I seesaw between whether I'll outlive my friends or not. JWER is a good case in point; while I exercise a lot more and indulge far fewer physical vices than he does, perhaps (aside from the Weyerbacher Merry Monks' Belgian Style Golden Ale - a triple much like Delerium Nocturnum and about the same level of potency, w00t!), but he chose a much less hazardous profession. So the tossup is still out there.
That said, if I get spammed before he does, I need him to be the alternate candidate for a Speaker for the Dead at my funeral. The other candidate is the Midnight Tree Bandit, who I have known just a bit longer than JWER, but not by much.
With that said, rescued from the dead, here's my future eulogy, with apologies to JWER. I remember the official purpose of this trip - it was because of my duties for the Army's Strategic Readiness System, a part of which I had some nominal responsibility:
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August 20, 2004: "Ghosts of Ramen Past"
Last week my friend Decrepitude was (almost*) in town for a couple of days, and in the spirit of reliving my nomadic, spartan college days, I crashed on the armchair in his hotel room two nights running. Missing was the girly power pop, the green and black BBS screen, and the ramen. Especially the ramen. Back when we were sophomores at JHU, shortly after my parents had moved an embarrassingly short distance from campus, I embarked upon a trek from house to apartment to Reading Room in search of a place to sleep and/or weather a hangover so as not to arouse the suspicions of the aforementioned parents (they tend to wonder when you're sleeping when you clearly ought to be in SOME class). I tried not to be a burden on any one friend for too long a stretch, but Decrepitude was a different story; he lived close to campus, by himself, and kept conveniently weird hours. We ran a BBS together (actually, he ran it, I just put it on my resume), we listened to a lot of College Tunez™, we watched violent movies frame-by-frame, and I spectated as he played all manner of homicidal video games. When food was imperative, it was either off to that paragon of the culinary arts, CC Carryout (which is still there, thank Bulgogi) or, more likely, his endless supply of ramen. I’m glad he wasn’t keeping track, because I’m pretty sure I ate about $700 worth of ramen that year.
The sleeping arrangements were rather austere, as befit the lodgings of a cheap-ass Army ROTC cadet, and I spent a lot of time on a spare sleeping bag on the hardwood (since I spent all of high school sleeping on a twin futon mattress that was about 3 inches thick, this was not a big deal. In fact, I think most of the back pain of the last few years has had to do with my foolish insistence on sleeping on actual mattresses). We were both more or less perennially single, and spent a lot of time bitching about that, and absolutely zero time actually attempting to change the state of affairs in any way. Of course, this was before JHU lowered their acceptance standards to let more beautiful people in, so all the remotely attractive women were already well spoken for, but it is barely possible that occasionally leaving a small dark room with no women in it might increase one’s prospects of scoring (it’s the BIG dark rooms where all the magic happens, especially if the floor is sticky). We also have something in common that I shared with pretty much none of my other friends, which is a deeply ingrained sense of honor which more or less completely embarrasses the hell out of me to even talk about, and yet is at the very core of my personality. I blame my upbringing in the shadow of the Naval Academy. Decrepitude was in the Army, so he was expected to be like this, but I met many of his classmates over the years, and very few of them even came close. He is a rare duck. I believe I am some sort of infrequent waterfowl, as well. To stave off the inevitable comments, most of you will recognize this trait in me as my complete unwillingness to ever let anything go, ever, if I believe that it is Cosmically Unjust. You may think I've let one or two things go over the years, but they're still in there somewhere. Eventually, my head will explode. I'll try to warn you if you're standing nearby.
We met up after I got off work on Tuesday, and by the time I finally figured out where in the hell his hotel was, it was too late to do much but drink, so we did just that. I am both proud and horrified that I can still out-drink most of my college friends, but it was never much of a challenge with Decrepitude, who is known the world over for highly entertaining drunken antics, usually ensuing mere moments after the alcohol was introduced (there are stories about me, too, but most of them aren’t very funny). He held his own this time; I think he’s been practicing. Either that or I was off my game. That, and I had forgotten to pack my Chartreuse. We talked and drank and drank and talked, about the state of our lives and the state of the world, and when it was starting to get late, we started back for the hotel and I had an extremely ill-advised cheese steak from Jerry’s, which I was almost certain had been banned in the mid-90’s. Alas no. I slept a fitful, and yet apparently quite snore-laden, sleep on the armchair (it was a big bed, ‘tis true, but the only friends of mine I’m willing to spoon with have always been tragically unwilling to spoon with me. Also: don’t ask, don’t tell).
He had talked about running around Arlington National Cemetery in the morning, and while he was to eventually wuss out and run a less gigantic circuit, I was still pretty damned impressed that he’s still in good enough shape to run a greater distance that I’ve run in my entire life, all at once, the morning after a small herd of beer. He did whine a little about the hills later, but they were eminently whine-worthy, and I was only walking them.
The next night, he had some Green Polyester event to attend, so I got my haircut and bought a crapload of books at KramerBooks and Olsson’s and schlepped them back to scenic Food Court, I mean Courthouse. I got a bit of a head start on the beer while waiting for him to get back, and then we went to the always excellent Brickskellar, where our need for beer was somewhat curtailed by the rather epic price of our first selection. Still, it was a good time, and I’m glad I decided to come down; we don’t get to see each other very often at all (i.e.: just like all my other good friends, including the supposedly pregnant one that lives 5 miles away). We’ve both gone through a lot since we first met, we’re still good friends, and I think our shared feeling that there’s a right way to live one’s life, even if we don’t completely agree on the particulars, is still very much intact. I just hope he never tries to collect on the ramen tab.
* good LORD does Northern Virginia suck ass
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