In Boozo Veritas # 61: Squirrel Babies of Orlando: Part 2

29 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

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baby squirrels, Drunken Monkey, Fallin’ Pines Critter Rescue, In Boozo Veritas, Orlando, Squirrels, Teege Braune

In Boozo Veritas # 61 by Teege Braune

Squirrel Babies of Orlando: Part 2

And now the exciting conclusion to Squirrel Babies of Orlando.

When I got back to my house, I was met with a critical situation. Jenn had quarantined the babies in a cat carrier, and while two of them were spunky and active, wrestling with each other and climbing up the carrier’s metal gate, the third had grown weaker, was obviously fading. His nose had not stopped bleeding. He sat in the corner of the case shivering slightly and clearly required the kind of medical assistance neither Jenn nor I was qualified to give. Fortunately, in my absence Jenn had formulated a plan. She had spoken to Shirley at Fallin’ Pines Critter Rescue who emphatically agreed to foster them despite the fact that she was already caring for over seventy orphaned squirrels at the same time. Jenn had met Shirley once before in a similar situation and felt confident in the woman’s nurturing abilities.

As we were pulling out of our driveway, Jenn told me that we had to swing by Drunken Monkey before we could begin the long journey to Fort Christmas in the sticks of rural Florida.

“What in the world is at Drunken Monkey that can’t wait until we get back from dropping off the squirrels?” I nearly shouted.

“You’ll find out when you get there,” she said.

It dawned on me that this must be the surprise to which she had eluded earlier, and as eager as I was to deliver the squirrels unto salvation, I could see that there would be no reasoning with Jenn who was unwavering in her insistence. As Drunken Monkey is only a block from our house, simply indulging her, and getting the chore over with seemed a safer plan than arguing the point. Nevertheless, I had become single-minded and frantic in my mission to rescue the babies, so I was barely considering the possibilities that this surprise might entail.

“Are you coming in?” I asked Jenn as I idled the van in a parking space.

“No, I’ll stay here with the babies,” she said.

“What in the hell am I supposed to do when I go inside? Ask them for my surprise at the counter?” I asked growing frustrated.

“Uh, sure. They know you,” was her cryptic answer.

I flung open the door to my favorite coffee shop and ran straight into the last person I expected to see.

Clasping my shoulders, my dear friend Adam looked me in the eye and said, “I hear there are some baby squirrels that need saving. I’m here to help.”

All this time, unbeknownst to me, Adam was some kind of super hero, and he had flown across the globe from Australia in a moment’s notice for the salvation of three baby squirrels. With this titan among men joining our ragtag expedition, I knew that we could not possibly fail.

“Thank God you’re here!” I said. “Come on, let’s go.”

Adam.

Back in the van Jenn and Adam were laughing and asking me if I was surprised to see him.

I answered that of course I was, but the truth is I thought I must be dreaming and accepted the entirety of the bizarre situation with the resignation of the lucid dreamer whose dim awareness of reality quickly subverts the delightful illusions until they are conquered by consciousness, washed out completely, and so lost forever. I waited for wakefulness to take Adam, the baby squirrels, and perhaps even Jenn from me as I opened my eyes to discover who knew what other life, but then it occurred to me that I would probably not dream Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” onto the radio, and with that acknowledgment, I returned from my brief and unsettling revelry, my delusion of a delusion, and faced the wonderful knowledge that I was rescuing baby squirrels with not only my fiancé and love of my life, but also a long lost friend who only moments ago I did not know when I would see again. As we drove and joked and reminisced about old times, it was with a shrill heart shattering shriek that the poor, injured baby squirrel reminded us of our mission and purpose lest we forget the lives for which we had taken responsibility.

Fallin’ Pines Critter Rescue lies a clearing dotted by palms and trees laden with Spanish moss. Nothing about its appearance suggest that it exists anywhere near a major metropolis. The simple house sits beside a fenced in garden carved by a winding path, adorned by ponds and flowers, home to many abandoned animals including geese, rabbits, sugar gliders, and even a wallaby. This mini Wonderland is shepherded by Shirley, sometimes affectionately referred to as Squirrely Shirley, and her canine assistant who exhibited a gentleness with the babies that is uncharacteristic of her species. Shirley gathered the tiny squirrels in her cupped palms and held them up at eye level.

“Oh they’re going to be fine,” she said beaming.

We tried to point out the injured baby, to make sure he received extra and immediate care, but as I watched the three of them crawling up and down Shirley’s sweater, nibbling on loose threads, I realized I couldn’t tell him apart from his brother. As though Shirley exhibited a mystical healing touch, the little squirrel was completely revitalized. His nose had finally stopped bleeding and no one would have guessed that only moments ago he was crying out in agony.

“He just needed somebody to love on him… Yowww!!!” She screamed when one of the babies had bitten her ear. At the sound of her yell, the squirrel scurried inside Shirley’s hair.

“That happens,” she said regaining composure. “They’ll try to nurse on anything. Sometimes they come in and their poor, little penises are pink and red because they think they’re nipples.”

We all nodded at this observation pondering its implications.

“Well, I better take these guys inside and get them something to eat.”

Declining our offer of a donation, Shirley turned and walked away. Beside her large auburn ponytail, jutting from her hairline, hung a tiny gray ponytail.

Back in the car Jenn admitted that she hand’t named the squirrels because she would have been too heartbroken if they hadn’t survived the drive to Celebration. We drove back to town as the sun began to set on Orlando, planning our next move. Although Adam was only going to be around for the weekend, and I had to work much of it, we decided to make the most of the time we had. All three of us were ravenous from our adventure, and thought it appropriate to celebrate its success with dinner and libations, so headed to Fuji Sushi, a former staple for us back when Adam still lived in Orlando. We ate green mussels and an unreasonable amount of rolls including one called Aqua Bear, which we ordered simply because it reminded us of the tardigrade, a minuscule creature that can, oddly enough, survive in the vacuum of space, an animal so bizarre its very nature is a testament to the surreality of nature, the dreamy euphoria that is life.

_______

Teege Braune (episode 72, episode 75, episode 77, episode 90, episode 102) is a writer of literary fiction, horror, essays, and poetry. Recently he has discovered the joys of drinking responsibly. He may or may not be a werewolf.

In Boozo Veritas # 60: Squirrel Babies of Orlando: Part 1

22 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

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In Boozo Veritas # 60 by Teege Braune

Squirrel Babies of Orlando: Part 1

The day began with bloodshed. A small lizard named Bill who had snuck onto our porch seeking shelter from the storm found himself instead in the deadly maw of a nine pound monster in a tuxedo. Jenn grabbed Eury by the scruff, jostled her, but by the time she released Bill from her jaws, Eury had already inflicted a wound of fatally violent severity. Bill wriggled on his back, and we assumed his demise was imminent. The killer, for her part, exhibited not the slightest shred of remorse as she was incarcerated inside the house, but instead chirped out her frustration at being unable to finish the job and devour her victim completely.

This is the face of a homicidal maniac.

Perhaps sacrificing the poor lizard to this fiend would have been the most humane course, but we were determined that Bill should know some kind of peace at the very end of his short life. Momentarily he regained composure, attempted to flee, but ran only a few inches, impaired as he was by his disembowelment. Ending his suffering by stamping him out seemed far too brutal an act, so Jenn merely scooped him up and laid him gently among some overgrown foliage in our front yard. He lay for a moment, breathing quickly, and then crawled slowly into the shadows presumedly to pass into the next world. One more brave, fallen soldier in the fight against Florida’s pervasive and aggressive mosquito onslaught.

“Are we cowards for not putting him out of his misery?” Jenn asked, and I cited Abbot Zerchi’s arguments against euthanasia in Walter M. Miller Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz by way of a defense

Even the passing of one so meek as Bill had me reflecting on the brevity of life. I’d read that the biggest regret shared by those in their final months was not keeping up with friends, as though a lifetime is a collection of people to miss, a cultivation of those from whom circumstances have kept us for one reason or another. In my case: my family in and around Louisville, Kentucky, my high school buddies spread out around the country, my good friend Nat in Seattle whose birthday was over the weekend, Adam all the way across the world in Australia. A few years ago we were nearly inseparable and yet with that distance between us, two years had gone by since I last saw him. Just recently I had a dream in which I found us together again, only to awake and realize just how long it had been.

I was distracted from my melancholy as the animals in our yard were behaving oddly; bats flitted through the air in broad daylight, and a bluejay who had alighted on the porch railing bounced towards me on his back-bent legs, glaring nefariously. Perhaps it was Bill’s death that had agitated them or maybe we were just unused to the incongruities of nature as we’ve only had any yard at all for a short time, having recently moved out of an apartment building in downtown Winter Park. I was vaguely aware in the back of my mind that Jenn had promised me a surprise earlier that morning, but as my yard was becoming the fabled Area X of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy, I almost completely forgot about it. Even the broad elephant ear leaves seemed to encroach with an unnerving familiarity. The off-putting atmosphere culminated just as I was about to leave for a work appointment with the discovery of three baby squirrels, each with a bloody nose, scattered around the porch and the yard, climbing up walls and trees with unsure footing and squealing in a pitch that cut right to the heart strings.

I put off my exit as long as possible while Jenn and I watched from inside and waited for the negligent squirrel parents to return and gather up their fallen babies at the same time keeping an eye out for potential predators not excluding the murderer Eury and her accomplice Riley who sat at the window chirping, howling, and begging us to let them outside so that they could dispatch the innocent creatures. The babies teetered precariously along the fronds of a palm tree, and it became clear that they had been abandoned. No parent would return. Utterly helpless, overly trusting, they suffered slim chances in that wild backyard of ours. Intervention would soon be necessary. As I guiltily ran off for my appointment, Jenn and our neighbor Matt set about gathering the babies for safe keeping, but we had no idea what to do with them next. Jenn and I didn’t know how to raise baby squirrels, and furthermore, it became clear that one of them might be seriously injured. I spent my appointment anxious, glancing continually and apologetically at my phone for updates and as soon as it was over raced back home.

Will Jenn and Teege rescue the baby squirrels and deliver them to safety, or will they all die a bloody and agonizing death?! Tune into In Boozo Veritas next week for the exciting conclusion to Squirrel Babies of Orlando!

___________

In Boozo Veritas # 59: A Family Sousing in Michigan

15 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

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In Boozo Veritas # 59 by Teege Braune

A Family Sousing in Michigan

Jenn and I flew to Michigan on Thursday for a long weekend that pinnacled at the wedding of my cousin Brian who had asked me to be a groomsman. Jenn had never been to Michigan and I had only been once fifteen years ago. During that trip three of my college buddies and I racked up the mileage making a circle around the state that included Battle Creek, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Flint, Detroit, Ann Arbor, and culminated at MSU in Eat Lansing. We did all this over the course of the week that was our spring break, never staying in one place for more than two nights, smoking cigarettes, guzzling coffee, and eating hamburgers from fast food joints the entire journey. This recent trip, however, was more stationary and somewhat less self-abusive. I have since given up the cigarettes and hamburgers and keep my coffee consumption at moderate levels. Nevertheless, I’ve added the vice of alcohol, something in which we did not much indulge fifteen years ago because we were nineteen and found acquiring it difficult in strange cities.

Like many families, when mine gets together large quantities of alcohol are always consumed. For my mother’s generation, the gender binary is almost universal. My aunts drink wine; my uncles drink Coors Light, and while Bud Light will do in a pinch, Miller Lite, PBR, Yuengling, and everything else that technically qualifies as beer is out of the question. Also, there’s always a bottle of bourbon that no one claims to have brought. Sometimes I am the source of its origin; at other times it is Brian or my brother Nic, and at other occasions, no one knows where it came from, but we drink it anyway because it’s bourbon, and we’re from Louisville. Bourbon calls to us, is in our cultural heritage like a familiar hearth even when we’re far away from home.

Brian was kind enough to book Jenn and me a reservation at a quaint, dreamy bed and breakfast called the Brickhouse at Somerset. From the idyllic garden in the backyard to the antiques collected in every nook and corner to the cats that lazily roamed the corridors, the atmosphere of the Brickhouse created the sensation of time slowed nearly to a crawl. The owner Sandy was more than accommodating when we crawled down the stairs to breakfast a couple hours later than she intended to serve it. She and her partner Ron stayed up late with us listening to Leonard Cohen, and in this charming and relaxed environment, a welcomed contrast from the hectic nature of a wedding, still we were constantly being offered alcohol as Sandy and Ron keep an marvelous collection of fine wines and Michigan’s many craft beers, a nice break from Coors Light. As if to demonstrate that there is more to the world than just bourbon, Ron poured Jenn and I each a glass of a twenty-one year old port-barrel aged Scotch that had me rethinking my prejudice towards Kentucky whiskies.

The wedding itself lay amidst a panorama of sprawling, pristine farmland. My cousin Christina spoke for all of us when she described it as the most picturesque wedding she’d ever been to. As soon as the ceremony had ended my mom and my aunts kept shouting for Christina’s husband David to get them another glass of wine despite the fact the there were servers designated for that very purpose. My mom who had several glasses of wine, which is a lot for her, had grown liberal with the camera, was forcing everyone to stop what they were doing and smile for rigidly posed photographs, which Uncle Lenny routinely photobombed. She would approve of these moments by giving out fist bumps. My sister Abby and cousin Jenny danced their signature moves, mostly a lot of arms flailing. The best man Corbin relieved a legitimate concern shared by many of the guests and gave a toast that was sweet, funny, and not completely inappropriate. Meghan and Brian, the bride and the groom, were beautiful together, and a lot of people cried, but in a good way.

I was sorry to part ways with that crew, especially since I didn’t get to spend that much time with Brian as he was so busy preparing for the wedding. On my way out, I gave him a hug and promised to see him during Thanksgiving. Then I thrust his wedding gift in his hands.

“Hell, just open this now while we’re both here,” I said.

He unwrapped the bottle of Michter’s Rye Whiskey Jenn and I had gotten for him.

“Ew, Daddy like,” he said lecherously as he turned the bottle over in his hands.

Airport libations.

We sat with David and Christina on the flight back to Orlando talking about their two children and catching up on family gossip. The scenery from the windows was surreally beautiful: on one side of the aisle the sun set on an ethereal landscape of billowing clouds in a unobtainable paradise streaked with various shades of blue and pink while on the other side lightening lit up the sky as it burst within clouds many feet below us. I used to be a stalwart writer on airplanes, but although I knew I had my blog waiting for me when I got home, I decided to put it off for a few more hours. Christina had given us a free drink ticket, and as I considered what to cash it in for, nothing, neither beer nor wine nor liquor, sounded refreshing. What the hell is wrong with me? I thought. I never turn down free drinks. Was I actually boozed out? I wasn’t even hung over, just really thirsty for actual water. As I was thinking I would be morally obligated to retire this blog dedicated to writing, literature, and drinking, Jenn used the ticket to buy a gin and tonic, of which I drank more than my fair share. Temperance vanquished once again, In Boozo Veritas is yet saved!

_______

In Boozo Veritas # 58: What We Talk About When We Talk About Bugs

08 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

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Donald A. Wollheim, Franz Kafka, Tom Waits

In Boozo Veritas # 58 by Teege Braune

What We Talk About When We Talk About Bugs

Last night I dreamed my home was infested by large, yellow centipedes each about four inches long. They seemed to be hiding in every crevice and nook as if materializing from the very dirt and mold, betraying no discernible point of entry. Too repulsed to fight them off, I simply retreated closing off rooms that they had conquered, boxing myself into a smaller and smaller corner until I discovered them wriggling out of my own pockets and curled up inside my hat and shoes.

I awoke disgusted but relieved to find myself in a space free of centipedes. I find myself particularly nonplussed by the species since high school when a few of my friends and I ordered a pizza from a new joint called Mama Mia’s, which we favored because of their impossibly low prices. We had consumed the majority of the pizza when Josh removed the second to last slice only to find a small clay-colored centipede cowering beneath it. As he shouted profanities, the centipede, exposed and berated, scurried away faster than one would have thought possible, its legs undulating in waves like a breeze blown through delicate hair. Despite their affordability, the establishment in question failed to thrive in the competitive pizza industry and shortly thereafter went out of business.

My anxiety dreams often take the form of insect infestation. Once I dreamed that I found myself surrounded by an enormous nest of cockroaches who were coming to life around me as I looked on in horror. Hanging from the dead branches of trees that were growing out of the floorboards, the cockroaches squirmed out of white, inert pupal shells while I searched for an escape before they began dropping to the floor and racing toward me. In waking life I am aware that cockroaches are born in dark, moist pits and underground burrows.

The only thing I find more revolting than a living cockroach is a squashed one, but my cats do not share my aversion. In fact, they could be considered aficionados of the disgusting creatures, tracking them down and devouring them with a verve and enthusiasm they exhibit for little else in their otherwise languorous lives. Inspired by the antics of my feline wards, I decided to explore my dislike of these insects by writing a story in which the life of an anti-heroic, human protagonist mirrors that of the common cockroach. The incredibly dark “What Keeps Mankind Alive” has at this time been rejected from several horror magazines and anthologies.

Franz Kafka wrote a much more famous story about a man transformed into a cockroach, though in truth that designation has to do more with liberal translation and popular conception than Kafka’s own ideas about Gregor Samsa’s alteration. The German word Kafka uses is ungeziefer and literally translates into “an unclean animal unfit for sacrifice,” a phrase packed with meaning considering Gregor’s life before the metamorphosis was dedicated entirely to providing for his family, a task to which he’s no longer equal after becoming an insect. Despite Nabokov’s lengthy and supererogatory argument for Gregor as a beetle, Kafka went out of his way to prevent definitive categorization, going so far as to forbid his protagonist from being depicted visually on the cover of the novella. At one point, the Samsas’ maid refers to Gregor as mistkäfer, literally “dung beetle,” but it is likely that she uses the word pejoratively rather than as a taxonomical classification. Of the various translations that have been posited over the decades, “vermin,” with its unspecific yet vivid associations, is my preference, though despite the visceral impact, even it fails to do the original German the untranslatable justice it deserves.

Another wonderful story that explores the innate human unease with insects is Donald A. Wollheim’s “Mimic,” which was the basis for the unfortunate Guillermo del Toro vehicle of the same name. The film does no justice to the source material, which is a masterpiece and pillar of classic weird fiction. As “Mimic” is not nearly as well known as The Metamorphosis, I will avoid saying much more as I have no wish to betray the incredible conclusion, a reveal that, despite exhibiting no gore or even much peril, is one of the most terrifying in the history of science-fiction and horror literature.

In his song “Army Ants,” Tom Waits, with a particularly sinister growl, recites interesting and often unnerving facts about insects accompanied by an eerie, creeping string arrangement. He concludes this lecture with a reminder: “As we discussed last semester, the army ants will leave nothing but your bones.”

Despite my aversion towards centipedes and cockroaches, I am not an entomophobe. I am fascinated by insects, arachnids, and other invertebrates even when they make my skin crawl. For some, I retain a special place in my heart, am awed by praying mantises, tarantulas, and lunar moths, and find katydids, walking sticks, bumble bees, and potato beetles simply adorable. I even tasted a few of these critters: scorpions are crispy and not unpleasant, crickets taste like unsweetened bakers’ chocolate, and ants tend to be so minuscule, I hardly notice them going down. That is unless they crawl back up again.

My most recent experience dining on ants was unplanned. My good friend, the accomplished Orlando writer Jared Silvia, brought a delicious, homemade Portuguese soup to a outdoor party Jenn and I were hosting with our neighbor Leah for Labor Day. Knowing many of the guests were vegetarian, Jared was kind enough to replace the sausage the recipe called for with cannellini beans. Little did any of us know, animal protein was determined to find its way into the soup one way or another. After the party ended, Jenn and I placed the remaining soup in our refrigerator and dined on it for several days. It wasn’t until we reached the very bottom of the pot that we discovered the hundreds of ants who had been stewing within it the whole time. The ants had invaded Jared’s soup, only to drown in their own hubris, and yet their presumptuousness didn’t end there.

This morning after awaking from my disturbing dream, I stumbled groggily into the kitchen to make coffee only to find my counter top aswarm with the same species of sugar ant that had expired in Jared’s soup. They had entered through a tiny whole in the grout and scaled a broomstick in order to feast on the remnants of a peach pie that had sat overnight in the kitchen sink. Shouting vitriolic exclamations at their legions, I vanquished them but not without a pang of guilt having been brought up by a Buddhist father. At least they were neither centipedes nor cockroaches. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help remembering a disturbing bit of trivia: that there are one million ants on this planet for each human. We are told somewhere that the meek will inherit the earth, but it seems the smallest residents of my house have become emboldened, may someday soon take over leaving me nothing but my bones.

___________

In Boozo Veritas #57: RIP Bar-BQ-Bar

01 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

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In Boozo Veritas #57 by Teege Braune

RIP Bar-BQ-Bar

I was thinking about doing a piece for Labor Day about William Blake’s idea of the creative process as a form of labor embodied by the tension and perfect balance between inspiration personified by Urthona (i.e. the Holy Spirit) and reason personified by Urizen (i.e. Satan) and their place in connection to Tharma (both the senses and God the creator) and Luvah (representing the heart, love, and Christ), known collectively as the Four Zoas, but then I remembered that Labor Day is meant, ironically enough, to be a day free from labor not a day to voluntarily impose more work on oneself, especially not in the way of a particularly dense and time-consuming blog post. That being said, having worked in the service industry for the past decade, I can’t remember the last time I was actually off work on Labor Day and just so happened not to be scheduled at Redlight Redlight this year. Who really knows when a break like this one will come again?

This past weekend Bar-BQ-Bar, downtown Orlando’s favorite dive bar, meat-market, watering-hole, shut its doors for the final time.

I’ll always have a special place in my heart for its run down, skeezy ambience, and I’m still unsure whether it was designed that way or as old as sin and simply never cleaned. I had even been tempted to assume the missing urinal was a stylistic choice until the night I entered the restroom to find most of the urinals missing. It seemed like a good place for a young, aspiring writer to hang out and collect priceless, debauched experience in order to avoid writing, and yet I can’t claim Bar-BQ-Bar has ever inspired a single word until today.

I first went to Bar-BQ-Bar shortly after moving to Orlando nine years ago. My friends Mike and Kosch were kind enough to take me out since neither of them knew me very well yet. We easily found a booth and Mike bought us round after round of Mickey’s Big Mouths. We struggled with the riddles inside the caps as we drank lazily into the night. Attempting to make out the illegible graffiti scrawled overtop of itself, layer upon layer, along the walls, I wondered at the ur-text that started it all. Written out line by line would the sheer immensity of it rival Infinite Jest, the collected works of Victor Hugo, or the entirety of the western canon? I thought I could become a regular at a chill, little dive like this one. It must have been a Sunday or a Monday night. I was unemployed and never knew what day of the week it was. I’ve never seen Bar-BQ-Bar so relaxed since then.

During a rowdier evening, Bar-BQ-Bar taught me the significance of a decent tip long before I became a bartender myself. One night I waited twenty minutes to order three beers. I stood with my cash out while the bartenders served everyone around me, failed continuously to notice me in that wall of people. When one of them finally filled my order I tipped twice the total of the High Lifes I was buying.

“Wow, thanks, man!” she said nodding in approval.

The next time I came up to the bar she jumped over several guys who had been waiting much longer than me to take my order, and while I didn’t continue to tip quite as much, I didn’t have to wait more than a minute for a beer the rest of the evening.

Another night I found myself sitting in a booth with The Detroit Cobras after their show next door at The Social. The drummer bought me shot after shot so the guitar player could hit on my date. We sat in our booth drinking long after the rest of the band had taken the tour bus and abandoned their two associates. Jenna, who I was not actually dating, nevertheless had no romantic interest in the guitar player, a man twice her age, but as a conciliation prize we drove them back to their hotel, the Travel Lodge on Magnolia Ave only two blocks away. We had to walk further to get to her car than they would have to get to their hotel, but the guitar player was persistent and didn’t give up until the very lat moment. In his defense, he was a perfect gentleman when Jenna pulled the car over and announced, “Here we are. Thanks for a lovely evening. You guys enjoy Orlando.”

I went to Bar-BQ-Bar much less after I started bartending and spending almost every night at Redlight Redlight, but still made the occasional jaunt through its seedy doors. One night a water pipe broke at the original Redlight, and we had to close down for the evening while it was being repaired. To this day, it was the only time we’ve had to close for a maintenance emergency, but as water was rapidly filling up the bar, it seemed like an appropriate last ditch necessity. Brent and I were swept along downtown with everyone who had been drinking at our own place to Bar-BQ-Bar where we decided to drink ourselves out of our frustration. After I was good and tipsy a young woman we called the Make Out Bandit began kissing me suddenly. This went on for a while and then she simply stood up and walked away without exchanging any of the niceties one usually goes through in such a situation. When I turned around my friends began to applaud me, so feeling red of faced, I darted off to the bar to order another beer. When I attempted to search for the Make Out Bandit a few minutes later, I found her already kissing someone else, but I was pretty drunk at that point, so I didn’t let it get me down. I remember much later watching her through a hazy cloud of intoxication as she left with another guy altogether.

The truth is these are just a few of the more memorable moments that standout from the stream of blurred together hours I spent inside Bar-BQ-Bar. There was a period in my mid-twenties when I was probably there a couple nights a week. Much of the time was spent wallowing in the banality of excessive alcohol consumption, my drunkenness making me feel like both part of the crowd and somehow outside of it. Bar-BQ-Bar was the hookup joint, and I guess some part of me hoped something like that would happen, but it was never really my style, so I just drank, alone or with friends, and sometimes I ran outside to puke in the middle of Orange Avenue and they wouldn’t let me back in afterwards, and sometimes I kept my shit together, but I always made it back home in one piece.

I didn’t go over there for their last weekend, didn’t feel like taking the night off work, but then everyone else’s stories and pictures gave me a pang of nostalgia, made me wish I had. I have long since misplaced my old photo booth snap shots and pretty much stopped going as our culture shifted from MySpace to Facebook and have no record of myself ever being there at all. The last time I went to Bar-BQ-Bar… Jesus, when was the last time I went to Bar-BQ-Bar?

___________

In Boozo Veritas # 56: The Endless Summer

25 Monday Aug 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

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In Boozo Veritas, Teege Braune

In Boozo Veritas # 56 by Teege Braune

The Endless Summer

“Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.” –Sonnet 18

Not even the day after Christmas was as disappointing as the last day of summer vacation. It doesn’t matter on what day the Autumnal Equinox falls, all kids know that summertime is over the day the new school year begins. Never mind that much of my summer was filled with banal days playing the same video game over and over again until I was sick of it, and putting off cutting the grass until my mom threatened to ground me if it wasn’t done before sunset. As summertime was ending those moments seemed like the exception and all I remembered were the nights sitting around a campfire in the mountains, swimming in a neighbor’s pool, going to barbecues, and staying up with my friends as late as we possibly could eating pizza and candy until we simply fell over from exhaustion. It didn’t matter if the summer was often boring because boredom represented freedom, the lazy freedom to do nothing if one so chose, and when that boredom was punctuated by something more fun, it was usually so exciting one could barely stand it.

My birthday on August eighteenth was the perfect excuse for one final hurrah with my buddies before we were sucked back into the tedious grind of the school year. Then in junior high school my public school district changed the schedule so that summer ended a week earlier and the first day of school suddenly coincided with the anniversary of the day I was born. Instead of a party my family celebrated both my birthday and the last day of summer vacation by going out to dinner, getting ice cream, and then heading off to bed early so that we could wake up at the crack of dawn for school. I would spend the night of my actual birthday completing the year’s first batch of homework assignments. Usually my friends, distracted by the newness of the school year, simply forgot that it was my birthday at all.

Long before my life resembled anything that could rightly be called adulthood, graduating high school and going to college killed the summer altogether. As the semester ended I would eagerly look forward to a long break from the relentless professors and their overwhelming immensity of assignments, from sharing a cramped living space with a guy I considered a friend, but whose major from what I could gather, was smoking pot and showering as little as possible. I, in turn, showered as little as possible to battle off his body odor with my own.

As it turned out, neither one of us were having much success dating.

Summertime seemed a nice escape from all that until it actually arrived and I once again remembered that I could no longer waste those precious months bumming around doing as little as possible. I was fortunate to have a reasonably well paying summer job waiting for me back in my hometown. Unfortunately, this job was working as a maintenance assistant and painter for the public school system. In a way my worst nightmares had come true; I was a high school graduate spending the daylight hours of every week day inside the depressing walls of my high school.

I came to Florida from Indiana in early adulthood in search of some kind of endless summer. My participation in the annual school year cycle had long since ended. I had already worked a series of jobs, some more satisfying than others, none as awful as the one I had endured in college, and had no delusions that my time down south would be some kind of life of ease devoid of labor, away from the rat race. Nevertheless, Florida seemed like a place where one could decompress, where people could feel like they were on vacation on a random Saturday. I had never lived less than ten hours from a beach, and the idea of driving to the coast on any given weekend thrilled me. The truth is, I had no idea just how cold it could get here at night in the wintertime, and furthermore, I thought, what the fuck is happening the first time it was seventy-five degrees on Halloween and eighty degrees on Christmas.

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In Boozo Veritas # 55: Process This!

18 Monday Aug 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Craft of Fiction Writing, In Boozo Veritas

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In Boozo Veritas # 55 by Teege Braune

Process This!

A Contribution to the My Writing Process Blog Tour

Nathan Holic is something of a renaissance man. He’s a professor, writer, cartoonist, blogger.

His first novel Fraternity Man was released last year by Beating Windward Press, and furthermore, he’s now edited three separate, amazing volumes of Burrow Press’s 15 View of Orlando. His presence is often accompanied by the masculine aromas of mahogany, bourbon, and motor oil, and by inviting me to participate in 15 View of Orlando Volume II, he introduced my work to this city and paved the way for the many opportunities I’ve been grateful to receive ever since. I’ve got a soft spot in my heart (and on my head) for the guy, so when he tagged me to be a part of the My Writing Process blog tour, how could I say no?

The origins of this glorified chain letter are obscure, chiseled away and lost by that mighty sculptor time. Like a delightful virus, it spreads itself from one host blogger to the next, almost as if sentient. Vanessa Blakeslee infected Nathan, Nathan infected John King, Mark Purcell, and now I too caught the bug. The funny thing is that I inadvertently talked about my process a couple weeks ago, but that was more a discussion on how I manage to whip out these blogs after procrastinating until the very last minute. I said nothing of my fiction and realized that I rarely mention it in my blog, so I’ll take this opportunity to discuss that here. Fiction is quite a bit different from blogging. Unless you have a book deal or are already a famous author, you have no deadlines, and most fiction writes are aware that if they stopped making any work at all, few people would care or even notice. That knowledge alone can lead straight to existential crisis. Writing fiction, for me, is about subverting that anxiety into a narrative, usually one that incorporates a monster in some capacity, but before I get carried away, allow me to digress. There are four primary questions that this blog tour obligates me to answer:

What are you working on?

At this time, my primary goal is to finish a yet untitled collection of short stories. I’m pretty close. A couple more medium length stories would put me at a reasonable word count, and some of the stories I haven’t looked at in awhile could use another draft or two. Short stories, not unlike classic cars, require a lot of time and maintenance. Whether this collection should be marketed as horror or weird, off-beat literary fiction will probably depend on which, if any, publisher decides to pick it up when the time comes. Truth is, some of the stories are more funny than scary. Genre lines are bending, merging; the filmy flesh separating one from another has become punctured and now they seep fluidly into each other. It’s an exciting time to be writing stories about monsters. I also have some longer projects that I would like to complete at some point, but something about the length of a novel simply shuts me down. I have not yet figured out how to sustain that level of concentration. Novelists, please send advice my way! How do you endure three hundred plus pages?

How does your work differ from other of its genre?

I guess I would hope that after reading my work the answer to this question would become self-evident. That being said, I’m not sure how to answer this. With a little luck, critics of the decades and centuries to come will debate this topic endlessly. Recently, as a reader I have become very captivated by the weird fiction movement invigorated and championed by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer among others. Humbly I must admit that I have too much to learn about it to tell you how exactly my fiction differs other than to say that weird fiction seems to embrace such an eclectic array of writing, horror, literary, surrealist, and otherwise, that differing may be inherent to one’s participation within it. You dig?

Why do you write what you do?

As I mentioned earlier, I love monsters. I have always loved monsters, and when I was a kid I had a toy called My Pet Monster, which I handcuffed to my bed in order to protect me from other monster that might otherwise come into my room and eat me as I slept.

Nevertheless, not all of my stories feature monsters as obvious as those with which I was obsessed in childhood. Sometimes the monster are the good guys, and sometimes I may even point out the, no doubt, ground-breaking observation that even people can sometimes become monsters. Your mind is blown, I know. That being said, a story about something that could happen to you or someone just like you on your way to work, I’ll most likely leave to some other writer. I’ve never been all that interested in writing realism for some reason, though as I reader I never want to become so mired in one genre that I close myself off to all the really great work that is out there. So why do I love monsters so much? Maybe, totem like, they help me contain, explain, or understand anxiety. Probably rich subject matter for a future blog.

How does your writing process work?

It is very important to me to have a routine. I’m not the kind of person who can just automatically jump into that headspace and dash out a few lines in between day jobs. I can write into the wee small hours of the night or get up before dawn and have pages already completed before the sun comes up, but I will most likely do neither unless I absolutely have to for some reason. I am lazy and also bartend at night, which means that I’m probably working or sleeping in those moments ripest for creation. If I can get up and set aside a couple hours for writing in my pajamas as I sip a cup of coffee before the day’s responsibilities tear me away, I’ll do so. I also like writing in public places and usually search out a cafe or coffee shop in which I can feel particularly at home to write for a couple hours in the afternoon. The Drunken Monkey is one of my favorite spots in Orlando, though recently they’ve been too busy for me to get really comfortable, which is great for them; they definitely deserve it, but selfishly, I miss the days when I was their couch’s sole occupant.

The times and places have changed continually throughout my life, but the need for a routine has remained constant. Periods in which my life or schedule has dramatically altered, whether it be by choice or because of factors beyond my control, my writing has inevitably suffered. This is often accompanied by episodes of crippling self-doubt that make a new routine very difficult to establish. When I was younger, I would become so frustrated by this cycle that I often tried to swear off writing altogether, but I could never stick to it. Didn’t really want to anyway. Even when I wasn’t writing them down, ideas for stories were never far from my mind. Recently my fiancé and I moved and at the same time I accepted an opportunity to teach English for an incredible organization called the Adult Literacy League. Both have been very positive changes, but simultaneously have left my writing in a slump. I’m trying to be okay with it, figure out what feels right, and reestablish a routine without becoming overly frustrated. I am happy to say that I have no intention of swearing off fiction.

Well, I was supposed to tag three new writers, but I put that part off too long, so I’m going to give my literary friends a chance to tag themselves should they so desire. Stephanie Rizzo, what do you think about all this? What do you do to breathe life into your incredible short stories? Jared Silvia, you’re another writer I love and admire. How do you make it work? Adrian Alexander, I have to admit, I’ve only had a tiny taste of your writing, but it left me longing for more. Do you follow some kind of process to make that happen? Amy Watkins, we haven’t heard from a local poet yet? As a person who writes in both essays and poetry, do you have any input on the different processes involved for one or the other? Adam Smith, all the way across the world in Australia, did you find your process changed dramatically when you left Orlando to go down under? I know so many amazing writers, this list could go on and on, so I’ll leave it at that. “Writer, tag thyself!” (as Jesus is purported to have said (or something like it)).

Also, it’s my birthday!

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In Boozo Veritas # 54: Anthology: Getting Drunk and Reading Stories

11 Monday Aug 2014

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In Boozo Veritas # 54 by Teege Braune

Anthology: Getting Drunk and Reading Stories

Saturday night I participated in a truly unique literary experience: Cole NeSmith’s Creative City Project sponsored Anthology: A Night of Stories and Spirits at Snap! Space.

To a soundtrack of gypsy jazz provided by The Cook Trio, writers Jared Silvia, McKenzie Parker, Keith Kolakowski, and Vanessa Blakeslee (whose debut collection Train Shots was recently released by Orlando-based publisher Burrow Press) and myself took turns reading original work sitting in an easy chair on a stage set up to look like Masterpiece Theater before a wonderfully large and responsive audience.

Lest we writers imagine that the packed house was brought by the allure of our brilliant work alone, signature, craft cocktails designed by Matt of The Courtesy Bar were also served. Five cocktails to be exact, one for each story.

It probably comes as no surprise that I, a drunken writer who keeps a weekly blog called In Boozo Veritas about literature and alcohol, would consider having a cocktail based on a story I wrote one of the pinnacles of my career. My weird story about prop comedian Carrot Top fighting reptosapien-hummanoid monsters in Winter Park’s Kraft Azalea Garden inspired an equally unusual beverage that combined chai-infused Bacardi with simple syrup, lime, and carrot juice. While I would never have thought to mix these ingredients together myself or order the concoction in a bar, this just goes to show why I’m no mixologist. The delightfully off-center, bright orange elixir partnered perfectly with a tale about a man with bright orange hair who is addicted to drinking lizard blood.

Across the board, Matt did an excellent job taking cues from both odd details and a story’s overarching atmosphere to create drinks as rich in layers and subtleties as the literature from which they were derived. I found it a personal treat enjoying his mixture of scotch, lemon juice, lavender-infused simple syrup, Peychaud’s bitters, and darjeeling tea while listening to my good friend Jared Silvia read his story “Thursday.”

Having read this story in Burrow Press’s first collection Fragmentation long before I even knew Jared, it was my introduction to the work of someone who has become one of my favorite local writers. Jared’s story, narrated by a ponderous drifter whose adventure finds him indulging in his penchants for sunscreen, cheap wine, and the dirty, after-work smell of a Russian bartender, is equal parts funny, sad, and wonderfully resistant to easy interpretation.

Each of the stories contained an air of the mysterious and an open-ended quality that lent itself to the heavy consumption of top shelf spirits. As the Creative City Project scheduled two shows back to back (both of them sold out), by the time everything wrapped up around midnight the writers and our significant others were ten stories and ten cocktails deep, and quite frankly swimming in it. Some of us sobered up by stumbling up Mills Avenue towards Tako Cheena and then jumping right back into that pool of self abuse by finishing the night at Lil Indies where they were serving some very fine cocktails of their own and playing a fantastic set of soul and funk. As always an otherwise classy evening devolved into a foggy night of rowdy debauchery. The events that followed are worthy of their own lurid tale, one that would most likely inspire its own signature cocktail containing what? Bourbon, beer, horse radish, dog food, and Edy’s slow churned French silk ice cream perhaps? But that is a subject for another blog post and another reading, one that will hopefully never see the light of day. In the meantime, Cole has proven that the City Creative Project is an organization to keep your eye on. I for one am eager and excited to see what amazing events he hosts in the weeks and months to come.

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In Boozo Veritas # 53: Year One

04 Monday Aug 2014

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In Boozo Veritas # 53 by Teege Braune

Year One

This week, Tuesday, August fifth to be exact, marks the first birthday of In Boozo Veritas. Like most one year olds, In Boozo Veritas is not aware that this is its birthday. No one thought that it would survive this long. When John King first asked me to write this weekly blog he had no idea that I was a habitual procrastinator who never had a penchant for commitment. Well, I’ve been working for the same bar for seven years and somehow I’ve convinced an incredibly intelligent and beautiful woman to agree to marry me, so perhaps I do not give myself enough credit. Like any long term commitment, this blog has taught me several things about myself. For starters, I’ve become aware that my pathological procrastination is not only a bad habit, it also my modus operandi. Attempting to think about a subject for my blog before Sunday morning is a mostly a useless endeavor. Even if I come up with a topic that I like, I won’t be able to think of anything I want to say about it. It really doesn’t matter how bored, busy, or preoccupied I am. On those rare occasions in which a subject seems too obvious to be avoided, Ernest Hemingway’s birthday for example,

or William S. Burroughs’s, I still find myself agonizing over my approach, the way in, so to speak, until the very last minute. More than once I’ve slinked off to bed on Sunday night defeated, believing this to be the week that I simply couldn’t get it together and form five hundred or so words into some kind of cohesive thought, description, or argument. My Aha! moment usually comes before dawn. I awake suddenly from quickly fading dreams drenched in sweat, the entire damn blog throbbing in my restless brain. I want desperately to put it out of my mind for a few more hours, roll over, and go back to sleep, but this proves impossible. Peace will not come until I’ve completed my task. I’ve written most of my best blogs this way. I won’t tell you which ones. You decide which of my blogs are your favorites, and then assume those are the blogs I wrote as the sun arose on any given Monday morning.

There are exceptions, of course. As Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, has taught us, “An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not creation so much as invocation. Part of the work cannot be made, it must be received; and we cannot have this gift except, perhaps, by supplication, by courting, by creating within ourselves that ‘begging bowl’ to which the gift is drawn.” The artist may prepare a room for inspiration, but it is folly to expect lightening to strike simply because one is standing with an extended rod in a thunder storm. At my worst, I’ve emailed John my blog entry at five pm on Monday afternoon seventeen hours past my deadline. Fortunately, he is always kind in these moments. We are both aware, in the back of our minds, that the only real consequence that would befall us were I too miss a week would be the shattering of my own ego, but what a delicate ego it is, and how shiny. It would be a shame to see an object of such lovely craftsmanship come to such a swift and tragic demise.

On those even rarer occasions in which I’m ahead of the curve, I employ a process I call Playing Hemingway. The way I heard it, and I’ve never been able to verify this story through reputable sources, was that Hemingway, who would have preferred to drink rather than write, knew that the latter justified the former. Taking this justification very literally, he wouldn’t allow himself to have his first drink until he finished a page, his second drink until he finished two more pages, and so on. It is unlikely that he always played by his own rules if he in fact used this process at all. Is he who keeps an ace up his sleeve while playing solitaire a wise man or a fool? I too have cheated at this game no one but myself has compelled me to play, though when I do so, it is only I who suffer. Writing while drunk is one thing, but I find I can never begin writing while drunk. Something about that initial momentum, those first couple of sentences, requires sobriety. Perhaps benzedrine would do the trick, but this isn’t the Beat Generation, is it? What generation is this anyway?

Truth be told, I’m not really sure what John had in mind when he asked me to write In Boozo Veritas, a name he chose and I have since come to adore. His only instructions were that I write something about drinking and literature. As a loose guide, I have used this topic to write everything from memoir, to journalism, to critical essay, to satire, to dadaist prose poem. Once or twice I’ve dispensed with drinking and literature altogether. If John’s instructions had been more rigid, I might never have gotten anything accomplished at all. In general, I’ve simply let the muse take me, late to the party though she usually is. Another thing I’ve discovered about myself is this: that I think about drinking more than I actually indulge in it. This wasn’t always the case. Entire months out of my twenties are blurry, half-remember bouts of consumption and debauchery, but I’m older now, and even though I still think of myself as a lush, I’ve grown temperate in my thirties. Okay, temperate may be overstating it, and my membership in the Prohibition Party is merely ironic. Maybe I’ll be drunk by the time I finish this blog. Maybe I’m drunk as you read these very words.

With a little luck and a tad more commitment, I’ll keep In Boozo Veritas going for another year and who knows, if John will have me, another year after that.

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In Boozo Veritas # 52: La Mer

28 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

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Hamlet, In Boozo Veritas, Sanibel Island, Teege Braune

In Boozo Veritas # 52 by Teege Braune

La Mer

Caught amidst the tension of a dual nature, I have suffered. In the struggle between an unfortunate tendency towards anxiety and hesitation and an urge towards impulsivity and spontaneity, anxiety has admittedly most often won out. Like Hamlet, this has been the catalyst for my greatest tragedies. I won’t tell you that my impulsivity hasn’t been the source of trouble from time to time, usually when the vice of alcohol was stirred into the mix, but I feel that my best moments have come about when I listened to that voice crying, “Leap into the darkness and trust the hands of fate to deliver thee unto the next shore!” Nearly every week, for example, I find myself procrastinating in my duty to compose In Boozo Veritas, yet invariably I always do my best writing before dawn several hours past my deadline. This morning I am speaking to you from a hotel room in Sanibel Island. This sleepy beach community is Jenn’s and my annual summer retreat. After several nights of this Edenic return, we are calibrated for the rest of the year. I’m not encouraging you to drive out here and find out for yourself. On the contrary, stay far away from this place.

Last year I came out here escaping the stresses that came with my job in sales. Only now in retrospect can I look back at that brief jaunt and recognize that the short break from bartending was something I need in order to prioritize my life. While I had the job, I simply felt miserable. Faced with the daunting prospect of having to leave our paradise and return to the drudgery of commerce, on our final morning in Sanibel Island I awoke with a delightfully impulsive thought running repeatedly through my brain. I will propose to my girlfriend today, I thought over and over again despite having no ring nor plan to do so as I was drifting off to sleep the night before. Now is not a good time, insisted that nagging, anxiety-ridden counter-voice that I sometimes listen to despite its ugly tone and implications. Wait until you have a ring. Wait until your circumstances in your life aren’t nearly so stressful. Wait until evil is banished from the earth and the lion lies down with the lamb. Silencio! I shouted, albeit only in my own imagination. Taking the fiend by the throat I banished him into the dark recesses of my brain. Though he will no doubt return once more, I said, again only in my own head, today I shall choose romance.

Pulling off the rest of it was no small task. Taking a cue from Jenn’s obsessive love of sea shells, I decided to buy an engagement ring made out of one as a stand-in until I could buy her a nicer ring. This meant bouncing from shell store to shell store looking for the perfect ring while Jenn sat in the car wondering what in the hell was wrong with me. I have been told that cemeteries are the worst places to propose, but as Jenn has never once done what she was told, I decided to follow in her spirit and drove her to one of our favorite places in the world, the tiny cemetery adjacent to The Chapel by the Sea, the final resting place for many of Captiva Island’s initial settlers. With the ocean crashing no more than a yard away I asked the love of my life to intwine her’s with mine. Jenn was so surprised she actually thought I was joking for a brief minute (before accepting my proposal through a gushing of tears). Rather than the depressing trek back to the real world, our drive home was a joyful plunge into a refreshed reality.

Jenn loved her seashell engagement ring so much, she told me that she needed nothing fancier. Unfortunately, the inexpensive ring did not last long before breaking, and I thought that Jenn’s heart would break with it. While I may not have something as lofty as a marriage proposal to offer her this year, tomorrow for her birthday I will return to my shell store and buy her every sea shell ring that fits her beautiful finger. When each one passes on, another will be prepared to step up and take its place. We shall mourn the loss of each fallen soldier before passing the symbolic, romantic duty to the next until a year from now when we return to Sanibel once again to replenish our supplies and purchase every sea shell ring on this magical, little island.

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