I got a certain spot I like to look at when I meet a girl, if I meet her in a bar, which is where I meet all the best girls. It's a little under the tits, over the hips, right above the intestines—nice and soft? Good, good. No unexpected deposits of fibrous tissue, no visible angioma without evidence of elevated estrogen levels? Perfect—I love a girl who can efficiently ingest, absorb and process toxins, and I love a girl with a good liver. Because young drunks in love are beautiful: they walk in zigzag shuffles like puppy dogs, they smear their hands all over each other's backs and faces until they find a wrinkle to hold on to, they laugh loud and easy, they lose the whites of their eyes into deep wells of color, and they look brighter and feel warmer to the touch, with little boozy suns churning hot in their bellies. “Rrrrrrrrrrrromance!” a girl I used to know would say, fluttering a hand (while the other sloshed a cocktail) over her heart. I knew what she meant: alcohol doesn't numb; it simplifies and amplifies. And I was in love with the drunken fuck—clumsy, giggly, sloppy, as cheap as you can get but still: I like a little action in my action! So get drunk, start talking too fast, sit too close in the slippery back seat of a taxi, forget about everything that's not within easy arms' reach (and tip way too well when you get dropped off). And then: dead-fish flop through the apartment door, giggling at everything, tipping off one leg to the bed or the couch or whatever. The only thing that sets down safe is whatever bottle happens to come in with you, which would end up on a speaker cabinet or toilet tank or turntable, just as disoriented in the morning as you. There are no hard edges with a drunken fuck; you just spin slower and slower and wake up in a pile of pillows, and you look over to see their face in silhouette and their body backlit with a fuzzy halo from the desk lamp or the screensaver or the sunrise floating through some cheap curtains. It's sex in montage, in slow-mo, in soft focus—that's basic-cable porno, sure, but it's how my generation was raised, and besides, that dreamy climax when two lovers merge into one necessarily demands a certain liquidity, right? That's a metaphor you can get every night for about $3: whiskey and coke, gin and tonic, Seven and 7, wow, from such unique and elemental components comes a most perfect and beautiful union, and can I get another couple of metaphors over here because I don't gotta drive tonight? I'd always hear about chemistry between people, but I didn't know that's exactly what they meant.
