drunk

Hasn’t Baltimore been through enough?

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One of the best perks about working in Sales, is that I get to do fun things with clients and spend other people’s money to do it! A group of us used to take Washington DC clients to a Baltimore Orioles game as a great way to spend time with them and develop better relationships with our clients. OK, come on it’s the Orioles, no one ever really cared about the game – we just drank and had a fun time. Here’s a few highlights from our last trip.

 

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We would go with about ten to fifteen people from different areas and invite about a hundred clients so it was always a big crowd. The last time we went was an absolute disaster; the forecast was calling for a washout, the sky was black and it was a torrential downpour! Rain like that only exists in the movies so I should have known that shenanigans would be on the menu.

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We were taking Amtrak for convenience to avoid the airport and also so that we could enjoy the bar car on the way. As we were dodging the downpour on the platform waiting for the train, we saw the train heading down the tracks. I couldn’t wait for the train to arrive to get out of this heavy rain and also to get away from the woman standing next to me. She was on her phone chatting away louder than loud and complaining about the rain as if her holding that phone in her hand instead of an umbrella was the smart thing to do. As the train stopped and the doors opened, the girl in front of us marched up to get in the train still chatting away like a little yenta. As she was gabbing and not paying attention to anything but her conversation, low and behold she didn’t mind the gap and fell in between the train and the platform. It was a combination of the heavy rain, the conversation, but mostly it was the hooker boots she was rocking on the platform. I can see wearing those in a club or on the runway, but on Metro North in a rainstorm? It’s no wonder she fell.

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It was like it happened in slow motion in front of me. Boom: the doors open, boom: she’s stepping forward, boom: she’s in between the train and platform, boom: she’s still on the phone screaming “Oh my God, I fell in the tracks, I’m in the tracks.” At this point she landed with a heavy thud on her elbows and her legs were dangling down under the platform – yet she didn’t stop talking or put the phone down! The New Yorker in me did what any normal person would do in the face of commuter roadkill: I started hysterically laughing and lifted my bag and stepped over her to get a seat on the train as she was staring up at me screaming “What the fuck are you doing?” and then back into the phone “Can you believe this guy just stepped over me? I’m in the tracks.”

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At this point, the conductor had arrived to see what was going on and help her up and as I was walking to my seat I looked back and realized that my friends hadn’t moved and were staring in disbelief that I had just done that? As the conductor went above and beyond to help that nitwit on her phone, we got seats on the train. We couldn’t stop laughing at how she never missed a beat on her call when we look up and where is the only available seat on the train for her to sit: right across from us. I couldn’t stop laughing and staring because she was soaking wet head to toe and yet she still stayed on that phone for another hour after that giving me dirty looks the whole time.

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So we got to Baltimore and the weather wasn’t letting up. Out of a hundred people confirmed, only about nine brave souls showed up. We sat in our empty section since no one showed up and there was a long rain delay. When the game went on, we just drank to make the best of it. As my friend Karen and I were talking, she just freaked out and started screaming at the top of her lungs like a psycho. I didn’t even get the words out of my mouth “What the fuc…” before this rocket flew right in between the two of our heads and hit the seat in back of us. A pop fly that was inches away from clocking one of us in the noggin and neither of us were paying attention! The ball landed with a thunderous boom and the guy in back of us snatched it. We were freaking out as everyone laughed their asses off and then the guy wouldn’t give us the ball. I was like “dude, that almost hit us in the head!” and he was like “dude, if you were paying attention instead of gabbing, you would have gotten it.” Forget being on TV, if that hit us we would have been hospitalized or dead…

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After the game, we tried to make our way through the crowd and out of there. If you’ve ever been to a baseball game, you know that the crowds are crazy and mostly drunk and it takes forever to get out of the stadium. I was walking with Amy, a colleague I’d just met earlier that day, and my impatience took over. I’m not sure exactly what came over me, but I knew that this crowd just wasn’t doing it for me. I linked arms with her and leaned in close so we were face to face and asked “How fast can you go?” “What are you talking about?” she asked and looked very confused and not expecting me to start shouting at the top of my lungs: “GET OUT OF THE FUCKING WAY!!! GET OUT OF THE WAY!!! SHE JUST SHIT HER PANTS!!!” and I started pulling her fast through the mass of people. It was as if the crowd parted like the Red Sea and I just kept shouting “SHE SHIT HER PANTS – GET OUT OF THE WAY” and people were moving like hotcakes to get away from us. She tried to pull her arm away and was pissed “What’s wrong with you? Are you crazy – stop pulling me” “You wanna stay here instead?” as we looked at people staring at us and then I started screaming again.

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Some drunk guy tried to help us and pointed as he shouted “Dude, there’s a bathroom right there, take her in there.” I screamed back “DUDE, SHE SHIT HER PANTS AND SHE’S COVERED – SHE NEEDS A SHOWER” which parted the people ever further away from us. When I tell you that we made it out of that stadium and back to our hotel faster than a speeding bullet, I’m not exaggerating. We had three drinks in the hotel bar by the time the rest of our group got back.

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As we were waiting for the others to meet up with us, she was obviously annoyed at me. I thought she was being a little bit ungrateful as I had just gotten us out of the crowd like a streak of lightning, but she was embarrassed. She tried sitting across the bar from me, but it was no use because there was no one else in there. Her phone rang and she started chatting away, and I leapt into action. I ran right over next to her phone and started screaming again “Amy, get your clothes on someone’s at the door!!!” and started hysterical laughing. She was pissed before that, yet this pushed her over. “Come on, It’s my mother. It would be funny if it was my husband, but it’s my mother for god’s sake.” I thought she’d think it was funny, but she absolutely didn’t and you know who thought it was even less funny than Amy? Her mother who started screaming “Where are you? I thought you were at a work event? Why are you undressed? Who is that? Where are you?” and Amy stormed off into the corner trying to explain “Mom, I’m not undressed…he’s an idiot…It is a work thing…”

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At this point the bartender was laughing at what I’d just done and I was in the middle of telling him about how we got out of the game so fast when our friends arrived and we were telling them. Amy was pissed at me and didn’t really want to move past this and be friends with me for some reason…She was mad that everyone was laughing at the antics instead of taking her side and a few drinks later she admitted that she thought it was funny too…but she would have thought it was funnier if I did it to Sue instead of her. Needless to say, it was a fun trip and we made the best of it despite the weather and if you’ve learned one lesson from this post it’s this: Don’t wear hooker boots in a rainstorm on a train platform – no good can come from it!

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Hasn’t New Jersey been through enough?

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Forget Sandy, Snookie, and Soprano’s Swan song, New Jersey has had another awful disaster worse than the tanning mom: A man was arrested for defecating in a New Jersey Tollbooth!

http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2013/06/22/Man-arrested-after-exiting-car-and-defecating-in-Holland-Tunnel-booth/UPI-79161371957477/

Forget No Tresspassing - this is the sign they need to hang in there!

Forget No Tresspassing – this is the sign they need to hang in there!

I must credit my friend Ja for notifying me of this, but the first thing I thought of when hearing this is “Was he in the EZ Pass Lane?” That doesn’t sound very EZ to me? And why on earth don’t they lock those toll booths? Can anyone just enter and have your way with the booth? Who stops to go in them, but even if you live out in the boonies, you lock your doors. Not to be gross, but did this clown leave his special package on a chair or on the floor or on the desk; how big is this booth? More importantly, who has to go to work the next day and use that booth? They might clean it up and spray a little Febreeze in there, but I don’t even let people use my desk phone without cleaning it off, so there is absolutely no way that I would ever go back to work and step back into that booth. My favorite part is that he was arrested for trespassing. If someone takes a dump in the tollbooth – that’s a lot more than trespassing!

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This of course reminded me of a story about my friend “Al”. Not many people will cop to as many embarrassing stories about themselves as I will, so he is a good sport for sharing this one. He was about eighteen at the time and was driving on the Expressway in his friend’s station wagon when his stomach started acting up. The Expressway always has traffic and can back up in a heartbeat and since Al was having the exact opposite of a backup, he made them pull that station wagon over.

He got out to squat in between the guardrails separating the two lanes and since it was summer, he wasn’t wearing a shirt, just khaki shorts and sneakers. As he was squatting and holding onto the guardrail for some semblance of support, he was crouching and doing his business while his shorts and tighty-whiteys were around his ankles. This is not an agile man by any means, nonetheless on the side of the road in a well-trafficked area and thus – his business ended up landing with a thud right into his pulled down tightie whiteys and his shorts. Now, if that wasn’t clear I cannot draw you a picture or explain it any further, so just go with me here. The way it landed, he might as well have never gotten out of the car in the first place because his clothing was ruined.

If you don't know this is Smokey from the movie Friday then I'm not sure we can continue to be friends...

If you don’t know this is Smokey from the movie Friday then I’m not sure we can continue to be friends…

Realizing he was in a bad state, Al stepped gingerly out of his underwear and shorts so as to avoid any and all contact, and then he crouched down in between the guardrails for coverage as he thought about what to do next. It was after about ten seconds that he did what anyone might have done in that position: he shot up like a rocket, jumped over the guardrail, and ran for all he was worth. Well, he then found out that his running was worth about ninety cents because his friends had been watching the whole time and once they saw him shoot up naked and start running towards them, they gunned it and sped away as he gave chase.

He was literally running on the side of the road chasing them wearing just a pair of sneakers and a gold chain around his neck with one hand giving his friends the finger and the other holding his junk. They’d slow down just til he got just close enough to almost reach the door handle and then gun it – laughing hysterically as they watched the show out the back window of that station wagon. Even if he ran like Usain Bolt, there was no way he could have caught them!

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About a mile down the road they finally let him in the car and agreed to take him home. Guess who didn’t think it was funny while they laughed their asses off? If you think that was the worst part of his day, then you should have seen the look on his face as they pulled off on his exit about forty minutes later. He almost lost control of himself again when he realized that his abandoned shat-on-shorts were still housing his wallet containing his fake ID and house keys in the pocket.

He made them drive him back to the scene of the earlier crime, but with traffic getting back there and actually finding the exact spot again, about two hours had passed by in that oppressive August heat. He was afraid of a repeat incident with them pulling away again (although now they had given him a towel to wrap around himself for modesty or to protect the seat from a bare ass in summer) so he took the car keys with him as he left to retrieve his wallet.

Who could predict the massive swarm of flies that would have been surrounding that awful pile of clothing laying there in the mid-day heat, but he needed his fake ID out of that wallet so he dug through and got it. He sprinted back to the car but not before throwing up on the side of the road. This was way before the days of Purell, so I’m sure he stunk to high heaven…

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The moral of this story isn’t “be careful who you hang out with because friends can screw with you and this can happen to you.” The moral of the story is “Take Imodium AD and this CAN’T happen to you!
For all parties involved, thank God this was way before camera phones as no one should bear witness to that.

In all seriousness, this is the exact reason I am addicted to Imodium AD. I take toll roads, I commute on a train, I travel highways…I wouldn’t be able to leave the house because every misstep spreads like the wildfire through the internet that I’d be a viral sensation the next time I have something other than white rice for lunch.

Can I get a side of whoop ass with that toast Jan?

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There’s really not anyplace to eat near the fat camp, especially late at night. After closing down the local bar, we were always hungry and looking for someone to take us to the diner. It was the only place to get something to eat 24 hours a day and I could never drive because I was always completely drunk. The food was unbearable if you were sober but, like I said, it was the only thing open late-night and thankfully, we were never sober in there. We went there so much that Jan the waitress became quite fond of me. When I say that she became quite fond of me, I mean that she would put up with my nonsense because I was always drunk and obnoxious…

Jan was very patient with the drunks and she made really good toast. She had a tendency to screw up my order, but I usually attributed that to my pickiness and slurring drunken speech – not her waitressing skills. Jan was in her mid-fifties, had big hair like Flo from Mel’s Diner, had extremely long nails, and had a deep raspy voice from many years of chain smoking. I know exactly what you’re thinking and you’re right; she was hot!

Jan, Is that you?

One night I was out with my cousin Leaky and her friend Diana. She was a nice enough girl, but she was extremely intimidating and she didn’t take shit from anyone. She didn’t appreciate my sarcasm – which she let me know often – and was actually more like a bodyguard than a friend. Let me try to paint a picture and tell you about Diana – she was built just like a FedEx drop-off box, had both her eyebrows, her lips, and ears pierced with all manner of metallic symbols and objects, a razor-thin moustache over that constant frown, and she had really short curly red hair like a certain little orphan whose name rhymes with Fannie. Picture a female Mr. T without the jewelry and you’re not far off. I used to like to refer to her as “the Enforcer” but obviously not to her face since I was afraid of her. I really do say it about a lot of people, but she truly was crazy.

Put a curly wig on top and it’s not that far off from what she actually looks like.

To illustrate her insanity, we were in her car after picking up another friend, when she saw a guy randomly walking down the street. She threw on the brights and gassed it to the floor! The guy saw her veering towards him and bolted off while she was screaming out the window “Why are you running? Why are you hiding behind that car” as she was holding the horn down and swerving at him. Did I mention it was after midnight on a weeknight on a random side street? I was like; “Hello crazy, of course he’s running away like Carl Johnson – You’re chasing him down a dark street”…Needless to say the guy went running scared through someone’s yard towards the next block over to get away from this lunatic.

So back to the diner – Diana agreed to take us because she hadn’t been drinking and I was starving and whining non-stop about going. As we walked in the diner, I could see the look of grave concern on Jan’s face and I just assumed that she was as puzzled about Diana’s hair and clothing choices as we were. Apparently, I was much worse than usual in my level of drunkedness. I thought I was acting all subtle and smooth like jazz but, in hindsight, there was nothing subtle about me stumbling in the door and screaming: “Jan, I will fuck you on this counter RIGHT NOW if you bring me some rye bread toast immediately.” I’m not saying for sure whether she wanted it or not, but that was the quickest toast I have ever gotten in any diner, anywhere before or since.

Everyone in the diner thought it was funny and was laughing: everyone except for Jan. Jan proceeded to scold me and threaten to throw me out…”You can’t act like that in here. You better behave or you’re out again” to which I started giggling uncontrollably. Then she got mad and screamed “Out! You’re not doing this tonight” and had her hand strategically positioned on her hip while the other hand waived me towards the door like an air traffic controller with a flare. I begged her to let me stay since I was starving and anyway I didn’t have the keys to the car – I should have taken her advice and left then- little did I know.

Not one of my shining moments…

I really needed to pee so I took a bite of some of that delicious toast and stumbled off to the bathroom urinal to relieve myself. The next thing I remember was someone grabbing my arm and I went all Wu-Tang. I was swinging like Marky Mark in The Fighter because you do not mess with a guy at a urinal in the Men’s Room. That’s how I remember things going down.

What ACTUALLY happened was that I was peeing at the urinal and leaned against the wall for balance and apparently blacked out/fell asleep in the process. Sensing something was wrong since I obviously don’t shit in public with all this Imodium AD flowing through my veins, my cousin thought I needed someone to check on me. I think you can see where this is leading…

She senses something might be off, yet sends Diana in to see if I’m OK. She came in, saw me passed out and grabbed my arm so as not to startle me when I came to. Needless to say, when she grabbed me it startled me and I immediately went all funky bunch and tried to throw a cuff or two. A normal person in that situation would be a little more understanding when a drunken person with absolutely no coordination is throwing punches – not Diana.

Once I went all Iron Mike, Diana responded like Jackie Chan. She threw an elbow, somehow kicked me in the face as I was falling and then threw me onto the floor. She threw me onto the filthy public bathroom floor! As if that wasn’t enough – she dropped on top of me with the sharpest elbow on the East Coast and started punching the drunk out of me. Homegirl got all out crazy and was giving me a full throttle beat-down right there at the urinal. She seemed heavy before – but with the sheer might and gravity of her torso pummeling me, I really thought that deuce and a half of Diana might literally break me. Remember what Bane did to Batman in The Dark Knight Rises – well He’s got nothing on Diana!

Bane or Diana?

I’d like to tell you that I connected with a few good shots in on her as she was picking up her next title fight belt, but the truth is I didn’t connect with anything but the bathroom floor. She was doing a real number on me, but in my defense, I was mostly just trying to get my pants buttoned up and put my junk away. Not the best visual, but imagine my fear about having my privates hit that very public and filthy bathroom floor! No amount of penicillin is gonna make that go away.

Usually in circumstances like this, there is a savior – someone who sees the wrong in this situation and does what they can to assist because it is the right thing to do – not that night! You know who my savior was? Not my cousin, who was laughing at my screams while she finished eating my toast back at our table. No, my savior was Jan who heard the commotion and screaming (mine) and came running in. She kicked the bathroom door open (almost hitting me in the face with it, by the way), grabbed me by my ear and proceeded to drag me out the bathroom towards the front door like I was a rolling suitcase. Turns out she wasn’t saving me at all – she was throwing me out! I thought she was coming to my rescue and was like “Thank God, she’s kicking the shit out of me! What took you so long?  Wait, why are you throwing me out – she attacked me!!! Hey that hurts – let go of my ear! Can I at least take the toast to go?” Needless to say, the view from my perch on the front steps where she deposited me was not pretty.

As I sat on the front steps beaten and defeated, I tried trying to compose what was left of my tattered pride and shake it off. I had just been the victim of a drive by ass kicking, and there they were eating and having a good laugh at my expense. I’m sure it would have bothered me more if I hadn’t passed out again while I sat there on the steps leaning against the glass door.

Rye Bread Toast, how I love thee…

Jan actually did bring me some toast out on the steps a little while later – which made me laugh because it confirmed what I already knew to be true: she wanted me….she’s lucky the bully beat down took every drop of energy I had in me or I might have tried to make a move on her…Granted, she didn’t apologize for dragging me out by my poor little delicate ear, but the toast was all I needed to know everything would be all right…

This has absolutely nothing to do with this post – I just thought it was funny.

Like I’ve heard so many times before “Wow, That’s a long one!”

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“Are you ready?…” I could hear her as she stomped into the building and headed up the front staircase to our second floor apartment like Godzilla rolling through Tokyo. “Why is this door locked?…Let me in!…I know you’re in there…Can you hear me?…Come on,  we need to leave – Oh my God – are you still sleeping? Get up; we’re going to be late! Don’t do this to me. Open this door right now!!…Do I need to kick it in again!!! Don’t piss me off…”

That’s exactly how I was rudely woken up by my friend Weezie screaming and kicking at the front door of my apartment. Both of my roommates went to Albany for the weekend so there was no one else to let her in. I tried my best to ignore her, but she was relentless. “Get up, its 4:45 and you know it starts at 5 O’ Clock!” she implored.

I slowly peeled off my Navy Blue Tempur blinders and tried to steady myself. (Don’t you dare roll your eyes at me – those blinders are so comfortable and so soft that it’s actually as if you took your head and shoved it right up a sheep’s ass – seriously, they’re that soft!) As I tried to get my bearings, I knew that I should be in my own bedroom and should be sleeping in my own bed, but nothing seemed familiar at all. It felt like I had been turned upside down and was looking straight into a hall of mirrors. I knew that I should just lie back down and ignore her, but the truth is that she really would have kicked that door in again if I didn’t get up. Ignoring her would only lead to an assault!

“I’m coming” I groaned as I slowly lifted myself out of bed “Stop screaming before I smack you again.”

“Try it Bitch, and you’ll see what happens” she growled through the door.

I don’t think I can accurately describe my friend Weezie. She’s the type of person who feels that it’s more important to scream every word as opposed to speaking like a normal human being. I thought I had gotten used to it after five years, but when you’re hung over and the equilibrium is far from steady, being anywhere near Weezie is never the right choice. She was one of the toughest players on the girls Rugby team, but she was freaking hysterical and one minute with her would have you laughing your ass off. She’s a lot of fun and one of my closest friends, but that girl is legitimately crazy. When she says she’ll kick in a door – she means it.

As I opened the door, her glance told me that she wasn’t amused. There she was: one arm strategically placed on the left hip of her sparkly black formal dress and on her face a look of disgust that I can’t even begin to describe. She was ready to go out for her big night and here I was screwing that up. For some unknown reason, I had thought it was a good idea to stay out the night before until 7 AM and then sleep the day away. This would normally be her routine as well on a Saturday, but offer up free booze and she’d scale a wall for it.

Her Formal for the Girl’s Rugby Team started in less than fifteen minutes and she was not amused that I had just opened the door in grey Calvin Klein boxer briefs and a ripped T-shirt – obviously not dressed and ready to go unless by the word Formal they meant that trailer park chic was the dress code. I didn’t even want to go because I was hung over and felt like crap, but the prospect of a top-shelf open bar for five hours really enticed me. My girlfriend didn’t mind me going with Weezie and most of our friends were going, and did I mention that it was open bar so, I thought, why not.

Weezie pushed past me and went straight for a Coors Light as she started playing with my dog. When I say that, I don’t mean to beat around the bush and try to sneak in a sexual innuendo – I mean that she was actually playing with my dog, Smokey. I tried to sit on the couch and make small talk by saying that she looked nice and that I would like a beer too, but it did no good. She gave me a look and then offered me ten minutes before it was going to start getting physical, so I got moving. Once again, when I say that I don’t mean to beat around the bush and try to sneak in a sexual innuendo – I mean that she would literally smack the shit out of me! I tried to pull myself together because I knew she wasn’t above using a slap or an elbow to the gut to motivate. She said she’d walk Smokey, to speed things along, and I asked if she would make me a sandwich since I was starving.  

“Are you kidding me? Did you just ask me to make you a sandwich?”

“You make it like I asked you to clean the toilet – it’ll keep you busy while I get ready. Come on, I’m starving.”

“You can eat when we get there – We’re gonna be late.” 

“Weezie, when you’re worth it they’ll wait.” Picture her unamused.

About fifteen minutes later, I was ready. Anyone who knows anything about me knows I was under duress to be ready in fifteen minutes. I locked the front door behind us as we headed down the steps. (This is important – I normally never carried keys or bothered to lock the door but my roommates made me swear to do it before they left for the weekend because of people coming in and taking stuff. It was a safe town and they didn’t think twice about anyone stealing the TV or DVD Player – the crime they were talking about was beer theft. Lisa used to sneak in (sometimes through the keyhole and sometimes through the front window – she is a small girl) and take the beer. She’d then blame Weezie who my roommates would scream at and accuse of lying when she tried to deny it. I knew it was Lisa but didn’t care because it was hysterical how crazy Unibrow would get. Unibrow was one of my roommates and we called him that because he was from New Jersey. I’m kidding, we called him that because he had the bushiest strip of felt impersonating two eyebrows that I have ever seen on a man’s forehead. It was as if Bert on Sesame Street had a baby with Peter Gallagher.    

As we were leaving the front porch I said “Weezie, will you put my keys in your bag? My pants are tight and I don’t want to have two distracting bulges.” She put my keys in her bag and cracked a smile so I could tell that she was loosening up a bit.

“I’m really hungry – what are they having for dinner?” I gently asked.
“Hooka, I told you they’re not having dinner – it’s passed food” She rudely responded back with.
“What? Who doesn’t serve dinner? It’s five hours long.”

“It was cheaper this way so the planning committee thought people would eat first to keep costs down”

When she said cost-effective, she really meant it. Their idea of offering something to nosh on was nachos, potato chips, and pretzels. I thought they might be putting the real food out later since this must obviously be a joke, so I started drinking to fill my stomach with something. I was going through my vodka phase and just took a tiny bit of orange juice to gently color the vodka a bit. Little did I know what a dangerous game that would be to play on an empty stomach…
“Weezie, when are they putting out the other food?”

“They have nachos right there – eat those.”

“Are you kidding me? I don’t eat with my hands remember…”

“You and that OCD bullshit again…”

“They don’t have any silverware or napkins either, how am I supposed to eat anything here?”

By seven, I was drinking heavily and dancing violently. I apparently thought it was my job when Michael Jackson’s Beat It came on, to get in the center of the dance floor screaming the words and busting out a few karate kicks. I looked good, but I’m clumsy normally so a kickin’ beat and all that alcohol did nothing to stop me from bumping into almost everyone on the dance floor.

That’s actually the last thing I remember of the Formal. I don’t have any recollection of the events for the rest of the night following that dance. My recollection is that I had a lot of rhythm and looked really hot, but some pictures have surfaced that drastically contradict that idea.

I have heard many stories of my activities from those missing hours, but since I can only hope that they are exaggerated, I refuse to accept them as fact. What I do recall is being surprised that a December night with so much snow could feel so hot. I was sweating like rice pudding left out in the sun all day.

The next thing I remember is walking down Main Street towards my apartment. It was just about five AM on the Savings Bank digital clock. I had absolutely no idea where I had been since the bars closed at two or where Weezie was. I also had no idea where my shirt and tie were for that matter as I was now only wearing my white undershirt. For some reason it also wasn’t as warm as it had been earlier. Did I mention that it was December in Upstate NY?  

When I got to my building, I tried to open the front door but it was locked and I didn’t have the key – Weezie did. Right about then having two distracting bulges didn’t seem like such a big deal after all.  

That’s when I remembered about the back fire escape that led into my bedroom. I had never actually used the fire escape before, mostly because I’m terrified of heights and partly because the slumlord that rented it to us actually said never to use the fire escape. It wasn’t really attached to the house and actually banged into the house on windy days. (The building was being torn down after the Spring Semester and was actually condemned). There was also a lip in the doorway leading into my bedroom from the fire escape about five inches high where a plate had been laid down, leaving an opening under the door so snow came into the room. It didn’t just come into my room, it accumulated. The gap was so big I was always afraid Smokey would crawl out through it.

As I mounted that frozen monstrosity that they were calling a fire escape, I somehow knew in the back of my mind that this wasn’t such a good idea but there was no other way for me to get in. It was snowing lightly, my hands were frozen, and as I forged ahead, I just couldn’t look down. As I got to the top of the ladder, I tried to steady myself and climb onto the landing but it was very slippery. Just as I thought I was on steady footing and stepped towards the door, I slipped on a patch of ice and fell off the back of the fire escape toward the snow-covered ground two stories below. Everything went black.

I have no idea how long I was out for, but there I was in the snow looking up at the fire escape and my first thought was that this was exactly the reason why the slumlord had told me never to go on that fire escape.

My second thought was that my head was pounding and something was wrong with my left shoulder. Every part of my body was fighting to let me know who was in the most pain. I think the back of my head won out, but then came the worst pain of all: I realized that I was still locked out.

Believe it or not, that second climb up the fire escape was a lot easier than the first. In addition to being drunk, now I was dizzy and in horrendous pain, but I made it up there. Slowly, I found my footing on the landing. I held onto the railing very tightly as I opened the door and rushed into the room.

Remember that lip on the door I told you about? Yep, it got me. I tripped on the lip of the door and fell forward with no time to react. I closed my eyes as the desk got closer to my face because I just couldn’t do anything else. The corner of my desk ripped through my forehead like a knife through cheese and I forgot all about the pain in my shoulder or the back of my head. Blood was gushing everywhere and Smokey was going nuts.

I couldn’t get myself off the floor partly because the pain was too intense and partly because of all the blood that was now in my eyes. I tried but I just couldn’t lift myself and Smokey’s barking and jumping around like a lunatic were not helping the situation. It was barely light outside, and I had to squint to see anything at all. I knew I should call my girlfriend because I needed to go to the hospital, but the phone was all the way through the bedroom, through the long hallway past the bathroom and then in the corner of the living room. I dragged myself through the house leaving blood everywhere as I crept to the phone and finally dialed her number.  

“You’re not gonna believe this, I’m bleeding. I fell off the fire escape, and..”

(Cutting me off) “Oh my God Is Smokey OK?”
“I’m fucking bleeding, he’s jumping all over me, HE’S FINE – I’m not OK!”

“Are you drunk?”

“Of course I’m drunk, what would I be doing on that fire escape if I was sober? It’s not even attached to the house! I need help over here. I can’t get off the floor”

“Go to bed and call me tomorrow – you’re so dramatic” and she hung up.

I think that’s the exact moment I knew that I would marry that girl.

I got Weezie’s answering machine next (she told me later that she was in bed hysterical laughing listening to me leave the message because all she could understand was me slurring “Hooka…Hooka…it’s not right…I fell off the fire escape…you have my keys…”

I finally got a friend to come over and take me to the hospital and a few hours later I was back in my bed with torn ligaments and a slight concussion after a good “talking to” from the doctor in the Emergency Room about drinking. I was so out of it that I was agreeing to his points and nodding to everything he said and didn’t realize that he was talking about me. I stupidly thought he was just making small talk about the way people drink when they’re in college.

I had just fallen asleep when I woke up to Weezie hysterical laughing as she stood above me dangling my keys. I tried to explain what happened, but she just kept laughing. She thought it was poetic justice for me leaving her alone at the Formal last night.

When my girlfriend came over, she couldn’t believe how seriously I was hurt. She thought I was just drunk and rambling on when I called her. I immediately forgave her because I was in love with her. I also immediately forgave her because no one else would take care of me and clean up my apartment and I was starving. I was heavily medicated that day but still made it out to the bars two nights later.

I wish I could say that night was a wakeup call for me and that I never got that drunk again, but that would be a lie. I had to leave school early and get an incomplete in all my classes and I looked like Mikhail Gorbachev with that big gash that went from my hairline to the top of my nose. I made scars trendy way before Harry Potter did but it didn’t go away for over two months and I had trouble with my left shoulder for much longer than that. I was in a sling and it was impossible to do anything for myself. I wish I could also say that was the last time that I got hurt while I was drunk (see broken ankle number one, broken ankle number two, St. Patrick’s Day 2009 when I fell face first into a brick wall and looked like Rhianna, etc.) As the saying goes: if you fall off the horse, you get right back on and I‘m pretty sure that applies to fire escapes too.