Atomic Chicken of Death

Saturday night

I coordinated with TheRock and some other people and the plan was pretty simple. 6PM warm up at the Hub in Ikebukuro, 6:30 some more friends of TheRock would show up and some friends of mine and then we would all decamp to an Izakaya for merriment and what was sure to be heavy alcohol consumption.
Well, Mission accomplished kids.

I went for a run around 3PM, a good run that left me exhausted. I got home, stripped the clothes off and poured myself a bulldog (Grapefruit juice and vodka), and to facilitate my speedy re-hydration, I mixed this with some Gatorade, because I am really healthy like that.

I was running late and mailed TheRock adjusting my ETA.
The Lateness was unavoidable. I was mixing a full bottle of Eric’s Fun Juice to take out with me to the Izakaya. Eric’s fun juice is new, and its basically Grape fruit juice, some pocari sweat, a little apple juice all mixed with 190 proof Polish vodka. This Vodka has a flammable warning label on the front of the bottle for Gods sake.
If you know me, then you know it was love at first site.

So after getting the mixture prepared and making sure I was wearing pants, I popped over to Ikebukuro.

630PM, I cruise into the Hub and give it a once over telling the waitress “No, I’m not alone (sort of sneering at her, bitch, of course I’m not alone), my friends are here”. I then quickly deduced that actually my friends werent there and I had to turn around and walk out looking not only like a fucking liar but sort of a sad dumb ass to boot.
I text TheRock.

Eric-“Hey, Which Hub are you in?”
TheRock-“Big one downstairs near my house.”
Eric-“I was just in there and didn’t see you.”
TheRock- “Thats because we are running late. Be there in 10 minutes.”
Eric- “Fucking Liar.”

I hate waiting alone in bars, or anyplace for that matter, for people to show up. I guess this stems from me naturally distrusting everyone and thinking I’ve been lured into an attempt on my life. People should wait for me damnit! Me ego CANNOT take the pounding!

Not only was TheRock late, but the two friends I invited were late as well. Finally they show up though, I barely greet them before turning on my heels and quickly leading them down the street toward the bar. I was in desperate need of a drink, my buzz from the after run cocktail already disappearing. I was glaring at the people working the street trying to pull customers into their respective restaurants and, I snarled at a Filipino girl that offered me a massage. She flinched and then quickly moved away.

Down in the Hub, I spot TheRock, JGL (Jeff Goldblum London, because he looks like a younger, darker,Jeff Goldblum and is from London) this other guy I don’t know well but have met around, I’ll call him Doctorhats (he always takes peoples hats and tries them on. I know, I hate that shit too), all of them at the bar. I go up, punch TheRock in the arm by way of greeting as he reaches out and takes the “tower beer” from the Bartender and grabs some glasses.

“Did you see the uglies?” He asks me.

“Who? No. You remember these two?” I gesture toward my friend Ta-chan1 and her friend Ta-Chan2.

TheRock sort of looks them over. “yeah, I think….god my girls are ugly. They are those three, yeah, the ugly ones at the table alone.”

We all crowd around the table where his 3 uglies are waiting and he is right, they are not good looking.
Ugly1 is fat. Thats usually a deal breaker, especially here in Japan, especially sober, but beyond that, she also looks a lot like a botched Miss Piggy/Manatee cyborg.
Ugly2 is fine below the neck but then has the face of a giant squid. Almost no eyes and a mouth devoid of real lips, with sharp looking nashing teeth. It was like 20,000 leagues under the sea every time she spoke.
Ugly3 vaguely resembles Jack the Pumpkin King and is wearing an old looking button up shirt that’s color I can only describe as a nice shade of Vomit Green.

“Rock, I am not impressed with this.” I say shaking my head, happy this is not my fault.

“Neither am I.” he then turns away and says to everyone “OK down the beers, our reservation at the Izakaya started….now.”

720PM, Some Izakaya in the same area. Not my style. Its just a big room with tables, no partitions, the menu is bunk, but we get nomihodai or all you can drink and I refuse to talk to anyone, especially Ugly 2 and 3 sitting across from me untill I have beer in my system.

My first two beers vanish quickly and I order more. I have the bottle of “Eric’s Fun juice” in a bag under the table and assessing the situation, first consider just getting up and leaving because the prospect of roaming the streets alone getting destroyed comes off as more appealing than my current set of cirsumstances, then I change my mind, go to the toilet with the bottle and take two long drinks from it.
Damn.
Strong.

Back at the table some cabbage arrives and everyone is talking and mixing and getting to know each other. Doctorhats is screaming about being a Jew and JGL is screaming back but I don’t understand what he is saying. I grind my teeth waiting for the alcohol to kick in and do its job.

745PM , JGL and Doctorhats sing a rendition of A whole new world, complete with gestures. This is so disturbing I actually try to start a conversation with Ugly2.
Eric-“Did we order food?”
Ugly2-“yeah, I think.” She looks perplexed.”Can you use chopsticks?”
Eric-“Can you spell your own name? Look did we order food?”
Ugly2-“Where are you from? Eat some Cabbage? You dont like Cabbage?” She says this, a wounded expression on her face. I cant handle this shit and I start chewing on my teeth.
TheRock leans down from his part of the table and mumbles what might have been an apology.

8PM, The waitress brings out this dish, white plate with a single medium sized chicken wing on it. I was to learn later, this is called Habanero chicken and is Hot as fuck. Also on the plate is a plastic glove, like you would wear for dying your hair, or conducting a forensic examination or giving someone an enema (yay!). The glove troubles me. JGL puts it on and I catch a little glimmer in his eye as he lifts the chicken wing up to feed it to Doctorhats and YES, I find this in conjunction with the Show tunes really disturbing. I see TheRock stifle a giggle and I know that something is Rotten in Denmark and it seems like Doctorhats is about be on the receiving end of a good ole fashioned Buddy fucking.
Doctorhats is really in high gear, his energy overflowing because he is at the moment the center of attention , and he lunges forward and takes a big bite out of the chicken wing and munches away.

8:01PMDoctorhats is turning red and is desperately searching for his drink. “Jesus. Jesus God that’s hot.” He is managing to keep a smile on his face. Doctorhats didnt know the chicken was going to be spicy. I guess the latex glove wasn’t a big enough hint.

8:03PM“Holy fuck someone,DEAR GOD!! Someone GIVE ME A FUCKING DRINK!” His hands are shaking and tears are pouring out of his eyes. His smile is genuinely gone. He is beginning to hyper ventilate. A beer comes, he drinks it, some snot comes out of his nose and he spills some beer then starts pushing me away. “Dude fuck, move man I need to go to the bathroom.” I move quick, and let him pass. I once witnessed my friend in Germany, when we were 15, projectile vomit onto two girls neither of us knew after he took a big bite from this Turkish kabob that had been slathered in Demon hot Crazy Sauce. I had stored that info in my “Need to remember to move” folder.

807PMJGL starts blinking rapidly. “Fuck, Fuck I think I got some of the powder in my eye.” He tries to wipe his eye off, that isn’t working, so he jumps up onto the bench, crawls over the back of it and dashes toward the toilet which is occupied and locked with Doctorhats inside. He bangs on the door. He screams. The door remains closed. Staff at the place look on concerned, they are realizing they were not prepared for this group of morons and drunks.
TheRock laughs and makes a dismissive gesture toward the half eaten chicken wing. “That isn’t even the hot one. Pussies.” I take a bite. Its hot. No theatrics but its hot.

815PM Doctorhats is back. TheRock lets him know that what he ate isn’t even the hot one.
“Man, I’m not a fucking Mexican. I’m a Jew. We don’t eat shit like that. ” JGL comes back. Eye swollen. A conversation ensues. JGL is pissed that Doctorhats took so long in the toilet. “I had to wash my mouth out with soap.”
JGL grimaces, his Goldblum like hands widely gesture. “What the fuck mate? Soap?”
“Yeah its the only way to get that oil out of your mouth.” Doctorhats is still guzzling beers, he is clearly drunk and is very loud.
JGL out of nowhere then says to the table making eye contact with each member. “Have you ever burnt your dick? I once put tiger balm on my dick.”
Eric- “yeah, I’ve done that, on accident before training. Not good.”
JGL- “No mate, I put it on and then fucked this one girl.”
Eric- I stare at him, my mind blank. “Why would….you do that?”
Beers arrive.

830PM By now I have managed to poor large doses of “Eric’s fun juice” into everyone’s cocktails and empty beer classes. Ta-chan 2 who is now sitting across from me makes a face, flinches, and asks what the hell I poured for her.
“Its a home made cocktail.”
“You mean roofies? You poured me a roofie cocktail?” she sniffs at it. I am at this point, heartly buzzed and sad that I hadnt actually filled this bottle with my own urine and the vodka. I’m drunk enough to actually think that this flower print jump suit Ta-chan2 is wearing isn’t a big fashion mistake. Im drunk enough to re-watch “GI Joe: The rise of Cobra.
“No. Its better than roofies. With this hopefully you wont forget, you’ll just be forced to live in shame remembering that you slept with him.” I point accusingly at Doctorhats who is now wearing two peoples hats at the same time and waving his arms around wildly in the air. Probably not his best moment.
“What the hell are you talking about?” She rolls her eyes and continues drinking it.

By the time we leave the Izakaya and head to another bar, I am shit housed.

At the next bar, little happened that hasn’t happened before and my memory now is some kind of drunken montage to the theme music from Cheers.
-Doctorhats walks around the bar like a man possessed, hitting on everyone despite having a booty call, with one of the bar staff, in 30 minutes. He actually hits on another staff girl while his booty call looks on her mouth agape, too stunned to interrupt. She still leaves with him.
-TheRock aggressively boozes Ugly2 while aggressively boozing himself.
-JGL disappears with some girl that came out of nowhere and actually tried on sunglasses JGL was holding, that were mine. She didn’t find it funny when I told her, honestly beaming with what I thought was a hilarious story , that I had dropped them in the toilet at the bar only minutes earlier. She was disgusted despite me explaining that “Hey, fuck, I washed them off. Calm down.”
-Tachan1 and 2 took turns boozing each other with Long islands and then buying drinks for me, always something that gets you-any of you- points in my book, and then marveling as those drinks quickly vanished. Apparently, they figured out I was drunk when I started performing “magic tricks” and fucking each and everyone of them up yet insisting that it was ok. “Oh…whats this behind your ear? Why its a…” and I would drop the coin. “Hold on hold on lets do it again…” Or, “Your thinking of a number between 1 and….oh fuck….” I had actually forgotten how to say the word TEN.

Its proof that there is in fact a god just because I somehow made it home and upon waking up Sunday morning felt totally fine.
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In closing….Soccer sucks. Do not talk to me about “World Cup” and expect anything other than rage and disgust.