Bad News Hughes makes us laugh again

From this entry, which the delicate ought not read, as it is in fact a discussion of collegiate male depravity somehow unassociated with alcohol and therefore all the more horrific. Hughes understands drunken shenanigans, as he explains:

Sometimes people say unkind things about drinkers. I understand why. It’s not like I, personally, never got all liquored up and kicked all the slats out of a fence, or threw a small man into some bushes, or helped Eric Gilmore huck a frozen turkey through a window with such force that it actually crashed through a corresponding window in the house next door, like six feet away, and we had to run outside and pretend we knew nothing about it, a ruse that worked because everyone was preoccupied with water squirting from the bathroom pipes I had burst moments before by firing a large firework into the toilet and holy shit that was one of the best parties I’ve ever been to and I often like to think it was our partnership that night that helped Eric overcome some of his dislike for white people. You never want to wholly overcome your dislike for white people. Anyway, I can’t speak for Eric, but I’m willing to accept some of the blame for the unkind things some people say about drinkers. I’ve had drinks, I’ve been naughty. But then the people who say unkind things about drinkers, who are they? They sit at home, gray and shriveled souls sipping tea and gnawing at cardboard and using the bitter resentment only borne from a life without joy to criticize and castigate those of us who occasionally take in a draught or two of spirits to loosen the shoulders, sharpen the mind and googly up the eyes. A practice that — as you and I know — puts a little sparkle on the Twinkie, just like Grandpa used to say. So fuck those guys. I feel like a good drunk does for the soul about like what four or five bowls of raisin bran do for the bowel. I even enjoy the hangover, as long as there’s nothing too taxing on the schedule and I can swagger through the day with a refreshing minimum of forebrain activity, just as pleasantly retarded as Coldplay fans, Democrats, Buddhists and people who maintain Harry Potter books can be enjoyed by adults. […] Oh, and you know what else? I don’t want to get all blah blah blah about society and gender roles and certainly people should be free to define masculinity in any way that makes them happy, but there’s this thing, right, with men, this lowest common denominator, and it’s that on some level we all measure our manliness by the level of menace we present to polite society. Like, even the most law-abiding and square of us take pride in, for example, how bad our feet stink, or that we shat out an abnormally large poo, or that we did a cannonball into the pool that ruined a nearby wedding ceremony, or something. We’ll brag about it. Sometimes under the guise of regret, but make no mistake — it’s still bragging. Look for the gleam in our eyes as we apologize. Somewhere, deep down in our hypothalamus, that apology is being transmuted into a humorous tale shared with our brother warriors around the campfire. Don’t try and change this. Don’t try and dim that gleam. Recognize that it’s there, for, like, evolutionary reasons, because back in ye olden times disputes were settled by the size of poo and men of the tribe often had to drive away saber-toothed tigers with their terrible, terrible feet.

It’s the things one particular Gainsville crowd did when stone sober that trouble him.

Comments are closed.