The Drunkard Flips Out

We parked half a mile away from the college and piled out—The Student, lacking coordination, tumbled out of the back seat and laid groaning on the ground. The Traveler took The Drunkard aside and whispered. Dee walked to a guardrail near the river running through the city and I followed.

“So. What do you study?” I asked.

She turned—I was normally ambivalent about blue eyes, but here, I melted—and said, “I study the genetic mutations between generations of e. coli bacteria in conditions that resemble Arctic winters.”

“That’s cold.”

“Yes. Very cold. You?”

“I, er, I do a special branch of literary criticism.”

“Which is?”

“Well, it’s a new field. Kind of ridiculous. There’s no real term for it. It’s… well, it’s studying how what makes something literary.”

“Ah, and what are your conclusions?”

I took off my hat and scratched my head. I had problems with this in my essay—it is incredibly hard to come to a conclusion about anything when no one knows what they’re looking for—and, certainly, had problems explaining it now. “Erm,” I began, “you’ve got some stuff that’s High Literature, and some that’s not. Some of the literary stuff is good storytelling—but a lot isn’t, and descends into rants about something or other. Some that’s not High Literature may be good storytelling—but, at the same time, a lot isn’t.”

Dee nodded slowly. The sort of nod one gives a madman. I recognized that look and despaired. “I see,” she said. “And what makes something literary?”

It was an incredibly hard question. “So far, research indicates that being George Orwell, Mark Twain, Alduous Huxley, or Sinclair Lewis helps.”

“And you?”

“Are clearly none of them. So.” I shrugged. “If you have any suggestions, feel free to send them my way.”

She nodded—this one warmer, less of the I’m-talking-to-a-madman slow nod I got earlier. “We should head back. It looks like your friend’s recovered from his near-coma.”

We did.

After we rejoined them, I up to The Traveler and said, “Two questions.”

“Shoot.”

“What’d you tell The Drunkard?”

“I told him to keep drinking, but if he starts freaking out, we’re leaving him.”

“Fair enough. Second question: What did I do last night?”

“Oh, you’d like to know, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes. Very much so. Please tell me.”

The Traveler took a deep breath as we left the car park, walked onto the sidewalk and followed Dee through double-decker-filled, pedestrian-laden streets to Christ Church College. We passed by multi-storey bookstores, specialty shops, and a variety of tourist gift stores. “I don’t know. I kind of like you freaking out like this.”

“What did I do to you?”

“Absolutely nothing. This might be a subconscious sense of schaudenfreude that I don’t show enough.” He looked around, dodged a couple of running children and their running, shouting parents, and said, “Yes, I believe that’s it.”

I grumbled.

“Relax,” said The Traveler. “We’ll tell you. Eventually. Maybe.”

We passed by a gatehouse. Looking through, into a courtyard, we saw a large, circular, domed building. “Hey Dee,” I said. “What’s that?”

“That’s the Camera. It’s one of the main libraries.”

“Looks like an observatory,” said The Traveler.

“Can we go in? Can we go in?” The Student’s eyes dilated and it looked like he was on the verge of leaping up and down.

“I wish you could, it’s lovely in there. They’re very particular about their libraries here, though, and non-students can only get in during certain hours.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “Unheard of! Absurd! It is a universal, human right to check books out of a library. The thirst for knowledge cannot go impeded by petty things such as university tuitions.”

 “Why did you just speak in a speech bubble?” asked The Drunkard, blinking rapidly and leaning towards me. “Are you a comic character? Are we in a comic?” He turned to the stone wall and licked it. “We’re not in a comic. That has a taste.”

The Student pointed to The Drunkard and said, “Dee, should we bring him with us?”

“Probably not,” she said. “I’ll take him for a walk around the grounds while you guys are inside.”

The Drunkard turned to her and smiled. “Pretty lady take for walk?”

Dee gave him a pat on the head. “Yes, when we get there.”

It was another few minutes before we got to Christ Church College. The college was located behind walls the size of Canterbury’s city walls, and I assumed that we were near Oxford’s castle (Oxford has a castle, right? Every city in this country has a castle) before Dee walked us through a black wooden gate and into the college grounds.

The grounds looked like Hyde Park—if you were to ignore the giant building to the left. It looked like a manor house from a period drama—an impression helped by the grounds. Immaculately landscaped, there was a large field—there were a couple games of football, a few people flying kites, and people lounging around on blankets. It was a nice day for it—the cutting wind so prevalent in Canterbury was not here, and the sky (joy!) was a rich blue. There was a lake in the middle of the field. Gravel paths stretched to the other side.

Closer to us, near the entrance gate and leading to the college itself, there was a lovely garden, bursting with colorful flowers. “Okay,” said Dee, “you’ll go up to that gate over there—” she pointed to an archway in building, and, after that, told The Traveler what to do.

I didn’t pay much attention because I was preoccupied with The Drunkard. He stood next to the flowers and gazed. I can’t describe it in any other way: he simply gazed. Then, he started crying and crouched on the ground. I walked over and said, “You okay, man?”

“They’re so beautiful.”

I looked at the flowers. They were pretty nice. I wasn’t going to disagree with The Drunkard on that. But there wasn’t, as far as I could tell, any reason for him to break down in tears at the sight of a well-manicured garden. I nodded. “Well, sure. I guess. They—”

“Must be set free,” he mumbled.

I couldn’t have understood him correctly. “What?”

“They must be set free,” he said—quite clearly this time. He stood up, looked around him, and yelled, “They must be set free!” He hurled himself into the flowerbed and began ripping and tearing at the flowers, sending them flying behind him like a dog digging a hole.

I stood in awe for a moment, my eyes widened, paralyzed. The Student rushed over, shouting, “Drunkard, what the hell are you doing?” He tried to pull The Drunkard out of the flowerbed.

“They must be set free—yesyesyes—and I am the man to do it,” The Drunkard shouted as he grasped the flora.

I came to my senses and hurled myself into the fray. We managed to jerk him out of the bed, and I saw his face. It was beet red and he was twitching. We pushed him across the pathway—past our fellow shocked and cowed tourists, who stood, looking on, cameras at the ready. “Nothing to see,” I called. “He’s just a fan of flowers.”

“They’re imprisoned for their beauty!” shouted The Drunkard. “We all are! We are all beautiful creatures in the jail of reality! Free yourselves!”

“No we’re not,” I said. “Most of the people here are hideously malformed.”

A low rumble went through the tourists. I looked for The Traveler and Dee, and it seemed they had disappeared off towards the gate. How they managed to not hear the commotion was beyond me. I turned back to the crowd. Turns out, a lot of them were hideously malformed. “Just saying that to calm him down, folks,” I lied. “He gets a little excited when we let him out of his cage.”

The Drunkard sputtered, and we let him crash to the ground. He burst into tears. “I am scum,” he stated. He clutched his head in his hands. “I am scum.”

Finally, The Traveler and Dee ran over. The Traveler knelt down near The Drunkard and looked up at me, his face a mixture between confusion and anger. “What the fuck did he put in his absinthe? Acid? It shouldn’t make him flip his shit this much.”

I shrugged. “I’ve never touched the stuff.”

The Traveler grunted. “Well, fuck. Dee, you go in with The Student and The Narrator. If this schmuck freaks out again, I can handle him.”

“Are you sure?”

I snorted. “You should’ve seen him yesterday. Traveler went all Apeshit Bird Man and kicked the shit out of him.”

She raised an eyebrow at The Traveler, who shrugged. “I landed a couple of good kicks and managed to convince The Drunkard of the error of his ways. Anyway, guys,” he said, “it’s five quid to go inside. And, apparently, it’s where they filmed bits of Harry Potter.”

“Joy,” I said. “My favorite film of all time.”

“I thought so,” said The Student. “You seemed like a Harry Potter freak. Running around, playing quidditch, casting spells and whatnot.”

“Okay,” said Dee, who, I’m guessing did not share our joy in making things up about each other. “Shall we go?”

“Lead on,” I said.

She did and we followed.

The Next Day

I woke up around noon shouting, “Vodka!” I was in a cold sweat and smelled like a distillery. I looked around me at the vaguely familiar walls, saw that I was inside a virtually destroyed sleeping bag (it looked like someone had taken a knife to the thing during the night) and, further, that I was in the room alone. The rest of the—intact—sleeping bags were vacant and the bed was made up. The door was closed. At my feet were the two empty mason jars, on their sides.

It was a good thirty seconds of lucidity before the massive headache hit me, and I clamped my hands to the sides of my head and groaned. After a few minutes, I got used to the feeling—as used to intense, throbbing pain as one can get, at any rate—and got out of the sleeping bag. I stood, stumbled, saw a note on the floor, picked it up and found that the headache made it completely impossible to read.

I pulled on my jeans and opened the door. The others were sitting around the table—The Student leaned against the wall—and drank what smelled like the best damn coffee in the world. “Raurgh,” I said.

The Drunkard turned. “Ah,” he said. “There he is.”

Lena, wearing white pajamas, turned and said, “Well hello, loverman.”

This pierced through the headache. I’d never been called that in my life. Not even in irony. It just wasn’t the sort of moniker people attached to me. “What—” I asked. That took a lot more effort than I’d hoped, and I groaned, took a breath, and started again. “What did you just call me?”

“Woah,” said The Student. “You don’t remember anything?”

My face contorted into expressions I can only describe as utter confusion—mixed with a supreme yearning to know what I did the previous night. I think—and it’s very hard to remember what your face is doing of its own accord—my left eyelid shut halfway and my eyebrow rose up a few inches. “No. What’d I do?”

The Student grinned, rose the cup to his mouth. “Oh, nothing. Hee hee.” He drank.

I spun and turned on The Traveler. I pointed at him.

He shrugged, grinning.

“Fuck all of you.”

“Oh,” said The Drunkard. “That’s slightly inaccurate.”

Now it was time to turn to Lena. “Did we…?” If so, that might have been bad. I hadn’t bought condoms since I was eighteen. Some might call it dangerous—I, knowing full well my habits, knew that I wouldn’t need them, so I called it fiscally sound.

She shrugged, raised her eyebrows, and sipped from her mug.

“This just isn’t fair. Not one Goddamn bit, guys.”

Dee walked in, windbreaker over a pink shirt and black jeans, and said, “Hey there, loverman.”

“Damn it!” I shouted.

“Er,” she responded.

“Right,” said The Traveler. “Shall we go?”

“Go where?” I asked.

“Christ, you didn’t have that much to drink.”

“Oh, wow. Now that you mention that, all of my memories come flooding back. Where are we going?”

“Christ Church.”

I tilted my head to the side. “We’re going back to Canterbury?” There was another university in Canterbury called Canterbury Christ Church. It was—by reputation—a haven for unique individuals with unique ideas and habits. I remember, about a month before we went to Oxford, The Student took me to meet a friend of his from when he was here before. We met in a pub on the High Street that catered to metalheads and Goths, and The Student and I were supremely out of place. We met his friend, who was with some people whose faces seemed to be made of metal rings, things escalated, and I was told that “if [my] Jew ass knew what was good for [me], [I] should leave.” So, I did. Steered clear of that place—and CCC, where those guys were apparently from. (I got an apology from The Student’s friend. Really, the incident is a testament to my ability to conjure up hatred from peopl. Anyway.)

“No,” said The Traveler.

“You serious?” asked The Student.

The headache started throbbing harder. “Look, I need you guys to pretend that I’m much dumber than I actually am. I don’t have the capacity to make logical conclusions right now, okay?”

“Christ Church College,” said The Traveler, “is the epitome of Old-World education—at least in England. It’s kind of like a massive fraternity in that, in order to be admitted to the college and allowed to live there, you need a juicy bank account.”

I must have had a blank look on my face, because he followed it up with:

“Also, it’s where they filmed bits of Harry Potter.”

Ignoring this—I didn’t feel one way or another about the books or the movies—I got my stuff ready and leaned against the wall.

The others gathered their stuff together, put away their dishes, and said bye to Lena—who was staying behind to do some coursework—and we filed behind Dee like ducklings. We got back in the car—Dee up front with The Traveler to give directions to a car park near the college—and I was in the back with The Student and The Drunkard. The Student was crushed in the middle, while The Drunkard spread himself out.

I turned to The Student—who was glaring ahead with an expression of absolute, unmasked displeasure—and said, “So, how’s the girl?”

He beamed. “Oh, she’s great. Fuckin’ great, man. You know, I’m really glad it worked out that I kept getting shot down at the beginning of the semester. It all worked out pretty well. Makes you think that, maybe, just maybe, the Chassids might not be completely insane when it comes to their philosophies on—”

“—Yeah, that’s great,” I said. “What did I do last night?”

“Really bothering you, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“And you had no interest in how things are going with Rebecca and I, did you?”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“Hmm,” he said. He scratched the beard that was slowly starting to appear. “Too bad, then. Seems I can’t remember what happened last night.”

“Oh come on,” I said.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Oh, get the fuck out. Drunkard,” I said, leaning forward. “What did I do last night?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

If Dee hadn’t been in the seat in front of me, I would have punched it with all the fury of… a man suffering from a blackout and trying desperately to remember the occurrences of the previous night. “You will pay for this, Drunkard! Do you hear? By all that is holy in the world, you shall pay for your transgressions this day!”

The Drunkard threw back his head and laughed. “Right. I can’t wait to read about what you have to say about me in that blog of yours.”

“How is the blog going?” The Traveler asked.

We turned a corner into the central part of the city—the part of Oxford that I thought of as “The Older Part with the Cool Buildings”—and immediately stopped due to a massive traffic jam. “Pretty well,” I said. We moved an inch and The Traveler, displaying his Americanness, laid on his horn, leaned out the window, and shouted that we were trying to drive here.

“That’s good,” he said, after bringing his head back into the car.

“Yep,” I responded. “Up to two followers, now.”

“Oh,” said The Drunkard. “A whole two! Tell me: out of those two, how many are your parents?”

“One,” I whispered.

“Aw, sweet,” he said. He leaned back, took a flask out of his jacket, and sipped.

“Drunkard,” said The Traveler, moving us up another couple of inches, “how’d you find the flasks?”

“Your mother,” responded The Drunkard.

I looked out the window. It was another nice day. Clear blue sky—one of the ten legitimately clear blue skies I’d seen so far this semester—with a nice, non-biting breeze. People were out on the sidewalks, walking through the gardens of the town, and here we were, sitting in a car inching along one of England’s stupidly tiny roads. (This, I thought, was why Europeans are in better shape than Americans: They’ll do anything they can to avoid driving.)

“Drunkard,” The Student said, “why are you giving The Narrator shit about the blog?”

“Pah, I’m just fuckin with him.”

“He doesn’t know that.”

“What?” I said, turning to The Student. I did know it—kind of. But, damn it, I was not to be made into an overly-sensitive nebbish Jew in the presence of a gorgeous woman. I glanced at the rear-view mirror and saw her grinning. “Fuck off, this is what we do. Right, buddy ole pal of mine?” I reached over The Student and punched The Drunkard on his shoulder.

“You do that again and I’ll curb stomp you.”

I swallowed the fear—my brother forced me to watch that scene from American History X twenty times one night when I was little—and said, “Yeah, yeah, says you. I’ll break your still.”

“What,” said The Drunkard, his voice dropping what sounded like eight octaves and reaching into the realm of the demonic. “What did you just say?”

“Er.”

“Kids,” The Traveler said. “We’re almost there. Refrain from killing each other in the presence of our lovely tour guide, please.”

“Mmhmm,” said Dee. “If you don’t, I’ll take all of you to a nice bagel place right across the street from the college.”

“Bagels!” the three of us shouted in unison. There were times like these when I thought, just for a moment, just in a passing fancy, that we were the same person, just split up in some arbitrary manner, but these moments passed.

“I’ll ignore the still comment,” said The Drunkard. He took another sip from his flask. “But that’s only because the halo around your head is a pleasant shade of blue.”

A Public Service Announcement from The Justice Trio

SQUIDJEW and ALEKSANDER—28, pasty with curly black hair, wearing a black pea coat, jeans, and boots—stand at a bar in a roadhouse. It is dimly lit, with a few stools near the bar, some tables and chairs scattered around. Rock music PLAYS from some speakers around the walls.

SquidJew turns around, faces the camera, and READS from a teleprompter, as before.

SQUIDJEW

Oh, hello there. I did not see you come in. How about this

service, huh?

He LAUGHS, timidly.

SQUIDJEW (CONT’D)

We’re here today to see you—wait. To see that you don’t—wait.

DIRECTOR (OS)

It’s on the fucking prompter!

SQUIDJEW

I can’t see for shit, this lighting is the worst.

Aleksander turns around.

ALEKSANDER

Da, I agree with cousin Jew of Squid. It is hard to see.

He SLAMS his fist on the stool next to him.

ALEKSANDER (CONT’D)

And where is innkeeper? I had better service in Russia.

DIRECTOR (OS)

There is no innkeeper, there is no bartender. We’ve told you,

this is a soundstage. Do you want brighter lights? Would that

make it easier for you guys?

SQUIDJEW

Hey, sorry if having it so your stars can see is a hassle.

ALEKSANDER

Da. If I want to be blind, I will drink!

He BURSTS into laughter and SMACKS SquidJew on his back.

SquidJew doubles over in pain.

SQUIDJEW

Son of a bitch, Aleks.

The lights go up.

DIRECTOR (OS)

Better?

SQUIDJEW

Much.

Aleksander takes a silver flask from his pea coat and takes a swig.

ALEKSANDER

Da. Much, my friend.

DIRECTOR (OS)

What is that?

ALEKSANDER

What? This?

He points to the flask.

ALEKSANDER (cont’d)

Is vodka, my friend. Would you like some?

DIRECTOR (OS)

You can’t drink on the set.

The director SNAPS his fingers and a CREW MEMBER, 19, walks on to the set, takes the flask, and walks back off.

ALEKSANDER

You will pay for that.

DIRECTOR (OS)

I’m sure. Go from the top.

The two turn back towards the bar. The music STARTS BACK UP.

SquidJew turns and smiles at the camera.

SQUIDJEW

Ah, hi there. Didn’t see you.

He jerks a thumb at the bar.

SQUIDJEW (cont’d)

How bout this service, am I correct? Hey, Aleksander,

Look at who’s here.

Aleksander turns. He glares at the Director, saying his lines in an even deeper Russian accent.

ALEKSANDER

Well. Hello there, fellow Houstonian comrades. We did

not hear you come in, what with the raucous drinking.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

DIRECTOR (OS)

Cut. Look, Ivan, can you cut the threatening tone? This is a

P.S.A., for God’s sake.

ALEKSANDER

Fuck you.

DIRECTOR (OS)

…Right. From Ivan’s last line.

SQUIDJEW

We came here for a drink, but as long as you’re here, we

have something to tell you, right Aleksander the Drunk?

Aleksander still stares at the Director.

ALEKSANDER

Da, cousin. Drinking can be fun, but it can also be

dangerous. I will kill you, Mr. Director, for taking my flask.

DIRECTOR (OS)

Cut. Fine, give the freak his flask back.

The crew member returns the flask. Aleksander breaks into a grin and holds it up in the air.

ALEKSANDER

Nastrovia!

He drinks from the flask.

DIRECTOR (OS)

From the last line. Action.

ALEKSANDER

Drinking can be fun, but it can also be dangerous. After

all, not everyone, like me, can drink Death to death.

SQUIDJEW

That’s right. Nor should they even try, because that would be

a--

BOTH

Bad idea.

They mimic a baseball umpire’s ‘out’ motion.

SQUIDJEW

And we don’t like bad ideas, do we?

ALEKSANDER

Niet, cousin. Bad ideas are bad. As we say in motherland--

He pauses, cocks his head to the side.

ALEKSANDER (cont’d)

We do not say that in Russia. We do not call it motherland.

I am insulted by your insensitivity.

DIRECTOR (OS)

Cut. I don’t give a rat’s ass. You got your flask back. Read the

lines so we can get out of here. Action.

ALEKSANDER

As we say in motherland, “A bird in hand is worth two

in bush.”

Aleksander, once more giving the Director a death glare, takes a swig from his flask.

SQUIDJEW

I hear that. I wouldn’t have been able to take down

Dr. Omnikill if I’d been blind drunk.

SquidJew cocks his head to one side.

SQUIDJEW (cont’d)

I didn’t kill Dr. Omnikill. Killman killed

Dr. Omnikill.

DIRECTOR

It doesn’t matter. Next line. Keep it moving.

SQUIDJEW

So remember guys and gals: Don’t let good times

go bad by drinking too much.

ALEKSANDER

And always remember friend water.

DIRECTOR (OS)

Cut.

STAGE HANDS begin ripping apart the set.

DIRECTOR (OS, cont’d)

Finally. I’m getting tired of being stuck on hero duty.

You fucks can’t act worth a damn, you know that?

ALEKSANDER

(screaming)

You want for to make act? I will make act outside head!

You will think rock is dog!

Aleksander takes a bottle of vodka from his flask and chucks it at the Director, who flees the set.

We Meet Our Hosts

The thing about English cities is that, unless you’re used to them, they’re incredibly confusing. In America, we like broad, straight avenues. Makes getting around easy. All this windy road stuff may work just fine for the bumpkins in the countryside, but give me a straight road into and out of town and I’ll be happy. The English have entirely too much respect for their history and culture and traditions to do what they should do: bulldoze everything in sight and put every city on a grid. Oh well.

Because the English like to hide their street signs in precarious positions (in Canterbury, one sign is just below the gutter on a roof), it took us an hour to find Lena and Dee’s flat. It should have taken us ten minutes. The building was in a nice neighborhood—the houses were detached and the windows weren’t miniscule horizontal slots and the building itself didn’t look like it was about to fall down at any moment. After driving around for another twenty minutes trying to figure out where to park, we found a spot nearby and The Traveler turned off the car.

The Drunkard woke up and showed no signs of being hung over or hallucinating. “Hey,” I said to him, “how bout them ants?”

“What?” he asked.

“Crawly crawly. Ants.”

He closed his eyes, sighed, and shook his head. “Therapy, my friend.” He reached in his jacket. “Woah, hold the fuck on.”

The Traveler, from outside, said, “What?”

“What the fuck did you do with my flasks?”

“I took care of them.”

The Drunkard was out of the car in a flash and had The Traveler by his collar. “What do you mean, you took care of them?”

I stepped out of the car on my side.

“After you tried to destroy the upholstery in the car, I put them in a safe place. Please, remove your hands from my collar before I unleash capoeira again.”

The Drunkard backed off. He scratched his chin, nodded, and said, “Okay. I’ll find em, though. And when I do? I will drink the fuck out of that absinthe.”

The Traveler shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He slung his duffel bag across his back and walked up to the building.

I put on my backpack and grabbed the sleeping bags, The Student picked up his duffel, and The Drunkard did the same.

We were buzzed in, walked up three flights of stairs, and were greeted by a woman way—waaaaay—out of my league. I mean, not that such a thing has stopped me from trying to chat someone up before, but she was MLB and I was Little League, to illustrate the gap. Blonde, curvaceous figure—about a ten. She wore dark blue jeans and a black tank top. “Hello!” she said.

And the accent! Oof! The back of my neck tingled and, naturally, I went, “Guh.”

The Traveler, the bastard, gave her a hug and they did the European cheek-kiss thing. I sent death thoughts his way. “Lena,” he said, “this is The Student—”

The Student waved. “Heya.”

“The Drunkard—”

The Drunkard tipped his ballcap and said, “Ma’am.”

“And The Narrator—”

Seeking to outdo the Drunkard and thus become the alpha male, I took off my cap and bowed. I intended to say, “The pleasure, I insist, is all mine.” What came out was a high-pitched squeak. There was no rebound from that. I sighed.

“Such interesting names,” she said.

The Traveler shrugged. “We get that a lot.”

“Dee,” she called, then followed it with German. German, I’ve always felt, is a semi-terrifying language. (I’ve considered why I think such a thing, and it really boils down to associating the language with Holocaust films.) At any rate, in walked Dee, and, once again, I could only go, “Guh.”

Seeing these two, I made a pledge to go to Germany. Not that I expected to be any sort of Don Juan but hey, it was worth a shot.

We went through the introductions again, and, this time I managed to work out a “Great to meet you.”

The Drunkard poked me in the ribs and whispered, “Nice job, Squeakers.”

“Fuck you,” I whispered back.

“Well, come in,” Lena said.

We obliged. Their flat more homey than ours. Wheras our accommodation had heavy fire doors rigged to slam shut, their flat had a much nicer, more open feel to it. The kitchen was smaller, but, then again, there were only two of them as opposed to the six to eight per flat in Woolf College. The walls were white like ours, but theirs were stuccoed and therefore pleasant to look at. They had a small round table in their dining room, a few chairs, a small TV, a couple of plants. The walls had a few posters of movie stars and musicians. It was, all around, a regular-person flat. I started thinking that maybe I should move out of college accommodation.

We stayed in their living room. Right before I ripped open the plastic confining my sleeping bag, I looked down at the floor and grinned. Hardwood floors! I can’t explain why I liked hardwood floors so much. Just one of those things.

“Hey,” said The Drunkard.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Did you buy matching sleeping bags? What the hell, man?”

“They were cheap.”

“Fuck that. They had a Jack Daniel’s one.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t notice it. Maybe you’d like a NASCAR pillow to go with your redneck ensemble, Mr. Moonshine.”

The Drunkard, taking a page from The Stalker shot daggers from his eyes.

The Traveler clapped his hands and said, “Well. Lena, Dee, it’s time for the Southern surprise.”

Lena, standing in the doorway, said, “I can hardly contain myself.”

The Traveler dug through The Drunkard’s bags and said, “Thanks for sharing,” as he pulled out a jar of moonshine.

“Woah,” said The Drunkard, “are you kidding me?”

“Nope,” The Traveler said, unscrewing the cap and handing the jar to Lena. “If you smoke, don’t do it until much later on. Also, don’t spill any on your clothes.”

Lena took a sniff and snapped back, her face contorting in such an expression of horror that it should have been in a comic book. “What is this?”

“That’s my moonshine.”

I punched The Drunkard in the shoulder.

“That I’m gracefully sharing with all of you. Without complaining.”

“There’s another jar in the bag, too,” I said.

The Drunkard whirled on me and said, “You bastard.”

I shrugged.

Lena took a sip, coughed, handed the jar to Dee, and coughed some more. “Wow, that’s some strong stuff.”

“That ain’t the only strong stuff here,” I was going to say when, naturally, it came out as a cough. I hung my head and sighed.

Dee reacted the same way, and I was about to make some bullshit chauvinist comment when The Traveler handed me the jar.

I looked down at this new, foul beast in front of me. The purple liquid inside—decorated by some blueberries and a couple slices of lemon floating around—reeked of a chemical refinery. Indeed, it smelled much like the industrial part of Knoxville. I looked up at The Traveler, who grinned at me. The Student had some sideways interpretation of a sneer, and The Drunkard was—I think—trying to eye Dee licentiously. Fuck it, I thought. I took a sip, and two things happened.

First, right as I drank and swallowed, the inside of my mouth… well, it didn’t burst into fire. But, I can’t exactly describe that feeling other than it was a fire-y sensation. It was like drinking a strong whiskey for the first time, amplified by about fifteen. I think that there was supposed to a taste to the shine, but all I could get was pain. Utter, utter pain. To think, entire regions of Appalachia drank this like it was nothing. No wonder incest seemed like a good idea to them—they probably lost half their brain cells during one weekend.

Right after taking that drink, I blacked out. When faced with such a new, unheard-of, potent beverage, my mind freaked out. Anyway, the last thing I remember is thinking: “What hath God wrought?”

In Which The Traveler Surprises Us

Sunlight largely disappeared while we were in Argos, and people dashed back and forth between shops. I figured it was nearly closing time for most of the places.

You see, Dear Reader, the people of Europe  view employment much differently  than we do in the States. For the European, work is the punishment for original sin. Seeing jobs in this light brings the European to the natural conclusion that work should be regulated. Americans, be patient. I know, we see the word ‘regulation’ and start screaming ‘FASCIST SOCIALISM! THE REDS ARE COMING!’ and other nonsense phrases. However, having lived in England, I can tell you that this regulation is built out of the most basic tenants of humanitarianism.

Understand that when I speak of opening hours, it is in regards to retail. Think back on your lives. Think back to anyone who has ever worked retail, grocery—any menial, thankless, underpaid job in the service industry. Do you, dear reader, ever remember them gushing about how much they enjoyed their work? How much they wanted to deal with a person who insisted that a cell phone has reception through fifteen feet of concrete; or suggested things like all shoes in a store should be made of steel, because steel doesn’t break like leather; or… well, any other aspect retail hell will suffice. I would bet that the answer to my question is no.

With that in mind, the Europeans have gone back to the ideals of the Enlightenment and decreed that those in the service industry shall not have to work nearly as much as their comrades in the United States. Yes, this is slightly inconvenient for the shopper, and, frankly, it would be strange to not hear some complaint because of this from time to time.

I stood outside Argos in the waning light on the Oxford High Street, clutching three tightly packed sleeping bags. To my right, further down the street and about a hundred yards away, was a church, its steeple lit by yellow floodlights. To my left was the dome of something or other. It was one of those moments I got, from time to time, where I was struck with a train of thought that went something like, “Holy shit, I’m living in Europe. Holy shit, I’m standing in _________.” Yes, I know, it’s laughable because, hey, it’s just another place—but you turn down the cold, jaded skepticism for a little bit, and you start to enjoy life.

The door swung open behind me and The Student walked out tossing a red bag back and forth between his hands. “Ready?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

We made our way back to the car and, when we arrived, I saw the Traveler, standing under a ring of light under a streetlamp. At his feet was The Drunkard’s duffel bag. In his hands were two mason jars of a dark purple liquid. “Wuh-oh,” I said.

“What?” asked The Student.

“Keep cool.”

We crossed the couple of lanes of stuck traffic from the other side of the road, and I said, “What you got there, Traveler?” I put the sleeping bags in the trunk.

“I think you know.”

“Nope.”

“Moonshine.”

The Student coughed. “Moonshine? Where did you get moonshine?”

“From The Drunkard’s bag.” He clunked the jars together. “You know anything about this, Narrator?”

“Er,” I said. I took off my cap, scratched my head. “Nope. Wouldn’t know anything about it.”

“How’d moonshine get here?” asked The Student. “They don’t have moonshine in this country.”

“Well,” said The Traveler. “If I had to guess, I’d say our passed-out friend has a still somewhere.”

I looked around and saw no trace of The Drunkard. I gulped. “Traveler, what did you do to the Drunkard? Where is he? Did you kill him? Where’d you put the body?”

“He’s passed out in the back. You’re going to have an interesting ride back there. He’s been clawing at the upholstery and muttering about living ooze or something like that.”

“Lovely.”

I shut the trunk and saw The Drunkard. His head was tilted back, eyes shut, and I could barely make out snoring. “Oh good,” I said. “He snores.”

“Yeah, in between night terrors brought on by—what? Absinthe?”

I nodded.

“Figured. Okay, here’s what’s going on. Before you and The Student got here, I got the directions to Lena’s place. We’re going to drive there, get all our stuff set up, and drink two bottles of shine.”

My head—a reaction that doesn’t happen often, but is a result of hearing something I never understand—retreated into my neck. I turned to The Student and saw, much to my surprise, that he was doing the same sort of thing. “What?” we said in unison.

“You heard me,” said The Traveler. He bent down and replaced the jars of moonshine, zipped up the bag, and walked over to the trunk.

I moved back and let him open it. “I heard you,” I said. “But I don’t think I understood you.”

He shut the trunk. “We’re going to drink the two jars of moonshine. Get it out of the way. Not have to worry about The Drunkard’s surprises possibly landing us in jail for public intoxication.” He shrugged. “If nothing else, it’ll make for an interesting night.”

“What about the Germans?” asked The Student. “Did you ask them?”

“Well, kind of.” The Traveler took out his keys, zipped up his jacket, leaned against the car, and grinned. “I said we’re bringing a little something Southern for em. They may have taken that for innuendo, but hey, whatever.”

“Hold on,” I said. “Don’t you think The Drunkard will object to this?”

The Traveler snorted. “It’s not like we’re taking it and not giving him any. Quite the contrary. It’ll be a communal affair. We’ll all have us some moonshine.” He ended with a strange East Tennessee accent that left me worried.

The Student shrugged. “Well, fuck it. I’d rather have it all off in one go than see The Drunkard have his stomach pumped for downing two jars of the stuff. Besides, it’s been for-fuckin-ever since I’ve had some shine.”

This shocked me. I assumed that The Student was too erudite to drink moonshine. People like him, I thought, wouldn’t drink anything that had the possibility of making you go blind. Hell, people like me wouldn’t do it, and I was a moron compared to The Student. I’d seen the man’s essays on liberal literary guilt in the United States—the man did not, should not, drink moonshine. “When was the last time you had some of this shit?” I asked.

He scratched at his mustache. “Freshman year at UT. A guy two floors below me had a still set up in his closet. Never changed clothes, but he made moonshine. I think he failed out in one semester. That’d make sense, wouldn’t it?”

“You telling me,” said The Traveler, “you’ve never had moonshine?”

There are some things that, when pressed about, a man will lie a hundred times over rather than admit. For whatever reason, moonshine was mine. “Fuck, course I had moonshine. I swill that shit all the damn time. Mouthwash. That stuff’s like mouthwash to me. Here. I’ll fuckin prove it. Down a jar right now.”

The Traveler and The Student burst into laughter. “You’ve never had it,” The Traveler said. “What the hell’s this stuff about mouthwash?”

“Dude,” said The Student. “It’s not a big deal. I don’t blame you.”

And, naturally, being the upright American man I am, I took this as if they were saying I wiped my ass with Old Glory, or went frolicking in a green field with a rainbow-colored cape. “The hell did I just say? I drink this stuff like water. Doesn’t bother me.”

“Right,” said The Traveler. “We’re calling you Jethro, then.” He opened the driver’s door and said, “Jethro, Student, shall we depart?”

“Shoot her!” shouted The Drunkard. “Shoot her!” If you concentrated, it sounded like he was trying to be Australian. We stared at The Drunkard. He was still sound asleep. After a few moments, he whispered, “Clever girl.”

“Okay,” said The Student. “Let’s head out, shall we?”

We piled into the Fiesta and started off.

In Which We Shop

I don’t normally like shopping. One might say I find it repellent. It’s not that I don’t see the point in it; it’s more along the lines of: I’d rather do something else with my time.

The point is that the store completely threw me. The lobby—interior, really—looked like the sales floor of a cell phone store: sparse display, a few red podiums laden with objects, a couple workers on the grey sales floor, and two or three people behind a red counter scowling at customers. The walls were blue, and on a couple of them, there were some advertisements. Soft quasi-Muzak leaked out from wall-mounted speakers. From time to time, a voice would interrupt and announce a number—at which point, a customer would approach the counter and walk away with a shrink-wrapped this, that, or the other.

The objects on the podiums were these massive multicolored catalogues. Imagine the Sears catalogue multiplied by three. The only browsing was flipping through these catalogues. You would choose your item, pay for it at a self-serve kiosk or at the counter with the scowling people, and then, a few minutes later, your item would appear at the counter via a conveyor belt. There might have been places like this in the States, but not where I’m from.

We walked into the store and, as you’d expect, our reactions varied. The Traveler darted straight for a catalogue and, as I learned, to the camping section. The Student went, “Huh, interesting.” Then he, too, went to a catalogue. The Drunkard put on a huge grin and snuck a drink from one of the flasks in his jacket. (I had heard that there was a special way one was supposed to drink absinthe involving everything from a silver spoon, to sugar cubes, to, from one man who insisted he was a sorcerer, the blood of an eagle. I assumed The Drunkard knew what he was doing.) “Finally,” he said. “They took away the salespeople.”

So far, through the semester, I’ve realized that I overreact a lot. I didn’t drop to the floor, cursing man’s predilection for destroying time-honored traditions such as the sales floor. I didn’t Brooklyn out—thank God. I did, however, have a minor panic attack. What would happen if they didn’t have what I needed? Could I ask workers for their recommendations? What sort of connections did they have with products that they never saw? Just what in the hell did they think they were doing?

I did, however, manage to calm down, take a deep breath, and follow my companions’ leads. I jammed myself between The Traveler and The Student and said, “What do I do? What do I do?”

“Calm,” said The Traveler. He took a slip of white paper from a blue box next to the catalogue, took a golf pencil from another box, and handed them to me. “You choose what you want and write the number here.” He pointed to black squares separated by a couple of dashes.

“That kind of takes the joy out of searching, doesn’t it?”

The Traveler cocked an eyebrow. “You want this should be having to hunt through stacks of boxes, searching for one particular item only to find that it’s out of stock? If so, we can go to ASDA and—”

“What’s ASDA?” I asked.

The Student leaned back, looked at me, and said, “You’ve been here two months and you don’t know what ASDA is?”

“Did I commit a crime?”

“Essentially,” said The Drunkard, a podium to my right. He flipped through the pages manically, never settling on one for more than a couple of seconds before emitting a tiny squeak and moving on.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“The ants,” he said. “The ants are everywhere. Can’t stay on one for long, or they’ll crawl.”

Yep, he’d prepared the absinthe.

The Traveler sighed. “What?”

“Nothing,” said The Drunkard. He’d broken into a sweat. He rubbed his forehead with his jacket arm, took off his baseball cap, scratched his head, and hummed some unnamable tune.

The Traveler turned to me and whispered, “What’s he got in that flask?”

“Er,” I said.

“Will it get us landed in jail?”

“Maybe.”

“Motherfucker. I knew this would happen. I fucking knew it.” He closed his eyes for a moment, nodded, opened his eyes again, and said, “Okay. I need you to write down this number,” he pointed to a blue sleeping bag, “and bring it to the counter. I’ll pay you back when you get back to the car.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to nip this in the bud.” He walked over to the Drunkard slung his arm around his neck.

“What are—” The Drunkard said before crumpling to the ground.

A hush passed through the store and a couple of workers ran over to check on The Drunkard.

“No,” said The Traveler. “It’s okay. I’ll take care of it.” He pulled The Drunkard up, slung his arm around his neck, and said, “You okay, buddy? We’ll head back to the hostel.” He shuffled out of the store, The Drunkard moaning on his shoulder, and winked at me on the way out.

The Student, oblivious as usual to all of the preceding events, watched the two move out of the store, turned to me, and said, “What was that?”

“The Drunkard,” I said in a whisper, “has a few flasks of absinthe in his jacket. Since we left the pub, he’s been sneaking drinks from them; he started hallucinating and The Traveler did some ninja move on him.”

The Student processed this information with a raised eyebrow, shrugged and said, “This’ll be an interesting few days.”

“Oh,” I said, “he’s also got a few mason jars of moonshine.”

“An absolutely fascinating few days, I should say.”

I picked cheap sleeping bags for myself, The Traveler, The Drunkard and went to the counter to pay. Soon, The Student followed suit, and we looked through the catalogues. It was, definitely an interesting array. Right next to sleeping bags, you could purchase an eight hundred quid charcoal grill. Diamond rings. Video game consoles. Many, many other things.

I began an interior monologue addressing the wonders of the modern world, and was only interrupted by a computerized voice intoning my number. I shook myself out of my reverie, walked over to the counter and was presented with three shrink-wrapped blue sleeping bags the size of small pillows. “No way I’m fitting in one of these,” I said.

“’Sat, mate?” asked one of the red polo-clad men behind the counter.

“These. They’re tiny.”

He studied my face. “They expand, mate.”

I smacked myself in the forehead and said, “Ah. Of course they do.” I took my items and passed by The Student.

Supplemental

It was a warm day when this happened. I say that because, frankly, it’s weird enough having a warm day in this country in winter—and, put on top of the events of which you’ll read below, it was a doubly weird day. Doubleweird, if Orwell had written it.

The Drunkard and I sat outside of the café near Woolf College. We watched people as they walked past—generally in groups of languages and nationalities (if you’d want to think of people as representatives of their cultures), but occasionally, you’d see the lone person, hunched over, a universe unto themselves with massive headphones blocking them off from the rest of the people on the pavement. The Drunkard looked the hardest at these people. If there was a sad enough specimen (usually the type to bury themselves in massive coats and glare at the ground as if it had wronged them in some special way), The Drunkard would grunt.

We didn’t talk for a while. I sat there, sipping from my rapidly cooling ceramic cup of Americano, watching the people and, generally, wondering if they, unlike myself, had had enough to eat for lunch. “Fuck,” said The Drunkard. The versatile word wasn’t used in pain, or anger, more like you’d expect someone to go “oy vey” after a catastrophe.

I turned and said, “What’s up?”

The Drunkard grunted and took a sip from his beer.

I checked my watch and noted that it was half past twelve. Now, I understand that England is a country in which drinking at lunch is normal, but I’d never quite gotten into drinking before one. It seemed wrong. Like I was about to hurdle over a cliff. I wondered, right then, what exactly made The Drunkard call me half an hour ago and see if I wanted to go sit in silence outside the café. “You okay?”

It was a minute or so before he answered, and I assumed he hadn’t heard me. “You know Michael Chabon?”

“I’m Jewish-American with a background in literature. Of course I know Michael Chabon.”

“You read his book of essays? Manhood Something or Other.”

“Can’t say I did.”

“There’s a bit in there that goes like—and this is paraphrasing: The art of being a man is to flood everyone around you with a great, radiant arc of bullshit. To give the appearance that you’re keeping your head, when, deep inside, the truest part of you is going ‘Oh shit!’”

We lapsed back into silence for a moment or two. “You don’t really give off the feeling of keeping your head.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

I tossed up my hands. “Hey man, you’re the one who took four flasks of absinthe to Oxford.”

The Drunkard answered with another grunt.

“You okay?”

“I tell you I’ve been going to lunches with a Chabad rabbi?”

“The fuck? Seriously?”

The Drunkard nodded, shivered, took a sip from his beer. “I miss having a community. I’m fuckin lonely man.”

“You’ve got us.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know. But, really, you guys—and you’re great, all of you except for Stalker and Writer—aren’t what I’m looking for.”

“You’ve got Julie, don’t you?”

The Drunkard snorted. “You shitting me? Man, she passes herself around the flat like a communal spoon. Downside of collectivism, I guess. After I found that out before we went to Oxford, I haven’t spoken to her. Didn’t expect to have any sort of relationship—really—I just…”

“Wanted something exclusive.”

The Drunkard nodded.

A pair of undergrads—both tall, the girl with rosy cheeks and the guy with that infuriating bird-crest hair—walked by hand and hand. The Dunkard slammed his fist on the table and shouted, “Go fuck yourselves!”

The two glanced over and hurried over towards the library.

The Drunkard, pleased, grunted again. “I haven’t had a community in years. Going to fucking Eldritch for school. What the fuck is wrong with me?”

I took a sip from the frigid drink and let him rant. Sometimes that’s what people need: another person around so they’re not talking to themselves.

“You know how many Jews there were in that school?” he asked. “Five. Counting me. The other four were even more secular than I am. You try getting an über-secular Jew to meet up for Passover? Fucking impossible. Forget dates. Forget em. Three times I went out with this one girl, thinking, each time, that maybe I got her wrong. But no, every time we went out it inevitably led to her ranting about how she had Christ in her heart and yadda yadda.

“Going out with a Jewish girl? Forget that. Went out with one one time. Know what she said when I told her my mom wasn’t Jewish? ‘Well, that makes you a goy.’ Makes me a shagitz. Fuck that. I didn’t spend my entire life getting Bar Mitzvahed, confirmed, teaching Hebrew School—I tell you I did that? I did. First grade. I didn’t spend the first part of my life—before college—to get told by some Jewish-American Princess that I’m not a Jew because my Mom wasn’t brought up in shul.

“And so I get here, maybe things are gonna be different. Nope. Fucking French collectivists. You want heartache, you think about smelly fucks shtupping the person you think of as your significant other. That, my friend, is the blues.” He drank from his glass. “Kroenenburg,” he said, after watching me watch. “Sweet lager. Only kind I drink.”

“I’m not a fan of sweet stuff.”

“You need it, sometimes. Women got their ice cream fixation. Me? It’s sweet lager and kosher wine. Kosher wine’s nothing but sugar with grape juice allowed to ferment. You’re doing Fiddler. You know the lyric, ‘God would like us to be joyful/ Even when our hearts lie panting on the floor.’”

“Course I do.”

“Well, it’s like that. I’m not sure about God. Don’t know if I ever will be. But, I figure, there’s wisdom in it all. There’s wisdom anywhere you want to look for it, really. I drink that Palwin stuff and think that, maybe, life has its redeeming qualities. There’s not enough bad stuff in the world to squish out the good. All the shit that happens in Israel. All the racism on both sides, all the bombings, all the warfare, and still. Some kibbutz manages to make a bottle of sweet wine that finds its way all the way to fucking Canterbury, only to be bought and consumed by yours truly.” He held up the glass to the sunlight. “I look through this glass, I take a sip,” he took a sip, “I think the same thing. For all the shit that gets shoveled your way, you gotta remember the sweet things in life. A hug. Your dog. Sitting around, getting drunk and playing Mario Kart. A glass of wine. Your job, which entails tending to grapes in a vineyard. Something. You can’t ever lose sight of what makes it worth the trouble to get out of bed in the morning. You do that, and why even bother doing anything in life?”

He stopped talking for a moment, watched people walk by. I noticed that his eyes were bloodshot and there was a vein popping out of his forehead. His left hand drummed the wooden table while his right clutched the pint glass.

I thought about a lot in that time where he sat, drumming. None of it was really joined up with a preceding thought, but it was all relevant one way or another. “All this because of a woman?” I asked.

He nodded. “All this because of a woman.”

More silence.

“All this because of one woman.”