Logorrhea

Not drinking at parties has taught me a few things. First, that as people continue to drink they talk louder. Second, that as they continue to drink they become more impassioned. And third, that they will fiercely defend their ideas and passions no matter how little sense they make - and loudly.

Last night I went with the Profuser to his girlfriend's sister's boyfriend's birthday party. Conveniently, for me, it was held at the Profuser's lady's house just down the road. The evening started out well enough, with a glass of champagne and some delicious deviled eggs. Wait, I thought you said you hadn't drank; that's right, I did have a glass of champagne - but that was all. As the night progressed, and those around me became more and more inebriated, I started to notice something funny happening. I'll preface this by saying I'm no doctor, but I recognized that the birthday boy - who we'd spotted buying alcohol inside a nearby Safeway - was suffering from a severe case of prolapsed oral labia. Words streamed from his gaping maw with an invidious recklessness, dribbling and discharging disgracefully down his chin as he decried the dumb and ignorant wretches who wasted their education pursuing a Sociology degree. I watched his words run round the room with scissors. He was rabid, fomenting at the mouth.

Politely, I sat and let him espouse his theories and his biases, waiting for the moment I'd let him know I was one of the dumb and ignorant fools with a Sociology degree. Once I told him, he quickly shed his embarrassment - what little of it there was, anyway - and then continued to qualify his claims. It's my birthday I'll decry if I want to, decry if I want to. I told him I agreed with him in some senses, and that he was certainly entitled to his own opinion, but much like any other discipline - you get out what you put in. I cited Michel Foucault to try and impress upon him the intellectual significance a sociologist might have, but he began talking about the hard sciences; things like physics and advanced mathematics. Maybe I should've said Marx, or showed him my hard science. It was then I began to notice that his eyes looked too far apart - almost reptilian - as if they'd slide off the sides of his face and get swallowed by his ear holes. His glasses seemed to augment this somehow. His eyes seeming to drift toward the edges of the frames, like two poorly composed photographs. He carried on hissing, with his right hand over his heart, pledging allegiance to his beloved sciences. I allowed the conversation to end by no longer giving him my attention. He wasn't really talking to me anyway - he was thinking aloud.

I started conversation with a gentleman named Mohit, whom I found to be an enjoyable and refreshing companion. Free from hard convictions - and affable too - he and I talked about Burning Man; he'd been twice. We regaled one another with tales of serendipity, poetic playa profundities. I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd seen him once while at Black Rock, but who knows.

Soon we were all circled around the table and I noticed the Profuser had been infected with the birthday boy's logorrhea. Again, I'm no doctor, but in my experience, it is an illness that is highly communicable. The poor Profuser was sinking ships, fleets. He expressed the idea of a future where human bigotry and racism would be lessened by the homogenizing affect of increased interbreeding; he had a dream. No sooner had he breathed the words than I saw the stoic sheen of the assassin's blade. With a hiss the birthday boy was upon him, excitedly stuttering so, so, so wait. wait. you're saying that racism will just go, just go away? Well no, that's not quite what he was saying, if you were willing to listen. The Profuser's point was that humans have a tendency to alienate others based on an easily discernible difference - such as the color of another's skin - and that if we were able to take this opportunity away from someone, it would force them to become more inventive in their racism; perhaps even compel them to confront the absurdity of their iniquity.

The drunkards though, they would have none of it. They became riotous. Who would've known that talking about race and racism would become so incendiary when alcohol was involved. I tried to help them see Prof's point, but their words trampled over me in a stampede of protest. At one point the Profuser and I were singled out for being white, as though this precluded us from understanding racism. The implication was that because we were white, we had no right to speak about it - even if we were discussing (and advocating) its attenuation. I sat there victimized and ostracized, discriminated against based on the color of my skin - in the midst of a discussion about racism of all things. It was meta. I hadn't known that being white forbade me from participating in these topics. I guess white people just don't understand discrimination. Funny, that. In my lifetime I'll see whites in America become a minority (currently predicated for 2043). Maybe I should just suspend the debate until then.

When the argument had finally ceased, the birthday boy couldn't help but resuscitate it. In one of his greatest moments of brilliance, in a last ditch effort to achieve dominion, he avowed that the physical structure of a body does not determine (or limit) its movement. This was a tangent. To show just how indeterminstic our physiology is, he leapt up out of his seat and displayed for us two radically different interpretations of walking. In one, he moved in the way that is naturally dictated by our physiology, and in the other he performed a hybrid movement of disjointed jerking and flailing onto the floor - like a breakdancer with a surplus chromosome - achieving little, if any, forward movement. See, we don't have to walk they way we do. Yes, I said, you've definitely proven that. However, even if we were to consider what you just did a variation of walking, everything you demonstrated is possible because of your physical makeup; your musculoskeletal system defines your range of motion and its expression. You were able to do that because your legs allowed you to bend in that way. He continued to argue with me and the Profuser laughed at the absurdity of his stance.

Realizing that reasoning with this individual was futile, I decided it was time that I go. I made sure to wait a little while, so that he wouldn't feel insulted on his birthday, and then I announced I'd be leaving to catch the bus in 5. It was at this moment that he chose to unleash his most deadly assault. I stood completely unarmed in the face of his wit as he said:

Sociology majors always leave first