—Hardie

Continued from yesterday’s “Best friends forever: Part one.”

I resumed scanning the room. Across from me in at the bar was a skinny middle-aged blond man I’d seen a few times over the last week and who—to my perhaps overly enthusiastic mind—was either pretending to have, or actually only had, one arm. Upon closer inspection, it became clear that his other arm, strung up in a sling, was obscured by his blue jean vest. He was accompanied by what looked like a younger clone—but with two arms—and indeed, my previous companion had suggested this was his beloved son. They got the father-son special: a pitcher of sangria for 13 Euros.
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Everyone knows real estate is about location. A young couple picks a home so as to be in a good school district, a businessman to have an impressive address in an upper-class enclave, a hippie to be close to “nature.” An Enthusiast is no exception.

But an Enthusiast’s real estate concerns are about how far it is to whet one’s whistle. Such is doubly important when an Enthusiast is away from his home real estate, whether on a honeymoon with a blushing bride or on a lark with a favorite prostitute—or waiting on a new visa for one’s adopted home country in the closest neighboring nation and hoping that the discovery of a nest of one’s adopted home country’s spies in one’s original home country would not derail one’s plans.
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—Josey

The cold, clammy memory of last night’s apology-necessitating act is every Enthusiast’s nauseating-yet-necessary champion-breakfast appetizer (breakfast of course being Kentucky coffee and a fist full of aspirin). But there are as many types of dristakes as there are Enthusiasts to make them. What is the best way to handle your victims the morning after?

1. I’m sorry I puked. You’re going to have to replace or thoroughly clean whatever you emptied last night’s Nail plus last night’s Double Down on. If you regurgitate on your friend and they demand you bathe them to undo your damage, do your enthusiastic duty: roll up your sleeves, and start gently cleansing their bare flesh with a warm, sudsy, over-sized sponge. Whether what you’re doing is literally cleaning up yesterday’s chunky over-enthusiasm or merely fulfilling their previously-repressed fantasies about you, just go with it. And if your vomit victim’s eyes roll back as you sponge away and they start muttering “nurse … nurse” in between satisfied gasps, keep sponging—you’re on the path to forgiveness. Besides, as an Enthusiast you’ve experienced and enacted far stranger things. Alternatively you could offer a revenge-heave. Gets you out of soaping them down, and/or paying to dryclean their “swayed” jacked and/or having to bleach their car’s air conditioning vents. What do you care about a return regurgitation? You’re wasted!

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—Prez

We had this team-building thing coming up at work. I’m not going to bore you with the details—nor compromise any identities—but let’s just say it involved going out into a body of water on waterborne vessels of some type, propelled by yours truly and his cohorts. Naturally, “BOOZE!” popped into my head the second I heard about this. I set out immediately on a complicated mission with several objectives.

First and foremost, I had to seek out the fellow drinkers who were going on the trip. This posed no great challenge. I don’t know what it is (and that’s part of the magic), but something deeper than our mutual love for that sweet, fermented, nectar-of-the-gods binds all Enthusiasts. We flocked to each other like birds migrating south for the winter, and without any hesitation, immediately decided that we would be inebriated at said-event.
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—Christian

I know the Enthusiast has already expounded on the trials and tribulations of drinking in public, but today I’d like to talk about a different kind of outdoor drinking. Namely, that which is done in the modern cradle of mother nature—the campsite. Here is the Enthusiasts’ guide to camping, guaranteed to ensure that your next journey in the wild* does not involve even a bit of sobriety.

The first rule of thumb is: you’re always going to under estimate. Unless your friends are a bunch of teetotalers, the carefree atmosphere of hanging out under the open sky, combined with the lack of responsibility a single bar of service on your cell phone engenders, will almost assuredly result in the lot of you drinking constantly. As such, be sure to bring plenty of hooch, and the right combination is very important.
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