12/24/09
A great drinking story from back in the day,
y'all...
A little background first. You see, at
the time, my best friend Joe lived by himself in the basement of his parents'
house. Sounds kinda weak, yeah, but this was like a finished
apartment: bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom, cable TV, comfy
furniture...had it's own entrance...now you get the picture. Since most of
the rest of us were still living in our bedrooms, Joe's place was the
cat's ass, and became the site of many Binge-Drinking Events among mutual
friends. I hesitate to call these events "parties," because that
word implies that at least some members of the opposite sex are involved
who you may have a chance with...and, to be honest, at that point in our lives
Joe and I were pretty fucking far from that scenario.
Our
BDE's were usually a bunch of guys hanging out, shooting the shit, playing Mario
Kart, and getting blasted. (Or playing RISK, but that's a
different funny story - TRUST me, it is - though I don't think
alcohol had a big part in that one.)
Well, one
fine day, Joe and I got our hands on the recipe for a mixed drink called Red
Death (gee, that sounds like WACKY fun right out of Edgar friggin' Allan
Poe!). I'd list the ingredients here, but if you're reading this and
have never heard of it, you can obviously go ahead and GOOGLE it.
SO! We pile into Joe's Nissan Sentra and take our little shopping list to
the liquor store. If you have resisted the temptation to GOOGLE the Red
Death, I will tell the uninformed that this is about $70-$80 worth of hard
booze. Oh, and that dash of lime juice.
We get back
to Joe's pad, unload our cargo, and we are sure we are well on our way to
becoming certifed mixologists. Me and Joe. Two guys who
are still getting carded. Working off a recipe given to us by an
indisputable pot-head and using a giant Tupperware bowl to mix this shit
up.
Joe makes a few phone calls. Invites some
of the gang. Come on over and try this RED DEATH shit we
made! YAH! WHOO!
While we're waiting for
people to show up, Joe and I begin to sample our witches' brew.
This we do using giant Tupperware cups. (Okay, we HEARTILY sampled, and
YES, Joe had a LOT of inherited Tupperware
stuff.)
Now, Indisputable Pothead had assured us:
"DUDE, this stuff'll kick your ASS!"
After we down
our giant Tup-Cups of Inevitable Ruin, Joe and I look at each other - still
very sober - and say something like "Bull-SHIT!" Obviously neither of
us had been shown the PSA about NOT GUZZLING HARD LIQUOR, and fill up the
Tup-Cups once more.
Fast-forward a
bit.
The gang's all here. Me and Joe are
BUH-LASTED - WAY ahead of the curve at this point. Everyone else
is sipping their drinks and, I imagine, looking at the two of us quite
nervously. We are Elvis hanging out in a room full of Buddhist
monks.
So Joe and I have this TERRIFIC idea:
"WE'RE GOING TO WALK UP TO PERKINS AND PICK UP SOME CHICKS!!!" YAH!
WHOO! Because WE are just WAY too charming to POSSIBLY
be refused. Or arrested.
A little more
background here. Where Joe lived at the time is a small, dark,
forested side-street. Perkins is a restaurant/all-night hang-out about a
mile away. Connecting these two points is Route 191 - a rather busy
highway with rather narrow shoulders. At one point on this trek,
Route 191 intersects with Route 22 - a VERY VERY busy
highway.
AND NOT ONE PERSON - NOT ONE OF OUR GOOD FRIENDS
- TRIES TO STOP US.
To this day, my only guess is that
they didn't think we'd make it up the stairs
to actually LEAVE the apartment.
Drunk Trek
- starring Dave and Joe.
To my amazement, we survive the
cars whizzing past us at arms-length on Route 191; AND we survive the Route
22 intersect, which puts us about three-quarters of the way there.
Home stretch, baby! The hot drooling virgins are just waiting for us up on
that hill. In a restaurant. For us. At Perkins. Muslim
extremists have better logic systems than this.
This is
about the time I realize that MY LEGS DON'T WORK.
I get the sudden impression that Sober Me is mentally kicking me
in the ass and HARD.
YOU ARE STRANDED,
BUDDY. YOU ARE A BEACHED WHALE. YOU'RE TOAST.
So what to do? (Realize, dear reader, that
this is LONG before the age of the cell phone...)
What to
do?
Yes! YES! GOT IT!
Start reciting - nay, YELLING - inspirational banter from those great
"Rocky" movies!
Two drunk guys weaving down the side of a
highway doing Mickey and Apollo Creed:
"Eye of the
tiger! EYE OF THE TIGER!"
"Eat lightning and crap
thunder!"
"NO pain, NO PAIN!"
And so
on.
I think that bought me a few extra steps.
CUT TO: DARKNESS.
This is
where it gets tricky 'cause all I know is what people have told me in The
After.
As I'm told, Joe helped limp my blacked-out ass
ACROSS Route 191 and into a grassy knoll beside the McDonald's parking lot
there. Apparently this involved dumping me over a small wire
fence, but it was nice and dark there in the grass - so I wouldn't
get rolled, abducted, fucked without consent, or picked up by
cops. A good place to hide the temporarily dead.
Then Joe - and this is the mark of a true friend here, folks - re-crossed the
highway and hoofed it back to his house to get help.
Now, when I tell this next part, remember that I am in an alcoholic
coma, alone and extremely vulnerable, maybe 10 yards from the
Mickey-D's parking lot, and Joe is shitting himself, probably wondering if
anybody will still be AT THE HOUSE when he gets
there.
So Joe somehow gets back, bursts through the door,
swaggers through the kitchen and into the living room where everyone is still
politely sipping their Red Deaths (I'm sure it WAS vile) but
now eating some food, and our friend Tom says - in that
brass-and-baritone way Tom has of speaking - "HEY BUDDY! WHERE'S
DAVE?"
And then Tom shoves a big handful of McDonald's
french fries into his craw.
Once the Lightweight, Now
the Heavy
D George Gawlik
12/25/09
ADDENDUM: In this excerpt from
FaceBook,
Joe picks up the story where my consciousness leaves
off.
The Red Death Fiasco: Part
Deux.
In a story here my
brother-in-arms David describes an incident which goes down in memory for one of
the dumber things we ever did.
Trouble is, after the
blackout, he doesn't remember the details that
followed.
After I marched my drunk ass back the mile
or so to my house and found that at least one person MUST HAVE DRIVEN RIGHT PAST
US, I grabbed Tom and we got in his three-on-the-tree Ford F100. 5 minutes later
we were back in the parking lot, I was in the truck and Tom was standing over
Dave attempting to motivate him toward mobility. Exactly what was said is
unclear, but it sounded like a bassoon arguing with an out of tune violin.
Finally, Tom reached down, grabbed Dave, and carried him over to the truck.
"MAKE ROOM BUDDY!" Tossed him in my lap, and off we
went.
Back (again) at my place, Tom carried Dave
downstairs and into the living room to let him sleep it off. I sat there, now
mostly sober from the walking and general holy-shitness of the whole event and
told everyone what went down after we left. People came and went, and then Dave
was upright but incoherent.
"What's up buddy?" Tom
asked.
"need to go bathroom" Dave
mumbled.
"Sure thing." and Dave walked past us, turned
right, and started walking out the apartment door.
"WHOA
WHOA GRAB HIM STOP HIM WHERE'S HE GOING."
Tom tried to
grab Dave by the midsection, but Dave, in a fit of cartoon physics, latched onto
the doorframe like a cat that doesn't want a bath and just bent and stretched
despite any amount of force applied. Changing tactics, Tom reached up and
grabbed Dave's wrists, ripped the fingers from the exit, and spun them both
round and into the bathroom in one motion, slamming the door behind
them.
Once the obvious sounds of struggle died, we
waited. Tom reappeared after a short while, "Well, I got him cleaned up as much
as possible. But it's not pretty."
Eventually, Dave
emerged, we all wound up crashing for the night, and in the morning Tom and I
were shooting the breeze when Dave awoke and stumbled into the
kitchen.
"How ya feeling,
buddy?"
"Well, my contact is missing. My wallet is
gone. And there's something that...smells like...vomit all over
me."
"Ah, that would be
vomit."
Thanks, Joe - that's quite
enough.
The Mad Max Master-Blaster of
Vomitus
D George Gawlik
BACK