I can’t really explain what happened this weekend, but it got a little wild. I could write about both nights, but I’m a little tired. Since Saturday night was one of the Top 20 drunkest of my life, why don’t we focus on that one?
(Hey - those first two lines rhyme!)
My buddy Joe was in town from Boston this weekend. Joe lives with his fiancée, so from the moment he arrived at my place (at 11:45 on Friday night), we started the boozing. You know, because once you live with your fiancée, you can’t drink so much.
After waking up around 2pm on Saturday with hangovers (that’s what happens when you stay at a bar until 5:30am because you’re throwing your money at the cute Asian bartender), Joe and I saw "Talladega Nights" (funny, but uneven), grabbed dinner (fried calamari and burgers are becoming my favorite one-two punch), and then started pre-gaming at my place. I was hitting the bourbon pretty hard, helping myself to healthy pint glasses of Maker’s Mark and ginger ale (after the requisite two gin and tonics).
Then my buddy Jeremy came over. Then friends Corinne and Brian. Then Tom, Brendan, Nicole, and Stephanie. Magically, there was a small party in my place. Yay.
Unmagically, I was not prepared for this and so our booze ran out very quickly. I suggested that we head to the local watering hole to continue the drunkfest. We were off.
By this time, I was feeling pretty good. Joe and I were drinking at dinner and had a number of drinks prior to heading out. Things were going as planned.
We settled in at the bar and more friends arrived, including my friend Maryanne and some of her co-workers ("Maryanne" is not her name; I’ve changed it because I’m not sure she’d want to be associated with this post, for reasons that will become apparent shortly). Maryanne was with two co-workers and promptly introduced me. The first I had never met, but I did not need an introduction to the second, for I knew her.
Indeed, she was The Challenger.
(Story time!)
A few years ago, I was dating a girl who abruptly dumped me. This made me sad and I responded in the way that men respond to such things: by becoming a whore. For some reason, whenever I come out of a relationship, my "game" naturally elevates itself. I go from being about as smooth as your average bowling alley employee to just above the level of Antonio Banderas.
[Note that this applies only to relationships in which I’ve been dumped or otherwise felt wronged or unappreciated. If the relationship ends amicably or by my accord, I do not get my magic powers. Which sucks, because if this wasn’t the case, I would probably start dating a series of girls in wheelchairs and then immediately breaking up with them, just to get my sexual powers. But alas, it’s not to be.]
It was under these circumstances that I first met The Challenger, who we will call Rebecca. A bunch of my friends and I were out and Maryanne brought Rebecca to the bar we were at. Rebecca and I were introduced and I felt it immediately - we were going to make out.
I descended upon Rebecca like a hawk from hell. I’ve written before that my idea of foreplay goes 1) Start making out; 2) Count to 100; and 3) Stick it in. My process of seduction is similarly rushed and just as brutally effective.
I started talking to Rebecca, buying us drinks, laughing it up. As I did so, I began to isolate us from the rest of the group. Not that we were on the other side of the bar or anything, but so that we were far enough from our friends not to be distracted. I need to do this because I can’t have my friends coming up to me when I’m talking to a woman and saying things like, "You know - I was thinking about that time junior year when you ate your own semen and in retrospect I don’t think it was that big a deal." Alternatively, I can’t have her friends pulling her aside to warn her about me or whispering things to her, like, "Maryanne just told me that this guy tried to rob a bank last week. Run away."
(I would like to say something semi-smooth like "By pulling her away from the others, I’m trying to create a date-like environment," but that’s just not the truth. If anything, I’m trying to trap her so that she’s forced to talk to me. She could be a woman or a bear - it doesn’t really matter.
Rebecca and I were hitting it off. She was an aspiring actress and, more importantly, a redhead (I find them delightfully attractive). Things were progressing smoothly as I kept getting both she and I vodka tonics.
[Also, actresses are sexy to me, if for no other reason that if they start acting crazy, you can qualify it by saying, "Well, she is an actress." I used to sort of see an actress who fascinated me and also gave the most incredible blowjobs in the history of mankind. Of course, I fucked it up, in part because my old roommate Rob nicknamed her Big Hair. Giving nicknames to girls I hook up with is typical of Rob - I’ve been with Big Hair, Man Hands, Man Shoes, John Wayne/The Mitt (who was so "rugged" that she could allegedly light matches off her face) and For Real (who was so talkative and annoying that Rob couldn’t believe that I too didn’t find her annoying, saying, "For real? She doesn’t annoy you? For real?" She actually did annoy the shit out of me but she was pretty hot, so I put up with it for as long as I could before dropping out.) Anyway, the kicker with Big Hair was that she later got her hair cut and it wasn’t so big anymore and it looked great. And, of course, the blowjobs. How it ends: I lose. But back to Rebecca and I…]
Soon enough, sure enough, by the grace of God and the good people at Ketel One, Rebecca and I were making out. I am an unabashed bar maker outter (I hope spellcheck later changes this word to otter, because that would be awesome). I know that making out with a stranger at a bar in front of your friends is not really the classy thing to do, but really, when a woman wants to kiss me, that feeling usually lasts for only a brief moment in time. Meaning, my window of opportunity is short so I must take advantage right away, whether in a bar or at a party or on public transportation. Also, it’s fun to kiss a girl with your eyes open while looking at your friends across the room who are looking at you. It really creeps them out. Like, big time.
One thing I’m not touching on is that by this point Rebecca and I were both pretty drunk. I mean, there is a requisite level of intoxication that one must reach - even someone as shameless as I - before it’s acceptable to be groping another person in a bar. The good news is that Rebecca and I had reached this level a good half hour before we even started making out. So we were simply now two drunks all over each other in a corner.
Eventually, when I realized that we might soon be asked to leave the bar because of the way we were carrying on, I started plying Rebecca with requests to come home with me. She protested, saying again and again that she wasn’t that type of girl, that we had just met, etc. She said that she wanted to see me again and to prove this gave me her number, then and there. We kept making out.
I don’t remember how she made her exit (again, very drunk), but we pried ourselves off each other and she left the bar. I walked over to my friends to hear things like, "Dude, that was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen" and "The image of you holding that girl’s face in your creepy hands while you kissed her - I mean, I won’t sleep for weeks." They were obviously jealous.
About fifteen minutes later, I looked outside the bar to see Rebecca standing there with my friends smoking cigarettes, among them coincidentally my buddy Joe (the same guy who visited me this weekend), when I thought she had left. Once she and I parted, my testosterone and boner had cooled off quite a bit, resulting me in realizing how drunk I actually was. I stumbled out to say hello to Rebecca and maybe get some more make out time in. Drunk John likes to make out.
I don’t remember much of us standing outside, but there was no making out or touching between Rebecca and I. We just all stood around in a circle, talking.
And then disaster struck.
Seemingly out of nowhere, a guy came over to Rebecca, grabbed her by the hand, and indifferently, casually, led her away. There were romantic overtones in these actions. As he led her away, Rebecca looked back at me with this look. I can’t explain it, but I don’t know if she was trying to exude sexiness or if it was a cocky "fuck you." Any way you cut it, the girl I had just spent all night making out with had left with another guy.
Fuck.
At that moment, Rebecca became The Challenger. Why? Because, according to Joe, who was an eyewitness as all this transpired, I made the face that every American made on the fateful day of January 28, 1986 when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in the skies above Florida. I went through the same sequence of emotions: confusion about what was going on; shock when I realized what was actually happening; horror when I thought of its implications; and finally, deep and lasting sadness when I was left with its memory. Not my finest moment.
Of course, I was duly ragged on by my buddies for what had transpired. I called my friend Maryanne the next afternoon to chastise her for hanging out with such strumpets when she said, "Yeah, I forgot to mention that she has a boyfriend."
Thanks, Mare - INFORMATION THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN USEFUL YESTERDAY. Apparently, Rebecca was out separately from her boyfriend, but they met up at the end of the night to go home together.
As you might imagine, I was confused by the whole situation. We made out all night long, she gave me her number, told me she wanted to see me again - was I played? Was I the naive victim of a conniving temptress who nearly gave me blue balls? Or was there something more here that required explanation?
I never found out. I never spoke to Maryanne again about The Challenger and though the story would occasionally be brought up by my buddies ("Remember when you made out with that girl all night and then she left with her boyfriend and you almost cried?"), it was generally forgotten about, another horror story relegated to the annals of my miserable sex life.
NOW - back to this weekend. The Challenger was now standing right in front of me. Maryanne had long-forgotten the story and off-handedly introduced me to The Challenger before realizing her mistake as the awkwardness unfolded:
Maryanne: "John, this is my friend Rebecca. Rebecca, this is John."
Rebecca: [glint of recognition not so well-hidden] "Uh, yeah…hi."
Me: [sweating, clenching teeth] "Um, hi as well. To you. Hello."
Maryanne: [realizing mistake, pooping self] "Uh…uh…"
I pride myself on my ability to not be awkward in any situation, but when an embarrassing story I hadn’t thought about in years came to life before my eyes - after a half a bottle of whiskey, no less - well, this was a little much.
At least the place was loud and crowded with my friends, so I was able to casually slip away after making the introduction so that I could run up to my buddy Joe and tug at him like a child trying to wake his parents on Christmas morning, screaming, "The Challenger is here! The Challenger has landed! The Challenger is actually in this fucking bar!"
Within approximately eight seconds, all of my friends who didn’t know the story had been surreptitiously apprised and the stage was set for an evening of awkwardness, pregnant with the possibility of drunken histrionics.
But Dear Reader, I fear I will only let you down, like I let down my friends that night. I wish I could report that I walked up to her and confronted her, possibly calling her an antiquated slur for prostitute like tart or harlot or even trollop; or that I shit in a bag in the bathroom, walked out of the bathroom, dumped the shit out in front of her, and said, "This is how you made me feel"; or that I start making out with my buddy Joe, groping him like I had once groped her, before finally saying to her, "I found kissing you so objectionable that I became a homosexual - how does that suit you? And tell me: as you watch my boyfriend and I kiss, you wish you were him, don’t you?"
Yet I did none of these things. Instead, I did what has since become natural to me: I retreated to the ever-loving arms of my true mistress, Whiskey. Over the course of the next few hours, I did two things very well: 1) completely ignored The Challenger (who, it is worth noting, was wearing an engagement ring with a diamond smaller than most of the diamonds I find in my stool); 2) got completely fucking annihilated. I don’t claim to be a serious whiskey drinker (despite my best efforts) but I have learned to tame it over the last few months, so I know how much I can drink and what state I’ll be in if I surpass this amount.
But for whatever reason, on Saturday night, things fell apart. I can’t give you an account of the night, but as I watched The Challenger from afar, stewing in my own rage and perspiration, I got very, very intoxicated. I don’t remember the night, I don’t remember how I got home, I don’t remember anything. I remember seeing The Challenger, vaguely recall being at the bar, and then waking up. That’s all I’ve got from about 1am until 12pm Saturday night/Sunday morning.
There is no resolution to this story, no great ending. I met The Challenger, I balked, and then I blacked out from alcohol. I made it through the night without confronting The Challenger or doing anything to harm myself or others. I successfully maintained my pride (I think) and self-respect but no vengeance.
I woke up only with a hangover and a story. But really, that’s all I’m looking for on the weekends, so that’s alright with me.
