I have some sort of crazy shit going on these days involving my parents being in town, having to go to the doctor for some truly weird paresthesias and neuropathies--like some essential tremor-ish stuff when reaching for a glass of wine, and believe me when I say I'm a pro at reaching for wine--so I'm a little distracted. So the posting has been a little erratic to say the least, and then I get agitated when I do some reasonable thing like reach for my glass of Malbec and my arm decides to disagree with me.

So, sorry. Hey, maybe I have lupus! On the other hand, repeated viewings of House have cheered me in that it is never lupus.

Anyway.

So, T. was my roommate for a year or so in college. T. was from Boston; once I called him on some damn break and his mother answered the phone. "Is T. there?" I asked. To my delight, she responded--I AM NOT KIDDING--"T.? Nahh. I think he took the cahh to Bahhstan Yahhd."

T. once decided to homebrew some beer. He bought that homebrewing bible--its name is lost to me, and I don't care--and a carboy and a giant steel containerstein and some other bubbletastic doodads. He collected dozens of Grolsch bottles--don't ask me where he found them--and other 22 oz. containers, and a bottlecapper and went to town. The apartment smelled like low tide at Coney Island for a week as he cooked his hideous mash; finally he bottled, and waited for weeks.

He was brewing an IPA, a particularly hoppy sort of beer. At the end of the process, which we were pretty excited about (despite the incredible odors, I had fun helping out), he finally decanted his first brew one morning right before he had to go to class.

"This tastes really good!" he cried, and it did. It was ten in the morning, the best time for any college student to dig into a fresh batch of beer. "Help yourself" he yelled delightedly as he left.

I did. I had no classes that day, or at least no classes that I was interested in attending. I drank six 22 ounce bottles of beer while T. was away at class.

"Is it good?" T. panted when he came home at four o'clock PM.

"It's delicious," I replied. I had drank six bottles of the stuff. "It's the best near beer I've ever had."

T.'s face dropped like the Hindenburg. "No!" he said. But it was true. T. had somehow, despite his bubble thingies and total adherence to homebrewing recipes, managed to produce a delicious beer with apparently no alcohol content whatsoever. At that point in the afternoon, I should have been trying to eat the sofa. Instead, I hopped up and gave him a few smart jumping jacks instead to prove my sobriety. (Note: this is a terrible way to demonstrate sobriety.)

Later, when I asked T. what, if he had one free wish to be granted on Earth, he would wish for, he said, "A pallet of beer. I want to put it in the living room, and when people come over and ask me what that is, I could say 'A pallet of beer.' "

I thought that that would be pretty cool. Of course, at that time, we were drinking Rainier.

One night, I went to a party, and when I came home, T. was slumped over our coffee table. His hand was on his checkbook, and the check's subject was DOMINO'S PIZZA, and the dollar amount was filled in. What wasn't filled in was the signature. T. was out cold.

Bummer.

Half an hour later, incredibly, there came a knock at the door; this must have been close to one AM. It was the Domino's guy. "I tried to deliver this an hour ago," he said, "but there wasn't no answer. You want this pizza?"

"Yes," I said, and quickly filled in T.'s name on his check's signature field. "Thank you so fucking much."

"Yeah," said the pizza guy. The pizza was of course dead cold, and I devoured it. I apologized to T. the next day, and he scoffed. "I would have done the same thing."

Then he played Gish. I hate that album and stopped feeling bad about eating his pizza.

When we left that place--we were more or less evicted--we squirted tubes of toothpaste all over the parking lot.

When T. attended my first wedding, I asked him if he was still smoking his signature Marlboro Reds. "I'm smoking MOAH!" he enthusiastically replied, and held out a freshly burning cigarette as example.

Oh, T., have moah of everything.