Chasm
an excerpt

Streaming through the window, the sunlight hungrily tugged at the eyelids of one Rupert Ralston. Slowly, regretfully, and with great hesitation, he sat upright in his bed, inwardly cursing the brightness of an already half spent day. Being that last night was a Friday, many folks his age would have been out prepping themselves for an alcohol induced craniotomy wake-up call the following day. Such was surely not the case for Rupert. He was enthusiastic and vivacious, but only in his studies. The nightlife was anything but a life for him. It was a distraction only inasmuch as bawdy drunks stumbling down his street disturbed his concentration at times. Only to the extent that it excluded him in yet another way from the status quo. There are those who don’t drink because lowering one’s self to such a stupendously stupefying level of chemical dependence is below them. Cheers to the straight-edgers. There are also those that avoid the sauce because it punches your “Go Straight to Hell” ticket. Throw some wine down the gullet for Jesus. Unfortunately, ‘ole Rupert was a squatter at neither of these camps.
Instead, he just did not understand or want to partake in such behaviors. He had hit the bottle before, yes, but it certainly was not the great enlightenment that everybody claimed it to be. His problems, no matter how obfuscated by whiskey the night before, somehow always just came back the next day. So what was the point? What is practical about pretending your problems are gone when they are not? Escapism was not one of Rupert’s pastimes. In fact, he hated the concept itself. Delusional tendencies were something to be treated with medications, not reveled in. Besides, he loved routine. Not because he necessarily enjoyed monotony, but because he enjoyed milking every ounce of efficiency from his life. Why waste your time doing things you are required to do? Each day he would arise, take ten or so strides northwest from his bed and into his bathroom. Once there, his left hand would raise the toilet lid whilst his right hand would simultaneously lower his pajama pants a smidgeon, just barely enough to accomplish the job. This all happened in one fluid motion. After the toilet was open, his left hand would rise to his head, ruffle his disheveled hair as he yawned, and then drop once more towards the toilet to close the lid. This was just one of the many things that had been mastered throughout the twenty-one years of Rupert’s life. The way he saw it, it was damn fortunate that he had such superb mastery of all the simple, mundane things throughout his day-to-day routine. How much time might this free up later in his life? Probably years at least. Perhaps decades. To be in line with current health recommendations, the average male is supposed to sleep away at LEAST 25 of the meager 75.2 years his body manages to function for. This boggled Rupert’s mind. That was more years than he had under his belt, and he could surely not imagine erasing all the experiences and knowledge he had accrued over those years. If he were to spend a meager ten extra minutes a day preparing his breakfast, he would lose another 190 days of his life to worthless crap he would rather not do. So why do it? All this time freed up by his endless quest for efficiency had the unfortunate downside of leading to an obvious need for recreational activities.
As a recreational element, drinking had its moments. Nobody can deny the countless pairs of panties and boxers that have dropped throughout history as a result of drinking. If sex is not the greatest recreational activity throughout humanity’s colorful existence, God has greater joys in mind for the future. What else can fill so many holes in one’s life but that sensual embrace and the joy it produces? No sane person would avoid such rewarding play. Every sane person WOULD, however, forego the life changing experience of their urethra turning into a fire-breathing dragon, a few days after their sexual frolicking, during their regular visit to the commode. Gonorrhea definitely does NOT play nice. And that was not even the worst that could happen. He could be one of those people on the Valtrex ads. He wondered which would be preferable: being known as the guy on the Valtrex ad, or genital herpes. Was there really any difference? Either you really had the disease, or everybody thought you did. Which was better? It was obviously a question for the ages.
Having exhausted two of the three reasons for recreational drinking, there only remained the tantalizing third: fitting in. Rupert had never fit in anyway, so why start now? Wouldn’t he not fit in anyway if he wasn’t trying to get laid or trying to rid himself of his skyrocketing interest rates and debt? Drinking can only do so much to make somebody fit in. After all, you have to want to fit in before it will work, and this was not really the case. Besides, to avoid being “that weird guy,” you needed friends to drink with in the first place. Everywhere there is a copious supply of alcohol, there is “that guy” wandering around solo, causing both male and female asses to pucker and stomachs to tighten. Even alcohol cannot calm the nerves that are hit by characters of this cast. They float about the party/bar/drunken sea of people, sidling up to any ear unlucky enough not to see the danger of such an interaction. Darting in, they see the smallest pause in dialogue, not as a chance to catch one’s breath in a story as everybody else does, but as an invitation to come screw up the whole conversation. Like a flashbang, they explode onto the scene, shocking and awing all present with their awkward entrance. The group then stares at “that guy” like a herd of deer in the white light one sees before death, paralyzed, not knowing if this is all real or fake, because who honestly makes such a sudden awkward entrance but “that guy?” Nobody knows him, and nobody ever will, because he is just “that guy.” Such interactions were not exactly in the same vein as fun for Rupert, so drinking pretty much lost its luster before it had gained much momentum. His liver could breathe a sigh of relief.