Since I'm sitting here in Bulgaria bored out of my mind, I thought I'd post a story I wrote a week or two ago.
Protecting The Liver
Thirty-three hour train rides aren't exactly easy or enjoyable experiences. Going on one requires a little bit of planning and preparation, just to make the ride survivable. Of course, being the kind of person that I am, one who goes into any and all situations with full forethought and total preparation, I did the same for my thirty-three hour train ride from Praha to Varna. With me, I brought a bottle of Ballantine's Finest Scotch Whisky, one and a half liters of Gambrinus beer, two grams of Amsterdam-grade marijuana, my remaining supply of Valium and codeine, and absolutely no food or water, or a lighter. I did recognize that I might get hungry, and so, with full forethought and total preparation, I ate a large meal just before I left. What I did not recognize, however, was that I may be hungry again in twelve hours. This was the minor flaw in my full forethought and total preparation mechanism.
So, as you can expect, after twelve hours, I was quite hungry, and with twenty-one hours to go, I knew I would become even more hungry down the road, possibly hungry enough to the point that my stomach, out of sheer necessity, would begin feasting on my liver, and that, my friend, is a problem, because, to be perfectly honest, I personally like my liver; it is what allows me to drink heavily, and it is the heavy drinking which allows me to enjoy life so much, so you could essentially say because of my liver, I am having a good time, and therefore, it is not something I want to lose.
And since finding some food immediately was crucial to the health of my liver, and hence my future fun-having, I decided to formulate a plan, a method of attack, to acquire something edible.
I considered my options: First, there was the BordRestaurant, a restaurant on the train, but the people who work there are usually pricks and it was a bit of a walk. My other option was that, once at a train station, I could make a run for it, buy some food at a side stand, and run back before the train left. I did recognize that this option was fraught with risk possibilities. I could outright miss the train, but in all practicality, that was unlikely, as trains need to accelerate, so I could probably manage to just jump on a cab and hang on until the next station. This would provide for a nice litte Indiana Jones-style excursion to my trip as well. Of course, there is the possibility of death, and with death, I would lose my liver, and would thus be unable to have any fun, and therefore death was not exactly on my list of things to accomplish young, and being young and reckless, I didn't exactly feel like meeting the reaper on this train ride. However, the rush and excitement of catching a moving train, climbing to the top of it, and then having a Battle Royale with an evil howler monkey who though he was Elvis did seem like my kind of fun, due to my liver of course.
I'm sure you can figure out which option I picked, and I'm sure you can picture what happened, because if it didn't, I wouldn't be writing this. (To be perfectly honest, I did not have a Battle Royale with an evil howler monkey who thought he was Elvis. The monkey I battled thought he was Jackie Chan. It was actually quite funny watching a two-foot tall howler monkey doing crazy ninja tricks, but I think it would be funnier for an evil howler monkey with slick-back hair to be howling out "Hound Dog".)
So, as we were pulling into the train station, I was leaning out the door, waiting for the train to slow down just enough so I could jump out and save my liver. As the train was screeching to a stop, I jumped, stumbled, and then regained my balance as I ran as fast as I could to the food stand. I reached the stand and realized that I was in Romania and I didn't have any lei. All I had were Czech coronas, and they don't really accept those in Romania. They would take euros, and I did have some euros, but they were in my bag, which was in the train, which, I realized when I turned around, was leaving.
Fuck.
I grabbed a banana from the stand, didn't pay for it, and I ran, ran faster than I had ever run before.
I got to the last cab just as the train was nearing my running speed, and I casually hopped on. It was like catching a wave: paddling hard to pick up speed, and then popping up when the wave catches.
And so there I was, two hands clutching for dear life and liver on the ladder on the last cab. I was quite lucky actually that, being behind a cab and not on the side of it, I was protected from the wind blast.
I figured I might as well climb to the top, find a cozy spot, and take a nap while waiting for the next station. And so I did, using my shirt and my forearm as a pillow and I curled up into a ball and dreamt.
I dreamt that I was eight years old. My little brother and I were in supermarket. My grandma was outside having a picnic and we were buying food for it. As we were walking around, I noticed some kids peering with their wee little heads into stands with toys and candies and drinks, and the stands were eating them, the kids, sucking them in and out of this world forever. This did not seem right and was giving me some bad vibes. We walked into an aisle and my brother saw some stickers that he wanted. But they were evil, and I knew this, so I said, "No, let's get out of here." (Remember, I was eight at the time; if I was older, it would have sounded more like "We gotta get the fuck out of this demonic hellhole. We belong here about as much as a nun belongs in a whorehouse.") And then i noticed red curtains falling at the end of the aisles, and the aisles themselves closing in on us, and then I knew we had to run. Fast. And so we ran. Fast. And then I awoke.
And as i awoke, I noticed, that towering above me was an evil howler monkey with murder in its eyes and wickedness in its grin, brandishing a set of nunchucks, and doing crazy ninja tricks.
Fuck me in the goat ass. This is precisely not what my liver needs at the moment, with its owner lying on top of a racing train, with a murderous ninja howler monkey out for blood towering above.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. What the hell was a man in this position supposed to do? And then I remembered, I had a banana. I could eat it, and have my last meal. At least let my liver go in peace.
And then I remembered something even better. Monkeys like bananas. And so I had a plan. I took the banana, and I peeled it, and I let the monkey see it, smell it, desire it. His eyes softened, just a touch, and his grin wasn't so wicked anymore, and his mouth watered, just a bit. And then I took the banana and threw it, slow enough so the money could catch it, but fast enough so he wouldn't land back on the train. And he didn't, and so I was safe, although my liver still wasn't.
I took another nap, this one without dreams, and awoke as we pulled into a station and a cop was screaming at me to get the fuck off of the top the train. I showed him that I had a ticket, and I wasn't trying to just steal a ride, and I showed him my driver's license, so he realized I was American, and so he said "Okay, no worries."
I decided it would be much better to take a nap inside the train instead of on top of it, so I went back into my cab. I also decided I'd had enough of an adventure for the day and I should just use the BordRestaurant. After all, that's why it's there. And so I did, and so my liver was safe, and all was well.
The End. This ad space for sale.
