About ten years ago, I was living in a shitty little apartment in a drab, white-trash neighborhood. I was about twenty-one years old and my life revolved around getting fucked up, sleeping, puking and smoking. Sometimes I’d combine one or more together for kicks because I was an angry little fucker and I liked it that way.

One afternoon, after waking up naked and extremely hung-over, I scrounged around and discovered that I was completely out of cigarettes. I was chain-smoking bastard at that point in my life, so this simply would not do. I needed to run to the corner store to further martyr my lung cilia.

Bleary and with head a-throbbing, I still had the common sense to not run out the door completely naked. I threw on a T-shirt and slapped on a pair of these Armenian work pants that I’d found in some Army-Navy surplus store. I’ve no idea if real-life Armenians actually did any work in them, but I kind of liked them. They were dark blue pants that instead of having a zipper or button fly, they used an overlapping contraption that closest resembled how the crotches of tighty-whiteys are set up. It looked completely normal to me and for some reason, I was partial to them. Perhaps it was the drugs.

Since I planned on coming right back, I threw these pants on without bothering to put on anything underneath and hit the street, heading for the corner store.

Ahead of me was a family on their porch. Father and mother, sitting around while several children ran about, screeching and giggling as the fucked up little parasites are known to do. One of the children came running in my direction, chasing after an inflated rubber ball. When the ball neared me, I crouched down, picked it up and gently lobbed it back in the kid’s direction.

Suddenly, the kid starts bawling, turns tail and runs to her parents. The mother looks at me and offers up a “Oh Jesus fucking Christ” to the heavens and the father starts eyeing at me like he’s about to beat me half to death.

It was about that time that I began to notice a draft.

I glanced down and saw to my sheer fucking horror that a force beyond my control, be it fate, karma or physics had caused my dearest pieces to be exposed. I was hanging out. The flag wasn’t raised—thank whatever Gods responsible, but it was definitely flying in the wind.

Somehow in bending to get the ball, the fly-contraption on these Armenian work pants had managed to shift a little here, a little there and now here I was, standing in front of some white trash family on a Sunday afternoon, hung-over with my dick hanging out. The older children stood there, slack-jawed—the image of my face being burned into their brains as the role model to compare all future examples of “bad men” against. Score one for daveb.

I may have little or no redeeming qualities and I may just be an overall useless leech of an asshole but one thing I am most certainly not is a pervert that whips his junk out, especially in front of children. I was fully mortified.

As quick as I could I stuffed that shit back in and took off as fast as possible without actually breaking into a run. There was just no point in trying to explain myself and the curious contraption that made up the crotch of my Armenian work pants. I hit the store and chain-smoked my way home, taking care to walk a much longer and completely different route. I was to maintain this new route for the remainder of my time living in this neighborhood.

I have not worn Armenian work pants since that day.

Yesterday, I was doing the morning rush-hour commute to the city, hungover, late and addled with lack of sleep. A typical morning for me. I sat there in the subway car, shifting from position to position, trying to find the one magical contortion that would prevent me from blowing massive chunks all over my fellow passengers like a poor man’s metro rendition of “The Exorcist”. A warning to the wise: if you are riding the 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 trains in the morning on a weekday and you see a skinny, pale and sketchy looking white dude with glasses that keeps leaning back and forth, shifting from side to side, make sure to stay out of range. Possibly, you might want to switch subway cars because it very likely could be me, very close to painting you with the contents of my twisted and unhappy stomach. You have been warned.

That morning, my voyage on the good ship nausea was not off to a particularly good start as I sat down in the one free seat in the car to a smell that made me think of the taste one might come up with after licking a few used ashtrays. Whoever had been sitting or had died there prior to my arrival was one hell of a fucking champion cigarette smoker. Perhaps it was the ghost of the Marlboro Man, come to haunt my morning hangovers, who knows, it stank like a motherfucker though.

So, up to my waist in stale cigarette stank, I held it down. Green in the face with a sweat beaded brow, I braved the bumping, the jostling, the screeching and the squealing, holding the lid down on my stomach with an iron will.

Finally, I made it to my last transfer. After switching trains, I only have a few more stops till I can hide behind my desk until death, or lunchtime releases me. I leaned against one of the platform pillars, proud that I’d made it so far without decorating some senior citizen or homeboy with hangover barf. The train arrived. The doors opened and I entered into the welcome air conditioning. Almost there.

Upon entering the car, I see this huge, black young man. He looks at me, smiles and says, “I’m on American Idol!” and proceeds to screech, not quite coherently, Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”, only just the chorus part, over and over, hanging from the bars in the train. As quick as I could, I made to back out the door, but I was too late. The doors shut and I found myself taking a seat, front and center for a one-man diva-thon without the medication.

This guy was clearly having a psychotic episode. Screaming, laughing, squealing his way through those four words much like the guinea pig at a “proctology as chainsaw art” seminar might do.

“Ladies and Gentlemen…I’m on American Idol! AND IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII WIIILLLLLLLLL ALWAAAAAAAAAAYS LOOOOOOOOVE YOOOOOOUUU!!!! AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”

Over and over, this crazy fucking nutcase assaulted my eardrums. He screeched so high, it was actually painful and I swear to god, something inside my head ruptured. Fifteen years from now, as I sit on the edge of the exam table and the doctor delivers the bad news of an inoperable brain something or other and asks, “Were you ever exposed to any high-frequency sound?”, I’ll look back and it will all make sense. That nutty squealing bastard will be the death of me.

Fuck Saint Patrick’s day. If there ever was a holiday to be hauled back behind the shed and shot, this day is a definite contender. Today isn’t about Irish pride, it’s an excuse to get shitfaced, pretend your Irish or talk up the fact that 75 years ago your Norwegian grandmother may have possibly given a blow job to a drunk sailer from Dublin and thereby qualifying you to stand there like an asshole at the bar, drinking your green beer and pontificating on your Irishness. It’s pathetic. Irish pride is not what you think it is. The Irish don’t drink because they’re all alcoholics, they drink because historically, they been fucked in the ass by everyone and their mothers. They’ve been enlsaved, slaughtered, starved, taxed, invaded, raped, you name it. You’d kind of want a drink after all that. Irish pride is a quiet, muttering pride with shades of bitterness. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we’re still alive and Laird willing, those bastards’ll let us live another year.” It’s that kind of mentality. Piss, vinegar and religious guilt. Add some grey wool clothing, a few potatoes and bad teeth and BAM wlecome to being Irish.

Now you might think, daveb, WTF? Hate the Irish much? Actually boys and girls, daveb was born and raised in an Irish family. A supremely disfunctional one (see: typical Irish family). He actually enjoys it too, just not the family part. He puts his natural ability to ramble on for hours about nothing to the little green man that lives under the rainbow of his hereditary gene pool. He’s a natural asshole and malcontent. Whether that’s what connects him to his Irish roots or is a direct result of them, who knows, it works for daveb.