have their regular wednesday night beer theme – “emerald isle night”, so all irish and british (wtf?) beers are on happy hour all night long. from where i’m sitting we had found our spot – but shane tends to get ancy when bar hopping and felt billiards were in order, so after a single round we were off to bum’s billiards, the land where pool and booze night was created in my circle. it’s where i learned to drink, learned the ME rules to eight ball (which take too long to explain here) and it’s also, coincidentally, where JAB met his wife.

a couple rounds of drinks (with a couple irish car bombs a piece thrown in) and a few sloppy games of eight and we started to get sentimental for our cabeza buddy josh, calls were made to see what HE was doing to ring in 2K9, and next thing you know we are whiskey bent and hell bound for the middle of B.F.E. where he was ringing in the new year.

not to be stereotypical, but this is where the plot thickens…

we stopped along the way and shane bought twenty-four more beers. i bought twenty-four ounces of rockstar since i was driving. with the exception of the token sip of champagne at midnight that was it for me. not so much for shane – he proceeded to down all but four of the beers – one got stolen (he probably didn’t know until he’s reading this), two were orphaned in the cooler, and the other one hit the outer wall of a house at mach four. but again, i’m getting ahead of myself a bit.

so we’ve been there a while, rang in 2k9 with josh cabeza, his wife, her cabeza-licking chum jana (not meant in a sexual way – you had to be at the juneteenth x que to get that one fully) and various friends of theres. it’s creeping up on 2am so i’ve been up for twenty-one hours at this point and reality and i aren’t chatting like we ought to when i notice it’s been a bit TOO long since i’ve seen shane given how much he’s had to drink. i start to head towards the cute little house on the property when c.l. jana meets me half way across the yard and informs me i need to take shane home. i barely eek out a “why?” when i see shane stumble backwards out the door, crash through (and in doing so, destroy) a stair rail and land on the concrete the opposite of soft, but he springs back to his feet like he’s made of rubber and yanks off his long leather jacket…

“oh, so it’s gonna be like THAT, huh, MOTHERFUCKER!?!?!?”

this can go to many places, but a pretty place ain’t one of them.

now what happened in the house that led up to this is sketchy – josh told me c.l. jana’s version of the story, and i don’t remember her drinking that much, so that might be accurate. shane’s version had no detail but ended with “and then i wanted to kick that dude’s ass” (as told to me the next morning when he woke up on my couch). but all i knew was i needed to make sure there WAS no fight, no legal involvement (the property owner tossed out the “call the sherriff” line a few times) and after lots of heavy breathing, cursing, and spitting, josh walked up and i used that to convince shane that now that our host was here he needed to be polite, say his good-byes, and we be on our way.

he politely thanked josh for having us out.
he thanked c.l. jana and kristen for being teriffic hostesses.
he told the home owner he was a nutless piece of shit and winged his last beer at him, with it detonating into the side of the house…

(i told you i’d get back to the eventually)

and away we went. he kept trying to make me go back ’cause he dropped his cigarettes, but i’d retrieved them. then he wanted the last two beers, and i explained that that was payment for the porch rail. a quick whataburger run and we were home.

oh, and to get back to the car thing – turns out a short in my headlight switch fried my battery. if i had gone to round rock or sa i would have ended up stranded for a couple days as most parts places have to order said part for next day delivery. but i didn’t ’cause of lucky choices i made. i then installed the part in the autozone parking lot, which is when i noticed the threads showing through on my front tire, so i bailed my plans to go to SA that night (sorry, benita – happy belated birthday!) and thus avoided some 70MPH blowout on a pitch-black 1604. so, yeah, i had to drop some coin – but i’ve avoided some pretty serious issues in the process. the money end sucked, but then i got a check in the mail i wasn’t expecting that more than covered it, so i think i ended up okay.

with that kind of luck, i’m considering this the year of the whore…and i’m buying some lotto tickets!