Guttersnipe

I woke up naked in a hotel room on Sunday morning covered in milk. There was nary a carton in sight. It was a hell of a Halloween party.

After a mind-numbingly dull week of work the chance to let loose and drink in the joy of the season was greatly anticipated and muchly deserved. The most exciting thing to happen prior to Saturday night was a guy on the sidewalk outside my window cleaning an almost certainly stolen bike with a toothbrush.

He went at it for a full half hour, pants falling off the whole time and head hanging inches from traffic. He scoured every damned inch of that thing before removing the seat and his pilfered bike share helmet, slamming an empty lighter to the ground in disgust, and riding off blindly across a busy street towards the nearby bottle depot.

It provided great entertainment for me and the other office drones but it was no match for that sweet elixir of spooky drunkenness mixed with a lustful taste of fake blood that makes up every good shindig this time of year.

Halloween weekend being the last gasp for exposed flesh in northern climes, there was a great preponderance of zombie cheerleaders, ghoulish skanky nurses, and undead prostitute teachers. Now I’m just as aroused by dead chicks as the next fella but the teacher thing just seems a bit tacky.

I was a “jail bird”, my date was Minnie Mouse (fantastic) and the majority of the night is either completely clouded over by the ravages of tequila and witch’s brew or would be unfit to print even in Mad magazine. Which is to say—on to the bowling!

While the league bowlers were all dressed in our usual slobbery, the rentable quarter of the lanes were filled by some sort of fancy dress adult pizza party. The same assortment of bulging bosom and hanging cheek was on display but the ladies seemingly were unaware that not only are the lights on full during weekday bowling, the ball delivery process combined with very short skirts results in the revealing of a great deal of (mostly) ample asses. The league membership reviewed this development. No complaints were lodged.

The increased blood flow must have enhanced my abilities. I had by far my best performance of the league year. The team arrived that night to find ourselves in first place overall and a group of our chums were there to drink with us and enjoy the games, adding to the pressure cooker that is league night. We faced stiff competition and a great deal of distraction. This game would be our greatest test yet.

They had one really good bowler, a guy with a handlebar moustache who used only his index and middle finger in the holes and pretty much just dropped his spinning ball on the lane from waist height. It made a great ka-blammo and took a nice curving path from left-of-centre to right edge and back in just off the head pin, most often resulting in a strike. I don’t quite know the math on the handicaps but his was less than half of the rest of ours.

The first round our crowd put up what felt like a smashing good game. I led the way with a 135, we also had a 133 and the other side had one member who only eked out 76 points. Alas, their big gun rolled 186 and we went down straight-up and with the handicap.

It all could’ve fallen apart then but the team came together and, like Andy Dufresne, we refused to go down without a fight. In the middle game I bowled a best-of-my-year 164 that topped even handlebar and we squeaked it out by a mere three points. We did lose by two based on the straight-up score but thankfully that’s not what matters.

Deflated, the opposition went meekly in the third. With another solid score of 133 (told you I was throwing rocks that night), ol’ Dicky led the way to a strong finish. Their top man still beat me by a few but we took the game by 30 and the overall by 11 points. It was a thrilling match, said none of our viewing guests, but it was another step towards mixed league glory. With five out of a possible seven points we’ll hopefully arrive tonight still holding onto our first-place perch.

On a Halloween postscript note, my friend purchased full-size chocolate bars to give out last night but must have thought our trick or treaters would be groups of septuagenarians. Thus I ended up with multiple Eat-More and Big Turk bars.

I enjoyed the Turk quite a bit, as did the friend’s (under age 30!) pal. The anti-Turkers around here don’t know a damn thing about taste and texture, that much is clear. It’s called a delight for a reason and it comes through in purple, chewy, chocolate-covered spades.