The Toast

A toast, sons and daughters, a toast. I’m head of this family and as such I’d like to share some thoughts with y’all. The young cannonball there, little Gene, comes up to me this afternoon and asks, what does joy mean, grandad? Well, I been pondering ever since and now I’m ready to tell.

Joy, people, is cracking open a bottle of good liquor and drinking it down as God intended without waste of water. Joy is goosing that sucker from top to bottom before falling out on the street and into the arms of the first woman you can afford, and let me tell you that when you’re as old and drunk and repulsive as I like to consider myself to be, that woman ain’t cheap.

Joy is losing the right woman, then going out and finding a wrong one every damn day instead. Joy is not caring one bit where that woman is or who she’s with or if she’s dead or alive because you’ve got everything she wants and there ain’t no way she’s ever coming back and asking for it. It don’t matter if you can’t stand to look in your children’s faces, or if you wake up every night crying; just so long as you’ve won.

Let me tell y’all that that, that, is what Joy is. Knowing that someone tore your heart out to make you sorry, then finding you’ve got no sorrow left. No sorrow, no love, no inhibitions, nothing. Except for hatred, ain’t nothing stronger than that. And that knowledge brings me Joy.

So here’s to Gigantic Gerry, good luck to you son.

And here’s to Joy, and to life at the bottom.