I guess you need the start the night before.... I mean, no doubt I had a few drinks. But I didn't think I was being unreasonable. When you're drinking, though, the reasonableness parameters get a little fuzzy by definition, and you tend to forget you're stewing in your own stupor.
Again, I don't think volume per se was the issue. Let's see. A margarita or two with dinner, followed by a couple hours off. Then a couple of bottles of Harp waiting for the cab to show up. At the Okkervil River/Centro-matic show, I think I had four or five beers over the course of two and a half hours. Which, I admit, is kind of lot. And mostly I think I was going too fast. It was hot in the club, hot outside, and something about hot Texas nights encourages drinking fast. Or encouraged me that night, anyway. You get a little stupid when you're drinking, right? Right.
Then we went over to the Tavern for the very end of Dave Huddleston's girlfriend's birthday celebration... I think I snuck in a pint of Bass there, not too mention two slices of some delicious birthday cake. It was from Lucy's, a bakery in Austin that makes among the best cakes I've ever had -- I will always have a super-special place in my heart for Lucy's cakes, whether or I like it or not, for reasons I'm not going to get into today. Over the course of an hour I had two pieces (the second being much smaller than the first, or at least that's how I remember it), eating pretty much with my hands like a drunken idiot -- because I was a drunken idiot. I know I was getting icing on my goatee, because some girls pointed it out to me, prompting me to wipe my face on the sleeve of my T-shirt in the suavest way possible. Yay! So maybe we can blame things on the cake...
No, it probably wasn't the cake's fault. Maybe we should blame that last half-pint I drank to help Ben finish off the pitcher before we let my friend Mike Booher drive us home in the Zykos van. Maybe we could just stop this crummy blame game. It was me who suffered through misery of a hungover Sunday... it just didn't seem like I had hit it hard enough to punished like I ended up being punished.
Several hours later I slid off my new bed --an exciting purchase I'll prattle on about at some other point-- and into an ugly morning that seemed to be conspiring against me from the word go. For starters, I couldn't sleep after 8:00 a.m. My stomach hurt and my head hurt and I knew enough that I needed to eat, have some Ibuprofen, and forget about getting back to bed. Then there was the weather... gray and crummy and raining just enough to smear all the grime on you car windows but not enough to really wash it away. Oh, and muggy to boot. Nice and muggy.
I ended up driving around South Austin by myself looking for the paper, a fountain soda, and some relief from the existential indian rugburn my hungover morning was putting me through. I almost said "existential titty twister," but that just wouldn't be right, would it? Either way, I didn't find what I was looking for -- the soda sucked, I hated the mixed CDs I had made the day before and foolishly already given away, and I had to go back to Houston. Even the radio turned against me -- I couldn't find Car Talk anywhere on the Austin radio stations.
Speaking of Booher, he called me about lunch right as I hit the road back to Houston. I am including a picture of him here, because I found it on the Zykos website, which I think is totally well done. I'm really looking forward to seeing them.
I didn't get to have lunch with Booher -- I had unfortunately already eaten, and like I said, was already on my way to Houston when he called. Not that I would have been much a conversationalist anyway. My hangover turned increasingly ugly over the course of the two and a half hour drive with my desperately increasing need for sleep. I talked to A. a little bit as I drove and felt like I was a pretty shitty conversationalist. I kept forgetting things I wanted to bring up and thinking of questions to ask and then forgetting those before I could ask them. I felt like I was being a terrible listener, and I am sure I was. That sucks. I asked for leniency, but you never know how irritating you're really being. Especially when you're hungover and lamely trying not to be irritating and/or dopey... you're hungover, you know? What can you really do?
In the end, one rides out the storm, I suppose. The nature of the hangover makes the entire the world look crummy. I get totally down on myself, everything seems pointless, yadda yadda yadda. But it's a passing state, nothing to take too seriously. Hungover or not, I sometimes forget about how temporary everything is and let myself get caught up in the moment... something to work on, I guess. And as a start, I would recommend laying on the couch with as many cats sleeping on you as possible, watching Cheap Seats on ESPN Classic, and falling asleep well before 9:00 p.m.
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