An Irish Saint and a Confession

I have already detailed the life and times of St. Patrick (or was it Saint Palladius?), so I won't rehash old posts, merely provide you with the link. However, do remember that today is the feast day of the Patron Saint of Ireland, which means lots of drunken revelry coupled with the phenomenon I like to call "Erin Goes Bra-less" along with countless sad motherfuckers stumbling around bars strapping on fake accents and asking the fair, drunken lasses "Pardon me, dear one, but do ye have any Irish in ye? Would ye care for some more?" God, horny drunks are so creative.

I, however, won't be participating in such activities. Not that I wouldn't mind bedding a fair Irish lass--oh, wait, I already have one...wan, fair complexion, red hair and a filthy mouth all included! No, this whole drinking thing isn't for me, not any more. Oh, don't worry, I'm not going to get all high-and-mighty on your sinners asses, no, not today. The reason for my teetotalism isn't out of some overdevelop sense of higher morals, it's strictly physiological.

It's with a heavy, sober heart that I come before you and admit: I've developed a wicked allergy to hops.

If you know me, you know that I love beer. Not the macro-swill that you pound down at a tailgate in order to be able to stomach the sad state of affairs Bob Davie and Tyrone Willingham have put on the field...no, I love craft brews. I've sampled well over a thousand beers in my day from 37 different states and 17 different countries (if you count Scotland and Wales as their own countries, that is). I even drove way the hell out of my way in order to stop off at a crappy microbrewery in West Virginia so that I could add one more beer and one more state to the list.

That microbrewery trip was the one where I finally had to start facing up to the truth that I had a problem. See, with the merest sip of a beer these days, my throat begins to close, my breathing becomes ragged, and my stomach lurches. The sad thing is, I used to absolutely love my beers with hops. I've had 90 Minute IPA from Dogfish Head shot through Randall the Enamel Animal where the hops was so powerful, it felt like I could pick them from my teeth. I've had a slightly chilled Stone IPA where I thought, "Hmmm...yes, that's about right", despite the fact that Stone's beers are typically offensively hopped (as much as I love hops, some beers are ruined by an overabundance of their oils). Research even says that hops could be good for the heart and most likely they would exhibit positive anti-oxidant levels in your blood (hops are antioxidants for beer, thus their use as preservatives). But none of this is for me. Not any more.

60 Minute IPA is what the Gods themselves drink.
I used to run my own beer blog where I was attempting to review beers, breweries and beer-based books. I even used a picture of a naked woman festooned with strategically-placed hops as the "mascot" of said blog, but as the hop allergy became worse, I had to suspend my work and, with a heavy heart, delete my beloved blog from the blogosphere. Even now, I'm tearing up a little.

So, my friends, while you're out in the bars wearing your plastic green bowlers, pretending to love Guinness and pinching the asses of those ladies who had the bad foresight not to wear green tonight, I ask you to down at least one pint and think of me. I'll be at home sipping on my Diet Dr. Pepper and watching Notre Dame piss away their first-round NIT game.

Regardless of my personal afflictions, let me wish you all a Happy Saint Patrick's Day! Also, happy birthday to my old drinking buddy Pat, aka Dr. Assy. Hopefully, he got a replacement laptop for the one that was stolen from his apartment and can read this once more.

It's Ash Wednesday, Y'all!

Typically, on a day like today, I'd break down the history behind the holiday and/or saint's day, interspersed with tiny little nuggets of extraneous information that would make the post slightly more amusing.

Today, I'm not going to do that. Perhaps it's the solemnity of the holiday, perhaps it's just that I'm ass-tired, or perhaps it's because I've been blowing my creative wad on the comments in your blogs. You have to admit, I've been pretty fucking clever this week, making up for last week's dearth of funny and/or pithy comments.

Anyway, I'm going to give up a couple of happy little stories today in honor of Ash Wednesday that are appropriate, given the holiday. Buckle up, bitches, we're going for a ride on the way back machine. Hold me, Mr. Peabody!

First off, we anachronistically arrive in spring of 1998. I'm in the throes of Catholic Conversion, and so I attend the Ash Wednesday mass. My friend Jeff was an alter attendant...or whatever they call the not quite priests doing the priestly duties. Jeff is now an ordained priest of the Society of the Precious Blood order. You should bear that in mind whilst I go through the tale.

There I am, standing in line, heading up toward the alter where I will get the ashes decorated on my head to loudly announce to the world that "I am Catholic, and I went to Mass. Suck it, pagans!" Sure, I wasn't a full member of the church, but you didn't have to be Catholic to get the ashes. You can just come in off the street and get the mark. Pretty keen, eh? The Catholic Church, much like the Catholic Girls, are all inclusive and will let anyone in.

So, I approach my friend Jeff and lean down (I'm taller than he, but about six or eight inches) and I see him working his thumb in the ash tray furiously, like he's trying to smash a bug beneath his thumb and grind its guts to Hell. I catch a fleeting glimpse of the ashed thumb as he raises it toward my head. It's black. Not just dark, sooty gray as one would expect. No, this was a black so pure, so powerful, that light itself was bent around it as it got sucked in by the absorbative properties of the color. "Great," I think, "he's going to put that on like graffiti." I braced myself for impact.

It wasn't just that he was going for darkness; he was going for maximal coverage, as well. Starting at my hairline, he dragged his thumb down my forehead to the bridge of my nose. He then reupped the ashes and started at the hairline of one temple and dragged his thumb across my brow to the hairline of the other temple. At that moment, there were about thirty, maybe fifty (at most) people still behind me in line, plus, I was in a church, so I had to stifle my urge to scream out "Jesus fuck, Jeff, would you like me just to roll in it like a dust bath?" I also, since he had made his intentions well and clear that he was going to enroll in the seminary that fall, couldn't slug him the gut. I mean, the man was going to be a priest and all.

So, I closed my eyes, offered a heavy sigh, and whispered "Amen", then departed to go back to my seat. One of my friends sat down beside me after she got her ashes, looked at my forehead, and burst into fits of giggles that wouldn't subside for a good forty five minutes afterward. I know this, because we went to lunch immediately after. Along the route to the cafe, everyone whom I passed suffered a similar fate. Those with more tact at least were able to twist their mouths up and stifle their laughter until after I passed, and some of them were able to utter a sympathetic "nice".

Let's hop back in the time machine and this time set course for spring of 2000. I'll set the stage for you here: I was young(er), I lived alone in my own apartment, I was currently enrolled in grad school where I was surrounded--pretty much daily--by hordes of nubile, college-aged girls who, when spring arrived, liked wearing very little. I was also recently single and had no steady girlfriend at the time. Got all that? Good, let's proceed.

Back then, I reveled in my Catholicism, and so I'd try to give up something hard. One year I gave up alcohol, another I gave up desserts and snacks. Pretty standard fare. Well, in spring of 2000, for some reason, I got it in my mind that I would give up masturbation. I felt I was doing it too much and too often, and so I decided to just up and quit. I'd be less lusty, my carpal tunnel would clear up, and my clothes would stop reeking of musk.

Now, my friends that I hung out with most of the time were all female. There were three of them with whom I entered the same research lab and to say that they were a little prudish would be an understatement. If I recall correctly, none of them were Catholic (which might explain it), but they simply did not discuss anything that even remotely had to do with sex. Or bodily functions. Or, well, pretty much anything that I would classify as humor. Yeah, I don't get it, either.

So, when Lent rolled around, one of them asked me what I was giving up. Knowing that they wouldn't exactly want to know about my extracurricular activities when at home, or driving back to my apartment, or if I was bored in the computer lab, or even walking past Touchdown Jesus, I blurted out "I'm giving up candy." Seemed logical enough, and it was one of those things that was a fairly common sacrifice.

On Ash Wednesday of that year, I went and got my lunch, and decided that I really wanted a milky way (God's gift to candy, with its perfect proportions of caramel, chocolate and nougat), so I went to the little college store there and bought one. No big deal. I slap it down on my tray for eating after I finished my salad or whatever meatless meal I was enjoying, and one of the girls points to the candy bar and says:

"I thought you were giving candy up for Lent!"

In a mad panic, my eyes go shifty, I break out in a sweat, my face flushes and my heart races. Finally, I managed to calm myself enough to offer a small nod and said, "Yes. Yes, I am." I tossed the snack in my backpack and carried it around with me for the remainder of the day, craving its gooey goodness. When I got home that evening, I pounded down the Milky Way as if my life depended upon it. Then I realized that there's no eating between meals on Ash Wednesday, so that ended up being my dinner. Meatlessness has never tasted so sweet.

I met my wife a couple of weeks after that. When I introduced myself and shook her hand, I couldn't help but notice the twin midget wrestlers fighting for domination in her shirt, and, since the carpal tunnel had been clearing up, my grip was nice and firm, in that sort of "Oh God, I'm staring at a hot redhead's breasts and I can't do a thing about it" way. Two years later, after we were married and when the movie "40 Days and 40 Nights" came out, I confided in her what I had given up that year. All she could say was "Wow."

In case you were wondering, this is my 400th post. I thought about doing something deep and reflective, but instead, I decided to offer up the tales of how my forehead was violated by the thumb of a priest and how I managed to stave off autoerotic pleasures for six and a half weeks. What will the next 100 posts bring? Probably more masturbation stories. Huzzah!