The 6 ½ reasons I woke up drunk in Perkins

by Crom

I’ll give ’em one thing. They make good pancakes. Not too “battery”, not burnt, not under done. They’ve got pancakes down solid. Their coffee is ok, it’s not as bad as some places, and they serve you about 90 liters of it. This is good when you’re barely coherent enough to order (which wasn’t made easier by not being able to see the menu). The scary part is rooted in my method of travel. My car was not present, and there was no way I walked 11k to a pancake house at 3 a.m. So how did I get here? Was it possible I had gotten a ride with strangers? I’d alienated everyone at the party, it was ridiculous to assume someone there had given me a ride. I still had all my money, so I didn’t take a cab. “The Problem with drinking” I muttered aloud “is that life becomes like Memento”

I was talking to myself. And, possibly, the cops at the other table. Ah shit. Much like the story from Reservoir dogs, they paid little attention to me. Coffee and shop talk were the only things on their minds. Pancakes and toast on mine. But still the question lingered. How did I get here? Oh I don’t mean the transportation issue, which was in the nebulous past of things I would never recall. I mean what chain of events were so skewed as to leave me stranded at a all night diner, a long way from home, extremely inebriated and with little to no recollection of the past 24 hours. My iron man indicated it was Saturday morning, 3 am and going strong. One memory floated to the surface, I had been pretty choked at whatever function we’d been attending…wait a sec… “We”?

12:32 am Saturday
Faceless Individual had been missing for awhile, he and some chica had gone into the house 2 hrs prior and I in my solitude had dug into the kokanee. I was starting to get a little choked, mostly due to the actions of the other people around the fire, evidently I wasn’t present. Like 2 other times, it seemed I had been invited, so that Faceless Individual, who was my friend, would accompany me, the instigator of the party wanting to set him up with the chica. I glanced at my watch, 12:32, I would wait for a little while, then probably leave.

I reflected on that memory, I knew something had irked me, but the revelation that being considered furniture was it shocked me, it was not the first time, and I doubted it would be the last. I sipped more coffee, cup 10, starting to gain some ground on my biological functions. My eyes would focus now, the room had stopped spinning. Reason #1: I had been invited somewhere as a vehicle to someone else’s presence and plan. It occurred to me I should write that down, but all I had was a broken green crayon (stolen from the hostess stand). I had my doubts about something as trivial as that making me go off the handle; I’m not normally that hair trigger, even after a few beers. I remembered Friday being a particularly stressful day, which may have led to a stressful night…

12:30 pm Friday
Work-Jackass had just left our deployment office. This was of course after arguing with me to take his last install of day, because his first had taken 3 hours. Not noticing of course that it would make my total for the day 3 and his 1. Not so much. I went to unpack equipment, when I was stopped in the hall by another peon to the IS industry and asked to deal with a simple permission issue. When I arrived, it had turned from a permission issue to “Hey, all my Oracle Databases are completely screwed, and I want them fixed right now”. I neglect to mention my certificate in Oracle Database Administration. I neglect to mention it because I DON’T HAVE ONE. Nevertheless after 90 minutes, I managed to make her machine work properly. Note to everyone, nobody asks you to do something easy, walking into a minefield is easy, it’s walking OUT that’s tricky.

So work was a shit show, that came as no surprise. But, when I left work that day I did promise a friend that someone at work would die. Bloodlust is not something that should be fed hops. Bad idea + Bad Idea = Problem². Reason #2: Work was turning me into an axe murderer. But still, an axe murderer should have the social acumen not to start trouble at a friend’s house. That concerned me, I may have started something; I may have also finished it. I paid up the bill and hit the road, no wheels, tread would have to do. The sun was creeping over the hills, backlighting my travels. I rummaged around in my head still curious what had made me go so burko.

10:00 pm Friday
Faceless Individual had stepped inside with some chica, no sweat off my back, so long as we got going in half an hour, everything would work out. Someone asked why I hadn’t moved the lawn chair closer to the fire, I mentioned I didn’t want to go blind from cinders, the wood we were using being dry as a 007 martini and popping like Newman’s brand. Party-Jackass evidently felt this was excellent material to test his new “piss off someone” attitude. He mocked me for a solid 20 minutes, suggesting that everyone would go blind if they sat too near the fire. Being human, I wasn’t particularly impressed with being the butt of a joke, especially in lieu of my beginning to get the feeling I was a 5th wheel at the party. I strive not to make fun of people, and tried to develop immunity to it as well. As a wiser man once said “an insult is like a drink, it affects one only if one accepts it”. This rationale didn’t help; I was still pretty pissed off. Someone was hankering for a beating.

Ah, yes. The one thing needed for a good fight to start. An asshole in the crowd. But with the fog of war lifting from my memory I recalled clearly I hadn’t laid into him. Reason #3: Jackass was flaming me and needed a beating, but I drank my beer instead. This lead directly into what happened after that, I won’t bother with what I was thinking at the time, it was about 1:00 am, we’d blazed to another liquor store for more supplies. And, lo and behold; I was ditched. Left at willow park liquor store to die, and in my state of disrepair thought “I should get some breakfast”, so I began my trek to Perkins. Reason #4: I’d been ditched and was not happy / Reason #5: I was hungry.

I’m a little surprised, but it wasn’t really the fault of the people I knew, I had gone with some friend of a friend of a friend kind of thing, and they probably didn’t even care. Having taken my abuses for the day I went into Perkins and fell asleep. Which leads to reason 6 ½ : I was there, because no one threw me out. You’d be surprised what that’s worth in this world. Most of the time they’d just pack you up and toss you. I woke up and had pancakes. It’s reassuring in a way, in spite of our trespasses, someone will take you in, feed you breakfast, and not steal your shoes.

Crom