The Udvance Rule

Okay, its like, 4:52 am on Sunday in Chicago, Illinois.

And it's also 4:52 am on Sunday in most places in Texas, which is a country in Amerca that's about the size of China, if yer in Europe, or the Little Brother of Mother Russia, if yer one of my awesome underground Russian programming buddies who gave us all free copies of Autocad back in the 80s and hooked me up with all those Murder-You-In-Your-Sleep Awesome Russian Chicks.

And I been drinking.

Well, y'know, I made a Rule that I would always tell you when I been drinking, and when I wasn't writing cold sober, so there you go.

And you know that I told you all the Rules before, and that I told you I never break my own Rules, and to my knowledge, I'm the only one that never broke his own Rules yet, so I figger I'll get special seating in Heaven or something ahaha.

And I hate when I write when I ain't Cold Sober, 'cause I never remember writing it, and I can't exactly take credit for it, and I wake up in the morning and I end up being my own biggest fan, which is a Mental Pretzel I can't really get my head around, and it totally pissed me off when I was younger and wanted to take credit for everything I did, so I try to avoid doing it, but I couldn't help it this time heh.

Anyways.. Ex-bouncer left like three bottles of hard liquor at my house after we got drunk last time, my guess is that he was trying to nuclearly disarm himself, and that he's turning into some kinda booze-hound, 'cause he can't get his drug of choice, which is the drug of choice for all Matrix-Loving Twenty-Something Carl Sagan Science lovers like him, and that's the Weed, y'know.

And I din't touch any of the bottles he left here, 'cause I used to have a real Drinking Problem, y'know, I even had to go to government sponsored classes to keep a hot blonde swedish chick out of jail for Incriminating a Minor, back in the day, when everybody thought I was gonna be a Famous Poet, 'cause I was about fourteen points smarter than the Believers think Jesus would do on the IQ test.

But I been sipping at this bottle of Southern Comfort, which is called So-Co, in the local shorten-everything-for-efficiency-purposes midwestern slang.

And I been drinkin' outta that one 'cause it was already opened, y'know, 'cause somebody, I won't name names, had already drank most of it, and there was less than half of the bottle left, so it didn't seem half as dangerous as it actually was.

But it was plenty dangerous, turns out, dangerous enough to make a Will Farrel Cheesy Ass Saturday Night Live Feel-Good Movie seem almost like an Important Life Lesson (WE NEED TO STICK TOGETHER AS BUDDIES IN THIS WORLD GODDAMIT! THAT CHICK IS POISONING YOU MAN! SHAKE AND BAKE!, MAN, SHAKE AND BAKE!!)

And Southern Comfort always makes me remember something from my childhood, this kid we called Udvance, 'cause, uh.. that was actually his last name in Real Life (I used to call everybody in my Testosterone Powered Teenage Gang by their last names, like some kinda ancient echo of past-life military stuff, I guess).

And I always been too sober to write about him, 'cause I don't know any other way to refer to him 'cept by his Real Life Last Name, which is something I would normally try to avoid, if I was Cold Sober, which I ain't at the moment.

Anyways, Udvance was the Nerdiest Kid of his age group at Maine South, which is the school Hillary "the Rodham" Clinton probably went to, since she grew up over there in Park Ridge, which is a haven for rich white kid stereotypes in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago, y'know.

And I went to Maine West, which is the Bad Side of Tracks for Rich White Chicks From Maine South, so I had lots of fun in those early Post Breakfast Club Days, I even had the honour of having an arthouse chick make a painting of me with my fly unzippered (Breakfast Club was shot at Maine North, which was closed down the year before I went to High School).

Anyways, there's two things I remember about this kid Udvance.

The first thing I remember is that he was the biggest nerd in Real Life that I ever met, straight out of Revenge of the Nerds.

And so I did the My Fair Lady-Pygmalion thing with him, y'know, as a proof of my own Hannibal-the-Cannibal Powers.

Look it all up on Google if you don't know what I'm saying in that last sentence before you go on.

Anyways I taught him how to be cool, and I actually used my powers to hook him up with the Most Perfect Girl I ever seen in my entire life, Beautiful, Sweet, and Rich, and he turned evil and actually treated her like shit and cheated on her (that's when I finally learned my lesson about using my Hannibal-the-Cannibal powers to screw with shit in Real Life, and I made the Rule to Never Do That Again).

And the second thing I remember is that he'd never gotten drunk before, until somebody gave him a bottle of Southern Comfort, which basically tastes like cough syrup, and he got so wasted that I had to have my Mindless and Nameless Minions put him in a bathtub, and he had been drinking this cough syrupy shit out of a cup, so it had painted his lips all red, Smart Guy From Dune-Sytle, y'know, and he was smiling all the time, and I'll never get rid of the mental picture he left me with, where he looked exactly like the Joker from Batman.

And I made this other Nameless kid carry him around and follow me everywhere after that, just 'cause it made me laugh to look at him.

That's it, the two bits of memory that So-Co, and this guy Udvance bring up.

'Cause they're permanently tied together, since I hooked him up with the Most Perfect Girl I Ever Saw In My Life.

Yep, see, previously to that, she took me to her house, Wounded Lion Style, and even though she was a perfect Sweetheart in Every Way, and she took care of me when I was wounded, and took no advantage of me in any way, even though she was all smart and understanding, and she had me meet her parents, and they liked me right, 'cause I'm a good guy, deep down, and all the animals love me, y'know, so I always pass all those tests with ease.

Even though all that is true, I ended up telling her (and her parents) that I didn't want to "partake" of her myself because she was too much of sweetheart, and I knew that I was Messed Up, that I wasn't fully sure of my capacity to treat her the way she deserved, because I was the Ultimate Teenage Bad Guy, y'know, even though everything that flowed from my lips sounded like a Rain of Golden Honey from Heaven, I couldn't remember the last time I had been sober, and if I knew one true thing thing about the universe, it was that I was definitely a goddam Evil Hillbilly Hobo Transient Piece of Shit that couldn't be trusted with anything important, and I definitely didn't trust myself with anything as valuable as her.

And so I gave the Most Perfect Woman I Ever Met to this nerd Udvance, thinking he'd at least treat her right, thinking that if anyone would appreciate her, a total nerd-ass loser like him would.

And what happened?

Well, he turned into a super shitty copy of me and he totally fucked her over and ruined her.

So I learned my Hannibal-the-Cannibal Sociopath Lesson.

And that's the lesson I'm gonna share with you all you fucked-up budding Hannibal-the-Cannibal sociopaths right now.

Never, ever, trust anybody else 'cept yerself with defending the shit you know is worth defending.

'Cause they ain't as smart as you, and they can't possibly understand the responsibility you are handing them, how valuable that gift is.

Better to have a Bad Man defend it, than nobody at all.

Better to have a Bad Man like you defend it, than anybody else, actually.

Although it took a whole lifetime to figure that out.

Mebbe you'll be smart and rob me of that knowledge, like I rob all the other old guys.

Mebbe you won't.

But if even one of you does, at least my life's Greatest Mistake will be worth something, and I'll have moved our sorry pack of dogs a step forward heh.