When It's Poured, It Reigns

In my 31st year on this planet, my level of activity is never consistent from one weekend to the next. I’ll spend one Friday and Saturday night in sweatpants, posted up on the couch with DVR’d episodes of Archer on the TV screen, and a week later I’ll be running between multiple events, happenings, and brouhahas that all seem to be going on at once. In February I took a road trip to Buffalo on a Friday afternoon; boozed all over the town that night; woke up the next morning and came back to Pittsburgh; drowned myself in Gatorade and aspirin, took a nap, and then hosted an Anti-Valentine’s night of barhopping in Shadyside with a cast of characters on Saturday night. The weekend after that? I didn’t move from my couch for the better part of 72 hours, hacking and wheezing through a bad chest cold.

The glamour life.

Last weekend I managed to find time for both sweatpants and debauchery. Friday TJ and I kicked it low-key with food, TV, and a few drinks at my place [Dupa was supposed to be a part of this, but he pulled the “blow off your boys at the last minute to see a girl” bitch move; he has been repeatedly chastised by our circle ever since, and deservedly so]. Saturday, though, was packed with three soirees around town—as well as one in Seven Springs that I had to forfeit attending due to the obvious logistics hurdle involved. My friend “Nitschke” was beginning his night of birthday celebrations at Hofbrauhaus, where a get-together for another friend of mine was also taking place. I planned to put in appearances at each of these, and then conclude the night at Tank’s place, where he was hosting a house party.

There’s an innate risk, though, in trying to synchronize this type social event hopscotch; the plan’s choreography is dependent upon each player’s attention to detail and ability to think on his or her feet. And, unfortunately for me, Dupa has the situational awareness of Lenny from “Of Mice and Men”.

He had gone to Hofbrauhaus around 4 to meet up with Nitschke and co. I rolled down around 6, having not heard a peep out of anyone aside from TJ, who said he’d catch up with us when we got to Levelz, a bar on Carson St. in South Side. I tried calling Dupa as I walked up to the Hof, but didn’t get an answer. I shot off a text to both he and Nitschke asking where they were in the crowded German restaurant. When I’d walked around without finding anyone or getting any calls or messages back, I phoned the birthday boy. “Uhh,” he responded after picking up, “didn’t [Dupa] tell you I left? I’m walking into the White Eagle.”

Nitschke said he had specifically told Dupa to alert me to the change of venue before he left Hofbrauhaus. And not only had Dupa—who hadn’t departed when Nitschke did, but had instead trailed behind to look for the other Hof party—failed to inform me that everyone else from the first shindig had already moved onto another bar, but he had neglected to notify me when he left a few minutes later. That’s two kicks to the doorknockers that I owed my Polish associate for party fouls that weekend, and I hadn’t even been in the same building with him yet.

Nitschke said he would only be at the Eagle for one quick drink, and that I might as well head to Levelz, which would be their next destination. Since TJ was also heading there, I abandoned my plan to stop by the other Hof party and drove over to Carson St. And after I’d gotten to the bar and ordered a beer, I shot TJ a text to see what his ETA was. His response: “We’re at the White Eagle.”

I hate my friends.

I sipped on my bottle of Sam Adams for another ten minutes, while daydreaming of kicking justice out of my boys and wishing I’d worn heavier boots. Nitschke and some of his friends were the first (well, second, third, fourth, etc.) to arrive. He loaded up the jukebox with Clipse and Mos Def songs while we waited for everyone else. “You know,” I remarked to him, “You’re probably the first white boy in a V-neck sweater to ever play ‘Grindin’ on a jukebox.”

Eventually Dupa, Mitch Canada, Jay Swag, and TJ came through the door; after I dished out some verbal abuse, the party as a whole relocated to the tables in the back of the bar to watch the Penguins/Leafs game. Reaching your 30s has a definitive effect on your party behavior. In our 20s, we would’ve been loud and rambunctious, propositioning female bartenders, spilling drinks, and making management nervous. Instead the 15 of us relaxed in chairs, calmly talking sports, music, and life. One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is our conversations inevitably turning towards the topic of sex.

Jay Swag: “I could hate-fuck something right now.”
Me: “Isn’t that kind of redundant, though? I mean, knowing you, I can’t picture any of your fucking being anything but hate-fucking.”

Swag informed us that he has, in fact, engaged in “love sex”—twice. Every other time was angry and ginger.

I made my way to Tank’s around 10:30, cruising with a slight buzz and The Black Album bumping on my stereo. When I walked into a house full of familiar tipsy faces, Chief gave me the beverage menu. “Beer’s downstairs, or *pointing to bottle* we have Beam.” I eagerly went with Plan B [The odds of me ever using that phrase again? Yet another mile marker of being 30something]. I poured myself a glass and looked for a mixer, to no avail. Noticing my unsuccessful search, Chief said, “Yeah, we’re drinking ‘neat’ tonight.”

Drinking glasses of straight Jim Beam after several hours of polishing off bottles of Boston Lager during the game? I saw no good coming of this.

And, of course, none did. As a collective, we circled the drain gradually, but with certainty. Finn and I narrowly lost to Chief and Sloku on the beer pong table. Sipping from a tumbler of bourbon in between chugs of beer from felled cups was poetic illustration of the balancing act we’ve found at 30. One moment urbane and sharp, discussing the politics of the Middle East and the pitfalls of marriage; the next youthful and crude, cracking jokes about body parts and each other’s sexualities. And yet it all contributed to the whole and finished product that we had become: very, very drunk.

• One of our friends, Clay, yelled, “Meat! C’mere, Meat!” TD watched in shock as his four year old daughter came walking in from another room. “You call your daughter ‘Meat’?” Clay, however, didn’t see anything strange in it. “What? She’s my little meathead,” he said affectionately.
• Hollywood and Chief stumbled into the type of mini-feud so commonly suffered by two guys too inebriated to know what language they’re speaking. Jokes led to sack taps; sack taps led to wrestling; wrestling led to a fishhook; a fishhook led to someone’s finger being severely bitten. And, of course, that bite led to rage and a momentary disruption of the party.
• Tank, Esq, and I lit up cigars on the back porch (a terrific idea for someone recovering from a bad chest cold, by the way). Tank, typical of married people who have some alcohol in them, became convinced that finding me a girlfriend was somehow necessary for my survival. “You don’t want a girlfriend?” “I’m just not concerned with it, man. I’m not saying I don’t want one, but I'm not going to break my back to make it happen.” This wasn’t satisfactory for him, though. Seeking backup, he turned to Esq, who had been more engrossed with bringing the radio outside while we smoked. “Don’t you think he needs a girl?” Esq is engaged, and certainly in no hurry to see others go through the same headaches that he does. “Not really. Let him enjoy it while he can.”

• The only three still awake by 4 a.m.: Hollywood, who watched old sitcom reruns in the living room; Tank, who microwaved frozen snack food; and me, who ransacked the remaining buffalo chicken dip that Tank’s wife had made.

Like I said, the glamour life. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to Archer. Danger zooonnnnne.

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.

Shots for Everyone

Only in Pittsburgh can you drink a Natty Light while riding in a limo. Well, I suppose you could do it in other cities, too; but it probably would be a lot more likely to be looked at as odd. In Pittsburgh, no one even thinks twice about it.

Saturday night was a study in contrasts. We pregamed in Squirrel Hill—a relatively progressive, white collar section of the city; but we were drinking Natural Light, which is as blue-collar a beer as there is. Everyone on hand celebrating my buddy Rocky’s birthday was above college age; but we played beer pong and chugged beer at a house party, which made me reminisce on my days at W&J. The main event was held in the South Side, which in recent years has seen an influx of trendier clubs and ultra lounges; but we were going to one of the last diehard “dive bars” found on Carson St., the White Eagle Inn.

Rocky, who is Mrs. T.C.’s cousin, managed to pack the small locale with friends and family. And, in keeping with the contrasts, his family being present in no way meant that the boozing was curtailed. I had already done about five rounds of shots—most of those being Rocket Fuel, which the White Eagle sells by the pitcher—when Rocky’s mother and father arrived. The next two pitchers of Rocket Fuel shots were paid for and doled out by his mother. The woman’s a saint.

I kept a running tally of the rounds of shots saved in a note on my phone; it read “9” when I glanced at it Sunday morning. But I suspect that I neglected to update the count near the end of the night, being tipsy as I was; and I have a vague recollection of downing a shot and thinking, “Well helloooo double digits.”

Sunday…hurt.

My sparse blogging as of late isn’t due to a lack of consumption. Every weekend in my social calendar from early February through the end of April is dotted with some type of engagement. Here are some notes and quickies from the last few weeks:

• At K.C.’s birthday party, Abbie’s mom sold Girlfriend and me each a $2 raffle ticket. The grand prize of the St. Patrick's Day drawing? A basket of booze. Guess whose fingers haven’t uncrossed since.

• Chappy has made a triumphant return to the game after about four months as a “healthy scratch.” A special party was held in his honor at Carson City Saloon a couple of weeks ago, and the alcohol flowed like the Mississippi in spring [I’ll dedicate a special blog to that night at a later time]. He took the early “L” that night, but he made an appearance at the White Eagle for Rocky’s party and seemed to have his drinking sea legs solidly underneath him once again.

• Girlfriend was away on a previously-planned trip to New York City for Valentine’s Day weekend, so I spent it hanging with the fellas (TJ already recounted the events of 2/13). V Day itself saw a fist fight break out in front of us at Shady Grove (a rarity amongst a largely preppy, young professional crowd); a mile-and-a-half hike to Cricket Lounge (a local strip club), where Hollywood met up with us—and apparently knows the entire staff, from dancers to bartenders; and an end-of-the-night gorging at Village Pizza. Ahh, the bachelor’s lifestyle.

• While playing beer pong at the pregame party this past Saturday, my friend “JW” decided to add one cup to the front of each team’s standard six cup triangle. “So this is the uncircumcised version,” I observed.

• On 2/21 BlahBlahBlah had a birthday party for his wife at Sing Sing, a local piano bar. While I typically loathe piano bars, it was good to see BBB and others who were in attendance. His wife gave birth to a bouncing baby boy a couple of days before Christmas, so this was his first night out on the town in quite some time. And it ended in classic BBB fashion: he got too drunk, got upset when his wife took the car keys off him, and stormed off through the crowd—and through one tough guy who decided to mouth off in response. This, of course, then led to me drive blocking BBB backwards towards the front doors to prevent him from turning the guy’s face into a freestanding speed bag.

This Saturday will feature the annual St. Patty’s Day festivities, beginning at Shannon’s around 9 a.m. I think the headache I have right now is a sign that my body has decided to get next Sunday's hangover started early, just to make sure it matches the ungodly amount of Jameson, Guinness, and green beer I’ll be drinking.

Salud.

My Weekend: Part II—Ticket No. 667

The morning after Part I of my weekend, I woke up with three vivid indicators of what had taken place the night before:

1. a beautiful Ecuadorian (“Lady Friend”) was cuddled next to me;
2. my head was pounding like a performance of “Stomp” was taking place inside of it;
3. Chappy was facedown on the couch in my living room.

And I still had a bachelor party to go to. Ouch.

I got to the bar (where the bus would be picking up all of us) an hour or so later than most of the other guys. When I walked in, Bill (the bachelor) had just been handed his gift: a t-shirt prominently displaying a picture of him and his bride-to-be, as she placed a big white flower behind his ear. One of our friends, “Bucket,” had randomly found the picture on a photographer’s website, and I think Bill wanted to crawl under a table when he saw it immortalized on a white tee. He definitely wasn’t too eager to put it on; he avoided doing so for about a half hour, ignoring our requests and leaving the shirt in the box. He resisted, until we finally issued a threat: we, as a group, would not let him onto the bus unless he had the shirt on. Would we really leave the bachelor behind, excluding him from his own party? Yes, yes we would.

He acquiesced, though, and a potentially ugly (but hilarious) scene was avoided. While I sat at the bar catching up with the guys, none of whom I had seen in quite some time, I noticed an exceptionally cute girl sitting on the other side of the bar. I pointed her out to Justin, who said she waitressed there during the week, and that she was only like 19 or 20. After a very gentlemanly round of “I’d like to [insert adjective for sexual intercourse] that,” we moved onto other topics. Suddenly there was a loud crash, and when our heads shot around to Tony’s place at the bar, we found him holding the bottom half of a tall draught glass, with beer all around him. He had knocked over the glass and caught the bottom as the top shattered on the bar. We were only seeing the end result—Tony holding the remains of the glass upright—though, and it gave the appearance that he had smashed the glass with his bare hand. From somewhere in our group came, “Beer was so good you had to crush the glass, Hulk?”

Once we were on the bus and headed towards the South Side, it became apparent that our bladders needed attention. Some braved the tricky art of using an “empty” while onboard a moving bus, while the rest of us held out. We made an unplanned stop at the White Eagle, since it’s one of the first bars on that end of Carson St. One of our friends (Frankie) ordered some beers, and had the bartender put a straw into Tony’s. Turning to him, Frankie said, “I don’t want you to drop another one and hurt yourself.”

When we left the Eagle, our bus got bogged down in the typical Saturday night traffic that you find on Carson (put 200+ bars, clubs, and restaurants onto a single, narrow stretch of road, and that’s what happens). We continued to pound beers until arriving at Jack’s Bar, which is at the opposite end of the drag. Jack’s was crawling with girls of the slore variety, and Bill’s t-shirt quickly became an attraction. Even if a girl walked past without any initial thought of signing it, one of us would quickly grab her and push her in his direction, Sharpie in hand. Some chose to write along the bottom hem of the shirt (on either side), with comments that were…risqué. There are a lot of dirty, dirty-minded girls here in Pittsburgh (no wonder I haven’t followed through on my vow to move away yet). One girl, Tiffany, wrote, “Bill, I’ll never forget that one night…” [Note: I promise you, Stacy, that he doesn’t know her; I was one of the guys who grabbed her and sent her his way.]

Around 11:30 pm or so, we headed back to the bus. While walking down the street, one of the bride’s cousins (Jesse) stopped next to a car sitting at the red light. A cute girl was in the passenger seat, so he motioned for her to roll down her window. When she did, he said, “Why don’t you and your friend come with us to the strip club?” (no one games better than drunk guys). I walked over to collect him, but before I could tell him to get on the bus, I heard my name called from inside the car. Leaning down, I saw HHM sitting in the driver’s seat. “Hey [HHM]! Sorry about him…want to come to the club?”

We headed towards Silky’s (without HHM and her friend), a strip club down the street from Club E. The reason for going there instead? The cover charge at Erotica is $20; at Silky’s it’s $10 (high rollers, all of us). The decision would prove to be fortuitous, though. While sitting at the stage living it up, a dancer with a roll of raffle tickets made the rounds. $2 entered you into a drawing for a free lap dance—I kid you not. Feeling good, I justified the purchase to myself by saying, “Eh, it’s only $2.”

Five minutes later, the DJ read off the winning number. “Six…six…seven.” I glanced down at the small orange ticket laying next to my beer. In my head it went something like this: “Let’s see; six, six, sev—woooooooowwwwwwwwwwwww!” If you were to tell me that I ran over to the DJ booth like a Florida retiree who was just told to “come on down” on The Price is Right, I wouldn’t be surprised. A 5’5” brunette walked over and grabbed my hand, and off we went up the stairs to the lap dance room. She told me to take anything out of my pocket that would interfere with her “dance,” so my wallet and keys went to the upstairs DJ. Then she told me to…adjust myself, to allow for maximum enjoyment [*sigh*…I can’t wait until my mother has to read that]. Off came her lingerie, and away we went. I wish I could remember the dancer’s name, because I would readily offer a high recommendation to anyone seeking to hire her. Or marry her.

Grinning, I returned downstairs to the “you lucky son of a b***h” comments of my boys. Some of the guys wanted to go to Club E, so we left Silky’s en masse. Though some of us (myself included) didn’t want to pay another $20 just to get in the door, we figured that we would sit on the bus and finish the beer we had on there while waiting. There was only one problem: the bus was nowhere to be found. Instead, we sat on the sidewalk across the street like the last six kids to get picked up after soccer practice.

For whatever reason, I reached into my pocket for my wallet, and had a gut-wrenching realization: I hadn’t retrieved my wallet and car keys from the DJ in the lap dance room at Silky’s. I can now tell you from experience, that nothing can make a large, drunk man sprint down a dark street like the unsettling thought of his wallet sitting vulnerably in an unfamiliar strip club.

Sunday morning, ten of us tossed around stories from the night that was. Eventually, talk came to the cute off-duty waitress at the bar where we had began the night while awaiting the bus.

Me: “What a piece of a**.”
Justin: “Yeah, she’s something.”
Bucket: “Wait, the young one sitting at the bar?”
Me: “Yeah. The smoking hot one.”
Bucket: “That’s my cousin!”
Jesse: “Oh yeah—I know her. She’s a big whore.”

Booze or Lose

Memorial Day weekend.

See, I bet when you read that, in your head it sounded like this: “Meh-more-ee-uhl Day Wee-kehnd,” didn’t it? Every time I read it, though, all I hear is, “three successive days of blacking out.”

This weekend will consist of the following:

1. a poker game at Zach’s (read: “free money")
2. Game 1 of the Penguins and Red Wings (read: “hammered and obnoxious by 9 pm”)
3. celebration of Alex’s birthday (read: “short skirts and long bar tabs”)
4. celebration of Haze’s birthday (read: “short skirts and a long night in jail”)
5. a cookout at Baby Joey’s (read: “Olympic beer pong trials”)

Last weekend was T.C.’s birthday, and I think I celebrated it harder than he did. About 15 of us spent the night at the White Eagle, a lowkey—i.e. dive—bar in the South Side. And, apparently, I drank enough shots to bend space-time continuum; we seemed to jump from 10 pm Friday night to 2 am Saturday morning. I’ve been waiting for someone to send me a picture of me getting into a DeLorean.

I can only expect more of the same ahead. Salud. And “Go Pens!”