Earning my stripes

Double-pissed - the state of being so pissed, even your pissed-up MATES think you're pissed.

Fuck knows what I look like.  Club hair and can't believe I was passing round a cigarette like it was a spliff because you know I don't smoke any more except when I'm really drunk and someone forces me I can only take on or two drags makes me ill but hahaha that's what it'll be like when the ban comes in you know come it'll be like come back to my place I've got some TOBACCO yeah passing it furtively like something illegal and-

Heinz Tomato Ketchup.  Important stuff.  Certainly is for Heinz.  Pretty much total worldwide market domination.

Running on instinct.  Food-sex-sleep.  Right now, food.  Stumbling towards the burger van.

But success can have its downsides.  Within Heinz, within the organisation, the team working on the Ketchup - that designed it, that marketed it - became too powerful.  I mean the beans are good yeah, but there are other brands.  The thixotropic brew was all-conquering.  A friend of mine used to work there told me - they grabbed the best people, dominated boardrooms, a state within a state.

When drunk I sometimes mime my thoughts.  Act out what I'm thinking.  I don't see it any kind of illness, just a sort of head-leakage. 

Not just a ketchup mafia - they had their own police force too.  Swoop and red-lights flashing.  DNA swabs, guardians of the purity, of the sacred bloodline.  Because the landlords, the restaurateurs, they buy the little Heinz bottles for the tables OH YES but once that's gone they fill them up with any rusty old radiator fluid.  I seen 'em.  Decanting it as the bar closes up, passing it off, robbing customers blind with their vinegary fakes, their dilatant dilettantes.  Brings coins up a treat.

Two gents at the burger van.  One apron'd behind the counter, another propping it up.  No queueing here, I order a burger and meanwhile, act my thoughts out loud without knowing it. 

The ketchup police showed no mercy on the cheats.  Midnight raids - turn the place upside down, slap you about, put the squeeze on.  Not afraid to spill a bit of the red stuff if they had to.  Hands up against the salad bar thank you sir.  We'll be taking these as evidence.

Finally, my bap handed over past a fumbled phone.  There - a long thin bottle with a pointy nozzle-cone.  Redplastic squeezy, watery and side-stuck. 

Head down, I grab the ketchup from the counter-top and give it a long, vigorous shake. 

Then draw a careful spiral on top of my open burger, concentrating like I'm icing a eulogy onto a wedding cake.

Eventually the Heinz management had to smash the racket.  I mean there are 56 OTHER varieties you know.  So they split up the ketchup team, fired a few, posted others onto different projects.  But the cult of the ketchup never quite disappeared.  Went underground.  There was a secret handshake.  Hold your left hand out in fist, then slap the end of that fist three times with the flat palm of your splayed right hand.  Mime it... you'll see.  And to this day no-one in the trade will cross a ketchup.

As I finish with the ketchup I notice the two men are strangely subdued.  I look up.  Their eyes fix on me, the three of us frozen to the spot.  Then I start seeing them; diagonal red stripes.  Everywhere.  Everywhere up the whitewall back of the van.  Everywhere, except for a man-shaped gap in the middle and-

Ah. 

There are diagonal red stripes up the kebab seller. And-

Ah. 

There are diagonal red stripes up the thickset, bald and be-sweatered customer stood my side of the counter.  Shiny and redblobs on the collar of his white shirt.  On his neck.  On his face.  Corner of his mouth. 

Like some sort of horror-film cum shot.  I look down at the squeezy bottle in my hand.

Ah.  Aha.

I start to cringe up inside.  I think - I've had an interesting life, but now it has come to an end.  These people are going to kill me.  The kebab-man is holding a - knife?  No.  Call a sword a sword.  I imagine myself turning, slowly, on the doner spit.  Feeding the next generation of pissheads.  Strangely comforting, in a way.  Kebab Karma.  And who'd know it wasn't lamb?

But no.  Instead, they just stare at me, silent through nervous grins.  Warily, the kebab man starts wiping a cloth across the counter.  I bluster:

Um, ahem.  Sorry, I...

"That's alright, don't worry about it."  He apologises, moving now to his apron.

Incredulous at this sudden capitulation, I swing my head and shoulders exaggeratedly to point at the bald customer-man, as if unable to swivel my eyeballs.  Surely he at least will kill me?

"Er, oh, no problem mate, could happen to anyone." 

...Mopping daintily at his gruesome collar with a napkin - laughably inadequate, like dabbing a tissue at the ragged stump of his own neck.  I nod slow-absurdly.  Drunkmarch off like an out-of-warranty cyberman. 

Only later did I realise why they reacted the way they did.  Because no matter how scary it looked, I looked scarier.  Had them bang to rights.  It wasn't PROPER ketchup. 

And they'd seen me do the handshake.

Comments

[An Unreliable Witness]

Pissed or double-pissed, I don't care. All I know - though this is based on a dim recollection of drunkennes from last May because I haven't had the nerve nor the leg to let a drop of alcohol pass my lips since then, regrettably - is that you're not supposed to be able to write this eloquently (oh, sod it, this fucking eloquently) about being pissed. No. All you are supposed to be able to manage is an unintelligible groan (however one spells such a sound) followed by the phrase "Oh, I was sooooo drunk last night". Please adhere to this rule - which you will find listed in section D, paragraph 3 of the the International Laws Of Blogging - rigidly in future, or else I shall have no option but to send John Reid round with a knuckle-duster to menace you with threats of deportation.

Honestly. Some people.

[Marcos]

it's the annual miracle of the liquefaction of st. heinz's blood.

[Ariel]

Diagonal stripes, barbershops, ketchup... alcohol is one hell of a potent hallucinogenic in your case! Not that anyone spiked your beverage, did they?

[fionat]

Christ, you should never be sober.

[Timbo]

I watched Kill Bill Vol 1 last night. Coincidence? Swords and kebabs? Anyone?

[emma]

You crack me up. I've never really understood how you always manage to make it home when you are in this state. Maybe you are like a homing pigeon, guided by instinct?

[Beth]

Honestly, I don't know what to say to all that. Other than, what are the other 56 varieties...and does it stop there?

[oe]

Unreliable - Thanks. Don't you find alcohol a creative force?

Marcos - Ah yes, thixotropism at its best

Ariel - The red stripes weren't a hallucination! Perhaps this point is a but subtle... I'll redo the paragraph to make to clearer.

fionat - hello. And quite right

Tim - never seen that film but now I might

emma - The beer taxi sees me through

Beth - I think there must be at LEAST 56 other varieties

[Peach]

so the mommy tomato and the baby tomato are walking down the road. the baby tomato runs on. she looks back at mommy and says ....

[Callisto]

Next time I'm double-pissed, screw the hotdog, I'm going to get a burger, with beetroot AND bbq sauce. Could get messy.

[Angelalala]

Briliant. You really do give double good blog.

[An Unreliable Witness]

A creative force? Oh yes. The problem is that I also find it a force of gravity at the moment. I am rather looking forward to when it isn't. Well, at least not quite as much.

[Aidan]

"You'd 57 ways of being mean to me
- 57 varieties, like Heinz..."

12 comments of praise, and no one's yet said something along the lines of "Who's the Daddies?"

For shame.

[clarissa]

Pinstripes are overrated.

[Yves]

I haven't read many of your posts, but I bet you have never written a better one. I'm awestruck

[Ben]

A really great post, not least for the lovely image of "some sort of horror-film cum shot".

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