- "You're going in the BUSH!"
- Knife fighting with the Emos
- Open Bar Party at the Farmhouse
- EPIC LANDMARK night
- Trout Fry - Abridged and Full Version(s)
- Naked Soccer
So recently (I believe nearly a year ago now) the state of California decided to make it legal to imbibe one of the more notorious alcohols in history: Absinthe.
This spirit goes by many monikers including: The Green Fairy, The Green Muse and The Green Goddess. Fairly unoriginal nicknames to be sure. This particular alcohol isn't just the type that will get you drunk, this alcohol also possesses hallucinogenic properties--hence the reason why it is prohibited in nearly every state in the union.The hallucinogenic properties of this alcohol are well known and documented since its discovery. The absinthe inspired painting on the left is titled "The Green Muse" by Albert Maignan in 1895. From the looks of the guy in the painting he's either schizophrenic, suffering from a scratchy face and some type of head lice, or this green ethereal harpy is controlling him. Personally I'm going to assume the artist meant this to depict The Great Head Lice Epidemic of the late 1800's. If you want to know more about this alcohol there is plenty of the literature online regarding its fairly infamous history.
Anyway so the state of California recently re-legalized absinthe; however, this absinthe isn't the old timey make you go bat-shit crazy absinthe, no this is just regular old 85% esophageal burning liquid with a speck of the crazy stuff. Apparently the market for black licorice tasting alcohols wasn't quite satiated by Jager and Sambuca, no we needed another. And this time we needed it to be A LOT stronger than any others on the market, and NOT just that we need it to be hallucinogenic as well. Great, superb.
So now you can go to most any upstanding watering hole in California, and order some of the Green Fairy--though I suggest avoiding calling it that because it may be misconstrued as something completely different. Not that there's anything wrong with that. You can get this alcohol in a shot, in a variety of cocktails, or the old fashioned way in in the dripper thing with the slotted spoons and sugar cubes (aka the awesome way).
So now that its legal here its just not as cool anymore, its seemed to have lost its allure. Either that or maybe it was eliminating the only reason why people drank that damn shit in the first place. As I learned during my Sophomore year of college at Luther the effects of REAL absinthe are both interesting and swirly.
A floor mate and fellow physics nerd friend of mine, we'll call him Doc, had a roommate who had recently returned from either studying abroad or gallivanting (synonyms) around Europe and had smuggled back a bottle of this mysterious green liquid. Well being that we tended to drink fairly heavily on weekend nights (especially), we decided to sit around and play a drinking game fondly known as Circle of Death or King's Cup.
The rules of the game were simple:
Step 1: Find a large mug, a lot of beer and a deck of cards.
Step 2: Surround the large mug with the cards face down.
Step 3: Take turns drawing a card from the circle of cards. If the card pulled is red you may give out that many drinks (divided as you see fit), if the card is black then you drink that many. The values of the cards are face values with A=1, J=11, Q=12. If a King is drawn then the person who drew that card pours however much beer into the large much that he/she wishes.
Step 4: Repeat steps 1-3 until the final King is drawn. Whoever draws the last king must slam the large mug of beer.
So obviously this game was about one thing and one thing only...getting dru-...I mean studying applications of John Nash's Game Theory....yeah that's it.
So in addition to the baseline rules I laid out above there are all sorts of different "house rules" such as Thumbmaster, Mushroom, Waterfall, etc. Basically all these things are different ways of saying you drink a lot of beer or shots. So after playing three or four rousing games of this and somehow I found myself still not drunk, Doc suggested we take some shots. Well being the courteous guest that I was (and am, really I am if you want to give me shots chances are I'll take 'em) I took him up on this offer and began to rifle through his "liquor drawer." If you lived in Miller Hall you know what I'm talking about, but if not, then I'll elaborate. The beds in the upper class dorms at Luther College were built into the wall. So rearranging your room was basically impossible. Where you would normally have space to put things UNDERNEATH your bed, there was only a drawer. What were you supposed to put in this drawer? Who knows, it was almost always designated as a booze drawer. Why would you have your booze directly below where you sleep? Obviously so you can sit on it like a mother goose tends to her eggs and nurse it to full health before drinking it...idiot.
So as I was saying, there we were, two of our Circle of Death-mates already succumbed to returning the beer to whence it came (the toilet, especially given that we would usually tend to drink the CHEAPEST possible beer available aka Milwaukee's Best Special Reserve BLACK), and we were shuffling through the half empty bottles of random alcohols that he had accumulated throughout the school year. We mixed ourselves a strange concoction of root beer Schnapp's, Seagram's 7, and Diet Coke and "enjoyed" that for a bit before his roommate Peter returned from the beer depository.
"Peter!" he yelled, clearly inebriated, "Start drinking you fucking pansy!"
Peter, looking white as a ghost, reached to the fridge and pulled out a pre-mixed cocktail--apparently he stashed it in the fridge before going to to call out some dinosaurs.
We sat and bullshitted for a little bit more and finished our concoctions as Peter finished what looked to be a rum and Coke. Once he finished that he asked us THE question, "Do you guys want to try some absinthe?"
Naturally being a naive college student I had no idea what this was at the time. "Of course I do," I replied thinking I hope I didn't just get myself in over my head. Peter recanted the story of his travels through Europe as he reached into the bottom drawer of his desk to take out the velvet bag that contained the Green Goddess--not the salad dressing. He unsheathed the stout bottle and held it proudly, looking at it for a moment before showing off his trophy. He recalled a few stories of hash houses in Amsterdam where they served this like it was anything else, and how while in Prague he would drink the stuff and always have the greatest time when he did.
I must have been fairly wide-eyed and impressed by the stories he was telling, possibly due to some inner regret about not seizing my own opportunity to partake in a similar adventure, but he then told me to find a chaser because I was taking the first shot. That right there, that single solitary clue should have tipped me off that maybe, JUST maybe, this wasn't going to be good. If someone told me now to get a chaser before drinking absinthe, I'd in all likelihood pass. The reason he told me to get the chaser was because this wasn't just any old absinthe, this was legit shit. This was 99% alcohol absinthe with thujone (the wormwood extract rumored to possess the hallucinogenic properties), and I was about to drink it.
Had I known beforehand what I was getting into I probably wouldn't have continued this process, but that's why its memorable. Say, for instance, I hadn't partaken in this beverage this night, I certainly wouldn't be boring you to death with this incredibly overly long blog entry. So here I am with a shot of absinthe in one hand and a beer in the other, and both Doc and Peter are staring at me waiting for me to down it. I raise my shot glass slightly to cheers them and their imaginary drinks, and down the hatch it goes.
The burn of the incredibly strong alcohol is felt as it goes down my throat. I quickly "chase" the burn with a pisswarm sip of shitty beer. I wait a few minutes for the other two to do the same and we do another round. We do one more shot before deciding that maybe we shouldn't drink all of his "precious", and he puts it back in the velvet bag and back into the drawer where it lived. We sat around and talked for a few minutes before there was a knock on the door. Everyone was ready to head to the bar. We grabbed our coats and hats and trudged out into the snowy night.
I think the drink started having its first effects on me as we walked down a hill besides a pool. I remember seeing the snowflakes falling in front of the sodium yellow street light and was incredibly entranced by it. One of the fellow bar travelers we were with needed to stop to light a cigarette so I stopped with him, not so much out of courtesy, but rather to get more time staring at the snowflakes passing in front of the glowing yellow orb. I remember thinking I could see every snowflake between me and that streetlight, all individual flakes were perfectly independent. I felt like I could make out specific details on these flakes, naturally I was experiencing the first batshit crazy effects of the absinthe.
The cigarette now lit, I was tapped on the shoulder and my hypnotized state was interrupted. Peter was standing there with me, apparently, and was urging me to get going.
"The bar is going to close soon dude let's go!" he yelled to me as he sort of ran, sort of slid down the snow covered city poolside road towards the bar.
The rest of the walk to the bar was fairly uneventful. I remember smoking one or maybe two cigarettes on the twenty minute walk, impressive considering I'm not a smoker. For some reason that night cigarettes were some sort of necessary panacea for me, not entirely sure why.
Anyways, we finally reached Scoes' after waiting in what surely seemed like a long line (four five people tops) and paid the dollar entry fee. Yes, the bars in rural Iowa have a one dollar cover, why you ask? No idea, just because they know they CAN charge it and make some extra coin essentially. As I pass by Pumpkin, the well-known bouncer of Scoes' and frat brother of mine, I stop and shoot him a look. He just gives me the typical, "Move it douchebag look,"(brotherly love) and I hit the restroom.
Standing at the trough, there were no urinals, and relieving myself I began to notice just HOW fucking dirty this bathroom was. At eye level on the wall in front of the trough were a few comic strips, I can remember a Pearls Before Swine comic, though I can't recall the contents or the punchline, but for some reason I was dying laughing after reading it. I zipped up, nearly in tears after reading this 3-lined urine scented masterpiece, and turned to wash my hands. I took off my gloves, turned on the water and let my hands run under it for nearly a minute, now becoming entranced with the water. Before I could get too enslaved I caught myself. "Get your shit together," I whispered under my breath.
I broke out of the trance and headed out from the poorly lit pisser and back out into the ambient dim light of the bar. The bar was to my right coming out of the restroom I looked to Marlene, ordered a Gin and Tonic, slipped her the three dollars (with tip) and continued back towards Pumpkin at the door. The crowd had jammed a few steps later and I looked to my right to see if anyone was on the dance floor. As I did I began to see streaking lights whenever I moved my eyes too quickly. The neon of the Michelob Genuine Draft bar sign streaked through my vision as I passed my eyes from the left and to the right. The dance floor lights were blinking joining the neon from the MGD sign in a visual cacophony. I quickly closed my eyes and braced myself against the slot machine at my back. I can remember taking a sip of the extremely cold gin and tonic and tasting how the lime perfectly contrasted the bitter quinine in the tonic.
The lights still streaking through my vision, only my eyes closed now, I decided I needed to grab a seat and felt my way to the nearby bar stool. The crowd by the door began to wane slightly and Pumpkin looked around the corner from where the bouncers sat. "Dude what the fuck is wrong with you?"
I took another chug from my Gin and Tonic, and started rubbing my eyes hoping to quell the streaking lights. "Pumpkin, I've gotta get away from the lights."
"What the fuck? Dude what's wrong with you?"
I opened my eyes, handed my G&T to him and repeated, "I've gotta get outta here, gotta get away from the lights."
He started laughing and I pushed my way passed him back out into the frigid snowy night. I didn't know where I was going to go to get away from the lights, or really where this sudden aversion to lights came from, but I knew I had to get out of that bar or something bad would have happened. What could have possibly happened? I'm not sure, knowing how I felt that night I very well could have sprouted fucking bat wings and flown into the kitchen, it was getting that bad.
I walked down a quiet, dark, not yet plowed road directly away from the bar. I had no particular destination in mind, I just knew I was on a mission to get away from that place. I walked for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes and found myself in front of the river, melting snow filled my shoes and I was sick of walking. Now normally when someone has been drinking heavily and partaking in hallucinogenic alcohols they should, at all costs, steer clear of a body of rushing water; however, this particular situation obeyed no known rules. I stood there watching the light reflect off the surface of the river for a few minutes before I decided sitting would probably be the best course of action at this point.
I sat and watched the river for what felt like hours while I waited for the effects of the absinthe to pass. When I would get thirsty I would eat a handful of, probably terribly dirty, snow. When I had to go to the bathroom, I would stand up and go...though not too close to my eating snow. Once I finally was starting to feel normal again I stood up and began the walk back to my dorm.
I nearly made it back to my dorm without seeing anyone, and then as I passed by Ylvisaker Hall (its a Norwegian Lutheran school layoff) I saw my friend Rachel. She yelled out my name and I pretended to ignore it, but then she yelled again and clearly knew it was me. Ignoring her was not an option.
"Oh hi Rachel!" I yelled back, hoping she would just continue walking. Of course she came over to see me. Not that I wouldn't normally like to see her, it was just on this particular evening I felt like I shouldn't be anywhere near people, especially people I knew.
"What are you up to tonight?" she asked as she approached. "E and I were thinking of going...," she stopped mid-sentence. "You have blood on your face." Her eyes were showing genuine concern.
Where the fuck did I get blood on my face from? I didn't get in any fights, did I? I hadn't been punched in the face since I was in third grade, did I make it this long only to waste the punch on a night where I could have easily imagined it happening? I took my gloves off and felt my face. Sure enough, frozen blood coming from my nose. I had gotten a bloody nose somehow during my exile near the river.
"Are you okay?"
"I think so, its a long story, I'll have to tell you it tomorrow. I'm done for the night, thanks for the concern though," I said as I started walking passed her to my dorm.
She started laughing, "Wow Scott, wow. There'd better be a good story to this one."
Well I don't know if its a GOOD story, but its definitely A story.
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Anyway, that's really the end of this tale. But that night I did get to add two gems to my lifetime knowledge base:
*DO NOT under ANY circumstances go to Roscoe's after drinking or partaking in hallucinogenic products.
*Never drink something from someone who says they smuggled it back from Prague. Especially if you decide to play three games of Circle of Death beforehand.
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