I'm So Drunk
It's me again, Captain Melo, and no, I'm not making a standard slut mating call. I'm here because The Plastic Highway has asked me to write a guest posting. So before he gets to his Adventure Part 2, I'm going to take this opportunity to pontificate on how the transition from 30 Day LA back to regular life has gone.
The last few weeks I’ve spent most of my energy getting back into the good parts of the routine that I had established before I started 30 Day LA in August. I’ve been cooking more, eating healthy, and trying to sleep more -- things that were pretty difficult to keep up with when I was on my adventure. I also revisited some of the places I went to last month. When I went to The Other Room with Lefty last week, he noted that I seem much more positive since I started the project. I do feel a greater sense of optimism in knowing that I can control my satisfaction with my life with this door to a world of new experiences now open to me. My approach to tackling challenges at work and play has been more aggressive and confident. However, I can’t say I’ve completely changed. One constant that I have steadily maintained, before, during, and after 30 Day LA, is my alcoholism.
This past weekend I organized a group Hollywood Bowl outing for the Fireworks Finale, which featured the LA Philharmonic playing Tchaikovsky and a performance by Kermit and Miss Piggy. The whole month of August I tried looking for concerts that I could go to at the Hollywood Bowl, but the good ones were sold out and I didn’t want to go by myself to a classical concert. So I was excited that I would get to make up for it in September and catch a fireworks show on top of it. We got there early on Saturday afternoon, and with our bags of food and alcohol in tow, raced up the steep path of the upper picnic area past some old people and snagged the last available table. Don't worry, those old people already had a table of their own. Over Lefty’s pasta salad, our old friend MissCount’s fried chicken, SatanNumberTwo’s array of home-made delicacies, ShopGirl’s watermelon, and 8 bottles of wine, the 9 of us spent the afternoon talking shit about life, people, and sex. We watched the sun set over the bowl and headed in to catch the performance.
I wish I could tell you how the performance was. Unfortunately, I missed the whole thing. I was only buzzed by the time we took our seats, but then Tiny and LawyerBoy pulled out their bottle of wine and passed it to me. I started swigging like it was beer. Big mistake. By the end of the concert I had managed to pick a fight with two gay guys who were telling me to shut up (I didn’t realize they were gay until later), spend a couple hours on the toilet barfing all over my shoes while hearing the fireworks and cheers exploding outside, then pass out on the curb as people were filing out of the Bowl. LawyerBoy found me on the ground and wondered aloud what kind of person gets trashed at an LA Philharmonic concert. I was acting like it was my birthday or something. So while Tiny and LawyerBoy were carrying my drunk ass back to the car and I pretended to fly through the air and do a Liu-Kang bicycle kick in front of the all the cars jam-packed on Highland, I realized that even 30 Day LA didn't change the fact that I’m a stupid drunken asshole.
Which makes me happy that one of the goals that The Plastic Highway has set for himself is not just to become a different person in these thirty days but more like the person he wants to be. It’s something I should have made a more conscious effort to do last month. But I do have one saving grace: I don’t need to be on a 30 day adventure to make changes for myself.
So instead of doing something new everyday, I’m going to make it every week. And instead of going to some place new, I’m going to set a goal for myself to work on. This week, it’s going to be: Stop Being a Stupid Drunken Asshole. I figure this way I won’t miss out on stuff like a Hollywood Bowl concert that I’ve been looking forward to for a month by spending the whole night barfing in the bathroom. It serves me right though, and at least the two gay guys got to enjoy the concert without me yelling in their ears the whole time. As far as how I’m going to implement this goal, I’ll look for an activity where I can meet people and appreciate being sober. The Abbot Kinney Festival this weekend looks like a good bet.
I already tried to address this issue last night, when I accompanied The Plastic Highway on his Hollywood Bar Trifecta. I’ll let him tell you about it, but it involved me not drinking and him addressing one of his biggest fears. Sounds like a terrible night, right? It turned out great for both of us.
So in the meantime, while The Plastic Highway is busy blasting through his activities, I hope some of you who read this website will try out a thirty day adventure for yourselves. If there was ever a time when you thought, "Damn, I need to stop doing that shit" or "I should try that out sometime," now is always a better time to do it than never. As fellow blogger DieselGirl says, “LA is a terrible thing to waste.” So is your city. And so is my liver.