driven to drink

The French are always accusing Americans of being puritans, something that used to really get under my skin. The French can be painfully traditional and conservative and nearly the entire country is Catholic, so i never really saw where they got off pointing fingers.

But i am beginning to understand. Firstly, the French are only culturally Catholic, so the extent of their spirituality is limited to freezing their tits off in a medieval church on Christmas eve and occasionally waving a palm frond lazily on....that holiday with the palm fronds. Besides this sort of stuff...they don't actually believe.

Now that I am living here I am beginning to see that Americans are real Christians...even the awnry punk rock ones that I frequent, who wouldn't be caught dead at Sunday service, are still genetically Christian...you can tell by the omnipresent belief that life should be misery and suffering.

it's a real downer.

I realized all of this when i was introduced to the concept of DRINKING GAMES. maybe you are familiar with some of them...i'm not, but i guess i have gotten to witness my fair share of "Beer Pong" and "Asshole" and a few others in the past six months. EVERYONE here plays at one time or another.

Beer Pong seems by far the most popular in Richmond. people use a long table (sometimes a specially decorated sacred plywood board is brought out) You arrange cups in a triangle, fill them with beer, let the person at the other end try to throw what is probably the world's-dirtiest-ping-pong-ball into your cups of beer. If they get the ping pong ball in then you have to drink the, now-contaminated, beer. If they miss, the ball just goes into the corner of the room and collects more dust and germs...so that's also good.

at least this is how it works from what i can tell...i've never actually played. Why haven't I played? am i spoiled sport? a tea totaller? a bad shot? NO!

i just don't need any excuse or justification to drink. none what so ever. i love booze. i love all kinds...i like the feeling of being warmed by alcohol. i like beer and wine and liquor, i drink them all because i can't tell which one i like best..i like being a little tipsy, pretty drunk....whatever. then i like eating, dancing, or running around. did i say like? because what i really meant was LOVE, as in I LOVE IT.

alcohol is one of the most ancient human social pleasures. Many advanced cultures understand this. for all of its' flaws, France is at the vanguard. But america seems to be lagging despite the fact that drunk people here are drunker than anywhere else.

I think this is the hidden subtext of drinking games, unconsciously, people here, even the wild ones, seem to feel guilty about pleasure. The real motivation driving the game is to assuage the sense of guilt that so many puritans associate with pleasure, thus forcing them to have fun. By besting someone in a drinking game you force them to drink, punishing their loosing with the pleasure they wanted in the first place and easing their conscience by making them feel that they just had to drink, since it is the penance for loosing. afterall, they are just following the rules

and we know how puritans love penance and rules.

it is not uncommon to hear someone say " i was sooooo drunk on Friday night, it was terrible, I just had to keep drinking, everyone beat me in Beer Pong" or " I lost at such and such and they made me drink three 40's"

it is not uncommon to hear me say " I was sooooo drunk on Friday, i drank everything in the house because i wanted to and I had a delightful time"

or, in truth, even more frequently: " Luke do you have any money? Good! let's go out on the lash and go crazy"

let's all embrace pleasure! ecstasies! aesthetics! irreverent spending! humour! beauty! poetry! sex! booze!



Hopefully my stint here will witness the ushering in of a new era of Bacchanalian Good Times.

we can do it if we try.