Two Excerpts and a Poem.

Two Excerpts from "The Best Way to Do Shots"

The Old Sage.

At a bar once, I bumped into a guy while coming out of the restroom who told me he was from South Africa, and he said that he got his secret from an old Irish guy. “Eat a stick of margarine before going to the pub,” the old guy told him. You’ll still be standing sixteen shots later. You’ll be as drunk as a coed after one plastic cup of trash-can punch, but you’ll still be standing. I asked the guy if he’d done that. He told me that if he were to tell, it wouldn’t be any fun. We got to ten shots before I quit and declared him the winner.

The Boastful Bimbo.

There was a birthday party a couple of years back where I met a girl who claimed that not only would she not have a hangover the next morning because she always drank a glass of water between every shot, she added that she could drink any guy in the room “under the table.” Under the carpet and into the very foundation of the building, even! No exceptions. She was falling all over herself after four shots, and ended up leaving with a guy that she kept insisting looked like Brad Pitt. I thought he looked more like Benicio Del Toro myself, but who cares? I don’t know if she woke up with a hangover or not.

A Poem.

In Portuguese.

The linguistic dabbler that I am.

"A ladra de meu coração"

a ladra de meu coração,
você não pode correr tão facilmente,
porque na chuva você se queda,
lembra-se,
eu te ajudei com o que você queria,
só olha querida, olha e escuta,
tenho que dizer-te
"o que comença deve acabar"
não é difícil para entender mas
eu te darei uma chance para reaprender
o que você perdeu enquanto a chuva
derramou//
querida,
ladra de meu coração,
a respeito de nossa vida juntos,
se você deixa, eu espero que
você manta tudo perto de seu coração

By Patrick Patterson-Carroll