Drunks Say the Darndest Things 5

TD: “‘Za is so good!’ should’ve made it.”
Me: “Yeah, well…You had one in there.”
TD: “Yeah, I know…”

Four years ago, it occurred to me that my drunken friends say some really stupid things. …Okay, okay; my drunken friends and I say some really stupid things. I threw together six or so quick examples to prove this thesis, and posted it without much more of a thought.

Fast-forward to January 2012; after posting a fourth edition of the now annual quotes write-up, my little-sister-from-another-mother was questioning my selection. It’s not like TD opened the blog post and was angered at finding I had published a quote of hers. No, her dispute was over the choice I had made among her personal catalog of drunken quotes. She wasn’t uptight over me putting one of her goofier moments on the internet; she was critical that it wasn’t the goofiest moment of hers that I could have used.

These are my friends. And this is just one of the many reasons why I love them.

In 2011, I finally had the good sense to keep a log on my phone of specific quotes as they happened—or, to be more accurate, I tried to keep a log. The best laid plans of mice and blotto men… This past year I was much better at it, and I compiled quite the hitlist for this edition of DSTDT in the process. If you said something to me (or around me) that isn’t listed below, you probably weren’t as funny as you thought. …Or I was just a lot drunker than you thought.

Without much further ado, here are more moments of drunken brilliance and brilliant drunkeness in my crew’s endless pursuit of the perfect buzz.

• This past St. Patrick’s Day, our girl Belle was injured before a single Car Bomb had been detonated. As she bled from Eve’s wound, we did our best to make her forget about it fun of her for it. While she and Jay Swag played against TJ and Rackt on Shannon’s W&J-Black-and-Red cornhole set, a thought came over me. “Wait…” I said, interrupting TJ’s throw. “Shouldn’t Belle be throwing the red bags?”
  
  
• One night in late summer, TJ called me to share one of his typically insane stories, the kind that only he could find himself involved in. The female antagonist in the tale, who had quite literally gone insane, was seemingly driven over the edge by Swag’s refusal to date her. A little later that night, I texted the man in question for background on this drama.
  
  Me: “Apparently your penis is the source of much magic and sorcery.”
  Swag: “lol. Just talked to [TJ] for 20 mins. Holy fuck.”
  Me: “Yeah. Insanity. All caused by you not being freer with the velvet rope you call a zipper.”
  Swag: “lol. She’s been avoiding me like the plague.
  A) I don’t care.
  B) You’re not attractive.
  C) I don’t play games, I’m a grown ass man.”
  Me: “LOL. The force is strong in this one.”
  Swag: “She’s stupid. You boob bang someone one time and they have to catch feelings. *sigh*”
  
  
• My girl Steph came into town in late April to visit and show off her very prominent baby bump. She gathered about 12 of her friends for dinner one night, including TJ, Dupa, and me. As we all B.S.’d around the table, her friend Molly brought up a cultural difference between companies in Europe and those here in the states: some European corporations keep beds in their offices so that employees can take naps. I immediately saw the number 1 reason why this idea would never work in the US. “There are too many sexual harassment laws for me to have a bed in my office.”
  
  
• During our night of revelry in Ybor City, TK uncovered a drinking issue that seems specific to massage therapists. Rackt was trying to describe an injury she had suffered at CrossFit, and as she stumbled in detailing the location of the strain, TK began rattling off Latin-worded diagnoses. Catching himself, he stopped and explained, “When I get drunk I start naming muscles.”
  
  
• As TK and I sat taking in the scene at Gaspar’s Grotto later in the night, a fella at the other end of the bar was romancin’ and b-boy stancin’. When he walked past a cute emo girl who was standing near us, drinking from a glass of clear liquid, he stopped to engage her in small talk.
  
  Guy: “What’re you drinking?”
  Girl: “Gin & Tonic.”
  Guy: *walking away* “Ah…classy bitch.”
  
  
• As I documented last summer, several of my friends took part in a kickball tournament one Saturday in August, and then hit the bar afterwards—hard. At Shady Grove, talk amongst some of the women in our group centered around Wall Street’s moment of glory, when an open bathroom door left him exposed in Alex’s glass-walled shower.
  
  Wall Street: “I should’ve pressed my cock against the glass.”
  Me: *sipping from my Manhattan* “If you had looked closely, you would’ve seen the imprints from all of the other guys who’ve pressed their cocks against the glass in Alex’s shower.”
  
  
• The following Monday, I texted Alex to ask if she had caught The Newsroom the night prior. But her hangover from Saturday’s fun, it seemed, had handicapped her well into the night. “I think right about then,” she texted back, “I was laying on my hardwood floor praying for god to just take me.”
  
  
• TK was barhopping around St. Pete and Treasure Island one night last year, and in doing so managed to spill a drink on his shirt. When he happened upon a random, unattractive chick, she called him out.
  
  Chick: “Is that cum on your shirt?”
  TK: “No, but you want some on your face?”
  Chick: “Yeah!”
  TK: *blank stare*
  
  
• With cold germs and flu bugs wreaking havoc on the East Coast in the month of December, all three of my team members at work were sick at different times during a two-week period. Since all four of us sit in the same small, open-plan section of the office, it was a minor miracle that I avoided coming down with something. When this fact occurred to my manager, she asked, “How didn’t YOU get sick?” With a grin, I answered, “I disinfect myself every night.”
  
  
• The Saturday before NYE found several of us at TD & Boy Toy’s house for a night day of boozing. During a furious game of (drunken) Catch Phrase, Boy Toy tossed out clues to try to bring his teammates closer to his given word. TD wasn’t on his team, but wasn’t about to let that—or inhibitions—stop her.
  
  Boy Toy: “Uh…ok. When I come to something, I come…?”
  TD: “BUCKETS!”
  
  
• My friend Ton’s wedding was a blur of booze, dancing, lewd behavior in the photo booth, and more booze, all in the wilds of Eastern Ohio. The next morning I awoke in a room at the Days Inn—next to a pizza, courtesy of Dupa. Although my travelling companion hadn’t passed out quite as early as I had, his recollection of the previous night’s events was no less clouded. He hopped out of his bed and walked into the bathroom to take a shower. As I put the pizza box on the dresser, Dupa called out, “Apparently I ate a piece of pizza while pissing; there’s a crust in here.”
  
  
• Jay Swag’s 30th birthday was a three-day murder scene, where everyone put his or her liver in a pit and ordered it to put the lotion—and a can of Four Loko Watermelon—in the basket. As things got underway on Thursday evening, I cracked open a Loko, sat down on the couch, and snapped a picture of the can with my phone. When everyone in the room stared at me, I looked up and explained, “I’m going to want to know why tomorrow.”
  
  
• The pace of our intake hadn’t slowed down one bit by the following Saturday. Collette’s drunk wasn’t satisfied with sadistically torturing her internal organs; it even projected racist stereotypes onto her.She asked for a sip of my Loko, having never had tried it before. She smacked her lips, examining the flavor. “Is that watermelon,” she asked, “or does it just taste like that because I’m Black?”
  

Country Grammar

Close your eyes. Now, in terms of the planning details, describe what you would consider to be the perfect wedding.

If you’re a female, odds are good that you just painted a picture that involved a marble-and-gold-trimmed hall filled with thousands of guests, immaculate flower arrangements, elaborate silk gowns, one or more men on horseback, and doves—carrying wreathes of heather woven into hearts—flying in formation to spell out the names of you and your groom, followed by more that spell “Forever”.

If you’re a male, odds are you ignored the exercise altogether. You probably countered with, “Trick question!” Then you cracked open a beer and turned on a playoff game.

And, of course, the guys were right. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume there is such a thing as “the perfect wedding”. I propose that: (a.) the women were still miles off; and (b.) I attended just about the closest thing to it two Saturdays ago.

My boy Ton has always been an original. A 6’1”, 300-plus-pound Ohio farmboy with a heart of gold and the Pillsbury Dough Boy’s giggle, he’s the type of guy who’s more likely to laugh off a stranger’s taunt—and skate circles around him on Heelys in the process—than to crack heads just for the sake of cracking heads. It follows logic then that, when he finally managed to find himself a woman worthy of wearing his ring, their big day would be done a little differently than how tradition might dictate.

This started with the instructions that were included with the invitations. While the decorative pink cardstock and fuchsia calligraphy were straight out of a 14-year-old’s diary [Note: This isn’t a knock on his wife; it’s a knock on women, in general...], they included at least one specific guideline that I had never seen before in an invitation of its kind: “Dress comfortably”. The ceremony and reception, it turned out, would be held at Ton’s house in Ohio. And not just at his house, but in his barn. Guests were invited to either make reservations at a nearby Days Inn…or to camp out on his property.

Dupa and I decided not to be cowboys, and booked a hotel room. On the Monday before the wedding, we discussed the other logistics and details via texts, with jovial bemusement.

Me: “What are you wearing? Invite sounds like people won’t be wearing suits.”
Dupa: “Yeah not a suit, maybe flip flops, shorts and a beater?”
Me: “Well, it IS a wedding. Got to at least add a trucker hat. #OhioFormal”
Me: “Maybe a button down shirt and jeans?”
Dupa: “Jeans? Wtf it’ll be hot”
Me: “Hadn’t looked at a forecast.”
Dupa: “Lock it up!”
Me: “Shit, so we’re really wearing shorts to this wedding?”

We consulted TK, the best man. He said that, really, anything short of assless chaps was fair game; that being said, the groomsmen would still be wearing tuxes. This left quite a bit of leeway. As a result, when we arrived I was wearing a white dress shirt, black dress pants, and dress shoes. My traveling companion had on a dress shirt, dress pants, flip flops, and a rainbow-colored serape (it was Cinco de Mayo, after all).

Ton’s house sits on a road…and that concludes the list of things that makes it comparable to my way of life. The road itself is gravel, and cuts through fields and untamed wilderness in Southeastern Ohio. Looking in any direction from his house, you don’t see any other homes for (literal) miles. So far as I know, he doesn’t own any crops or livestock, but he certainly has the property to do so if he chose. As we parked, approximately 200 people milled about the barn and road, in every combination of attire between the “formal” and “casual” extremes on the dress scale. Almost all of the women wore a dress of some sort. The men, though… Some wore suits, some wore t-shirts; Ton’s brother-in-law wore a dress shirt, tie, cargo shorts, and sneakers. It was actually beautiful to see so much variety and freedom of individual expression.

Lined up outside the barn [which, for my fellow city slickers, looked more like a large garage than a classic “barn”] were coolers filled with cans of Bud, Bud Light, Yuengling, and Yuengling Light. Just inside the first of three garage doors along the face of the structure was a small bar where you could order wine and liquor. The bar was manned by a little old man in a black dress shirt with an orange and red western scene of horses racing freely across a desert plain. Pimpin’.

We were all instructed to find seats among the rows of picnic tables arranged inside the barn, and the ceremony began. As TK and the maid-of-honor two-stepped down the aisle, I heard someone crack open a can of beer somewhere in the room. I finished my first can of Bud Light as Ton and his wife exchanged vows; I considered opening my backup can that was sitting on the table, but I didn’t want to be that guy. Once the groom had kissed his bride as commanded by the minister, I discreetly cracked it open amongst the roar of applause and cheers.

Before dinner was served, we had to send some people to the beer store for a re-up; 21 cases had met their maker. It mattered little to me, though, as I had switched to gin & tonics, a much more suitable drink when wearing dress clothes outside on a warm spring day. And Crazy Horse, the bartender, was pouring a liberal mix into those 8 oz. Dixie cups. I tore through dinner (homemade barbecue!) while laughing with friends at a table on a patio, enjoying the camaraderie and trying not to stare at my boys’ girlfriends’ chests. Some of our group played “Bang, Marry, Kill” using the wedding guests at the table next to ours (Dupa: “I’d bang the younger chick, kill the older chick, and marry the guy.”). Our buddy Kyle made a run to the bar, and when he came back with a new G&T for me, it was in a 16 oz. cup. They had run out of the smaller cups. And yet, it seemed Crazy Horse had still used the same amount of tonic as he had been putting into the 8 oz. versions.

Viva Ohio!

It had only just dawned on most of us the prior night that TK’s role as best man meant he’d be making the traditional toast. This could only mean good things. And, sure enough, he didn’t disappoint. During the speech, he produced a cocktail shaker, shot glasses, cans of Red Bull, and two flasks from a bag; then he mixed together a batch of Vegas Bombs and distributed them to the wedding party. As they raised their glasses, and the rest of the wedding raised ours, TK closed his toast with, “Here’s to heat—not the kind that burns down buildings, but the kind that brings down panties.”

The dichotomy of crowd reactions was unavoidable; everyone 15-45 years old cracked up, and everyone 46 and older sucked their teeth in (unconvincing) disgust. TK gave less than a standard-measure “fuck”. He brought the leftover Vegas bombs out to us as the party resumed following the maid of honor’s speech. A short while later, TK appeared again, this time carrying a fifth of Patron and an air of determination. “We’re finishing this today.” It took all of 15 minutes for his goal to be realized. The bottle was soon dry, after being passed around a group of about five of us. Even Dupa, who had stayed away from tequila since spring break his senior year, took a swig. There’s a certain fearlessness that comes with drinking miles away from all civilization.

As you might have predicted, things started getting out of control from there on.

• Not long thereafter, several rows of tables were removed from the barn to create a dance floor. As things started getting funky, our friend Shafe’s girlfriend convinced Crazy Horse to let her wear his shirt. She then bopped around the dance floor in the shirt comically, winning the heart of every guy around. At one point I leaned over to Kyle and said, “The only woman here that I want to bang right now is Shafe’s girlfriend.”
• When I recounted that anecdote to Dupa during the drive home the next afternoon, he replied, “Buddy, you weren’t alone in that sentiment.”
• As for the Polish madman, he quickly got wild on the dance floor in typical fashion. That led to the mother of the groom pulling him to the side and politely asking him to pull his pants back up, saying bluntly, “There are kids around.”
• We discovered the photo booth. Kyle and I took a series of random, mildly-homoerotic shots; Dupa and two of our other friends did the same. Our boy and his girl snapped a series of shots, after which they sheepishly showed us their clips, saying, “We didn’t know these were going into the wedding book!” In the last of the string of four pics, our friend was clearly groping his girl’s titty from behind, while giving the camera an equally-raunchy smile.

• As good as that was, though, they were outdone by a random couple at the party, whose photo booth pictures were circulated the next day. The first two pics were normal silliness, but in the third the guy lifted up his gal, who supplied the camera with a full-on, panties-full-off beaver shot.
• I awoke early the next morning to a pizza box snuggled close in my hotel bed. Dupa had ordered a pie after we’d (miraculously) gotten back to the hotel, but I was passed out before it arrived. He therefore ate half and tucked the other half in next to me. I tossed it on the ground, stumbled to the bathroom, and then went back to bed.
• A few hours later I awoke, asked Dupa where the pizza on the floor had come from, and then munched on a slice while we gathered our stuff up and checked out.

Those country boys know how to do a wedding.