Day of the Living Fleischmann's: A Paul Story

 

Fear it.

It was a long time ago, what movie just came out, The Rum Diary. We saw it at a theatre John P. Bruni knew of, I want to say it was one of the many Carmikes in the area. At this time, it’s 2011 in the fall, I remember that because I was trying to catch the Christmas rush for workers and wrangle myself up some employment…my ex-wife and I had just moved to Warrenville to stay with my sister. She lived in a ghetto shithole with a felon on the run for an old man, so I felt right at home. Dude wasn’t that much of a twat. Now the viewing of the film was uneventful. You can’t watch Thompson and not go a little ham afterward, this I’ve found. Speed and booze was on the table. The Doctor would’ve appreciated the poor man’s smorgasbord we had in front of us. 

Paul brought a bottle of Fleischmann’s to the party that night. He didn’t indulge in the white crosses I had, no—at this time, he liked 5 Hour Energy (HARRS N HARRS of ENERGY—I’m probably the only man on the planet who remembers that commercial) which I hated because it only ever gave me hours of fuck all. Why not just drink, well, I needed the speed not just to honor Doc but for Paul, I already said he didn’t partake in speed but…that man used to drink like Jim Lahey and when I say like Lahey I mean like I used to have to pull the fucking bottle out of his mouth. We used to play a game called How Many Bubbles Can You Make because when you tip up a bottle, it bubbles. This motherfucker made that shit look like chili farts in a beige bathtub. He was once able to gargle the vilest of swill. And tonight was no different.

Epic, not that we went anywhere or did anything, oh no—we cozied up to a handle (half gallon) of Fleischmann’s, and I think Paul had not cocks, but rounds of pepperoni, Corn Nuts (Jesus), what else did he like…COMBOS. There it is. Those pretzel wrapped hunks of powdered fake cheese. He coveted those madly, trying to get a Combo from Paul could cost you a hand, unless you were clever like me. Usually, when I wanted a Combo, I’d tickle him until he farted a bunch. This renders Paul incapacitated every, and I mean every time. If he’s mad at you, never fight---tickle. I remember around the time the booze got below the handle his brown eyes went away and filled with the no-sale light of drunkenness. The hotel room was white, white, white, and I think it was a Hilton close to a hotel of ill repute called the Brer Rabbit. Tales of that No-Tel are horror du jour. Even being close to it makes you want to talk about it (if, that is, you’re from the Chicagoland area and like drugs) so we probably spent some time talking about that. We talked the movie with reverence because Thompson. We may have talked about the old days of Cthulhu games and shit, in any case Paul got fuckin’ slaughtered on that Fleischmann’s.

No. Check that. What’s fair to say is that the Fleischmann’s came to life, slaughtered my friend and snatched his body, and then decided it liked hanging out with me. It did its level best to compel me to suck its neck over and over again and as much as I love Paul I just couldn’t do it.  

I remember saying something like, “This shit isn’t agreeing with me. I can’t drink any, uh, more, blugh…no, I’ll puke, dude.”

"THAT’S BECAUSE YOU TOOK TOO MUCH SPEED, YOU FOOL! DRINK!” It turned in its seat and shook its handle at me. My hand wavered in the air, but I pulled it back and The Fleischmann’s became wrathful. “I—told you...to DRINK!” Slosh. It spun its cap from its neck and hit me in the forehead. It shoved its neck down my throat and told my stomach to create a vacuum. I did not drink, it forced me, I tell you, FORCED! But it was so compelling. “If you don’t drink me, you’re a wuss. Like you never fought any dudes. And if you did you lost. Now drink.”

And so it went.

I indulged The Fleischmann’s until I ran out of pills and the sun came up. When I looked out the curtain the Fleischmann’s squealed. It shuffled, rattling the table and sending Combos a’ flight and howled for me to close the curtain. The Fleischmann’s did quite a bit of howling.

I’ll cut to the most interesting bit of it.

See, I love adventure. The more dangerous and stupid, the better. Like I won’t cliff dive, but I will get into a perfectly good motor vehicle with a walking, rattling, belching, occasionally snarling six-foot-two bottle of Fleischmann’s in a hotel parking lot at something like 11 am howling I AM LONO HE WAS ONCE BUT I AM NOW LONO, shit like that. If only I’d emulated Doc more with the tape recorder dealio because I’d have LOVED to have this experience on film or audio. It was an impressive soliloquy the bottle gave. The Fleischmann’s was nothing if not a poet. Lyrical elan has little to do with vehicular safety, though, and sadly so.

 “Maybe you should let me drive,” I said.

  The Fleischmann’s barked; “NO! YOU’RE DRUNK!”

My wife wasn’t saying anything. She was too hungover to think. She told me later that she could barely see with the sun burning her eyes and since she also sucks fucking donkey balls as a person, she’s not in this—she got in the back seat and passed out. That left me to deal with The Fleischmann’s alone. That meant Korpiklaani. Really loud Korpiklaani. Metsalle, as memory serves. Which cool because right now, it’s Rankarampu, their newest album. Like I says, I was drunk. But not drunk enough to be Lono. And certainly not drunk enough to have men and women staring at me in the middle of a hotel parking lot during late morning. This might have floated at weird o’ clock in the morning. Now? Ho ho.

“That lady’s checking you out,” I said. “You should chill out before she puts the hounds on us. Slow your roll. Rest your neck. And let me drive.”

“YOU!” And he caught himself. “Do not have a license.”

 “What’s that have to do with anything?”

 “IT MEANS EVERYTHING!” Harumph. “I’M NOT A CROOK LIKE YOU. I ABIDE BY THE LAW!” My wife was about to go face-first into the pavement, The Fleischmann’s was close to puking down his suit and some dude (maybe scared he’d never seen no walking bottle who has ffs) was giving us the hairy eyeball which meant I might have to kick into gear—no. I got in with the giant bottle and let it drive. Paul isn’t a lunatic like this, see, and I remembered—it’s not him. It's the drug—Fleischmann’s—he did well enough getting out of the parking lot.

Lo, we swung into traffic, and I mean swumg. We were in a Honda of some kind, which luckily didn’t have the longest of car noses; The Fleischmann’s did not smash into the hapless driver in his equally hapless car driving cheerfully and ignorantly alongside a lunatic and bottle shimmying into the traffic. The Fleischmann’s laughed maniacally—waaaahhh hahha hah hah hah a la this guy—

“Dude holy fuck you almost hit that lady,” I said. Ladies were not faring well with The Fleischmann’s. Good for them they weren’t sitting next to it. This was no longer John Paul Bruni. All I saw was a two-hundred pound glass cylinder full of sloshing booze that, when its blood hit the sides of the bottle, gave off words. I wouldn’t say it spoke. It gave off growls. Belches. These weird sort of whining things.

“I almost hit nothing,” it said. “YOU! Will sit there and enjoy the holy fucking shit!”

The brakes screamed as The Fleischmann’s brought three thousand pounds of steel death to a halt before it could go up the ass of a motorcycle. The driver’s helmet turned.

 “See?” I said. “Do you see it, man! They’re looking at you.”

“They can’t see me, Rob. They’re blind right now.”

Holy fuck. It remembered my name. And off we went. Needless to say I was on my P’s and Q’s with the side-seat driver shit. My hand did a lot of wavering. The Fleischmann’s looked at me, its boiling liquid eyes rolling behind my friend’s glasses. I could see charcoal in the sclera and also slivers of oak. At least it should’ve been oak. This might’ve been plywood.

“What are you doing, Rob?”

“I’m taking the fucking steering wheel, goddammit! You can’t drive. Look at you. You’re a living bottle. You don’t even have arms!” And I grabbed the steering wheel.

Paul flickered behind the booze for a second, but The Fleischmann’s won. “Don’t touch my fucking steering wheel motherfucker, this is my car, I drive it, I already told you you can’t drive because you don’t have a fucking license. I am not that drunk. I can drive just fine. I did not almost hit anyone, everything I did, I meant to do. So don’t touch my fucking steering wheel. Don’t—”

And so the litany went for a few miles. We pulled into the parking lot of a mall across from my sister’s apartment in Warrenville. Why? Because The Fleischmann’s was screaming. At some point I returned the screaming and it gave me back my friend.

“I’m sorry,” Paul said. “What did I do? I don’t remember. How did we get here?”

And he winked back into a being of solid glass and waving liquor. Just that quick, no sheep's wool I swear, and he’ll cop to this himself if you ask him. Was I better? Hell the fuck no. At the end of it I said I didn’t really give a shit because I—I mean, I cared for my ex-wife. Mostly because it seemed like the right thing to do. I have trouble with stuff like that. That’s probably why we’re not married anymore. Funnier still is that she didn’t really care either. She slept through the whole thing. When Paul asked how we got there, she asked me the same thing. Both of these fuckers were fucked. I loved both of them, too. But I didn’t love that bottle.

“I will never fucking drink you again,” I told The Fleischmann’s. “You are the most vile, underhanded swilling rotgut shit I’ve had the misfortune of fucking with. I don’t always learn lessons fast, but this time I did. I’ve no more truck with you! GET—the fuck—out of my strip mall, you fiend.”

“It’s not yours!” The Fleischmann’s laid on the Honda’s horn. If heads turned, I didn’t see them. I was too busy laughing.

“Scat! We won’t cater to your ilk here.”

“I know when I’m not welcome!” The Fleishmann’s changed the CD (yep, way back then) to Megadeth. Guitars shredded at a speaker-raping volume and The Fleischmann’s, finally satisfied, drove off into the early noon of a beautiful Chicago fall. True to my word, I never saw it again…it gave me my friend back, but sometimes I miss it and so does he.

So it goes with what is lovely that kills you.