24.2.10

Freedom'ish

24 FEB 2010

A year ago, when I left my fraternity brothers behind at ‘coolege’, after a very long and equally unproductive educational pilgrimage, my father told me not to fret, that I had socially graduated.  To what new level of social advance, I can only assume he thought my efforts towards drinking would shift focus to my unethical, and quite likely illegal, undergraduate essay ‘workshop’ business.  To his dismay, I will admit, a four-day pass to Austin proved that I am the same drunkard who has roamed the halls of various Florida University and College dormitories over the last eight years…

Saw a man dancing on a Grand at a piano bar.  Met six bikini waitresses who serve false hope.  Nigel threw up.  Bought food from a street vender and wore it for the rest of the night.  Walked into the wrong hotel—three times.  Flat Iron steak and a bottle of cabernet sauvignon.  Piano bar again, someone paid seventy dollars to hear the UF fight song.  Found the First Sergeant and got a free beer.  Ate at Katz’s deli, it was nothing like New York.  Bought clothes without food stains.  Played billiards and watched USA beat Canada.  Air hockey in a dingy bar.  Shots that taste like Tabasco.  There was a light-saber battle on a mechanical bull.  Hailed a cab to go four blocks.  Ribeye on the bone, a bottle from Stellenbosh, finished with a Port and felt snooty.  Barnhardt threw up, and then he bought false hope from a bikini waitress.  Took a body shot at Coyote Ugly’s, probably have herpes now.  After hours party at some hotelDrunkenly slurred directions, luckily our cabby spoke gibberish.  Snow in Texas, all fights cancelled.  Sign-in to base postponed.  The snow stops.  Sign-in is back on.  A last look through a Starbucks window of the slush filled streets, as I sipped on an espresso and tried to remember the last four days.

The grounds at Ft. Hood were still covered in snow when the taxi dropped us at the gate.  And I may have been drunk still, when we woke in the morning for a run.  As for my misadventures my father had hoped I left behind, it seems more likely that I’ve merely deferred my actions for the deployment, and I’ll reinstall my payments into sophomoric behavior as soon as I get home.

- The Exodus

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