fwriction

In the greatest crossover since Spiderman teamed up with the cast of Saturday Night Live, fwriction is joining forces with Beer Goggins, a New York City blog focusing on local craft beer and all-around drinking awesomeness.

Mad Hops, one-half of the Beer Goggins team, has crafted a work of fiction that combines a love of writing with a devotion to fine beer drinking. It’s trippy and wonderful, and I hope you enjoy it over the weekend, preferably with a frosty brew.

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“Through the Drinking Glass,” by Mad Hops

The little bits of lip skin accumulated quickly on his shirt, and when he picked too deep, he could feel the warm pool of blood. The trick, he learned long ago, was to not go too far out or too far in. Too far out and you cross over from the lips to the regular skin. Too far in and you hit raw, moist inner lip. Both have plenty of nerves, and both sting like getting stood up. 

He didn’t want to pick at and bite his lips, but it was a byproduct of finally stopping biting his nails. The only problem was, now that he had longer, healthy nails, it was that much easier to tear the shit out of his lips. Ten tiny hoes, all ready to do work. And when that happens, you can’t eat spicy foods, or acidic foods, or foods with a lot of salt. Or foods that require you to open your mouth really, really wide.

All you can do is look like a slovenly, disgusting excuse for a human as you stand up, fold up your shirt to save the parts of you that were once on your face from falling to the floor, and walk over to deposit them into the trash.

It’s an interesting one-act play.

“I need a beer,” he said in the bathroom, applying Vaseline to his leaking life-force. He shuffled to the fridge, slow and plodding, and opened the door. No beer. Very little food. A half-pint of shrimp lo mein surrounded by near-empty jars of salsa and spaghetti sauce. A tomato rotted away in the crisper, but it was not visible.

“Fuck.” That word escaped with such…abandonment. Such lifelessness. As if his bank-robbing partner slowly made away with his half of the $3 million, and those four letters were the only bullets in the chamber. To a bleeding man, a defeated man, beer is currency. Beer is God.

On to church.

Canal’s Warehouse Liquors sat just a few miles away, and what a cathedral it was. Beer, wine, and liquor climbed each other to the ceiling and were nice enough to segregate themselves. If I were locked in here, how long would it take for me to drink myself to death, he thought, and seriously pondered. He decided six days. That’s when the lack of food would combine with the drunkenness to the point where he’d climb one of the racks and fall off, breaking his neck. Then he thought how funny it would be if he didn’t actually die from alcohol poisoning. Then he congratulated himself silently for secretly, and sincerely, figuring it out. And wanting to test it.

The usual fare didn’t excite him much. Despite the gargantuan size of the place, he had tried just about every beer two or three times over. There were no other birds to hunt.

He moved a Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA slightly here, a New Belgium 1554 just a little to the side there. He walked the aisles slowly and bent over every few steps, like an old woman examining her neighbors’ roses. He smelled them, noticed their thorns.

Then he saw it.

Tipped over on its side under a blanket of dust, a bomber.

He picked it up: “Wolodarsky’s Swirling Wormhole Ale.” It didn’t appear to have a location, or an ABV percentage, or anything else that would identify it beyond a cryptic name. Even the cashier seemed confused. There was no UPC and no price tag, so she consulted with the manager and they decided to charge him $6.50. He happily obliged.

As he got into his car in the parking lot, he looked up at the Canal’s sign. The “C” was burnt out. He giggled and took a picture with his cellphone.

When he got home he threw his keys down on the side table, on top of a month-old New Yorker and next to his one-hitter. As he walked to the kitchen, he looked at the bottle again, studiously. Not so much the label this time, but inside. There was a swirl of colors that seemed exotic and strange, even though he could barely see through the brown bottle. Wiping off the neck and the cap with his shirt, he opened a cupboard to get a glass.

He poured. The name fit. It was a dark ale, and it swirled around and down, the varied brown, chocolate, mocha and black hues rolling in and around and over each other.

The taste, however, was nowhere near as exciting.

Lifeless and flat, it fell down his gullet with nary a peep. He thought maybe it hadn’t aged well on the shelf. It could have been there for years, getting skunkier and skunkier. There was no way to tell. He was sure of one thing, though: he had wasted about seven bucks.

He followed the beer golden rule, though, in that no beer shall go un-drank. As the last sip passed his lips, his thoughts went to what show from his DVR list he would watch, what time he had to be up the next day, why he…

Why he…

Why he was feeling funny. Why his insides were twisting and turning, spinning and churning, and why, all around him, colors and forms bled into each other.

And, most importantly: why he was being sucked into the now-empty bottle.

(To be continued…)