Netherword

[Brotep]

I never had a mint julep until late Thursday afternoon, a fact I  made up for with enthusiasm.
It was my friend's going-away party, and I wasn't here for the company. If this was going to happen it had to be quick. Work the next morning would not be gentle, and I dismissed the thought of calling in sick as soon as it occurred to me.

Taking a personal day always seems like a great idea until you remember you're getting paid by the hour. You needn't wander far to find something more expensive than mountains of edamame and a bottle of cheap thrills.

Soon I was sufficiently shitfaced to stagger on home--with a quick stop at the convenience store for junk food and milk--just a little more than I wanted to be, and just a little less than it takes for the spins to overtake you.

Raw experience can be shaped in different ways. An itch can become an orgasm, if you know what you're doing. The thing about physiological states is, beyond a certain level of intensity they become irresistible. Right now the spins were a Jehovah's Witness persistently knocking at my door while I pretended not to be home.

A little time, a little more digestion, and that Jehovah's Witness could turn into a SWAT team. I was living on the edge of self-induced vomiting, and if I had let myself fall, maybe I could have gotten some sleep. As it was, I couldn't manage rest until five, which left me little time, but it was time enough to dream.

I kept fading in and out of sleep, and rather than present a coherent story--or mood, as my dreams lack the direction of a storyline proper--disjointed dream-images would flash into my mind. I would react, awaken, fall asleep. Again and again. Not with a start as with night terrors, but a different place biochemically and therefore mentally than my usual fare. Seamless.

I tried to affect the dreams, but they just melted away. I don't know if you have ever been awake while in a sleep state, but everything takes on a greater intensity. Your skin is positively humming, waves of sensation moving up and down your spine, and you find yourself surprised by everything.

When it was time to get ready for work I felt this in a strange variation: sights and sounds did not tire me, but my nose was overwhelmed by the vanilla massage oil I still hadn't gotten out of the carpet. I found causal reasoning difficult. And all I wanted to do was write about the experience.

I managed a paragraph on the bus before the strictures of routine and the world around me won out. Whatever it was, the strange state diminished into normalcy over the course of the day, until nothing remained but the memory. Much of my writing is intended to capture a state of consciousness while experiencing that state. This isn't it, but it's close.

[Jasper]

Perhaps bourbon isn't your drink.

[Don Coyote]

That is precisely why I do not go to sleep whilst heavily inebriated.

[Brotep]

Perhaps bourbon isn't your drink.

I've had bourbon before and been fine. I've even had a whole lot of it and been fine. But I don't think I've had a whole lot of it after eating a ton of edamame. I wonder if it might have slowed the absorption of alcohol even more than food in your stomach typically does, thus allowing me to drink more without feeling the effects right away, and stay drunk longer.

I had my last drink at 7, maybe 7:30pm. Just before 5am I still felt a little disoriented every time I turned on the bed.

That is precisely why I do not go to sleep whilst heavily inebriated.

Which?

While I don't care to duplicate the intoxication, the way I felt when I woke up was fascinating.