Eulogy for the 3 Books that Are Going to Be Thrown Out Because I Threw Up On Them

The smell of throwup
of vomit
of stuff the body said no to

makes books unreadable
worthless crap that smells

the one sense dominating those of the eyes
of the heart

the nose knows nothing about the effects of
pretty words strung together
in melodies that we believe
mirror that of our souls

that we have them
6/9/02 - 3:45 pm

I am going to embrace poetry. I haven't written any since high school really, I sort of became to jaded to think any poetry is good. And okay, there is lots of bad poetry, and yes, I am just adding to the heap of it - but fuck it all, fuck any worries or fears I have about seeming like one of those people - I have recently decided that I am going to embrace sincerity - that I am going to stop making pretensious sneers about things I think (thought, now) are cheesy for whatever reasons - for whatever fears of intimacy or exposure lie veiled behind ironic laughter at "poets." Especially male poets. Brian Lee, I thought of you this morning while Bonnie was in the shower for half an hour probably masturbating. I thought of all the inside jokes I have made with friends about your poems. But honestly, even you are wonderful. Beyond wonderful. Anyone that wears their heart on their sleeve is. I remember countless hours spent with you when we were roommates, where you proudly wanted me to read your new poems. I sat and listened, and sometimes felt silly listening to all this poetry, but other times felt privleged - was aware and not scared of the fact that you were showing me how you dealt with life - how you made sense out of things nonsensical seeming - how you created beauty and other benign things in my bedroom, with your simple voice, reading the words you wrote. And so, I'm sorry to Brian Lee and everyone else that I ever thought was slightly fruity - yours was a noble cause. I don't even know what it is about poetry that somehow draws people to it with grand intentions to be heavenly creatures, to delineate life - since I really don't feel like line breaks are necessary anymore in poetry in this modern age of ours - that prose can be just as poetic as something broken up into little lines, if not more so. In line breaks, though, there seems to be something meaningful, and yes, this is definitly all in how the reader (me) has been conditioned to read a text - that we (you and I) have been told to linger over poems, to spend time with them - but, whatever, I am a mystified reader granting more power, more religious import to texts with line breaks because of antiquated theories on literature. But that's fine, because reading Jaroslav Seifert this morning felt great. We didn't wake up in time for Unitarian church services, which I really wanted to go to, but I had some poems that were probably just as good, and so yeah.

Anyways, that little poem was just placed at the top of this entry to serve as an epigram that I could reference in the beginning and then go on to tell the long story of last night, the long story of everynight, of me, and of how I ended up throwing up all over a pile of books. A pile of good books. It was most definitely not the books that made me vomit. They were David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Plainsong, and a copy of The Paris Review. What made me vomit was a deadly combination of alcohol and cheese curds last night, as Bonnie and I celebrated her 21st birthday.

The night started off at Chi-Chi's since we were unable to find an Applebee's where Bonnie had hoped to order two drinks for the prince of one during Applebee's 24 hour a day "happy hour." Friday's looked far too scary and carnivorish, so we settled on Chi-Chi's, which was definitly not the most festive of atmospheres. Chi Chi's sort of has the feeling these days of a K-Mart. Now that Wal-Mart's are everywhere, K-Marts just have a geriatric air to them. And for some reason, depsite the bright color schemes attempting to give off the feelings that America associates with Mexico or at least "Mexican" restaurants, which are close enough, right? The bright, even picante wall colors were still not enough to make the place seem as if it had a pulse. You can dress up a dead body but its still going to be a dead body, you know?

After we ate dinner, we went bowling, which both of us really love to do. It was cosmic bowling with darklights, little disco lights, glow in the dark bowling balls, and loud pop music, which was pretty fun, but also loud bad alt-rock (Korn, Puddle of Mudd type shit), that was just offensive and made me want to scratch myself violently. Anyways, bowling was a blast. My first game, I did something incredible, something that made me real proud of myself - the last three frames, I made five strikes in a row to come to a final score of 176. By far, my highest score ever. Second game was a 91. And third game was a 108. I think Bonnie got an 83 the first two games and I think she wanted some change, "because stasis is for losers and ag boys."

After bowling, it was back to Babcock house where I proceeded to get drizzityunk like a scizzityunk. This, the use of izzity in words, was our favorite thing to do all night, and conversation went on for way too long but not too long, because nothing is, and it was damn fizzityunny like a bizzityunny. So yeah, we downed a half bottle of vodka in probably like twenty minutes, and then we filled up a big litter bottle of coke with probably half a bottle of rum, half a bottle of fun - and took that with us as we headed towards State Street looking for excitement. Since we consumed an insane amount of liquids, we were soon having to pee, and last night, we pissed so goddmanfucking much, it was ridiculous. We were peeing in any bush that looked hidden and also a few that most definitly were not. We wandered around Madtown forever with our little bottle of alcohol, gettting even more drunk, being really out of control and yeah.

So then, there was this boy named Dorian. Or Daniel, originally. He had changed his name to Dorian because he thinks everyone should change their name. He had dreads. This was enough for Bonnie and I to go up and talk to him (the dreads). We asked him where all the musical hippies were that usually play drums and guitars where he was sitting because we were ready to dance. Yes, we did do this, and yes, it does get worse. We seriously sit with him and talk for what must have been at least an hour, talking about the most insane things, just so happy that someone is talking to us, that we get to practice our conversation skills, or lack thereof, on someone other than ourselves for a change. Madison, what to do for fun, Rasta, trance music, hippies, making eyes, his baby, the name Dorian, girls that wear shirts with little tie straps on the back, and who even knows what else. We just kept talking and talking. Probably because we both had to pee really bad, we finally broke away, but not before telling him that we'd see him at the protests next weekend and that he was our one friend in Madison so far, and that we were going to introduce him to Rebecca who he would really like (we were real embarrased about that part when we remembered that today). After finally saying good-bye, we ran into populated Peace Park and peed in some more bushes.

We made it home somehow and walked in the front door of Babcock house, where one of the cute, quiet ag boys was watching tv. I asked him what he was watching, and he said the World Cup. Since I sometimes love, soccer I asked him about it, and he said that he was rooting for England to win. I started screaming about Mark Beckahm, the hottest soccer player in the world, who plays for Manchester United. My sister went through a brief period of time where she wanted to be a soccer hooligan, and I was also always fascinated by European soccer culture, particullarly UK soccer, and so that is why I know a couple of random soccer players and facts, and can have conversations with people and make it actually sound like I know something about sports, or at least, soccer. After this little bit of me being so excited about David Beckham to this somewhat shy ag boy, we went up to our room, where things start to get blurry. I was babbling about how cute that boy was and how I wanted to go to talk to him more, and Bonnie encouraged me to go down and talk to him. Something about sitting on his lap too, Bonnie told me today, to many cringes from me. So, I actually went back down there, but thank god, by this point, he had already gone to bed, because otherwise this entry would be about how I got the shit kicked out of me last night by the ag boys. I go downstairs into the kitchen and get a huge bowl of cheese curds, which is basically just really good chunks of cheese. I ate a whole fucking bowl of solid cheese. The rest is a big blur. Appearantly, I threw up all over the floor by Bonnie's bed and then slept next to this throw-up with a towel as my pillow until I woke up this morning at tenish very confused to not see Bonnie in the room anywhere. I found her downstairs on the couch sleeping, and then she told me about the throw-up. And so, this morning was spent cleaning up my throw-up which was so gross and was basically just gooey cheese curds that smelled like rum. Our room still really stinks from it, or at least it did after we had both waken up for the second time, taken a shower, and got dressed. We decided that we needed to get out of the stinky room, to just go anywhere, and to do anything.

So, we went to the zoo, and saw so many cool animals, and I felt like I was part of Earth, part of something grand, and I felt really good.