"I want you to stonewall it."

- Richard M. Nixon

During my last week at the firm, Carter, a buddy from New York, was in town for a conference. We met at Brassiere Perrier for drinks - on his accounting firm - at 5:00. An early primer was necessary. Carter didn't fuck around; he attacked fifths of vodka the way most people dive into red wine.

The Brassiere makes stiff drinks. We ordered one after another for an hour or so, watching the foot traffic outside. When I started feeling those chills from too much drink and on an empty stomach, we started walking back to my place, to meet up with Lisa and grab dinner. On the way, we passed Wonderland, a headshop off Rittenhouse. Wonderland is perfectly situated above a sex toy emporium called the Pleasure Chest, allowing for great one stop party shopping. You could pick up a bong, nitrous oxide canisters, amyl nitrates, anal fillers, nipple clamps, leather masks, double-sided dildos and porn tapes to fit any fetish festering in your corroded mind - all within a 50 foot space. The stores were great for people watching... a fantastic assortment of hippy chicks milling about the assless chaps racks between beady eyed David Berkowitzes in Members Only jackets, scurrying around with armloads of "Ass Masters I - XII" and "Cum Dumpsters I - IV" tapes. The scene was a perfect snapshot of how wrong life can go when you smoke too much dope and don't learn how to talk to women.

Carter stopped in front of Wonderland. "Do you still have that nitrous cracker?"

"Whip-its?" I figured he was joking.

"I don't need to be anywhere until tomorrow afternoon."

Carter and I stepped out of Wonderland with two boxes of nitrous oxide cylinders and fistful of day-glo tie died balloons. Nitrous nights go downhill in a hurry. We had 32 containers of the stuff - enough to turn the average man into a drooling vegetable. Laughing gas is unlike any other drug in that you actually feel yourself getting stupider as you use it. It takes years of booze to fry synapses to the point that you recognize you're diminished. A dope bender leaves you feeling slow for a day, but it passes and the mind returns - better usually, relaxed. On the "hippy crack," you feel your brain dying as the frigid vapors enter your head. "Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss," the gas leaves the balloon. "Oh... yeaahhhuh... he... yeh... ssssssssssssssssssssssssssss... Ohhhh... ohhh... yessss..." Your voice drops to a deep sludge bass, along the lines of the serial murderer in "Silence of the Lambs" - "Oh, you mean that great big, fat person?" After 3 balloons, you notice your limbs are slow, mired in gelatin. After 6, everything in the room is Penthouse-airbrushed with a thin blurry film. The reverb echo accompanying the peak of a nitrous hit is now a constant hum in your head - "Waaaw waaaw waaaw waaaw waaaw." Someone's boxing your ears over and over again. Your grey matter's a pan-seared steak - even when the hit's over, it's still cooking on the plate. After a dozen, you're stuttering, unable to form full sentences. "I'll beer too" or "Remote? Uh, no," suffices. After a box of 16, you're legally retarded. Attempts at witty rejoinders come off like Beetlejuice ramblings. Finding "pizza" in the phone book is beyond your skill set. The dog sits stone-faced, in judgment, mocking you, shaking his head in disgust. You can barely follow the plot line of the sitcom you're staring at and all you can hear in your head is that constant wretched hiss. "Sssssssssssssssss." From party guy to junkie in less than an hour; the couch is your only friend.

"Let's do some Stonewall Jacksons," Carter boomed from the kitchen.

"Are you... kidding?" I struggled to read the channel guide on the television.

Carter was one of those rare people who were impervious to the effects of mind altering substances, an annoying and pointless trait. What was the point if you couldn't get high?

The Stonewall Jackson is doom. If we went that route, I feared we'd never make it out. We'd already cancelled dinner, and I didn't want to spend the entire night in the house. The SJ is a common cocktail. It goes by a million different names depending on where you went to high school or college. There's nothing fancy to it; simple and lethal:

Ingest bong hit (two foot standard pipe is preferred).

Chase with one shot of Wild Turkey 101.

Exhale.

SJs were usually performed amongst a group of four people. The process was repeated until a fifth of whiskey was finished. I'm not certain of its derivation, but the name seems to fit. Stonewall Jackson was a notoriously unpredictable Confederate general. He routinely disobeyed General Lee, regularly issued bizarre or incoherent orders and was accidentally shot to death by his own soldiers. Not a far cry from the realm of possibilities after a handful of SJs. Or maybe the person responsible for the name confused Stonewall with his well known drunkard namesake, Andrew Jackson. It probably just sounded cool to a roomful of stoned frat brothers in the late 60s.

The SJ reached mythic status during senior year in college, when five groups of housemates in various off campus apartments decided to hold an SJ tournament. Five men per team, one 1.75 liter bottle of bourbon and one eighth of standard issue grass. First to finish wins. It was the stupidest endeavor in an entirely senseless college career. My house won with a time of 17 minutes and 54 seconds. I vomited more than Karen Carpenter on a beach weekend. Carter's house lost by a minute and registered a complaint with the referees, claiming we'd illegally drunk straight from the bottle, rather than following the traditional rules, which required pouring of the bourbon into shot glasses. The refs took it under advisement, but never issued a ruling. Since that day, every time I see Carter, if he can, he forces SJs on me. It's pointless; I lost my bourbon fastball long ago. He pounds me into submission - passed out at 12:00.

I never sleep long. The rest of the evening usually follows a standard course. At 2:00 Carter shakes me awake, Yellow Pages in one hand, cordless phone in the other. He paces back and forth in front of the television, interrogating me. The dialogue's always the same...

"Are there any B.Y.O. strip joints near here?"

"No."

"Can I get an escort?"

"I don't think Lisa'd dig that."

"What's the nearest hotel? I'll order one to go there."

"Just go to Lily's."

That is what the SJ brings. On the average buzz, the idea of banging a hooker in your friend's guest room is insane. With a brain full of SJs, it's reasonable, proper. That you've asked permission is effusively polite. Your friend's veto is appalling.

Many think dope's the reason you can't help but make an ass out of yourself in the throes of a SJ stupor. They're wrong. Wild Turkey 101 is a drunk unlike any other. Scotch will make you charming. Vodka's liquid Percocet. Beer's an oafish drunk, a fount of senseless non-sequiturs and flatulence. Red wine will put you to bed. White's piss. Tequila will make you loud. But Turkey 101... Under the right conditions, 101 will turn you into a rabid baboon. Your judgment isn't compromised - it's bloodied with brass knuckles, curbed and left on a sewer grate for dead. You've nothing but a mindful of terrible ideas - equal parts dumb, dangerous and malicious - and twice the energy you need to act on every single one of them. ...At least that's what Premium Grade Turkey does to me. The scars prove it.

"EREERGH... Here it goes! Led Letterman style... I mean... Zeppelin!" 101 gives you the strength to get the television onto the roof. As far as your balance with the appliance over your head once you're there, it's not so helpful...

"So when can I get these stitches out, docturrrr?"

"Three weeks, son. You're lucky. That bush broke your fall."

"It was only 15 feet, doc."

"Here's a pamphlet on booze, son. Enjoy ruining the rest of your life."

101's the only drink that leads to morning questions like "Who's lawn jockey is that?" or "Why is the lawnmower in the living room?"

If 80 proof bourbon's the cocaine of alcohol, 101's freebase. The difference in those 21 proof units is the difference between waking up at 8:00 and 9:00... the difference between a .38 and .44... the difference between fucking Ashley and Jessica Simpson. 101 amplifies every aggressive angle of your personality, shoving its warm fingers down your throat and dragging every rotten suppressed thought to the surface. But unlike cocaine, there's no dishonesty in a High Test Turkey stupor. The façade's shredded. The schlep on the train, the smiling "brick in the wall," the corpse in the grey suit - all dead... Reborn, baptized in sour mash... You're a man who tells people Exactly. What. He. Thinks. The mind's free to speak without fear or concern for sounding stupid, disorganized or unprepared. You're what you'd be in a jungle. Nobody can sustain his "Philadelphia Lawyer's Omnipotence" with his brain soaked in 101. The act seems wrong on every level - a chickenshit move, begging a blinding right cross to the jaw. Bourbon doesn't suffer liars, the posturing or people who can't give up Control. 101 tempts you to scatter their teeth. On the Turkey, you're bleached to your basic elements - who you are, nothing else. I don't know a "Philadelphia Lawyer" who drinks it.

By the fourth SJ I was a wheezing, spitting fool. That's when Carter decided to throw the balloons into the mix. "What if we add a nitrous hit to the equation? Bong hit, balloon, shot. A Stonewall.... Oxide... yes, Oxide."

Sucking smoke, then a mouthful of freezing gas, then a shot of whiskey, then exhaling, takes a while. By the time you're done, you're feeling looped from the oxygen deprivation alone. After three Stonewall Oxides, I was fairly certain I knew what a bad case of the bends felt like. First your heart raced a bit. Then your head felt really light. Then the whole room seemed to stretch out, as though you were seeing it through a fish-eye lens. Then you felt this intense pressure on your temples, like someone was squeezing your head between clenched fists. The shapes around you became two dimensional for a moment and the music became tinny, like the sound you'd get from an old transistor radio.

We had Weezer's "Pinkerton" playing over and over. I couldn't get enough of "El Scorcho." "I'm a lot like you, so please, hello... I'm here, I'm waiting / I think I'd be good for you and you'd be good for me." Perfect... pop catchy, but drenched in sarcasm. Rivers Cuomo is singing to someone either he can't stand or can't stand him. The song fit perfectly with that moment in my life - my divorce from a firm I'd loathed. But then, Weezer works for any moment. It really was the perfect band. You got all the fun of simple punk rock, and all of it layered over complex song structures and lyrics working on more levels than "Blood on the Tracks" era Dylan. Weezer works when you're depressed, happy, high, blasted, sober, tired or excited. Or maybe "El Scorcho's" obnoxious chorus and the Hendrixy background noises hidden in the track just sound great when you're rolling around on the floor with a skull full of laughing gas, feeling your brain drip out of your ear into the Oriental rug. "Goddddddaaammmmmmmmm..."

The problem with nitrous is the ride's too short. I wouldn't want a four hour whip-it, but a little more than a minute - maybe, say, 5 minutes - would be perfect. Almost as suddenly as the Stonewall Oxide set in, the peak crashes and the immaculate idiocy ends. The furniture bloats back into its normal three dimensions. The music grows back into a full stereophonic texture. A rip current drags you back into reality, like one of those cable television dramatizations of someone returning from "the light" in a near death experience. Suddenly coherent, you stare at the hair on your forearm for half a minute. Too much. This must be what heroin's like.

"Eat this," Carter held the pill before me.

"What is it? This isn't ephedr--"

"Not all ephedrine. It's got guar--guarana, and, uh..." Carter struggled to read the back of the multicolored plastic baggie that held the pills. "It's got caffeine... and, uh... Just eat it." I swallowed the horse pill. Nothing from a 7Eleven checkout stand could do any damage. "How do we get a cab?" Carter waved the cordless receiver like a dagger.

The next three hours were a haze... dashes back and forth across the streets of Olde City, arguing with a bum outside the ATM on the corner of 2nd and Chestnut. "I know you got more than a quartah... I know!" Nothing registers with any true clarity until the moment the cute brunette slapped me across the face in the middle of the Plough and the Stars.

"Why the fuck did you do that?"

"You grabbed me."

"No I didn't."

Her boyfriend jumped to her aid. "Did you just check her oil?"

"Check her oil?" I had to snicker; a great line deserves a laugh. He wasn't amused, but he was small. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the bouncer pushing people aside, plowing through the crowd toward me. He wasn't small. "Come on, you're outta here," he grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the door. "But I didn't... fuck it. I'm leaving anyway," I shook loose of his grip and walked outside.

Carter was standing on the sidewalk, grinning. He'd checked her oil. "Sorry about that. Let's get some food. I need to eat."

We walked to South Street and grabbed slices of pizza. When we finished eating, I hailed us a cab home. "Take us to--" Carter cut me off. "Take us to Lily's," he screamed at the cabbie. The cabdriver answered back in a confused Middle Eastern accent. "Lily's?" Carter leaned over seat and barked at the cabbie - "Massage. Asian. Center City." I leaned in toward the cabbie. "Head for City Hall. I'll guide you from there."

Lily's is a Philadelphia institution, the best known handjob joint in town. I obliged Carter, but going there was a huge waste of time for me. I have a rule against paying for any sex act - particularly a handjob. It's irrational to most, but the way I see it, paying to getting jerked off is burning money - you're pissing away $50 to get something you've been providing yourself for free since age 13. If you can't give yourself the best handjob available by the time you're 30, you're doomed. It's OK to be a failure in a lot of things. Some people can't dance, some can't spell, some can't hit a fairway wood. But when you fail at masturbation, God's telling you something... and it's not good. Jumping off that bridge might not be such a bad idea.

I wasn't wasting my time and money on a substandard stroking from a 17-year-old in a kimono. And even if I were, the hybrid ephedrine pills we'd taken probably would have prevented it. Carter'd eaten five or six of those little bombs. He was paying a white slave to give him a handjob while he was pharmaceutically impotent. Sheer idiocy.

I walked Carter upstairs. The collection of middle aged postal workers, pear shaped translucent white office clerks who all appeared to be suffering from varying degrees of Klinefelter's Syndrome and wasted businessmen stopping by after blowing their paychecks at "Delilah's" or "Cheerleaders" were a gross lot. A doughy cubicle mole was riding an exercise bike in the corner in boxers and brown dress socks. His sagging, hairy man breasts were rhythmically rolling up and down as he pedaled. In another corner was an acned, skinny kid in an oversized Flyers jersey. He looked like a paperboy who'd saved a jar of tips to pay for his "first time."

A middle aged Asian woman in an orange robe appeared. "You wan washy washy?"

I turned and bolted down the steps before she could corner me. I didn't want Carter tackling me and shoving me into a room, where I'd be forced to decline her services. Television's taught me honor and pride in workmanship are huge matters in Asian society. I didn't want to find myself arguing with the owner about dishonoring his establishment or explaining to a weepy "masseuse" that I wasn't insulting her skills. "No, really, you've got the most beautiful hands. I'm sure I would love to receive your 'service'. But you see, my girlfriend has this thing about me and hook-- I mean, 'massage professionals'. And I also took this odd pill which--" I'd had Too Much of Everything for the evening. I didn't need that action. I wanted home... bed. I had that sinking feeling that when I walked outside, I'd see the first grey glimpses of the dawn. There's nothing as rotten as watching the sun rise and knowing you're still going to be drunk when you wake up, whenever that is.

The sky was deep black; Jesus still loved me. I started down the alley, wailing in a ragged bass, "I'm a lot like you, so please, hello..."

To be continued...

Posted by PhilaLawyer at 8:09 PM

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