I wrote this on November 1st, 2011, after a few beers. This was somehow supposed to be my first installment into an attempt of doing NaNoWriMo but I quickly realized that if I am to write a novel of any sort I need to (a) have an idea of something to write about and (b) be in the habit of writing so that what I write doesn’t sound like crap. I was strongly considering not publishing this but given that approximately no one reads this and that I have also sacrificed all my feelings of shame once I started posting YT videos, I decided to go ahead and upload this. If you don’t like foul language or bad writing, I would suggest closing the browser tab at this point.

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“It’s amazing… so amazing,” Kanye cackled from the $14 waterproof radio with iPod attachment that had been one of the many glorious drunken Woot purchases I had made. Kanye continued on to rap about speed-racing or some shit like that but obviously the words weren’t catchy enough to remember. If they had been, Kanye wouldn’t have had to employ the superbitch persona to elevate his sales.

I trekked across the 10-foot-by-10-foot room, entered my bathroom and pulled the iPod out of the cheap gadget that was sadly the only device I had that was capable of disturbing my thoughts with loud sounds. Unfortunately, the silence was only slightly more amicable than the crappy audio wave producer that managed to make even someone as talented as Britney Spears sound like an ogre from a Japanese mass-video-game-company’s product.

Having dealt with the audio situation, I was faced with a decision to make. I went back to my computer and reviewed my two options. Light or dark.

Light was perky and socially acceptable. I wasn’t sold on the taste but she was conventionally pretty. At certain angles, the light shone right through her to reveal her inner beauty and bubbly personality. Most people chose light. But I was afraid that she was going to be too stereotypical; too frail. The last thing I wanted was zero curiosity and a “get-it-done” mentality.

Dark, on the other hand, was a completely different option. She was rich and creamy, not unlike the batter that would result in a situation where one was baking a really delicious set of cupcakes. What I liked most about her was the fact that she was full-bodied. There was no here and there about it; if I chose her I would be getting a meaty dinner in a glass, so to speak.

I had been thinking about this decision for way too long. After a night of heavy drinking, all I wanted was a voluptuous treat to end the night with. Was that too much to ask for? Perhaps it was, but I guess I had been under the incorrect assumption that anything could be found on the internet for the right price. Yes, I was an extremely stringy motherfucker, but all that meant was the quality was minimized and the risk was amplified on my eventual decision. Shit. So difficult.

‘I’ll have to flip a coin,’ I told myself. ‘I’ll have to flip a fucking coin.’

I dug into my pockets and found a neglected penny. Although, I guess, every penny in today’s economy is completely neglected. A penny is like something you see on Jersey Shore. Bronze beyond imagination, always covered in shit, and you can’t seem to rid yourselves of them. Also, like the characters on Jersey Shore, the world would be a better place if you could go to Disney Land and stuff one of them into a machine and end up with a nice memento that you could keep in your wallet or throw away.

Having found a coin, though, my decision was looming. All that was standing by me and instant gratification and a possibly endless 8 minutes of ecstasy was a piece of metal twisting and turning aimlessly through the air before settling on the dirty carpet that covered my domicile. And once it settled, the decision was made. This was the sudden, decisive nature of a coin-flip. It took only a few seconds before presenting you with a scenario that you would unequivocally question and disagree with.

I took one last glance at the photos on my laptop. There were several different angles of each of my choices. It was obvious that the photographers had taken quite a liking to their subjects and I could definitely see where they were coming from, given by the beauty that was oozing out of them like pus from an infected wound. I zoomed into the photos, squeezed my eyelids into all sorts of unnatural peepholes, and prayed that I would be able to figure out what I really wanted. If only I could smell them, my decision would have been extremely well-informed. Why hasn’t anyone invented the ability transport smell through wires, yet? Surely that would be the next sense to check off the list after sight and sound.

Alas, there was no respite for me. It looked like I would be relying on probability and the magic of gravity to decide my fate. Or, I guess, the science of gravity. Whatever. How seriously can you take someone who enraptured the world by playing with an Apple.

I took a huge breath and flipped the coin in the air.

It did not seem to take an eternity to rotate, revolve, turn, twist and finally settle back down on the ground after a pretty minimal impact. At the most, it appeared to have taken an entirety of about 1.7 seconds, which was directly unrelated to the kind of time I had already invested into this decision.

It had landed heads.

Fuck.

I had forgotten to define the boundaries of my experiment. Heads meant nothing, which was strangely ironic because `head` meant a lot in terms of the decision I was trying to make. I had to redo my whole experiment, which meant there was a mandatory incubation period involved where I once more tried to convince myself that I had the ability to make this extremely important decision without relying on statistics and chance.

‘Power through it… just power through it!’

These were the thoughts that mingled in my brain but I had no idea what they meant.

‘Fine. Heads is dark. It is done.’

The decision was made. I did prefer head from the dark variety to that from the light variety. I felt like it was a lot creamier and maintained its own unique flavor. Head from the light variety was iffy at best—it may last a while but it just as may just subside into a dry, torturous mess that didn’t excite anybody’s senses. In the worst possible scenario, it would be so bad that the rest of the experience would suck as well, or worse, be prematurely terminated. Heads was dark. Done.

I took another deep breath. I weighed the coin in my hand and scrubbed some grime off the dude’s neck to make sure that the decision wasn’t weighted in one way or another. Finally, at peace with the fact that I was trusting my happiness that night to Newton’s first law, I put the coin in between my thumb and forefinger and flipped it.

This time, the coin flipped a fair bit longer than 1.7 seconds, probably because I had put more energy into my tossing mechanism and also because I my nimble fingers had now become accustomed to the process of tossing a coin. The coin floated in the air like a butterfly who had suddenly forgotten how to fly. It rolled around nonchalantly like a fighter-pilot who had just realized that he had lost control of his aircraft during an air show but was high enough that he didn’t give a shit that he was about to clatter to the ground as if his plane was made from a material that looked like Tupperware but was, in fact, entirely destructible.

As the coin headed ground-ward in the same inevitable fashion as a waterfall, I squeezed my eyes shut because I couldn’t bear to see the decision made after what seem like hours, but was in fact only minutes, of mental turmoil. I heard the coin plop on the ground softly, just like a simile that I will not have to present here in its full-form because everyone in the world has a standard, and somewhat disgusting, simile about something plopping onto something else.

I opened one eye, and then the other. The coin had surreptitiously rolled away to a location where the angle of the light prevented me from being able to tell which side had landed on the carpet. I took what felt like my third deep breath of the night and crept towards the coin. Well, in reality, I probably just stumbled over there, but it felt like creeping because I was, after all, operating after a night of heavy drinking.

Just as I was about to make eye contact with either the face or architectural wonder on one of the most useless collections of metal in the world, I heard a screeching sound introduce itself from my bed-side table. I was momentarily confused. Last I had checked, I had disposed of all my stolen parrots in a socially acceptable manner.

Oh, snap. It was just my phone making noises—the last reminder I had of poor Corky who had to be forced to be remembered only in reminder-form because he had been a little too judgmental and loud-mouthy over the light and dark choices that had in fact been a point of mental constipation for several weeks now.

I retrieved my phone from its perch atop the table and found an extremely pretty face staring back at me. She was neither light nor dark—her complexion was the perfect amber combination. As I stared at the photo, all my indecision melted away and was replaced, instead, by a feeling of total enlightenment.

I drunkenly, yet diligently, tapped away at the screen with the pre-determined pattern to shut the phone alarm the fuck up. As soon as I was through I composed a mass-text to the few friends who still hung out with me given my lifestyle choices:

‘yo dudes…. i totes forgot that we were doin that new belgium party tonight. i hope no one’s bringin the fat tire cuz i got a 12-pack of that shit sitting in my fridge! see y’all in 15!’

After getting the satisfying clicks and beeps that my spammy message had actually infiltrated everyone else’s phone, I headed to my fridge and grabbed the six pack of Amber Ale and headed down the stairs. Looks like I was not going to have to pigeonhole myself to a certain type of beer, tonight.