Nicci bought me three beers tonight and told me to consider it a donation to the website. In turn, I bought myself a $22 bottle of beer. Thanks, Nicci. Now you can all watch me get drunk on beer while I type about what happened to me today. I’ll type very slowly so the story will grow more confusing as it progresses. Right now I’m working on my first beer of the night, the $22 bottle of North Coast Old Rasputin XII. Batch #3. Aged for 9 months in 12-year bourbon barrels. ABV of 11.5%. Seriously, I think this is one of the best beers I’ve ever consumed. It pours jet black with a thick brown head. Aroma of vanilla, caramel, coffee, chocolate. The flavor boasts plenty of oaked goodness juxtaposed to roasted malts, vanilla, and mocha. Super soft, delicate, easy to drink and memorable. One of the best Imperial Stouts I’ve ever had, right up there with the Bell’s stouts. Fuck is it good.

So, today I worked almost nine hours. I was dropped off at the coffeeshop across the street because my car was in the shop. I had an omelet for breakfast and tried to think of an idea for this blog. Little did I know that my lunch break would provide more than enough fodder for a blog entry. From 10:30am until 3:00pm, I worked. I processed some orders, priced some vinyl, chatted with customers…it was a normal day at work. The only difference was, I didn’t have my car with me (it was at the mechanics — did I say that already? Well, if I didn’t, that’s why I had to be dropped off at work like a fucking two-year old). So, if I wanted to go anywhere for lunch, I had to walk. Sometimes I don’t take a lunch, and I just drink a soda. Sometimes I drive to lunch. Today I decided I was going to walk to lunch…because I didn’t have my car. Did I mention that already? Oh well, I’ll continue my story after beer #2.

Beer number two is Avery Collaboration Not Litigation. It’s a combination of two beers: Avery Salvation and Russian River Salvation. It’s a Belgian Strong Ale. 8.97% ABV. It’s very complex, but after a few sips it is growing on me. It pours dark amber in color with a small white head. The aroma is dried fruit (orange, raisin), cinnamon and cloves. The flavor is very sweet. A little peppery and also fruity. There is a very slight hint of hop bitterness in the finish. It’s a good beer, better than just an ordinary bottle of Avery Salvation, but not nearly as good as the first beer I had. I guess now that I’ve described it in great detail I’ll continue my near-death story. Have I mentioned yet that this is a story about me ALMOST DYING? Oh man, it’s so fucked up.

Timeout. I just went to El Compadre for Erin’s birthday with Nicci, Pat, Nate and Shaun. Nicci paid for my margarita, so it was like a bonus donation to the website! It was a good time. Their salsa flights are fucking spicy! There are chunks of jalapeno in their pico de gallo, which makes it very hot. The margarita wasn’t that bad, either. It’s certainly aided my “buzz”. Now that I’m back, a little over an hour after I left, I suppose I can finish my story.

Lunch break. Three o’clock in the afternoon. I decided that I was going to walk to the grocery store to get a small snack. Unfortunately, the road upon which my job is located is rather busy. There are many, many cars driving by at high rates of speed. What’s worse is, it’s kind of on a downhill slope, so plenty of cars are speeding by at higher rates of speed than the drivers realize. Oftentimes I’ll cross the street to grab a soda and I’ll be shocked by the rate at which approaching cars reach me. Not that I’ve been hit or anything, but cars accelerate down that hill fast.

So, I’m walking towards the grocery store. I cross the street and pass a bank or two. I’m thinking about what the hell I want to eat (knowing that I’m going to be going out to dinner in a few hours with my girlfriend), and minding my own business. I decide to call my mother to tell her that I’ve cancelled my temporary health care plan since my job has offered me a new health care plan. I slow my walking as I proceed downhill. I pass a liquor store. I slow almost to a stop as I dial her number. Suddenly, I hear a sound behind me, like an obnoxiously loud rattle. I stop as it approaches, trying to place the sound. A black Honda passes me at an enormous rate of speed. It was almost a blur — it was that fast. As I’m standing, watching the car pass me by, I hear a loud clicking sound. Before I’ve even processed what I just heard, I heard a loud snapping sound and a CRACK.

Apparently the Honda had a loose hubcap. Literally, the thing snapped off as the car was parallel to me, walking down the street. The hubcap must have become dislodged as the tire hit something in the road. I didn’t notice any potholes or anything, but surely there had to be some kind of…object there, which jolted the car, and in turn dislodged the hubcap. I never saw it flying through the air in my direction. I never even felt the rush of air as it passed just in front of my face. I simply heard the CRACK sound, and realized that, to my immediate right, a hubcap had become lodged in the wrought iron gate sealing off the parking lot I was walking passed. I’ve never seen metal cut through metal like that before. Maybe if you took a powerful saw to the gate you could cut a few inches into it over the course of several hours. This fucking hubcap was LODGED in there. Like, you couldn’t pull the thing out no matter how strong you were. It was stuck. In the fucking iron gate.

We’re back at Nicci’s now, enjoying the last of the bottle of Avery Collaboration Not Litigation. It tastes better now, after a strong stout, a strong ale, and a margarita. I’m pretty sure this is one of the better Strong Belgian Ales I’ve consumed — not that I’ve consumed many — and maybe i’ll try it again someday. More importantly, there are two beers left to consume, and they certainly aren’t going to drink themselves. Nicci bought me a bottle of Stone’s 13th Anniversary Ale (which has just at liquor stores), and a bottle of something called Angel City Rahsaan Roland Kirk Stritch Imperial Stout. Both of them sound amazing for entirely different reasons. One is a Stone Anniversary Ale, and one is an Imperial Stout.

If I hadn’t stopped to call my mother — my mother — I’d be dead right now. I would have been one of those embarrassing news stories where they find a decapitated head on the side of the road. I’d be fucking dead, people! There’s no way I would have survived. I came within an inch of my death today. What a surreal fucking feeling. God, I think it’d be perfectly karmic — a totally hilarious joke — if I’d died that way. People would show up to mourn the loss of my life and they’d hear how I died and they’d say, “Oh yeah, of course. We didn’t expect that he’d die any other way.” My enemies would laugh. My fucking friends would laugh! I’d be the guy who got decapitated by a fucking hubcap while he was walking to the grocery store to buy a shitty bowl of soup and a fucking Smart Water. It’d be the most embarrassing death since the guy who died because he ran towards an oncoming train in an attempt to prevent it from hitting his car. Even in death I’d be too embarrassed to face my family and loved ones.

For minutes I stood and stared at the hubcap. I thought about how it would have felt for that thing to cut through flesh and bone. Would i have even noticed? Would I have simply dropped like a bag of cement? Who would have found me? Is that thing about losing control of your bowels upon death true? What if one of my co-workers had to identify my body and I had shit my pants at the time? What would my mom have said had the call to her gone through, and then I died. Would she have heard my death rattle? So many thoughts. I couldn’t possibly remember everything that passed through my head as I stood there, on the side of the road, staring at the fucking hubcap. I feel like I immediately looked up to the skies and thanked God for keeping me alive, but I also feel like I almost broke down crying, and maybe I also just snickered and continued on my way towards the supermarket. It was a complete out-of-body experience. I remember realizing I was in buying a pre-packaged sushi lunch several minutes later, but I have absolutely no recollection of how I got from the hubcap to the grocery store. It was like I suddenly projected myself into the check-out line and that was the moment my mind began to actually process information again. To put it as bluntly as possible, it was totally fucked up.

We’re still finishing the Collaboration Ale. There is a sip or two left in our pint glass, and Nicci is watching a television show called Dance Your Ass Off. I think it’s about weight loss, but I’m not paying attention because I’m trying to relive the moment I almost died today. She didn’t even care that I almost died. When I told her what happened, she laughed. I’m not kidding, either, I told her the entire story, just as I’ve told you, and she stopped me and said, “There’s no way a hubcap could become lodged in a wrought iron gate.” I told her that’s exactly what happened, and she laughed and said it was impossible. So, I did the only thing I could think of, and I told her she was right. It was impossible. I told her, in fact, that I had made the whole story up. And to tell you the truth, it is impossible. I made the entire story up. It didn’t happen. There was no hubcap. There was no wrought iron gate. There was nothing. It was a joke. I wrote this story around a few beers and a tequila-based cocktail at a local Mexican restaurant. Quite frankly, the whole story was made up. The only true statement was that I walked to the grocery store to buy myself lunch today. Everything else — except for the beer reviews and the bit about celebrating Erin’s birthday– was a lie.

Did you fall for it? Did you think I almost died today? Did you know from the start that I was completely full of shit? At what moment did you realize that I was a) drunk or b) lying about the events of my day. This will help me in the future as I construct more stories about near-death experiences. Please be honest with your feedback. If you thought the wrought iron gate detail was entirely implausible, I will happily accept that I pushed it too far. If you thought that the story was true until you reached the point where I dispelled the story, let me know so that I can laugh in Nicci’s face and show her that I convinced people that I almost died via decapitation by a hubcap. Either way, if you comment you’ll be changing the way I write future blog posts about drinking beers, accepting donations from readers, and nearly killing myself.

I didn’t almost die today. I just thought about what it’d be like if I did. Does this make me “dark” or “Goth”? Maybe. Does it make me a creative writer and a silly drunk? Definitely.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this installment of Getting Drunk On Your Donations. If you’d like to read more stories about me being drunk and not knowing what to blog about, submit a donation to this website and you will:

01. Receive a care package “Thank You” note.
02. Have an almost personalized blog entry where I write about how I spent your money.
03. The satisfaction of knowing you are helping your own personal education about the finest beers in the world while also perpetuating my decent into alcoholism.

Nicci says not to joke about alcoholism, as it is a sad thing, but she was the one bought me this beer and that “strong” margarita, so she has to deal with whatever I write. Sucker!

Bellini – Wake Up Under A Truck
Mayo Thompson – The Lesson
Fikret Kizilok – Just As Long
Arbete Och Fritid – Dagen Lider

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