The Worst: Probie'd

[If you missed my earlier post: This series of stories will explore some of my more embarrassing achievements in the category of "drunken fail". And if you're wondering what "probie'd" means...you must not watch NCIS.]

There’s a bit of a contradiction to this story: Of the tales in this series, it occurred most recently, and at a time when I had already cemented my status as a star in the drinking game. In fact, it’s the only one that took place post-college. And yet, it all happened because I was young and naïve. …And stupid, basically (though that particular characteristic is sure to be a running theme throughout these stories).

It was the fall of 2005, and work had brought me to sunny San Diego. This was the fourth business trip of my young professional career, and by now I had earned the trust of customers and coworkers, having shown myself to be someone who could hold both his booze and his tongue. Most of them were either married, respected within the professional community, or—in many cases—both. If you have ever watched Mad Men or House of Lies, then you know that those are precisely the type of people that get the craziest after business hours, especially on the road.

But they were also old. Now, in fairness, I was 26 at the time; back then, anyone over 35 had one foot in the grave. At my current age, I see things a little differently. But the plain fact was that almost all of my coworkers and customers were on the other side of 40. And now that they had let me into their circle, surely I’d easily prove my superiority. Hell, I’d rise through their ranks and take the throne! Yeah! I could out-drink them with one liver tied behind my back!

*draws an arrow back to the earlier part about being stupid*

On Tuesday, the second day of the five-day conference at the Omni San Diego Hotel, we held an evening reception for attendees on the outdoor terrace. San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter is magical at night from an elevated vantage point (as I would further confirm in 2008); when you add in the perfect weather and the glasses of 12-year-old Glenfiddich I was swimming through, it was damn near euphoric. Want to know the best part about being the most junior person at a business party? Everyone else is buying. Corporate credit cards were still warm, dry blankets of financial irresponsibility back in ’05. And there was plenty of room for a 26-year-old “kid” to curl up under one like a stray cat brought in from the rain.

After the party, a coworker (we’ll call him “Work Unk”) and I moved downstairs to McCormick & Schmick's, where the rest of our cool table—the bad boys and bad girls of the professional development conference—were to meet up. It might have occurred to me that my dinner had consisted only of several neat glasses of scotch and a few appetizers, but that didn’t stop me from waving off the bartender’s offer of a menu. No need, my man—I already know my order: scotch!

We were joined by Ms. Purple. She was a punk scene party girl in her earlier years; but now, in her 40s, she had “quieted down.” Now she focused on being an industry professional by day and dedicated mommy by night. But the wildchild gene was still in her blood, and on business trips she was dangerous. She had begun treating me like a little brother (to this day, in fact, she calls me “Little Bro”), and was now about to do the most “big sister-y” thing to me she could: Set me up for an epic fail, all for her amusement.

She bought a Buttery Nipple for Work Unk, who refused to take the girlie shot. Ms. Purple had barely motioned the shot glass in my direction before I was removing it from her hand and tossing back the concoction like a damn man…well, a man drinking a Buttery Nipple. Unk’s refusal to do the shot earned the kind of derision from Ms. Purple that was only to be expected. When pushed far enough, he defended himself by planting his foot in the turf and stating that he could go shot-for-shot with her all night.

Here’s what happened over the course of the next 97 seconds, in precise order:

1. 
   Purple accepted Unk’s challenge.
2. Purple ordered up two shots of Jager.
3. Purple reminded us that she was the only one with a rental car, and was therefore the night’s designated driver by default.
4. Purple announced—without my warning or approval—that I would be taking her place in the challenge.
5. Purple let loose an evil cackle from atop the cliff while watching me sail towards the ground below, with a fresh bootprint on my back.

Before leaving the hotel bar, another two rounds of Jager shots were done. They would not be the last of the evening. It was like the Jagermeister Hunger Games. Ever hear of immersion therapy? Well this was that in reverse. I didn’t fear Jager before that night, but now I flinch like a battered woman any time a bottle of it is raised in the air.

We eventually met up with the rest of our group: Papa, in all of his grinning glory; a sassy, cougar coworker (“High Heels”); a sassy, cougar customer (“Cowgirl”); and a quiet-but-funny customer who was openly gay (“Turtle”). The only thing anyone seemed to know (or would tell me) about the club we were going to was that Ms. Purple had picked it out. A wise man would have considered that more than enough information with which to draw up a few theories; but a wise man also would not have gotten into a shot-taking contest on an almost empty stomach after drinking scotch for a few hours.

The seven of us squeezed into Ms. Purple’s rented Toyota, Cowgirl sitting on either Papa or Unk’s lap [I just don’t remember anymore] in the backseat, and High Heels sitting on my lap in the front seat. I should probably take this moment to note that High Heels would, several years later, become my manager at my previous employer—more specifically, my team manager, who repeatedly reintroduced me to her husband in St. Petersburg last fall. Back in ’05, we’d worked together for over three years, but really hadn’t spent much time around each other. Now she was in my lap. As unusual as it all was back then, when the memory pops into my head now, it’s flat out surreal. The woman who signed my timesheets and conducted my performance reviews once sat in my lap in the passenger seat of a cramped midsize rental car while I was obliviously screaming towards my drunken fate like Major Kong. Life’s something, ain’t it?

We made a stop on the way to the club…at a sex shop. I was merely a passenger at this point—in both the car and the night in general. Ms. Purple had a specific purpose for stopping, but I (a.) didn’t want to know, and (b.) didn’t ask. …Though I think it involved nipple clamps. The rest of us toured the aisles of dildos and whips like tourists in a fuck toy hedge maze. I’m fairly certain Ms. Purple made a purchase before we left, but… That’s one of the rarely-acknowledged benefits to booze: Selective memory becomes that much easier—and merciful.

When we finally walked into the nightclub, things seemed...dull. It was hazy (could’ve been a smoke machine, could’ve just been my accelerating inebriation—flip a coin) and music was pumping, but that’s about it. There were some people, but if attendance numbers were in the double digits, I’d be shocked. And the chicks that were there…woof. They were rough-looking. They were the face “rough-looking” makes when it smells a really bad smell. They were a train loaded with ugly traveling south at 30 mph colliding head-on with a train loaded with butts that's traveling north at 27 mph. They were…men?

They…were…men…

I tried to process everything I was relearning about the world. To that point in time, I had never been in a gay bar. Mind you, I wasn’t against gay bars, or homosexuality. I’m a cheerleader for gay rights, actually (the more guys that are into other guys, the more chicks there are for me! …oh, and basic human decency, equality, blah, blah, blah). There was a gay bar a couple of blocks from the apartment I lived in at the time, and I always wanted to check it out. But I had no gay pals back home, and I was far too much of a pussy [ironic phrasing] to go in alone.

The people in this establishment fit into one of two categories: either men dressed as women, or men dressed as themselves, their selves being men who had no interest in women. I was in the “men staring at women” category. Make that “woman”; as in Ms. Purple, who was with Turtle at the bar, the both of them laughing their asses off at me.

I knew they were interpreting my expression as me being uncomfortable about being in a gay bar. Keep in mind, my customers—and many of my coworkers—at that time were computer nerds, systems and software programming geeks, etc. A lot of them were nice people, don’t get me wrong; but these were not men and women with varsity letterman jackets collecting dust in their closets. So me being a big, towering, former college athlete, obviously I was in some way homophobic, right?

No, my stare wasn’t about being in a gay bar, it was about someone feeling I needed to be tricked into being in a gay bar. Purple never bothered to ask if I’d be interested in going, she just assumed I wouldn’t be; and, therefore, she conspired to win some kind of comedic victory fueled by self-righteousness. The irony, of course, was that she was being closed-minded by assuming that I was closed-minded. But whatever. I walked over to them and began hacking away at her smugness. “This is awesome! I always wanted to check out a gay bar!” I watched the feeling of satisfaction drain from Purple’s face a bit, before she called to the bartender, “Two shots of Jager!”

Fuck…I forgot she could do that.

I remember at least one more round of shots while we were standing at the bar. Then, at some point after that, I remember standing with Cowgirl, Papa, and Unk as we watched something happening out on the dance floor. What we were watching, I don’t know—thanks again, booze-induced selective memory. Though at that point of the night, my memories aren’t just selective, they’re mostly erased. I was blacked-to-the-out.

It wasn’t even 10:00 pm. *sigh*

I do, for whatever reason, remember stumbling through the hotel hallway, towards the door of my hotel room. Everything for hours before and after that, though, is gone. My alarm somehow went off the next morning, and my Wednesday…well, you’ve already read that part.

While Unk, Purple, and the like had a healthy arsenal of jokes that they threw my way for the rest of that trip, the postscript, on the whole, was fairly tame. Sure I had blacked out—early—at a gay bar with customers and coworkers; but I hadn’t vomited, I hadn’t gotten lost or arrested, and I hadn’t pulled a “Bangkok”. On the whole, those results weren’t bad.

Then, a few weeks later, a new story finally reached my ears. It went like this:

At some point late in the night, I had disappeared. Not for real long, but for long enough for it to be noticeable. Amidst this, High Heels went to the ladies room. When she opened the door, it slammed into someone on the other side. When she leaned into the bathroom, she saw me, standing with Cowgirl, with a guilty, sloppy grin on my face.

How can I say this?…


Let me see if I can put this into perspective for you: I, the most junior person on my team, had just gotten caught making out with an older female CUSTOMER, in the women’s room of a gay club, by a coworker of significantly higher rank who (at that point) had absolutely zero loyalties to me, all while blackout drunk.

You know that unshakeable little touch of paranoia that eats at your soul for the 24 hours immediately after you awake from a bad blackout? Well for the next couple of weeks, I began updating my resume every time senior management walked past my cubicle. I saw something different in High Heels’ eyes when she looked at me. You could say it was newfound respect for my virility, but I’d dated her secretary the year before that—my virility wasn’t on trial. No, this…was power. This was, “I know something that could jeopardize your ability to pay next month’s rent.”

I didn’t relax, really, until a few months later. Cowgirl emailed me for the first time since the San Diego trip. The topic was a work-related issue, but once we’d resolved that our conversation became more casual. Summoning courage, I admitted that I had heard “the story”, and apologized for my actions.

“Oh, no,” she replied, “You don’t need to apologize! I dragged you into the bathroom!”

Kicking and Screaming

As Grandma Klump would say: I walked over, but I limped back.

Well, to be more realistic, I stumbled back. I’m guessing. I mean, I was about 85% blacked out. And I was in a hurry—the curtain was falling fast on that final 15%. I was in the wilds of Shadyside on a Saturday night, and the pathway to my apartment—and to safety—was quickly disappearing. Not that the streets and sidewalks were going away—just my ability to see them. It was a race to the finish; I fell through the doorway of my apartment building just as the darkness closed in around me.

I awoke the next morning lying facedown, perpendicular across the top of a made bed. Thankfully, it was my bed. I was wearing an undershirt and boxers. My Tommy Hilfiger polo was on a couch in the living room. My cargo shorts were on the floor in my bedroom. So was the silver string of plastic, star-shaped beads. My socks were missing in action. What caused all of this cataclysmic destruction, you ask?

Kickball.

More specifically, it was a charity kickball tournament. One in which Pakistanimal, Mrs. Pak, TJ, Alex, Shannon, Jay Swag, Mitch Canada, Belle, and others had all taken part last Saturday. I, like any sensible adult on a humid, 90°F August day, stayed home. And when I did leave my place, it was just to go to the barbershop. My friends, in all of their wisdom, began drinking around 9 a.m. in the muggy misery of Pittsburgh summer. Then they ran, sweated, and injured themselves…playing kickball. And they tried to argue that I was being the silly one.

After the tournament, all of the aforementioned suspects (aside from TJ, who was on Daddy Duty) headed to Mario’s Eastside Saloon in The ‘Side. I finally walked over to join them at a little before 5 p.m. But, while I was just beginning my day’s imbibement, I was a solid eight hours behind the rest. Given the wide range of behaviors, intoxications, and events to discuss—not to mention several significant gaps in my memory—I’ll just bullet point the highlights:

• Jealous that I was freshly showered, several of the Gym Class Heroes tried to hug their sweaty nastiness onto me when I arrived. I came oh-so-close to swinging away like Ashtray in Don’t Be a Menace.
• Alex jumped up and down dancing for a moment. When she saw me pause and fixate on her quite ample chest, which was active in her shirt, she seemed to learn for the first time that big boobs bounce. “Wow,” she said, continuing to jump up and down with her eyes glued at a downward 90 degree angle. I’m not quite sure how she didn’t end up with two black eyes.
• When I met up with the group, they were on the deck upstairs, which was a sauna. Why they thought this was acceptable is as unknown to me as why they felt it worthwhile to play kickball. Canada, Swag, and I soon led a migration to Shady Grove, where there was air conditioning.
• After the tournament, our buddy “Wall Street” was the only one sensible enough to get a full shower. While he did so at Alex’s apartment, her cat pushed open the bathroom door; this gave anyone who walked past the bathroom—including a suddenly prudish Shannon—a full view of him in the glass-walled shower. When Mrs. Pak (who was successfully tanked) later learned of this anecdote, however, she was aghast that neither girl took the opportunity to check out Wall’s goods. She (repeatedly) explained in no uncertain terms the ogling, fondling, etc. that would’ve taken place had she been in their shoes. Nodding towards Wall, I said, “I think [she] just added you to her ‘Exceptions’ list, man. ‘George Clooney’…‘Brad Pitt’…‘[Wall Street]’.”
• Pak was…well, Pak: Drunk, audacious, chain-smoking, boastful, etc. And loud. After an hour or so at Grove, our bartender—sensing me to be the voice of reason soberest member of the group—asked me to keep him under control. It seems that, though he was only spending about half of his time standing near me, Pak had provoked four separate groups of diners to move from the tables in the dining area on that side of the bar.
• Being as far behind in the pickling process as I was, I decided that my drink orders would be liquor instead of beer. Earlier that week I had come down with a minor head cold, and had taken to drinking bourbon—and, in most cases, Manhattans—as a home remedy. Therefore I decided to continue improving my health with the bourbon, vermouth, and bitters mixture. I’m not sure exactly how many I put away, but…well, refer to the opening paragraphs above.
• Midway through the night Alex produced three strings of plastic beads: one red, one silver, one blue. They had been accessories of hers to the Olympics Opening Ceremony party she and I had attended the week before, and were now stowaways in her purse. I vaguely remember snatching the silver strand out of her hand and throwing it around my neck. I've always found boozing to be a patriotic experience.
• While others soon departed (Swag and Canada had a bachelor party to attend; Pak and Mrs. Pak are married, and therefore cannot be out after sundown; Belle and the rest left to pursue various acts of depravity), Alex, Shannon, Wall Street, and I held firm. Despite our advanced state of blotto, we each had the good sense to order dinner. Hindsight being 20/20, I can only imagine the carnage that would have resulted had we not made that experience-taught move.
• Shannon’s aforementioned prudishness melted away as she drank. With no provocation from the rest of us, she took the uneaten tater tots from her meal and some dipping sauce, and made a work of art. (Clearly, Mrs. Pak wasn’t the only one questioning her refusal to prey on Wall Street’s earlier state of vulnerability.)
• This is an excerpt from a text conversation I had the following Wednesday.
  
  Me: “I don’t remember leaving, but I vaguely remember pretending to be on a phone call as I walked down the street. Which leads me to believe I was running away.”
  Me: “It’s a standard drunk tactic of mine.”
  Me: “Wait, who wasn’t wearing pants?”
  Alex: “Ahha I will remember that.”
  Alex: “I wasn’t wearing pants…I found them in front of my kitchen sink the next morning.”
  Me: “LOL. Totes…”

Welcome to the Grown-Ass Man Club

I turned 30 in March ‘09. And one of these days I may finally make peace with it. In the meanwhile, I’ve found some comfort in watching most of my friends endure the milestone. My standard text message/Facebook-wall-post on these occasions has been, “Welcome to the Grown-Ass Man Club. We meet on Saturdays. Bring scotch.”

This month saw the induction of two new club members: T.C. and Alex. T.C.’s birthday was on the 16th; his family, Hurley, and I did a little dinner in the South Side that night, complete with a cake shaped like a stein of beer. While the night was fun, it was relatively non-alcoholic (Hurley and I indulged in a couple of drinks each, just because we’re us). Everyone deserves to get ass-on-the-floor drunk in celebration of his or her 30th, though, and T.C. wisely formed a plan to do so.

He was assisted in this by the timing of Alex’s Dirty-Thirty party. Her birthday falls eight days after T.C.’s, and her friends would be holding a bash for her at Whim in Station Square the Saturday between the two days (5/19). T.C. decided he’d start that night with Alex’s soiree, and then move onto one of his own in Shadyside. Since The ‘Side is my turf, I was appointed second-in-command. O’Captain, my captain…

With so much fun scheduled for Saturday, I planned to relax on Friday and conserve my energy. What I didn’t plan on, however, was Pakistanimal getting a “hall pass” from his wife that night. He called me shortly after I’d come home from the barbershop, with designs on getting a whole different kind of fade going.

Me: “I’m staying in tonight.”
Pak: “I’ll be at your place at 8:30.”

*sigh*

He brought a bottle of Kraken with him, and was barely inside my apartment door before he was mixing together two cups of Kraken-&-Coke. While I wasn’t thrilled about having my night hijacked, I couldn’t let that delicious spiced rum go to waste. And then, strangely, I found my agitation being slowly washed away with each sip. For my second round, I abandoned the Kraken and made myself an Elder & Wiser (bourbon, St-Germain, and apple juice). And I soon forgot that I had ever considered not partying that night.

We hit up William Penn Tavern, which had a healthy Friday night crowd buzzing inside. Pak ordered himself a Captain-&-Coke, and I told the bartender that I wanted a bourbon-&-Coke. He handed us a Captain-&-Coke and a…?

Pak: “Is that a bourbon-&-Coke?”
Bartender: “No—I thought you said a ‘bourbon-&-soda’!”
Me: *blank stare*

A bourbon-&-soda? The fuck? I was more than a little disturbed by the lack of hesitation he showed in taking what he thought he’d heard and making it a reality. I know Shadyside attracts a slightly more refined crowd than say, the South Side; but are people around here really ordering that concoction? And at such a rate that he doesn’t even raise an eyebrow when he “hears” it?

He offered to take the drink back and get me a bourbon-&-Coke, but once again I wasn’t interested in wasting liquor. Now that Daddy had gotten a taste, I wasn’t letting any of it get away. I drank the misbegotten mixture as Pak and I lost convincingly at darts to two random guys. When it was time for a re-up, I stepped back up to the bar and gave the same order Pak and I had placed earlier. And once again, the bartender came back with one Captain-&-Coke and one bourbon-&-soda.

I was starting to take this shit personally.

A cute girl sitting in front of us at the bar was Johnny-on-the-spot; she noticed the error before even I could. She took the drink from me, called over the bartender, and told him to fix my order. The take-charge attitude, the Lisa Loeb-vibe her eyeglasses gave, and her pretty face had me falling hard. Before I could start contemplating names for our future children, though, another curveball was thrown, this time by Hurley.

Hurley [via text]: “Come to [Diesel] and call my name. I got bottle service.”

Uh oh.

My nerd-hot love would have to wait for destiny’s next entanglement. Pak and I got to the South Side as fast as we could, and found…pretty much what we expected. Hurley was obliterated, as was his boy who co-signed the bottle service. They had a few random people in their VIP room that they’d pulled in from the passing throng; girls mostly—hot ones, when at all possible. Three bottles of Grey Goose stood on the table with cranberry juice, Coke [“Sure,” I thought. “NOW I have unlimited access to Coke…], and orange juice, daring me. I filled up a glass with Goose and cran, and then took a sip and realized I had grabbed the carafe of Coke by mistake in the dim room. Oh, the irony… The mix still went down smooth. “Yup,” I thought, “I’m definitely drunk.”

We drank and charmed ‘til closing time, doing our best to find hot girls to come share in the Grey Goose bounty laid out before us. And, as the lights in the club were coming up, the lights in my blotto mind were going down. Blacked-to-the-out. I awoke with the usual “What-the-fuck-was-just-happening?” startle on Saturday morning, snug in my bed sheets. I drifted back to sleep with the cloudy foreshadowing of a hangover, and the slightly-more-painful understanding that I had an even bigger night still ahead of me.

I arrived at Whim that night as the party began gathering steam. Alex’s friends had reserved a roped-off section of the club, adorned it with special napkins and balloons, and arranged a champagne toast. It was the typical elaborate, thoughtful, but-a-touch-too-ambitiously-austere party that girls tend to naively plan. It was sweet of them, and I’m sure Alex—being that she’s a girl—loved it. As a guy, well…trust me, no man wants a coronation ceremony after losing his twenties. For all the bad that went on during my relationship with The Ex, I’ll always be grateful for the job she did in planning the party for my 30th birthday. It was elaborate, sure, but it never carried that overwrought I’m-a-big-girl-now feel that women usually build into their big parties. In other words, it was fun.

Earlier in the day, Entertainer had made it known that he wanted to join T.C. and I in adjourning to Shadyside for the second half of the night. But now, as Alex’s party got into gear, it was ever-so-obvious that he was already too drunk to make the transition. T.C. and I were taking it easy, and drank only two beers apiece while biding our time until we could escape. Entertainer, on the other hand, was slamming shots and drinking full cups of vodka. Youngins… When T.C. and I kissed the girls goodbye and headed towards the parking lot, we had to leave our comrade to the care of his girlfriend, Shannon, all of us understanding that trying to do the Shadyside portion of the night would likely kill him.

T.C. and I found our way to Shady Grove, where we met up with Tony, Nate, two of Nate’s boys, and our buddy Trip. Beautiful Coors Light girls patrolled the premises, as did a multitude of attractive women who weren’t being paid to flirt with the bachelors among our ranks. T.C. and his wedding band, when not watching on in amusement, did their flirting with shot glasses at the bar. Eventually our friend “Lotus” made her way to the bar, adding a touch of feminine charm to our drunken male banter. Any charm I was adding, however, came straight from the Elder & Wisers I was putting away one after another.

Several drinks and shots had been thrown T.C.’s way by the time she got there, but that wasn’t good enough for Lotus. “You’re not drunk enough,” she protested to T.C. “I’m buying you a shot!” An hour or so later, she looked over at T.C. and said (with a noticeable slur), “He still doesn’t look like he’s drunk!” “Trust me,” I countered, having spotted the telltale signs—talking loudly, eyelids dropped slightly during regular conversation and squeezed completely shut when placing emphasis on a particular point, etc.—that T.C. was feeling it. “He’s crushed.”

We fit in another couple of rounds of shots—and a round of drinks—as 2 a.m. came calling, and then all headed out into the night. Tony, T.C., and I did the gentlemanly thing and walked Lotus home. About halfway there, though, her own drunken “tell” raised its head: stubbornness. Despite being an intoxicated, attractive woman walking along a dark city street, Lotus objected to being escorted. She stopped dead in her tracks and refused to walk any further if we continued to follow her. We negotiated for a minute, and finally she agreed to move on with just me chaperoning her, while Tony and T.C. headed straight back to my place. [Don’t bother asking what kind of sense this makes; I assure you, it makes none.] Once she was safely in her place, I headed home and caught up with the boys as they reached my block. Lotus sent me this the next morning: “Omg what did u guys do to me last night? Haha the path to my room looks like a tornado came thru!!”

T.C.’s night ended with less spinning winds, and more spinning rooms. He hugged my toilet for about 20 minutes, as Tony and I tried to talk over the awful retching sounds coming from behind the bathroom door. When he had finally emptied himself of all that he could force out, he stumbled out to the living room shirtless, and plopped down awkwardly on my loveseat, passing out in mere seconds.

No one said becoming a Grown-Ass Man was pretty.

Something Borrowed

Let me preface this story by saying that it’s not mine; and, because of this, there is simply no way I can tell it as well as its rightful owners. But my friend that relayed the escapade to me doesn’t have a blog—to the best of my knowledge. That leaves it up to me to share it with the world via On the Rocks. If he or anyone else involved should ever want to sit down and dictate a first person account to me, I’ll be more than happy to put it on the page. But it is just too good of a tale to wait until that theoretical day. As I summarized back to my friend after hearing his rendition, “It’s like ‘The Hangover’, but without the happy ending.”

Late Thursday night, after a night of making a modest income at the Rivers Casino poker tables, I met up with Pakistanimal and stopped by our favorite spot in Shadyside. We were shocked to find the place nearly empty, which is rarely the case at 12:30 am on a Thursday night. We would quickly realize that this was a blessing in disguise, though. With all of the time we’ve spent in this bar, we’ve come to know some of the staff pretty well, including “A-Train”, a bartender. And without the usual pressing crowd of patrons demanding his attention and rocketing up the decibel levels, A-Train was able to tell us about the crazy several days he had spent in Las Vegas the week before...

The trip was actually a bachelor party for his brother. Among the wolf pack would be the bride’s brother, who A-Train had never met before the car ride to the airport. Providing that ride was the bride’s grandfather, a no-nonsense old timer. And as everyone piled out of the car at the curbside check-in, the old man grabbed A-Train’s arm and held him behind for a moment. “I want you to watch over my grandson while you boys are out there. He’s a fuckup; he’s always been a fuckup. Don’t let him get into any shit!” [Does anyone else picture this grandfather looking and sounding like Jack Palance, or is that just me?]

On their first day in Vegas, “Brother of the Bride” (BOTB) quickly got obliterated at the pool—to the point where he looked like this guy. The bouncers, as you would probably expect, soon informed A-Train and the other bachelors that BOTB needed to be removed, and offered them the opportunity to do it first. Very gracious gents, those Las Vegas bouncers. A-Train and the guys walked BOTB to his room, despite his protests. When they threw him on his bed, though, he was soon lights out, and wasn’t heard from until the next morning.

As the trip went on, this became a recurring scenario. BOTB would—seemingly without explanation—get irreversibly wasted faster than anyone else in the party. But despite this, the others were able to contain him and prevent any major damage from being done to person or property. And so on the final day in Vegas, when he again turned into a blacked-out mess early in the day and the boys again put him to bed well before sundown, no one thought anything of it.

The next morning the bachelors all awoke and packed up, wary of the 11 am departure time of their flight home. All, that is, but for one guy. With only about 30 minutes left before they needed to leave for the airport, one of the party members gave an alarm that sent chills up the spines of A-Train and his brother: BOTB wasn’t in his room, and had neither been seen nor heard from since the day before. In a last attempt at remaining calm, A-Train suggested someone call BOTB’s cell phone. “We tried that. It was in the room.”

“Fuuuuccccccccccccccccccccc...............”

The next 30 minutes were a frantic search for clues. They packed up his belongings and lugged them to the lobby, in the unlikely possibility that they would find him down there waiting. They talked to bellhops and the concierge, hoping someone had seen BOTB. They called members of the bride’s family back in PA, on the chance that he had called back there because he didn’t know the phone numbers of the guys in the bachelor party. They called the Las Vegas police, in the event that he was wallowing in a drunk tank. They talked to the Hard Rock security team and filed a missing persons report. One of the guys in the party was staying in Vegas an extra day, and was tasked with being the main contact should any information about BOTB’s whereabouts be turned up.

As the departing partiers, including the now sick-with-fear groom, rushed through the lobby to catch the flight for which they were already late, BOTB came stumbling towards them through the front doors.

Despite being stunned by their missing comrade’s miraculous materialization, they wasted no time with explanations. They shoved him into a cab and sped as fast as possible to the airport. Along the way they learned two things:

1. BOTB had spent the entire previous night at the strip club across the street from the Hard Rock, receiving private dances from a stripper to whom he’d taken a shining.
2. BOTB was still, to that very moment, blacked-out drunk. He had no clue where he was, what was going on, or why everyone was so panicked.

When the group reached the front of the security line at the airport, the TSA agents took one look at the wounded soldier. “No.” Several minutes of begging, pleading, and promises to sober-up and look after him finally convinced the security agents to let them move on to the gate. Once there, party members were dispatched for coffee and food to combat the inordinate levels of alcohol coursing through BOTB’s body. They tried to get information about his night out of him, but he seemed to know almost as little as they did. Someone suggested he check his pockets.

BOTB clumsily reached into his left front pocket, and pulled out a receipt. He handed it to A-Train, who looked it over. “$1500. Damn. What about your other pocket?” BOTB fumbled around with his right pocket for a moment, finally pulling his hand out; clutched in his mitt was a wad of receipts as thick as a wallet.

He thrust the small bundle towards A-Train, who took a moment to read through them. When BOTB asked what the total was, A-Train couldn’t do it. He handed them to someone and said, “You tell him.”

“Fifteen…thousand…”

They asked BOTB how he’d racked up that many charges on his credit card. He told them that the card company, after a point, began calling the strip club each time they rang up another exorbitant charge. “They’d hand me the phone; the card company’d ask about the charge, and I’d say it was ok. After a while they started making me fingerprint the receipts for confirmation. And they just kept bringing out champagne…”

Member of group: “Did you at least get head or fuck her or something?”
BOTB: “No…”
A-Train’s brother: “Do you know how many call girls you could’ve gotten for $15,000?!?”

Live to Drink = Drink to Live

If you're a prissy non-drinker, a new report suggests that the fun people like moi will outlive you. Of course, if you're a prissy non-drinker, chances are you don't read this blog. But I digress...

The next time you've polished off your third beer, and you have that internal debate over whether to stop the party or do a cannonball into shit creek by ordering a fourth beer, do the responsible thing: Order two beers. And a round of shots.

From Time.com:

The sample of those who were studied included individuals between ages 55 and 65 who had had any kind of outpatient care in the previous three years. The 1,824 participants were followed for 20 years. One drawback of the sample: a disproportionate number, 63%, were men. Just over 69% of the never-drinkers died during the 20 years, 60% of the heavy drinkers died and only 41% of moderate drinkers died.

These are remarkable statistics. Even though heavy drinking is associated with higher risk for cirrhosis and several types of cancer (particularly cancers in the mouth and esophagus), heavy drinkers are less likely to die than people who have never drunk. One important reason is that alcohol lubricates so many social interactions, and social interactions are vital for maintaining mental and physical health. As I pointed out last year, nondrinkers show greater signs of depression than those who allow themselves to join the party.

This past Saturday I worked hard to extend my life expectancy, drinking Long Island Iced Teas at Shady Grove like there was a toy prize at the bottom of each glass. I managed to black out somewhere between wingmanning for Dupa and waking up in my bed yesterday morning.

[And, yes, I'm aware that I just said that blackouts aren't common occurrences for me. Fight me.]

Fade to Black

Last Friday night I experienced what I would later dub on Twitter, “the world’s safest blackout.” On what was intended to be a low-key, low-dough night with the boys, TJ, Dupa, “Armo”, and I kicked back with a bottle of Belvedere, dinner, and some DVDs. And right about the time that “The Professional” ended, I experienced my preferred means of time travel, jolting awake the next morning. I felt like I hadn’t moved from the exact spot on the couch where I’d been watching the movie. If anything, I’d just sort of fallen over and then gotten right back up, only to now find myself in the Saturday dawn.

No bars full of strangers. No “How did I get there?” No losing my credit card. No losing my driver’s license. No losing my cell phone. No strange numbers on my phone. No drunk dials or texts. Well, no damning ones; I did manage to call TJ’s girlfriend in Tampa and wake her up, though in my defense it was only about 11:30 (that’s right, I was fully blacked out by 11:30—fight me). No unexplainable bodily harm (save for a small cut on my thumb that was more likely the result of fumbling with my zipper in the bathroom than me carrying out and/or thwarting a surprise ninja attack). I had blanked my memory of much of the night, with no possible consequences to bear the next morning. Win.

Things seldom go so well. Rarely is the fan turned off when the shit hits it. I’ve used the metaphor of a snowball in the past to describe professional drinking, especially if said drinking is done in celebration of holidays and special occasions, when it starts early in the day with the intention of rolling on through the night. And that imagery is more than appropriate, because not only does the size of your drunkenness grow exponentially, but so does the speed of this giant snowball of intoxicated idiocy—and your inability to control where it goes.

Several of my blackouts have already become On the Rocks greatness. Stories like my Halloween at Ohio U., Steph’s going away celebration last month, and a Friday night out with the boys two Februaries ago are now familiar seasoning in the l-o-l stew that is my recreational activities. But many more—for one reason or another—have yet to be published. Like last Thanksgiving Eve, when Pakistanimal, his girlfriend [now his fiancée—congrats], and her sister joined Tony and I in a night of Shadyside boozing. After pregaming at my apartment, the five of us were soon slamming Batman shots at Shady Grove, and then I was casually strolling up a street eight city blocks away, alone and dazed. And Tony was standing in front of my apartment building fuming, because three hours earlier I had left him at the bar without a way of getting into my place. That bar, though, would be William Penn Tavern, and my departure was a good hour after my last recollection of anything, when we were still partying like rock stars at Grove. Just like that, a fun night with friends had turned into W-T-F-? Tony said that when I finally ambled up to the building, I slurred something about having been at a party. And now every day I fully expect someone to approach me on the street and say, “Hey, you were that tall random guy at that party last Thanksgiving!”

[Note: Given the fact that my family—and my parents, even—read this blog, it has suddenly dawned on me that I probably should have been masking these stories as something some friend of mine did. “Then my friend…uhh, 'Dave'…got really drunk on Batman shots and…” Oh well.]

Thanksgiving Eves have proven fertile ground for this sort of thing. In 2004, that particular night of the year was, dare I say, epic. Dupa, T.C., and I had hit the South Side to drink and revel. Then, at about 4 a.m. or so, I found myself leaning against a front door, slowly knocking on it. I stopped my fist just before it barreled into my mysterious wooden resting post once more, and stood upright to take in the scene. I was on a porch…that I had never seen before. The house was dark, and to this day I wonder if its owner had been peeking from behind the curtains, terrified. I walked down the steps and out to the street. I was in a suburban area, but it all looked so unfamiliar. I began walking down the street, deciding that the one thing I absolutely needed to do was get away from that house; to hear sirens at any moment would have been “game over”. As I came to the next intersection, it suddenly hit me: I was in T.C.’s neighborhood, and his house was on this street. I had met him and Dupa there at the start of the night. I quickly found my way to T.C.’s, and got myself on a couch to sleep it all away.

Over the next week or so details of the missing hours began surfacing. The last thing I remembered was being at the upstairs bar in Smoking Joe's Saloon. That had been around 11 (fight me twice). After that came stops at a couple of other bars, including Jack’s. There I found myself momentarily separated from my boys as I waited in line for the restroom. Some random jackasses brought static, and fists were soon cutting the smoke-filled air. From across the room, Dupa had quickly spotted me, cornered and surrounded, and charged into the fray with T.C. close behind. According to reports, my boys and I proceeded to bring the ruck, soused though we were, until bouncers could finally break it all up. I was so in the zone, in fact, that when one bouncer first stepped in to intervene, I swung on him. Luckily it was just a grazing shot, because—I’d later learn—he was our friend Jed’s cousin (I ran into him again a few months later and apologized, but he understood; as drunk as I was, I probably couldn’t see, let alone discern between attackers and bouncers). Pakistanimal, who had been out with other people, said he walked up to the door at Jack’s that night, but was told they couldn’t let anyone in until they cleared out a fight that had just taken place. Just then, Dupa, T.C., and I stumbled out the door laughing. “[Pak], what up? We were just in a fight!”

T.C.’s little sister picked us up from the South Side and took us to a party her friends were throwing. After that? Well, after that I played the world’s slowest game of “Ding-Dong-Ditch”. That’s really all any of us know, because by the time the fight ended, all three of us were at some level of blackout. Only Dupa has any memory of the brawl, and not even he remembers the party.

Luckily, blackouts aren’t frequent (not for me, at least). The anxiety that comes with waking up the next morning is enough to make you nauseous, without the aid of the hangover. This is especially true if you wake up on the floor of an unknown bedroom in Ohio (see “Halloween at Ohio U.” above). But even when you find yourself in your own bed—where, you could argue, you should feel the absolute safest in the entire world—the prior night’s mental abandonment can be waiting to pounce. When I blacked out during the first night of my birthday weekend last year, I had been with my boys at Shady Grove. When I woke up the following morning, I was laying in bed next to The Ex. She was sitting up with her back against the headboard, her folded arms looming like storm clouds over my aching head.

Her, through clenched teeth: “So, do you remember last night?”
Me, in my head: “...fuck!”

A Fond Farewell

If “Cooley High” and Boyz II Men have taught us anything, it’s that it’s so hard to say goodbye. On the other hand, though, alcohol has taught us that if you don’t remember it, it didn’t happen. So if a dear friend is moving on in life, but she throws herself a going away party so sadistically drenched in alcohol that you wake up at 5 am the following morning without the slightest clue how you got in someone’s living room, then you never said goodbye and she hasn’t left, right?

Steph—oh she of the wondrously foul mouth and generous pour, packed neatly within a demure “girly-girl” exterior—recently came to a realization: Like others before her who are high on talent, personality, and ambition, she has finally accepted that Pittsburgh is no place to waste her life away. And so, eager for opportunity and a better life, she has decided to move to New York City. [Note: If anything in the prior two sentences came across as sarcasm, let me assure you that nothing could be further from the truth; the tone is meant to be more of a seething jealousy.] Ever the enabler, last Friday she christened her departure by hosting a party that also broke the proverbial champagne bottle over the bow of my belligerent inebriation.

I started the night by meeting Dupa on Mt. Washington. Each of us parked our car near Jay Swag’s house, with the hopes of falling down either there or somewhere near there when all was said and done. Dupa arrived a good 20 minutes later than me, having had a minor fender-bender while in transit. Some clown with a less-than-agile right foot had not hit his brakes early enough, and as a result slid into the back of Dupa’s car as my friend sat idling at a red light. The two drivers pulled off to the side of the road to inspect their respective bumpers; luckily no real damage had been done.

Dupa: “He said, ‘My bad man, I’m kind of in a hurry.’”
Me: “Did you exchange insurance?”
Dupa: *completely serious* “No, I told him, ‘Go fuck yourself,’ and got back in my car.”

We made our way to Station Square via a rectangular blast furnace on rails that the Port Authority of Allegheny County has the nerve to call the Monongahela Incline. Air conditioning and the Incline have yet to meet, and on Friday it was 92°F with humidity somewhere in the mid-90th percentile—at 7:30 pm. And that was the outside air temperature; inside the small, enclosed rail cars, you could double each of those numbers. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the Station Square bars pay the Incline operators to pump heat into the funiculars just to ensure that customers go searching for cold beverages when they get to the bottom.

Round 1 of Steph’s party kicked off at Bar Louie Station Square with dinner and drinks in the VIP area, thanks to a friend of mine who hooked us up [astute readers will note that this is the very same VIP area that hosted my 30th birthday celebration last year; Dupa almost looked out of place without a bachelorette party participant perched on his shoulder]. I, of course, made use of the $34 all-you-can-drink-top-shelf special that my friends and I have looked back upon fondly since last year. Chelsea, a wonderful princess of a waitress, made it her duty to have a new Red Bull and Ketel One ready for me as I finished each previous one. And the party’s attendance count grew as quickly as my drink count did. Bill, Shannon, The Entertainer, and even Hurley joined the throng of people bidding adieu to Steph’s life as a Pittsburgher. And my friend “Biff” arrived after pulling together an impromptu—yet well-executed—prank.

It was simplistic in nature and origin: Early in the night, Dupa sent a text to Biff to ask if he was on his way. Biff, feeling saucy, decided to respond with “Who is this?” Dupa showed us the text, and then responded with, “The guy you met in the bathroom at Elixir last week.” While he did that, I quickly shot off a text of my own to Biff: “[Dupa]’s almost buying it. Keep going.” And so began our dance (forgive my paraphrasing, but neither Dupa nor Biff gave me a transcript, and I was a good four or five Red Bull and Vodkas in by this point).

Biff to Dupa: “This is [Biff]’s mother. He has a new phone with a new number, and he gave me his old one.”
[Dupa begins to bite, but is still skeptical. He asks around the party if anyone knows of Biff changing his cell number. All along the way I’m behind him mouthing the words “SAY YES!” to everyone. At Bill’s suggestion, he sends…]
Dupa to Biff: “Prove it—show me your breasts.”
Biff to Dupa: “That’s highly inappropriate. If you want to talk to [Biff], his new number is 814-xxx-xxxx.”
[Dupa is stammering. Steph, Bill, and the rest of us are laughing hysterically. Dupa recognizes the “814” as a Johnstown area code, and suspects it to be the phone number of Biff’s buddy, Pete.]
Me to Biff: “You almost had him, but he figured it out when you used an ‘814’ instead of a ‘412’.”
Dupa to Biff: “That’s a Johnstown area code, so I know that’s not his number.”
Biff to Dupa: “That’s his work number. His personal cell phone is 412-xxx-xxxx.”
Biff to Me: “Don’t worry, I fixed it.”
[Dupa’s really worried now, as the added depth to the story—and the added alcohol he had consumed as time went on—was now convincing him that not only had he just told his friend’s mother that her son had picked him up in a public restroom, he had also asked her to show him her boobs.]
Dupa to Me: “Fuck! *thinks* I should text [Baby Joey] and ask him if [Biff] changed his number.”
Me to Dupa: “Probably worth a shot.”
Me to Biff: “He’s going to text [Baby Joey]!”
Biff to Me: “Don’t worry, I took care of it.”
Dupa to Joey: “Did [Biff] change his cell number?”
Joey to Dupa: “Yeah, the other day.”
[Dupa crumples into a ball, fully expecting an ass kicking in his near future.]

When Biff finally walked into Bar Louie chuckling, Dupa was more relieved than angry. I think it’s safe to say that finding out your friends have been messing with your head is a far better alternative to finding out that you’ve brazenly asked your friend’s mom to sext you.

The party moved to Buckhead at about 10. We had not planned on going there, but given its location (across the street) and the temperature (Bar Louie’s air conditioning was turned off, inexplicably), it just made good sense. Despite the lack of forewarning that Buckhead’s staff was given, Steph was able to negotiate free admission for everyone in her party (good luck pulling that one off in New York).

Things rapidly got hazy, for all of us. Dupa was “iced” by Entertainer, while Shannon and I openly wondered why we even associate with them. Steph pinballed between the four or five clusters of partygoers that had formed around the club’s main bar—and did shots at each stop. Biff held court in one of the huddles, with several of the party’s beautiful women around him; this led him to say to Dupa, “You see this? You see all of these girls? I look like the man right now, right? Nah. None of them want me. I’m deep in the ‘friend zone’.” And Hurley and I, each armed with an open tab of our own, caused me to tweet, “Hurley and I might have the most violent friendship in history. We literally will spend any amount to kill each other with shots.”

Legitimately twisted, he and I followed Steph’s bar crawl to its third location, Whim; Dupa, Entertainer, and Shannon, however, all set off for Jack’s Bar in South Side. This was my first time being inside Whim since its previous life as my beloved Margarita Mama's. It has a very Studio 54-ish feel to it; that’s not necessarily a good thing, but it’s not a deal-breakingly bad thing, either. I’d only recommend it for those times when one finds himself in precisely the same circumstances in which Hurley and I found ourselves that night: part of a group that featured a high percentage of females, in high spirits, and floating towards a blackout, with no real agenda for the rest of the night.

After a beer or two—and possibly more shots (my ability to memorize was seriously hindered by that point, but I certainly wouldn’t rule out our sadistic game of “Last Man Standing” following us to Whim)—my boy and I finally bid adieu to Steph and the remaining partiers, deciding to cab our way over to Jack’s. When we found our three fellow refugees from the party at the back bar, they were engaged in the same activity as before: championship boozing. Some of our friends who hadn’t been a part of Steph’s celebration had also joined up at Jack’s, and they were no less enthusiastic than the rest of us to order more rounds of shots and drinks. I can—and more or less have to—sum up the rest of my bar night with the following two simultaneous conversations that took place the next morning.

Me to Dupa (in person): “Where did you lose me last night?”
Me to Hurley (text message): “Where did I lose you last night?”
Dupa to Me: “I think when you left Jack’s to go to Rumshakers.”
Me to Dupa: “We were at Jack’s?”
Hurley to Me: “Too many shots. I don’t know. Maybe Jack’s?”
Me to Hurley: “No, you were with me at Rumshakers.”
Hurley to Me: “We were at Rumshakers?”

I woke up alone in a living room, sitting upright on a couch. I wasn’t wearing my shirt or my shoes. The TV was on, and with a random infomercial playing on the screen. I looked around some more. I was in Jay Swag and Mitch Canada’s living room. But it had been weeks since I’d seen either of them. At least I thought it had. Had I met up with Swag somewhere last night? How else would I have gotten into their living room? Did I break in? I began looking around the room for my shirt and shoes. Nothing. I carefully made my way up the stairs to the guest room. There were my shoes sitting neatly in the corner, with my wallet and watch stashed in them. And draped over a chair was my shirt. I laid down on the bed, content to sleep for another few hours, when one last thought made me jump up. Opening my phone and using the light from the screen, I checked inside my wallet. Debit card? Check. Credit card? Check. License? Check. I exhaled and fell backwards onto the mattress.

As I drifted off, I thought to myself, “Did I see Steph last night?”

Playing Catch-Up

My fellow seasoned veterans in the drinking game know that few things in this world are tougher to do than to come in late on a boozing session. This is especially true when the friends you are trying to catch are drinking with the reckless abandon of a Kamikaze pilot riding inside of a dynamite-laden snowball that’s rolling down Mt. Everest.

As you probably guessed, I’m going somewhere with this. A few Fridays ago, my night started with a birthday dinner for my mother, and I was the designated driver (she and my aunt wished to sample the restaurant’s wine selection). This meant that I was forced to ignore the happy hour starter’s gun that sent my fellow crew members Dupa, Pakistanimal, Jay Swag, and Mitch Canada racing towards the same promised land of inconsequential actions and euphoric thought that I, too, wanted so desperately to visit. Shortly after I had come home from dinner and my DD duties (which were severely needed; when I left them at my mother’s house, the ladies were discussing the idea of having me drop them off at a strip club so they could see male dancers for the first time in their lives), Tony came through and picked me up so that we could join the regularly-scheduled programming, already in progress.

I understood what we would be walking into; about two hours earlier, I had received a phone call from Swag. While he explained that Dupa was already a blacked-out mess, I noticed that a subtle amount of slurring was developing in Swag’s speech patterns. I asked him if he had spoken to Pak—only because, not long before that, Pak had texted me to ask what the night’s plans were. Swag, however, then took it upon himself to state for the record that he didn’t care about Pak, or where he was. That’s not to say that he didn’t like the guy. “He’s alright,” Swag clarified. “But if someone asks me whose back I’ve got, then that’s [Dupa], you, and [TJ]. You guys are my family, you know?” Although the parlance was different, I instantly recognized the infamous—if not downright clichéd—“I love you, man” drunken speech. And I was very aware of the fact that I was receiving it at almost 9 pm. When Tony and I finally walked through the doors of Rumshakers, I silently thanked Swag for the warning that he never realized he’d given me. By this time his drunkenness had fully matured into a robust, disillusioned arrogance. He had become Tony Montana, laughing off anyone who dared point their finger at the bad guy. And yet, Swag wasn’t the spectacle amongst us. No, that “honor” belonged to Dupa.

Ladies and gents, I’ve known Dupa for almost ten years now. I’ve fought alongside him in the VIP-lounge-trenches and beer-pong-battlefields, against liquids of all nationalities and bottles of all sizes. I’ve seen him do a naked starfish on the living room floor of girls he hardly knew, randomly channel the spirits of his Polish ancestors while riding in a bus full of strangers, and tempt the interests of swingers. But I have never, in all of those years and all of those adventures, seen him as irreversibly annihilated as on this night when he stood swayed in the center of Rumshakers. And I tell you this next anecdote with no designs on exaggeration (and, honestly, I don’t have the luxury of overstating what took place; it was just too incredible to allow for artistic license): Dupa had lost the ability to talk.

Let’s be clear, here: I don’t mean my friend spoke a mush-mouthed swirl of mismatched syllables and sentence fragments, like one might expect from a man in the throes of a blackout. No, he literally did not possess the physical ability to speak. His brain seemingly had endless thoughts and feelings that it wanted to convey; but, tragically, it was forced to detour them through his body movements, as gestures and head motions were his only available means of expression. And I had become Timmy, trying to learn the news Lassie so badly wanted to share. When I greeted him upon my arrival, he silently directed his pointer fingers toward the bar. I glanced at it, and then back to him.

Me: “You want a beer?”
Dupa: *half nodding, while emphatically patting his chest with both hands*
Me: “You want to buy the round?”
Dupa: *nods excitedly, gives a thumbs-up, and walks toward the bar*

Tony and I promptly tossed back shots and beers in the hopes of making up ground. We most certainly, however, did not want to go as far down the rabbit hole as Dupa, who was now creepily hovering over and grinding on girls near us, including Swag’s friend “Finger Bang” [Note: This is her real nickname, as given by Swag; I’ll let your mind fill in the back-story there—just as mine has, since neither he nor Mitch will tell the tale to me]. As she nervously looked to the rest of us for help, Dupa wrapped his arms around her from behind and began dancing, playfully lifting up her skirt ever-so-slightly before she stopped his hand. She remained a good sport, thankfully—which is a level of coolness you almost have to expect from a girl who allows guys to refer to her as “Finger Bang”. She weathered the storm with a smile, and when Dupa eventually got lost in the crowd while trying to make his way back from the restroom, she made her escape to S Bar.

Dupa needed to call it a night. I knew it, he knew it. Hell, even Swag Montana knew it. Isolated from our group, I spotted him 15 feet away, typing on his phone. I caught his attention and waved him over. He shook his head “no” with a knowing smile, as if to say, “It’s too late for me, my friends—save yourselves.”

Despite this defeatism, though, he briefly regained hope. The patronage of Rumshakers at this point in the night was heavily slanted in the “urban, non-Caucasian” direction. Dupa, losing himself in whatever Top-40 song was rumbling the speakers, became a one-White-man dance island on the dance floor. Arm in the air, he bopped to the music and occasionally glanced back at me, almost as if he was seeking approval. Naturally, this caused the intrigued eyes of twenty or so brothers and sisters who had been watching Dupa to scan back to me. And all I could do was shake my head and take another swig of my drink.

Mitch Canada and Jay Swag left for S Bar, and Tony and I hailed a cab for Dupa. As he climbed into the back of it, he looked back at me confused.

Dupa: “You’re not coming with me?”
Me: “No, buddy. It’s only 12:30. We're still drinking.”
Dupa: “Ohh…”

Tony and I met up with Swag and Canada at Folino’s (Mitch’s wardrobe had prevented their admittance into S Bar), where we were eventually joined by Pak. The rest of the night was spent drinking bottles of Miller Lite on Folino’s improvised “patio” (a section of sidewalk that had been roped off from the river of people walking up and down Carson Street) and insulting each other’s sensibilities. But, try as we might with rounds of shots, Tony and I never achieved the level of intoxication that had taken hold of our friends. At closing time Pak led Tony and I on a 45 minute expedition through the backstreets of the South Side in search of his car, which ended with the two of us walking back to Tony’s car and leaving a stubborn Pak to his dogged search. Just before we reached it, however, I got a call from Pak, who asked if we could pick him up on our way home.

Early the next evening I talked to Dupa, who had finally come into some reasonable form of consciousness. I asked him what, if anything, he remembered about the previous night.

“Leaving work at 3:30.”

“Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more.”

First, let me welcome my brother-in-arms, TJ, back into the Crooked Straight fold. I was just as eager as the rest of you to read about the events in his last post, because I can only remember approximately 20% of that night myself. From around the time I called the taxi company, to about 7 a.m. the next morning, my mind is a blank sheet. I came out of my blackout standing at the door to the apartment’s bedroom, where Ashhad was passed out. I had turned on the light, and was now staring intently at my buddy slumbering in the bed, trying to figure out just who he was, and why I was in his home.

This past Friday was another head-scratcher, but for much different reasons. It started under quite normal pretenses: My friend, Abbie, was having a birthday party for her fiancé (“KC”) at Mullaney’s Harp and Fiddle, an Irish bar & restaurant in Pittsburgh’s Strip District. KC is a proud Irishman; and, with St. Patrick’s Day nearing, everyone is growing fonder of all things green and/or made of hops. Harp and Fiddle, therefore, was a fitting choice of locations. An energetic Irish band rocked from the stage with enthusiastic participation from a standing-room-only crowd, and draughts of Smithwick's, Guinness, Harp, and Bass Ale populated hands and tables throughout the establishment (except for Girlfriend, who stuck to her beloved Corona).

The place is somewhat small, however—especially when it’s packed to the limit and a live band is onstage ten feet away from your table. A subset of our larger group decided to move to a quieter, less-expensive bar nearby. KC prepped Girlfriend and I, neither of whom had ever been to this new venue before, by saying, “It’s a bit of a dive. It looks shitty from the outside, but it’s not bad inside.”

As we walked up to the bar, which was in an old former hotel, we appreciated KC’s honesty. From the outside, you might mistake it for an abandoned building. When we walked through the door, however, we found that things indoors were much more vibrant. Smoke, music, the crack of billiard balls on a pool table; gruff-looking middle-aged white guys and stone-faced, thuggish young brothers staring holes through you; this was a typical Pittsburgh dive bar.

Or so we thought.

About an hour after we arrived, Girlfriend caught the eye of a guy at the opposite end of the bar. He waved at her—with his fingers. She waved back, but quickly realized that I had only seen her half of the exchange. “Don’t worry,” she assured me, “he’s gay. He waved like this *imitates the wave*”

This put both of our brains on pause: An openly homosexual man at a dive bar? It’s not unheard of, true; you could go to most small, local bars in America and find the token neighborhood gay guy hanging out amongst friends and people who won’t hassle him. But this felt…different. Suddenly, En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind” came blaring over the speakers…and all Richard Simmons broke out.

Many of the “thuggish” Black men began pantomiming and dancing. One young white man was quickly shirtless, twirling around his corner of the bar and occasionally dancing while staring at himself in a mirror on the wall; the man who had waved at Girlfriend sashayed to and fro to the beat, with his arms swaying back and forth up in the air, frequently gyrating closely with his buddy. Wrists everywhere were joyously limp and proud.

Girlfriend and I finally understood what was going on: We were in a gay bar.

Most of the people in our circle hardly blinked. Girlfriend and I, nowhere near new to being around gay men, were enjoying every last minute of it. One of KC’s friends, however, was suffering from a fit of homophobia. “He’s scared to go to the bathroom,” KC laughed, pointing at his nervous friend. When Girlfriend felt the need to walk to the ladies’ room, she asked if I was going to be okay by myself. I laughed and waved her off—I was about to be the belle of the ball.

Two guys—one taller, chubby, and middle aged, the other short, thin, and slightly younger—were walking past and decided to stop when they saw me standing alone for the moment.

Larger Man: “Well! Aren’t you a tall handsome one?”
Me: *laughing* “Thanks.”
Smaller Man: “My god, he looks so strong!”
Larger Man: “Doesn’t he? I bet you could just make us your slaves!”

I was called away from my new fans by Girlfriend. The door to the women’s bathroom didn’t lock, and she wanted me to stand guard.

“Baby, if there was ever a bar in this city where you would be safe from guys trying to walk in on you when your pants are down, I think this is it.”