Hungover Weekend

Sometimes life imitates art. Friday night a few friends and I went to see the hilarious new film “The Hangover”. Sunday morning I was nursing a raging hangover on one of those “how the hell did we get here?” mornings.

“The Hangover” is, to put it simply, brilliant. The concept—a Vegas stag party gone wrong—may sound basic and predictable, but the plot is executed flawlessly, providing enough shock to keep things moving along quickly. And the dialogue between the characters is spectacular. Almost all of my friends—even those who saw the flick with their respective girlfriends or with other groups of friends—have been tossing quotes back and forth since Friday night, nearly jamming up Facebook with rapid-fire wall posts, status updates, and comments. Most enjoyable, at least for me, is the sense of familiarity you feel while watching three guys try to piece together their night. All of us have had those bad, blackout-riddled binges, and there is an instant connection built between the audience and the characters because of this. On the way home that night, Chappy and I started talking about personal “WTF?” mornings that were in some way comparable to the one in the movie (the first thing that came to mind for me was my Sunday morning at Ohio University several years ago).

Saturday Tony, Dupa, Chappy, myself, and others congregated at South Side 86 in the South Side to watch what was supposed to be a definitive Penguins victory in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Unfortunately no one seemed to tell the Pens that there was a game, and we had to endure watching a 5-0 scraping. Maybe we had a premonition of what was going to happen; during the first intermission, most of our large party moved up the street to Rumshakers for $2 shots. The first round was a double round of Grape Bombs (grape vodka and Red Bull). Mitch Canada handed them out two at a time, and no one could pretend any of this was going to turn out well.

As we were arriving earlier, the male bartender was tossing a guy out onto the sidewalk. The tossee, a middle-aged man who seemed to be a live preview of how drunk the rest of us would soon be, had received fifty cents in change after paying for a beer. Feeling generous, he announced to the two bartenders, “THIS one is for you, and THIS one is for you!” while sliding one quarter in each of their directions. Neither of them was amused by this, and moments later he was flying across the sidewalk.

One of our boys, “Jay Swag,” had inexplicably come to the South Side dressed in a white tee. Normally you won’t get through the door at Rumshakers in this attire, but the place was still empty and the bouncers were being lax (hence the bartender removing the aforementioned drunken philanthropist himself). The bartender went into the back and brought out a green Rumshakers t-shirt leftover from St. Patty’s Day, and gave it to Swag to wear. Feeling jealous, I asked if he had any 2XLs in the back. He disappeared into the back room and then came back with one. It was quite possibly the best $10 I spent all night.

LRG eventually joined us, which just meant more rounds of shots being bought and handed out. During one round, he pointed towards the female bartender working that night, and made it known that he was impressed by her…measurements. This is a standard drunken pastime of LRG’s, so I decided to cut through the rigmarole. I called her over:

Me: “Excuse me, but do you have a boyfriend?”
Her: *a little stunned* “Uh, no.”
Me: “Okay, my buddy right here *pointing at LRG* is a little shy, but he thinks you’re really hot, and would like to meet you.”

I then shoved LRG towards the bar, and walked away chuckling as they shook hands.

Soon we were stumbling our way back down the street to Jimmy D’s, and then to the White Eagle Inn. At the Eagle we caught up with our friend “Belle”. About 5’7” with long blonde hair, Belle may look like a girly-girl, but she’s one of the boys. She drinks, parties, and curses as hard as the rest of us; all of which made it that much funnier that she had caught the bouquet at a wedding earlier in the night. But—in true “On the Rocks” style—Belle turned this symbol of trite-tradition into a prop, bringing it with her to the bar for the noble cause of sheer humor. Wearing a sleek black dress and high heels, and armed with a beer bottle in one hand and a wedding bouquet in the other, she rocked out in a dive bar full of cigarette smoke and gruff looking guys with paint and sweat stained blue collars.

“New from Mattel, it’s ‘Pittsburgh Barbie’! Whether squatting behind a car parked off of Carson Street, devouring a ‘Cap with egg’ at Primanti’s, or dancing on the bar at Calico Jack’s in a miniskirt, this girl is all Burgh! ‘Pittsburgh Barbie’ comes complete with her own Steelers jersey, IC Light bottle, and public intoxication citation!”

I have not yet been able to confirm that we took more shots at the White Eagle, but I feel certain that we did, based on the following:

• The Eagle is renowned amongst the area’s drinkers for selling Rocket Fuel by the pitcher;
• My memory of the evening has large holes in it, beginning soon after we arrived at the Eagle;
• No matter how accomplished and intelligent any particular one of us may be while sober, when we drink we replace the thought “I should slow down” with “I’M STILL STANDING! MORE BOOZE!”
• I don’t remember, but have video evidence of, Dupa and Belle dancing; he would cast out an imaginary fishing line, and she would get “hooked”, cupping her hands on either side of her face and flaring them out to mimic fish gills. He would then reel in the imaginary line as she danced towards him, wriggling like a freshwater bass.

At bar close we walked to Mike & Tony’s for gyros (I choked down two in about the same space of time that it would take most people to eat only one), then caught a cab. For some never-to-be-determined reason, we told the driver to take us back to Dupa’s apartment instead of mine, which was closer. Sunday morning I awoke facedown on one of his couches, without much recollection of anything past the gyros.

I did, however, have a green Rumshakers t-shirt.

Is It Really Real?

“Is it real son, is it really real son
let me know it's real son, if it's really real
something I could feel son, load it up and kill one
want it raw deal son, if it's really real”
--Method Man, “Bring the Pain”

I have fielded this question a few times now, and I suppose it’s to be expected. Although I always provide the whole truth as I know it to be, some of my stories are a bit extraordinary; this, of course, is exactly why I choose to share them. But it’s also the reason why some people question the authenticity. Even the woman who perhaps knows me better than anyone else, my mother, said some months ago, “I read your blog about Ohio University. What an imagination you have!”

“Umm, Mom…That all actually happened.”

“It did?”

“Yeah. All true.”

*silence as she wonders where she went wrong as a parent*

Some friends have asked how I manage to remember as many details as I do, since I’m typically drinking heavily at the time that the events in question take place. I can’t provide a very definitive answer here, other than to say that I’ve always been very observant of my surroundings. Even at the age of four I was giving my mother directions home from the bowling alley, store, etc. Also, as I’m sure most partiers out there know, drinking stories are often a collaborative effort. The best part of any “day after” is lying around a living room with your friends, piecing together events of the night before. You may remember 30% of a story, while your buddy has another 30% that you had forgotten (or not known at all). That’s usually the point at which you find out some of the dumber things you’ve done. Last Saturday, when I told Esq about the claim he had made the previous day, he laughed himself silly for nearly five minutes straight.

The stranger reaction, though, is when people read further into my tales than need be. One person said to me, due to my many stories of fumbling opportunities with girls, “Wow, you never get any!” While I can see how you might make that assumption (I mean, come on; “You’re really tall”??), it’s not true. More often than not, I try to keep my hookups off this page. Why violate the trust of an “associate” just to brag? Besides, what’s more entertaining to read: a story of how I missed out on a girl because I drank myself beyond the point of understandable speech, or a story of how I ended up in a hotel stairwell with a married woman? Okay, bad example.

The funniest instance of this occurred the other day. While talking to Breitling, he mentioned something a mutual acquaintance had told him. “She said, ‘[The D.e.f.i.] came into my bar one time, and now he’s in love with me.’” She didn’t give him any evidence to support her claim, so I can only guess as to what led her to believe this. Aside from one night of hanging out with her and mutual friends, I have had no real interaction with this girl. I lightly referred to her on this page a couple of times, so maybe she read that and decided that it was my way of serenading her? A friend of ours and I had a short, idle conversation about her once; maybe she thought that I was trying to find out her ring size?

Whatever the case may be, the sheer delusion of it all is hilarious. Even someone as fantastic, revered, and modest as me is guilty of a little narcissism from time to time; but, at the end of the day (or when I sober up the next morning) I always find myself back in reality, feet firmly on the ground.

All you have to do, baby girl, is ask yourself, “Is it really real?”

The Ohio University Halloween (Pt. 2)

[The conclusion of my Ohio U. Halloween story (read Part 1). When we left our fearless explorers from W&J (T.C., Tony, and yours truly), they were at an off-campus house party, sober and in civilian clothing, when they made the executive decision to forge off on their own, to Court Street.]

Court Street is effectively the Ohio U. version of New Orleans’ Bourbon Street. It is a straight, wide street lined with bars, and for Halloween they block it off at either end of a mile-long stretch. Oh yeah.

T.C., Tony, and I waded through the inebriated masses of skin and costumes, and I suddenly remembered that I had come armed with a cameraphone. I decided to get some good use out of it, and snapped a few pictures as we walked up the street. After a block or two, we chose the nearest bar. It was a typical, nondescript college pub, with booths along the right wall, a large bar running the length of the left wall, and TV sets in a few different locations. We sat down at the bar, and ordered six shots of Jaeger. It was business time.

Prominent among the revelers in this bar, was a girl wearing a Hooters girl costume. And she was wearing it convincingly (i.e., she was blessed with large “chesticles,” as Tony likes to call them). She and a friend (who was dressed as a female devil) came over to the bar and sat to the left of me. I felt a tap on my left shoulder, and turned around to find the Devil-Woman smiling at me. “Hey!” she slurred. Pointing to her friend, she said, “Put your face in her cleavage and go ‘bbbrrrbbb!’” I was speechless. This girl, without any provocation, had just asked me to motorboat her friend. I looked at Hooters Girl, who seemed uneasy about her friend’s sudden desire to see a complete stranger stick his face between her breasts in a crowded bar. “Do you want me to do that?” I asked. She said, meekly, “Um…not really.” I really am too nice when I’m sober.

They were fun girls, though, and I continued talking to them. Seeing that I had a cameraphone, they decided to give us a mini performance. Devil-Woman grabbed a cherry from the bartenders’ caddy on the bar, and held it in the air between them. From either side of it, they each leaned forward and shared it in a messy kiss as I snapped a picture. God bless modern technology.

We downed a few more drinks, and then made our way back out into the street. The scene was like nothing I had ever experienced before. An endless river of people flowed past, wearing a never-ending variation of costumes. And there were costume teams everywhere. More cheerleaders. More hookers. A powder puff team of girls wearing football jerseys, short shorts, ankle socks, cleats, and eye black danced in the street. Naughty cops. Naughty witches. Naughty nurses. There was even a group of naughty chefs, who were dressed in chef hats, tight white tops, short skirts, and had aprons around their waists. Why don’t girls dress like this the other 364 days of the year?

We decided to start bouncing around to different bars along the street. We entered one, and found a spectacularly-bosomed girl checking IDs at the door while wearing a low cut fairytale princess dress. I had her pose for my cameraphone; as drunk as I was getting, the picture probably looked clear as day to me then. Looking at it now, though, it’s like looking through pond water. I guess modern technology just wasn’t advanced enough for her rackage.

Being that I was drinking—beers and shots were ordered at just about every place we stopped in—my memory starts to fade in and out around this time. I know I’m forgetting more than I’m remembering, but what I remember is vivid. In one bar, I found myself sitting next to two cute, petite chicks dressed as…naughty sluts? I was unconcerned at that point. I mentioned to them the cherry show that had been performed at the first bar, but they were not impressed. “That’s nothing,” the brunette one said, as she grabbed her blonde friend and engaged her in a lingering kiss for my camera. It’s a small miracle that alcohol dulls the senses. Otherwise I might have shown them just how much I enjoyed that photo-op. It really is the ultimate compliment, ladies.

We were walking through another bar, when a random girl grabbed T.C. Being that he had a girlfriend back at W&J, I began formulating different cover stories in my head. But it turned out that she had gone to high school with him, and was now in her junior year at O.U. “Little A.” (this one is for protecting anonymity) took us downstairs to hang with her friends at the basement bar, which was a laid back scene. Dim lighting (or at least I remember it as dim), music, tables and chairs, as well as a bar with stools around it in the far corner. I vaguely remember there being couches, too, but don’t quote me on that. We drank there until last call, at which point Little A. invited us back to her and her friends’ house. This concludes my recollection of that night (save for one memory which I will get to in a moment), but not the night itself. Hello, darkness—we meet again.

I awoke around 9 the next morning, still drunk. On a floor. In a room. Alone. I looked around, and was quite certain I had no idea where I was. It seemed to be a girl’s room, complete with pink decorations, various pictures of people I didn’t know, and female clothing strewn about. I could hear male voices on the other side of the door. They seemed to be rehashing the events of the night before; I figured it was just T.C. and Tony. I turned my attention to my phone; I didn’t have my phone. “What the f...?” It wasn’t in my pocket; it wasn’t on the floor. It wasn’t on a desk or a chair. “Man,” I thought. “I hope my boys know where it is.”

I opened the door, and found myself face-to-face with two guys I had never seen before in my life. They were sitting on two couches in a living room, and seeing a 6’6” man emerge from the room caught them a little off guard. Thankfully, though, they were relaxed cats, who understood that I was as confused as they were. I found out that neither of them lived there. They were visiting a friend of theirs who lived in the house. Neither had seen a phone lying around, nor did they know my boys. I decided that I was never drinking again. Ever.

I used the house phone and tried dialing my phone, but heard nothing. No ringing anywhere. The two guys were about to hit the road, and couldn’t offer me much help. They could give me a ride, but to where? Pittsburgh? I had no idea where my peoples were, so it would have been a pointless exercise. I thanked them, and continued to try to remember anything I could about the night before. I walked into the kitchen, and looked out into the backyard. Suddenly, I remembered sitting on the back porch by myself in the dark (yeah, I worry about me sometimes, too). I walked outside, and tried calling my phone again. I heard a Nas song faintly playing nearby, and rescinded my earlier pledge of future sobriety. I called again and tracked the sound, until I found my phone sitting in the middle of the yard, on the other side of some lawn furniture. There were 16 missed calls and 10 text messages, all from the night before.

I tried calling T.C. and Tony, but got nothing from either. I walked back to T.C.’s car in the parking lot on the other side of campus, hoping they had slept there. But it was empty. I didn’t have a key, so I sat on the ground next to it for 20 minutes before my phone rang. T.C. said groggily, “Where the f*ck are you?”

As he and Tony trudged back to the parking lot, he filled me in on the end of their night:

• When we got back to Little A.’s, there was a raging party. We were drinking, when I suddenly disappeared. T.C. and Tony had no idea where I was, and tried calling me because they were heading back up to campus with some people. But they called and called, and couldn’t find me. How you miss the 6½ foot tall biracial kid in the backyard is beyond me. But it’s not like they were drinking water while I was throwing back the shots, so I cut them some slack on that point.
• They finally gave up on finding me, and walked up to campus. The people they were with got separated from them, for whatever reason. Tony, being in his “obnoxious drunk” stage of the night, decided to start dropping flying elbows on car hoods. He would run at the car yelling something like, “You think you can destroy me, bitch?” and then leap, slamming down on the hood. I think he said that, at one point, he was even standing on one hood. Fantastic judgment, that one has. He and T.C. then decided to retire to the frat house, where they found two couches in a chapter room and passed out.
  
• Tony woke up without a $50 bill in his pocket that he had begun the night with, and decided that one of the frat brothers had pick-pocketed him in his sleep. T.C. had to drag him out of there before he started shit with anyone. It took years before he finally conceded that he likely had just spent it. Crazy drunken Irishman.
  
• I found out, when I ran into Little A. months later, that it was her bedroom floor that I had slept on. She had ended up somewhere else, and didn’t even know that I had been in there.

That Sunday was a rough one. I drove half the way home, and then slept the second half while Tony drove. T.C., whose car it was, slept for the entire drive. We vowed to return the following year with more people, but never did. The damage from the night was best summed up in a conversation I had with T.C. a couple of weeks later. I had eventually gone through the pictures of the trip that were on my phone, and came to one of a beautiful blonde girl, wearing a 1920s “flapper” outfit; complete with a tight, low cut top that showed off the ample blessings that nature had bestowed upon her chest. I didn’t recognize her, so I asked him if he did.

Me: “I don't know who she is, but I love her.”
T.C.: “Buddy, that’s Little A.”
Me: “Who?”

The Ohio University Halloween (Pt. 1)

It’s a Wednesday, and I’m sober. So I’m going to delve into my archives for story time (sit back, this will be a long one):

In October 2003, my good friend (we’ll call him “Tommy College,” or “T.C.”; not so much to protect his identity, but because it really pisses him off) called me with an idea. He had heard about Ohio University’s annual costumed Bacchanalia, which O.U. students and alumni downplay as a “Halloween party.” Now, I am going to assume that you’re like me; when you see the term “Halloween party,” you think “a relatively small gathering—maybe 20 to 40 people, some of whom are in costume, consuming alcohol and relaxing while music plays.” A reasonable supposition, but let me shatter it with a fact that T.C. dropped on me during that phone call: O.U.’s Halloween party is the 3^rd largest public celebration in the country, behind Times Square on New Years Eve and Mardi Gras in New Orleans. I went into involuntary spasms at the realization of what we were about to get ourselves into.

At the time, T.C. was president of his frat, which has a chapter at O.U. His idea was to call the president of O.U.’s chapter, tell him that he was coming through with some guys for the party, and graciously accept the unmitigated hospitality that would be offered by the O.U. frat brothers: beds, booze, hookers, liver transplants the following day—whatever we wanted. We’re W&J guys, after all: we would be received as liberators. I now have a sneaking suspicion that T.C. was working with the Bush Administration’s Iraq War advisors.

Tony was the only other friend of ours who we could convince to ride out with us. Some had other commitments that day. Some lacked what my high school defensive line coach called “intestinal fortitude.” Even Tony took some convincing. He didn’t commit until a friend of his, who had heard elsewhere about the famed party, said he’d be crazy not to go.

On the Saturday of the party, Tony, T.C., and I made the 3 hour drive out to Athens, Ohio. If you have ever made a trip across any stretch of Ohio, then you know just what kind of torture it is. It’s similar to the scene in Starship Troopers, where the bug drains the guy’s brains to read his mind. Ohio wanted to know what our plans were, and after 2½ hours our skulls were bone dry.

Athens is a typical college town, in that there’s more college than town. At night, the O.U. campus sits on a plateau like a glowing oasis amid the pitch black nothingness of, well...Ohio. And as we drove into the light, our jaws dropped. Block upon block of off-campus apartments and houses, teeming with people. And, especially, with girls scantily-clad in “costumes.” Girls on the porches. On the sidewalks. Sticking out of windows. Drinking on rooftops. On campus it was more of the same, every single block crawling with people. Drunk people. In costumes. God bless America.

The three of us had decided not to get dressed up, and as we walked from the parking lot to the frat house, we realized that we stuck out like sore thumbs. When I say everyone was in costume, I don’t mean “everyone” in a generic sense. I’m speaking literally here. EVERYONE. Except for the three W&J guys.

T.C. called the president to notify him of our arrival, and we stood outside of the frat house while we waited for him to come meet us. A foursome of attractive girls dressed as naughty girl scouts strode up the walkway (I still say in movie-like slow motion). One stopped to offer us some of the goodies in her “cookie box,” a shoe box which had been modified to match her outfit. She opened the top and revealed a large assortment of condoms. Tony and I each took one, and she smiled at us as she departed, catching up with her friends as they walked into the house and up the stairs. The look on Tony’s face was that of a man who had found heaven.

This was my first exposure to team costuming, but certainly not my last. After Frat Prez came down to get us, he took us upstairs to a hall party where groups of cops, cheerleaders, and hookers walked to and fro. He introduced us to his girlfriend, who herself was part of a group of…well, it was never made quite clear what their costumes were. Fedoras, pinstriped dress shirts, miniskirts, thigh-high stockings with garters, and high heels; kind of a cross between hookers and ‘30s gangsters. Whatever it was that they were going for, they achieved it beautifully.

They took us to an off-campus house party, but the fact that we knew no one aside from Frat Prez was readily apparent. And he was distracted by his friends, which left us as the un-costumed unknowns crashing the party. Not an easy conversation starter. Plus we were all sober. We had been handed beers at the house party, but they were the first drops of alcohol we had touched all night. We decided to journey directly to the epicenter of the craziness: Court Street.

(to be continued...)