LAST SATURDAY

As you loyal readers might recall, my buddy Joel sprung for rocks no salt at the hallowed Maudies, and after a multicultural visit to the twilight zone courtesy of my neighborhood Jihad Mini mart which is a bubbling mix of culture, we retired to my house for a serious bout of drinking that included vodka, crown royal and beer.
The CD player was in constant rotation although I'm not clear on the selections...I know there was alot of Cracker in there, but the rest is a bit fuzzy. During the course of the evening, we devolved to the trading licks ( that is, hitting each other on the arm over and over again) and arm wrestling, much to the amusement of Ann. Joel is alot bigger than me and handily beat me in the arm wrasslin', but I matched his punches with the same ferocity as his...after all, I'm not small-just wrapped tighter.
As with all drunken testosterone fests, this one went to the invariable. Joel gloating about his prowess in the arm wrasslin' zone, and me warning him that he should "fear me". Although the jury is still out, and he has the size advantage, I believe that in a real knock down drag out between us I would prevail. I believe this in a most feral and primitive way. Why? Because I have a bigger axe to grind than he does, not that we would ever come to no shit blows because at the heart of it all we are friends, and while it's fun to muck around, neither one of us wants to really hurt each other.
He called me on sunday and asked if my arm hurt...we laughed about how stupid we were but how much fun it was being so stupid.
No harm done.
The last real fight I had was broken up, if you don't count the thousands of "restraints" I did when I was a soldier in the psychic wars. But arriving for 8 hours of angry kids possibly trying to kick your ass for whatever fucked up reason and you have to contain them without hurting them ( as a sidebar I learned that extreme pain puts an end to this kind of bullshit in a hurry...call me/us animals if you want, but in the end, I finally accepted the fact to end hurt sometimes you have to hurt right back in a measured "therapeutic" sort of way).
Sure, he could win a arm wrasslin' contest everytime, no problem. But if it came down to it, and I had to tap into that 15 years of unreasonable and spontaneous violence thrown my way I would so crush his ass.
And I think he knows it.
Alchohol is a funny thing yo.