My Crapulous Birthday - (art prompt writing contest)

The last thing I remember from last night was falling off the bar stool. Okay, so maybe I overdid it with my birthday celebration, but that's a once a year thing - and I intended to enjoy it! Earlier in the evening I decided to take myself out to dinner to no place fancy - that would be one of the restaurant chains in the area. No, not fast food; that's not celebration cuisine by any stretch of the imagination. I was going to buy the finest steak I could afford, along with a salad and French fries. Maybe a fancy piece of pie for dessert. Why not?

The problem is a fellow diner, an old friend of mine, just happened to be at the restaurant too. So we decided to enjoy our respective repasts in each other's company.

"Steve," he said. "Where ya been keepin' yourself lately?"

"Nowhere in particular. Just back and forth to work mainly. Sometimes Marge and I go out for a fish fry, or a walk."

"How come she's not with you tonight?"

"Aw, you know. Says she's not feeling up to it, some sort of woman thing. I think it was another one of her excuses but I didn't feel like arguing."

"That bad, huh?" The waitress in that section came up to their table and asked if there would be anything else. Both men declined.

"Look Ian, I don't want you to get the wrong idea. You asked me a question and I answered it - plain and simple."

"I know, but it is your birthday after all, isn't it? When you were a kid your mom threw the best birthday on the block. We had a blast."

"Yep, she was a good woman - and the best mom a kid could have," I said as I cut the remaining hunk of steak.

"I say let's do something to honor your birthday and her memory."

"Like what?"

"Well, you're over twenty-one, aren't you?"

"Ian! What do you take me for?"

"The intelligent middle-aged man that you are. Let's go celebrate." And so we did.

The club was half-filled with noisy drinkers and we decided to sit at the bar. Ian ordered a tequila; I, a beer. A good quality imported ale, not the cheap stuff. The bartender was a chick in a too tight tee shirt, and a hicky on her neck. She was accompanied by a guy who was tattooed on his arms and his neck. I wondered why he put himself through the torture of getting them, but I guessed it was a personal thing.

"Hey Steve, you ought to throw back a tequila here - go for the grown up stuff."

"Yeah right, mix it with beer. Great idea," I said facetiously, savoring my brew.

"Aw, c'mon, one real drink won't hurt you. You can always go back to your suds." So I thought to myself I won't get Ian off my back till I show him I'm not afraid of a little tequila, so I obliged him. That stuff hit me like a ton of bricks and I can only assume that for some reason unknown to me that it tasted like more. I woke up the next day at Ian's place, on his lumpy couch to be exact.

"Ian," I called out. My head pounded like someone was using a post maul on it. Where was Ian?

"Yeah buddy," said Ian as he entered the room. He sure looked a lot better than I felt.

"What happened?"

"It's called getting blitzed - uh, plastered?"

"You mean I kept drinking?"

"You wouldn't have it any other way, Steve. You kept saying it was your birthday and you were entitled. So, you had another and another..."

"You mean tequilas?"

"Yep. It wasn't till you started talking about some goofy pink cat you were riding on that I figured you'd had your limit. Man, you described that like you were actually there. Couldn't shut you up either. You rambled on about the cat wearing a wristwatch for a collar and that you were carrying a watch yourself. You must've been worried about the time or something."

"Marge!" I heard myself shout.

"Don't worry, buddy. I called her and told her that you'd had too good of a time with the bottle. I said I'd see to it that you got home okay today, that you just needed to sleep it off."

"I can tell you one thing, Ian - no more tequila for me! Whatever that eerie dream was, I don't need that either. I vaguely remember it, but I'd rather not remember it at all." The clock struck twelve noon.

"I've always said you have a vivid imagination. You shoulda been an artist."

---

This is for @gmuxx's art prompt writing contest.

Image by @azbeen

_{Crapulous may sound like a word that you shouldn't use in polite company, but it actually has a long and perfectly respectable history (although it's not a particularly kind way to describe someone). It is derived from the Late Latin adjective crapulosus, which in turn traces back to the Latin word crapula, meaning "intoxication." "Crapula" itself comes from a much older Greek word for the headache one gets from drinking. "Crapulous" first appeared in print in 1536. Approximately 200 years later, its close cousin "crapulence" arrived on the scene as a word for sickness caused by drinking. "Crapulence" later acquired the meaning "great intemperance especially in drinking," but it is not an especially common word. Source: Merriam-Webster}