My Random Pieces 3

I was never much of a drinker. I never really saw much point in it. I'm not exactly a social person, I've had severe anxiety my entire life, and crowds have always made me deeply uncomfortable. Some of that has faded with the years for a lot of reasons, but it was all in full swing when I was younger. On the night this story covers, though? I drank. Entirely too much for no apparent reason, with my older brother who very much did drink regularly. As you can probably imagine, hijinks ensued. Disclaimer up front: No one was (seriously) injured! The only scars left behind were some more Random Pieces on my psyche. These days, that's good for everyone!

It was not an eventful day. Average lazy Saturday. I spent the bulk of it doing nothing, as I was wont to do at that time. Before my all-consuming need to always be busy kicked in and overtook my life. Ah, the halcyon days of youth. How I wasted thee...alas. For reasons I cannot fathom, my brother Brian asked if I would like to go to a bar with him that evening. One of his usual haunts - a clean, usually trouble-free gay bar downtown in the city we were living in at the time, working on a few construction contracts in the area. For reasons I understand even less, I agreed to go. This blew everyone's minds - Casey said yes to a bar? What the actual fuck? The assumption was that I was dying and hadn't told anyone. Either that or I had been taken over by a far more fun interdimensional pod person. Either way, my family seemed like they were cool with it.

Here again, the club was uneventful. We secured a pool table and played while we drank. Apparently, I am okay at shooting pool provided I have been drinking. Not so much when I'm sober. Either that or I didn't give a shit if I was good at it or not. Things start to get a little bit fuzzy around here. If I didn't entirely understand my reasons for coming out and drinking this night, then it is entirely fucking incomprehensible how or why I ended up in a situation where Brian and I were trying to outdrink one another. Reduced inhibitions and all that, I suppose. Yay, alcohol! Whatever the reason, Brian and I ended up drinking entirely too much in our quest to somehow be better than the other. Spoiler alert: there were no winners. At least as far as I remember. Which, by this point, is not a lot.

Have you ever had the kind of night where you only have fragmented memories of what went on? Little blips of recall jumping out completely at random with seemingly no prompting, but no full recollection of the entire picture of what the hell you were doing at the time? It's fascinating. Some part of me was on autopilot that night, but the conductor of my brain train was drunk at the controls and even that guy doesn't know what the hell happened. Let's go over some of those memory blips.

Saturday night/Sunday morning. Time: (Unknown)

Blip. Brian and I have left the bar. When did that happen? It's summer, so it's a nice night. Little humid. We're walking down a main street. There are other people around, also impaired. Assumption? We're still near the bar. Good start, we haven't gone far. We don't seem to be in any hurry. Just taking a walk to clear our heads a bit, maybe? Brain conductor is still lucid enough at this point to have possibly realized that a good head-clearing was in order. Good on him.

Blip. Still on a street. Less people around. Couldn't be too much later. Brian is angry about something. That's not abnormal - drunk Brian lets his emotions run wild, and anger is often one of them. That's cool, I can get him calmed down. Our entire family has experience with that, no big deal. He seems to be arguing with, or at least shouting at, a brick wall. Better that than yelling at a stranger, or me.

Blip. Sitting down now. Still in the same area. Brian has just lost a fight with the brick wall. He's cradling his hand, bloodied a bit and definitely sore on account of it just tried punching through a brick wall. Minor abrasions on his head. Probably from the headbutting. Quick welfare check on the wall tells me it has sustained no injuries. I'm giving this round to the wall - it seems to have come out on top. I wisely stayed out of the fight. Good news, Brian is calmer now.

Blip. Railroad tracks? In downtown? Alright, not unheard of. Don't recall ever seeing them before, but hey. I'm always down to explore. You never discover anything wild and new sitting at home on your ass after all. Adventure, come and get me! We are at least walking next to the tracks and not on them. Smart. Good work, brain conductor.

Blip. Definite static setting in now. Very fuzzy, but there are train cars. Not moving - that's good. Trainyard of some kind it looks like. Still dark out, so it's still very late or very early. Vague sense of exhaustion is setting in which means probably very early, but it's a tough call. Both of us are doing alright, things seem calm. Calm is good.

Blip. Trains are cool. Random thought. Close to a train car of some kind - freight, not passenger. Doing great.

Blip. Ladder.

Sunday morning. Time: (Unknown)

Blip. Something under me is cold and hard. The sky is a bit brighter. Looks like the sun might be trying to come up. Feel like I was sleeping. So what woke me up? ...And why does it feel like we're moving? Fuck. Good on you, brain conductor. Top of moving train equals bad. That's solid math.

Blip. Not on the train anymore. Brian is next to me. Still near train tracks. At least we're on the ground. Some asshole threw up on my shoes. Dick.

Blip. Phone is in my hand. Sun is nearly visible. Feel like shit. No idea where we are.

Sunday afternoon. Time: 12:45 pm

Blip. Home in bed. Thinking clearly now, though not at all feeling good. First step, check on Brian. He's asleep on the couch, good. Seems like he's no worse for the wear given his losing fight with the wall. Calling it a win. We're home safe. No cars in the driveway, which meant we didn't drive like fucking idiots. Another one in the win column, if anyone is keeping score. Whatever the hell else happened, at least we made it home safely and smartly. Back to bed please and thank you.

Piecing that night together more fully took some time. Turned out I called my little brother to pick us up, using a nearby street sign as a locator. No memory of that, and no idea how I managed to be coherent enough to get our location. He swears there were no train tracks around the pickup location, so we must have moved on from the train yard. We picked up our vehicle the next day when everyone was feeling better. Brian did not break anything or have any serious injuries and doesn't remember the wall incident at all, let alone why he was fighting with it.

We never really looked all that hard for the trainyard we ended up at. Partially because god only knows if we were allowed to be there, and partially because it just didn't matter. We were there, we did a thing, we survived, and we made it home. And I learned a fucking lesson. That was the first, last, and only time I ever got blackout drunk. As it turns out, nearly taking a drunken ride on the top of a moving freight train is a good way to make sure you never let yourself become that impaired again.

As for the conductor of my brain train? I let him keep his job. For whatever his part in getting me involved in that situation, his slam-drunk ass got us back out safely. I figure it's a live-and-learn situation - my brain and I both made some mistakes, and we both learned some lessons. But I definitely keep a tighter leash on the bastard so we don't end up riding the rails quite the same way again.