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This is something I have written because nothing is going on in the news, I could not think of any funny lists, or any lists at all, and it just happened to me. This is not appropriate for children, or those with a childlike sensibility. You have been warned.

So when I was hanging out in my dorm, reading and smoking, because that’s what I do when no one else is around, when my friend Ivendrago came over. His name isn’t really Ivendrago, but I’m taking a page from Tucker Max’s book and giving him a codename in case someone who knows him reads this, and also because I never asked if I could write this up. But I’m blowing passed that ethical issue because this was hilarious.
So Ivendrago asks me if I want to go out for a couple of beers. I really don’t. I have work to do. I won’t actually end up doing any of this work, but staying home instead of going out drinking leaves me with the fiction that in about five minutes I will stop smoking, reading, tinkering with my stock portfolio and checking twitter and actually do something productive.
Productive. Adjective. Everything I do not normally do.
So I tell Ivendrago this, and he gets sad. The fact that he was really sad at my telling him we should go for beers later in the week should have probably tipped me off to the fact that he’d passed drunk way back at like seven in the morning, but it did not.
So, because he was sad and I was having my one empathetic moment for the year, I went out with him.
First stop, the liquor store, because a couple beers with some food aren’t enough for Ivendrago, and because I was hanging out with him, I was practing the “when in Rome” thing. We need additional alcohol
I should explain my relationship with Ivendrago. I met him about fifteen times last semester. Most times I was arriving at the bar, he was leaving the bar absolutely wasted. I got to recognizing him because of this. We probably had four or five conversations. One angry one about politics, and three where he’d go, “dude, I’m wasted.”
I’d go “Yeah,” and then he’d vomit.
So he lives in my building now,, and I introduced myself this semester and he didn’t remember me because apparently every single time I’d met him he was so drunk he was blacking out. So now we do lunch, which is almost like the real world business lunches I’ve heard so much about except that neither of us are employed and so we have no business to discuss and only one of is us drunk, so its really only one quarter of a business lunch.
So we go to the liquor store, like I said, and I start flirting with the cute liquor store girl, because she’s 1. cute. 2. there. 3. laughed at all of my jokes.
Then Ivendrago starts telling her a long and detailed account of how he recently got a paper excepted into some important scientific conference happening this summer. Props to iven, but the girl at the liquor store did not need to hear the story.
So I sort of say something to interrupt him and to save her from the story, and she tells me she’s not surprised I’m drinking because I’m hanging out with Ivendrago. I don’t know if this means 1. everyone needs to drink to survive such an encounter, or 2. Ivendrago is such a raging alcoholic that all of his friends must also be raging alcoholics.
Right as we finally cash out, the other girl who is working at the liquor store and is not as cute as her friend tells Ivendrago to hurry up and finish buying shit because she has her period. What relevance this has to the speed of our purchasing booze I have no idea, but I’m pretty sure she just wanted him out of there because e the story about him getting published had taken five minutes.
At the mention of period I did nothing and Ivendrago sort of burst into a slow, odd laughter. I tried to dig through the floor in shame. I mean, it was obvious he was laughing because the girl said period. And he wasn’t hiding the fact that he was laughing at her.
I really shouldn’t throw stones, because I once laughed at a Wall mart greeter who had down syndrome, but there were extenuating circumstances that time.
Ivendrago is not heading for the door, and I thought things could not be more awkward. Later that night I would be proven wrong. So I usher Ivendrago out of the liquor store.
“Fuckinng bitch!” he says.
“Right,” I say, having no idea who he’s talking about. “Fucking bitches.”
“Period girl? Well, dude, you did laugh at her.”
“Jason,” Ivendrago says, “You have to learn who to respect in this world and who not to respect. I don’t respect people easily, and she… is a fucking bitch.” He spits into the street and takes a beer from his pocket and I reflect that other people don’t respect him easily either.
I had bought two big cans of fosters at the liquor store and I realize that the single shot of Jinn I took before leaving my dorm would not be enough to make this night bearable, so I also open my beer and we sit on a bench and Ivendrago starts telling me many things which I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to hear.
“I met a girl last weekend.” he says.
“Where? You’re banned from all the bars on campus.” As far as I knew this was true.
“Nope,” he says. “So we start grinding on the dance floor but we’re grinding so hard that the bouncer kicks us out. She was five ten and a hundred and seventy pounds.” I pause for a moment and reflect that his taste in women is abysmal. “I sodomized her,” he says.
“Man, I really do not want to know,” I say. “I just have no desire to learn anything more about this.”
“I think she liked it.” An unwanted mental picture appears in my head and I finish my beer hoping that if I can drink quickly enough I can cause retrograde amnesia to kick in. The sodomy story goes on for quite a while. I will spare you the details.
“I think the man should make all the money in a family,” Ivendrago says. I forgive him this opinion because he was born and raised in Russia. I offer my own opinion, that both people in a marriage should make money, but he is too drunk to hear me.
He starts saying things and I cannot tell if they are profound or idiotic. “You have to live your life every day. Have to live for the moment. I do whatever I want to, because you don’t know if you’ll be alive tomorrow.” My thoughts are 1. yes this makes sense. 2. but on the other hand its Monday and your sloppily drunk on a bench at eight at night.
He starts going on, telling me that he’s had twenty-three women, which I doubt, and some other crazy shit. I have adapted my policy of communication. I now only respond to Ivendrago with conditional statements like “maybe, perhaps, possible, that could be,” he does not notice.
We go to the one restaurant on campus Ivendrago has not been kicked out of. He’s wasted, I’m no where near drunk, and am regretting this hole thing. Damn my empathy.
He walks behind the counter and starts telling the Indian guy manning it how he’s getting published. Now I should say the Indian guy isn’t actually from India he has no accent and speaks perfect English. “Published,” says Ivendrago slowly. “You know what published means?” Oh, god in heaven, shoot me now.
Ivendrago comes back to the table, crashing into someone waiting in line as he does. The guy starts yelling at Iven, but Iven is too drunk to even notice. “Did you order?” I ask, because I really need another beer if I’m going to deal with this shit. Also, the quicker we eat, the quicker I can extract Iven from this situation, and with him, the tatters of my dignity.
He begins to tell me about a felony he got charged with, and I realize that I have no desire to be where I am whatsoever. “This guy was making fun of me, my girlfriend and my country!” Well was a buck seventy, I think, I would make fun of her too, and as for the country, its Russia so I would also make fun of the country.
“So I broke a bottle over his head and then I kneed him in the face ot. He broke the bone behind my eyebrow.”
“Cool,” I say, because I think this is the response that he wants.
“It was not cool at all,” he says. He now has a thick Russian accent. I also realize something I would have realized five minutes ago if I’d given him my full attention. He is almost screaming.
He is so loud that every other customer in the place has either stopped there conversation to listen to ours or are talking about the crazy Russian sitting across from the uncomfortable looking preppy.
I need an Ivendrago break. I go outside for a cigarette. “Hey,” a cute girl says to me, and I am trying to figure out how I know her. “You want a ride out of here?” she says.
I stop trying to figure out how I know her, and bow my head. God exists, and he’s getting me out of here.
“Sweet Jesus, yes!”
“OK,” says Angel. Her name is not angel, but she also gets a codename. Fuck it, I don’t actually know her, she doesn’t need one. Her name is Miranda.
“When your food comes, I’ll come over.”
“Thanks,” I say.
I go back inside just in time to stop Ivendrago from getting another felony charge. He has cut the line to yell about the order he turned out never to have place. “You,” he says to the guy behind the counter. “Are an ass hole. An ass hole.” The guys starting to get heated, and Iven is about a second away from making his codename a hole lot more accurate.
I manage to calm everything down and I finally get my beer which is 1. not that good and two, expensive.
I pound.
“My boss loves me.”
“I’m sure,” I say, and the table behind us laughs.
“He is fifty-three.”
“A man of the world,” I say and now two tables are laughing.
“He introduced me to his family,” he says.
“I feel for them,” I say, and I have my own laugh track.
I don’t feel bad about this because we are now having two conversations. He is so drunk I’m pretty sure he has lost the ability to hear what I am saying.
Our food arrives and I go up on the pretense of getting napkins. “I am so, so, sorry,” I say to the guy behind the counter.
He bursts into laughter, and I picture Ivendrago beating the shit out of him. I get my napkins and start looking for the Angel, and I wonder if she’s gotten fed up and has abandoned me.
Ivendrago takes my ranch dressing and drinks it.
The angel comes over. “Oh, my god, Jason?” she says, as though this is one big coincidence.
“Hey!” I say, as though I actually know her. “You weren’t in class today,” I say, and we have no class’s together at all.
“I know,” she says, “I overslept. Hey, you want to come to my place?”
“What?” Ivendrago says, having finally caught up to the conversation.
“Sure,” I say.
“Where’s your place?” Ivendrago asks.
“Down the road, but only Jason is coming.” She says this like its a booty call, bless her fucking heart.
“I’ll see you say,” as I’m leaving.
We are out in the parking lot when I hear a crash, cursing, more cursing from someone else, Iven yelling at someone. He comes out into the parking lot. Angel laughs and slows down. We are five feet from her car. I think she wants to see what’s going to happen. She is holding her keys in her hand. I take them, hop into the passenger side, lean over, and start the car.
“Jason?” Iven asks, and I get my first feeling of guilt. I step on it.
“For the love of god,” I say, drive!
She does. She drops’s me off at my place, I get her number, and then go inside and listen to a wonderful sound. Silence.