(SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Posted While Still Kinda Drunk, More Than Likely Incoherent)
Penny pitchers of Budweiser and Bud Light were advertised as the Saturday Special at The Pumping Company, a fine establishment on the North Side of Chicago, about a 30 minute El ride from where I live.
It’s also just a short walk from Standee’s, the finest shitty, NYC-style all-nite diner the North Side of Chicago has to offer, so we could sober up easily. Or so we thought.
Things like this always seem like the ingredient for a brilliant, drunken Saturday night.
Instead, they usually end up brilliant and drunken for about an hour and a half or so, and then as total fiascoes the rest of the evening.
So, not realizing this at the time, of course we went, and we drank. Or at least I drank. A pitcher and a half of not as watered down Bud Light as I anticipated in an hour and a half.
I have no tolerance and a 15-minute drunkenness lag, so as soon as I even start to feel drunk, I need to stop drinking, because I know I’m going to be feeling quite fucked up in the very near future.
However, I’m also a fucking idiot, so I continued drinking after I started to feel drunk. So I was good and fucked up by the time I called one of my friends’ girlfriend “titalicious.”
Really.
Thankfully, she took this as a compliment.
I realized I needed some food when after two bottles of water, I was still incredibly fucked up, so I walked (or more accurately, weaved) over to Standee’s while others continued drinking.
There was a girl there with a literature book and a journal, who I’m relatively sure was writing literarily (if that’s a word) about all the random drunks in this coffee shop, although she claimed it was purely self-reflective.
I’m sure I’ll wind up as a minor, pancake-eating alcoholic in some great work of literature someday.
After a couple of cups of coffee, my friend Jon joined me, then slowly people started coming in. I think my friend whose girlfriend I, uh, complimented, didn’t smack me simply because he was even more fucked up than I was.
He ended up puking repeatedly, and his girlfriend (who was sober, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective), drove him and my roomate and another friend home.
The other 4 of us ended up taking the El, and at the transfer from the Red to the Purple line, I had to pee so badly it wasn’t even funny.
The usual wait for the El, which is normally just annoying, seems particularly torturous when you think you’re going to explode. I felt the pain of another friend of mine who was with us, and I swear I will never make fun of him again for having to pee every five seconds.
So I finally get home, go directly to bathroom, not passing go, not collecting $200, and when my business is finished, I come out, and nobody’s home.
I don’t notice a note that has gotten kicked into a pile of trash next to my door in my drunken stupor. Emphasis on stupor.
So I call my roommate’s cell phone. No answer. I call all three other people that drove home together. No answer from any of them. I call them all again. Still, nobody picks up.
I started to panic. If any single one of them had picked up, I probably would have calmed the fuck down, at least partially. I was still too stupid to notice the note.
So I bring two of my friends who were drinking with us into it. One claims he is going to get in his car and go look for all of them, which I expressly forbid either of them from doing, since I know how much they were drinking.
So they call a sober friend of his, and they start looking. Finally, I call Ms. Titalicious’ house, and I determine that Ms. and Mr. Titalicious are at her apartment, where he is recovering and she is about to go to bed, though they don’t know where the other two are, though they dropped them off at friend #3’s apartment, half a block from mine.
My two friends who had gone a’ lookin’ went over to friend #3’s apartment, knocked on the door, and thankfully, her still-awake and still-sober roommate told them that she was a) there and b) alone.
So now all we had to figure out was where my roomate was. I still was too goddamn dumb to notice the note.
They came over, and I was calling my roommate for approximately the 875th time, and she finally picked up to a “WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?!” from me.
She said, “Oh, didn’t you get my note?”
I looked behind my concerned friend who was standing directly in front of me. A small, legal-colored but not legal-sized piece of paper sat next to a big pile of boxes I meant to bring outside a week ago, directly behind him.
There was writing on it: “Hey, stopped by a party, back soon (heart), Katy.”
Fuck.
So I had scared the living shit out of my friends, woken several people up, and totally freaked out…because I was drunk and oblivious.
Alcohol is bad, mmkay?
Like I said, these things always end up seeming like a good idea at the time.
Next time, I’m pacing myself. I’m drinking my pitcher and a half of beer over the course of three hours, and not an hour and a half. Then, maybe, I might actually be able to hold it.
I hereby apologize to the following people:
1. My friend’s girlfriend who I called titalicious.
2. My friend whose girlfriend I called titalicious.
3. My friends who I freaked out for being paranoid.
4. My roommate for being paranoid.
5. Anyone who has managed to make it through this whole rambling post.
Especially #5.
Ugh. Hangover update tomorrow, I’m sure.