Re-unification, at what cost?

I departed Las Vegas proper around 11 in the PM in order to hop a red eye to hotlanta and make my way to a buddy’s bacholer party. He’s a straight shooter with upper management potential, so for anonimities sake we will call him Bill Lumberg. As I touched down around 6 in the AM local time, I was greeted by a cell phone call from a raiding party that had organized for my transport. Along for the ride were best man Don Guido, and the trip’s navigator Sgt. Schlitz. Neither of the passengers being driven in Lumberg’s company car were at a point of sobriety wherin they could have completed a common children’s maze. It became clear they had partied all night and awoken Lumberg to retrive the inbound cargo.
When I hopped in the backseat and gave out the required three step handshakes to all involved, Sgt Schlitz began berating Don Guido and did not stop berating him for the next thirty minutes. Admittedly, Don Guido was in charge of the festivities and had failed to undertake the proper measures to secure that which only travels in underground circles. He was also lectured on his lack of partying ability, his unneccessary backtalk, and the general ills of the italian culture as a whole. The only response a catatonic Don could issue was “I did a bunch of cough syrup dude”. He gave said response in whisper form to me on three seperate occassions but otherwise took his toungue lashing like a guilty man. Sgt Schlitz took this oppurtunity to explain that what the guinea was playing pig to was not in fact cough syrup but rather liquid vicotin, his greasiness had been kept in the dark because he couldnt handle the truth. After voicing the indisputable facts of the case, the Don responded “I did a bunch of cough syrup dude”.
We got back to Lumberg’s mansion and saw the spoils of his four years of toils. Fancy ass furniture, obnoxiously large flat screen television, and enough bedrooms to house most of his first cousins/direct siblings/individuals fitting both specifications. Add to that his gorgeous bride to be, the only knock on which being “Hell, Lumberg fucked her”. Im not the envious type, but I will admit that a part of me wanted to stab him in the eyeball with one of his own decrative pewter giraffe legs. Maybe I felt that antimosity before, or maybe it intensified when Lumberg claimed to be making my bed, but really he just laid down a sheet to cover his expensive couchs from Moultonian contamination when I slept there. He honestly just put a white sheet over the whole thing, rubbed my hair like I was a damn pet, and then said “off to bed boy”.
The next afternoon was punctuated by the arrivals that slowly started to pour in. Our group of five expanded to 14, and it was the first time this particular assortment of individuals had reconvened en masse since some of them graduated six years ago. Lacking weed or the ability to keep up with these fucks drinking 20 hours straight then waking up four hours later for another go, I took another path to inebriation. The Sergant put me on a medicine regiment wherin we were downin two tablespoons of this vicotin stuff every couple hours or so. We had easily 10 each on the day, and the once full prescribtion bottle was empty by evening. I never got out of control fucked up from it, but I was definitly riding high throughout the afternoon, and there were countless people who couldnt handle their assigned dosages. One such unlucky bastard ended up passed out face down on the back lawn and needed to be corralled inside to answer to his classmates for his sub par performance.
We spent the entire day grilling out, trying to find weed, and challenging a keg to a battle of wits. We were calling anyone who might have kin in atlanta to get any kind of lead and for the most part shit was coming up empty. Finally, we had a breakthrough when someone put us in touch with a former pothead pledge who now lived in the atlanta area. My man big Mo came true, and made the hand off on a half ounce that set us straight for the weekend. Even though we had about twenty irons on the fire, I dont know that anyone other than him could have come through for us, and the contraband was beyond a necessity. Sgt. Schlitz continued to blame an inept Don Guido for his failures, but the arrival of mind altering plant matter did help to ease his dissappointment. The only problem with the whole thing was a complete lack of ettiquite on our parts. I mean, this kid went out of his way to get me some weight, and we never even hung out with him. He had to know the main reason we were calling was to procure the product, but there is still some baseline show of gratitude that was denied a man of his valor. I was in a similar situation a couple weeks back when a former coworker I hadnt talked to in two years called me up out of the blue to say he was in vegas and looking for canibus company. I set everything up, handed it off, and was rushing to another locale, but he made a genuine effort to invite me back to be a part of his circle and no such effort was made for the Atlanta Kid. Really, I just wish there were guidelines for renumiration, some schedule of values I could reference which would tell me that a short notice half ounce should be repaid by a single smoking session and a choice of three individual little debbies snack cakes.
Once we had everything in order, the party was brought to another level. We tore through what laid before us and reconvened in the garage to play a spirited game of beruit. Sgt Schlitz and the Dude were longtime house champs, and they fell back into their winning ways. I got siddled with a has been and a never was, so despite my personal production of about 7-8 cups in a given game, my team mates never held up their end of the bargain. Luckily for me, there was a loudmouth reminding them of their inneffectiveness during the entire match, and though this loudmouth recieved a few vicious kidney shots from his target, I stand by what I said. By far the worst player at the table was a man who we will call Count Blackula because once he passes his fifth beer you can count the seconds before hes about to black out. Oh, and hes african american, that too. Count Blackula went through a stretch where he shot the ball short on seventeen straight shots. Not hitting the front of the cup short, but bouncing on the table well before the cups short. It was fucking miserable, I begged him to overshoot them just once, but had to watch as his limpwristed throwing style left me to fend for myself.
There was a break in the action between one and three AM where we got a solid no limit hold em game going. Everyone bought in for ten dollars, and the blinds were set at 25 cents and 50 cents. Needless to say, I could have cracked this fucking game with my eyes closed, but I ran into a big hand when I was bluffing and chopped off half my stack. I was down to about four dollars and fifty cents, when I came out of my funk and started to make my run. Over the next two hours I was talking all sorts of shit, showing bluffs, and yelling things like “I live in Las Vegas, Im much smarter than you at cards, I think we should ban Moulton from playing for fairness sake.” I would then do a terrible ventriliquist impersonations and start fake throwing my voice by just making it an octive higher and sayin “yeah, moultons too good for us”, “I thought we were just playing for fun, then moulton got here”, or “can I just give my chips to moulton so I can go back to playing beruit”. Lumberg was the one who really had it out for me, thinkin he would use his business sense from swappin tools at the local Lowes to outsmart me at my own game. After building his stack to twenty bucks, he left with absolutely nothing. I know its his party, but the mother fucker has to learn somehow. I cashed out up 28 as the big winner, and could not get another game going thereafter. I guess sometimes the best player does come out on top. We broke the game and went back to the beruit table whose show of skill extended until the sun was starting to come up around six in the AM.
We headed into the kitchen, wherein the six of us who had made it through the night began preparing outrageous edible creations. I was then subjected to a longwinded speech from the dude that went something like this: “This is how lame you are Moulton. Im married, and I should be the lamest guy at this party, but Im still rocking out. Look at you, you’re about to go to bed, you really havent done anything worthwhile since I got here, and you seem to have forgotten how to party. See this sandwich, its delicious. Im fucking married, and I can still enjoy this. What happened to you. Why dont you run off to bed, bedtime moulton. We all know you are gonna be the first one passed out, why do you even try to hang out? Bedtime Moulton…” After going on for about ten minutes he promptly left the party, and went upstairs to pass out. The rest of us held on for another half hour or so, but then we also calmly faded into the cool southern morning.

Re-unification, at what cost?

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