One of the best things about reuniting with old friends is that you immediately fall into the old patterns. Alex and Jon become the nice, funny ones, Blake and Reid join them until he gets drunk, I become uber-sarcastic, Jeff and Aaron compete to be more outrageous, Susan keeps us all together, G is all about the camaraderie, Amir shows us his new websites (I’m very, very sorry) and Kevin avoids us for as long as possible. We retell the same stories we have told a hundred times before and we laugh as if we haven’t heard them before. And we start drinking before noon every day like it’s our job.
This New Year’s Eve Party didn’t have the same number of stories as some of the past years (see Exhibits A, B, C, & D), but I’m not sure I have ever had more fun. It was as relaxing and laid-back an experience as being completely bombed for three straights can possibly be. If there is one memory that stands out in my mind from Chicago 07/08, it is drinking and playing beanbags on the roof of a Chicago building for three hours on New Year’s Eve, in a snowstorm. It is as surreal an experience as I can remember. Here are ten more memories (in chronological order) that you didn’t have to be there for to appreciate:
2) New Friends – One of my favorite things about my weekend was the interesting mix of people that we brought together. The Rice/Trinity/Baylor Med School meshing led to some interesting interactions. Here are two of my favorites (paraphrasing from drunken memory):
1) Anne: “Elsa, you are always flirting with random boys at bars.”
Elsa: “No, they were just flirting with me.”
Anne: “What’s your secret?”
Elsa: “I act really slutty.”
2) Aaron (drunkenly, jokingly(?), and hopefully some extreme non-sequitir): “We should just go over there and have sex with all of the Arab women.”
Amir: “And the best part is, they are the ones who get arrested for it.”
Aaron: “I think you and I are going to be friends.”
3) Garcia’s Shots and Blake’s Disregard for the Guy Code – The pure evilness of that last quote makes a little more sense when you consider what Aaron was putting himself through on New Year’s Eve Eve. After a relatively slow start to the evening at a sports bar and an Irish whiskey bar, Aaron decided to take matters into his own hands. When we arrive at the next bar, I immediately head to the rest room. By the time I get out, Aaron has already ordered a round of Irish car bombs and another round of…umm…”chaser shots”. Five minutes later, he was ordering Jager-bombs. Twenty minutes later, tequila. Then whiskey. At one point, Reid walked up to Aaron who was standing catatonically in front of another group of shots. Reid said, “What’s up, Aaron?” Aaron glares at the bartender, points at Reid, and yells, “Tell him what to do!” The bartender answers, “Take a shot???” Aaron is an overwhelming presence when he is drinking (and especially when he is buying). It got so bad that Blake couldn’t handle the thought of taking one more shot and did the unthinkable…he went and told Aaron’s wife (Susan) on him. Not long after, Susan sent Aaron home. In the vernacular of my school, Aaron was forcin’ it, Blake snitched to the principal, and Aaron got suspended.
4) Alex’s Love – The Old Faithful of any get together is Alex getting drunk and telling all of us how much he loves us, his girlfriend, his family, that drunken guy in the corner, and that advertisement over the urinal. You can tell that he hasn’t been drinking too much in Atlanta lately. First, he announced to the whole bar that he would rather have sex with his girlfriend than any girl in the bar (which is actually a nice sentiment if you think about it). Then he told two female friends of Amir that he was “not sexually attracted to (them) in any way”, but that he liked them as people. He later explained that he wanted to make them feel safe so that we could hook up with them. There are also multiple pictures of him kissing Jeff on the lips. This would be much more explainable if they weren’t taken on different nights.
5) Munoz’s Pull – Deaf girl aside, all of the rumors that I have heard coming out of Houston are that Jeff is maturing, that he is hardly going out anymore, etc. That may all be true in his day-to-day life, but Jeff on vacation certainly hasn’t changed. The night started off calm enough, but sometime during the cab ride from the sports bar to the Irish bar, Jeff got Munoz-drunk. To those of you who are uninitiated, this means his face turns purple, he stops making sense, and he approaches every girl between the ages of 16-60 that he sees. He will have absolutely no memory of anything that happens after this point. This particular time, Jeff was in particularly rare form. He couldn’t hold more than a one- sentence conversation, multiple strangers approached me to ask if my friend was ok, and Aaron (in the condition that he was described above) was actively concerned about him. The one thing I forgot to mention about being Munoz-drunk, however, is that he is a regular Energizer bunny. No matter how many drinks he has, he doesn’t fall down. He is like some Charles Bukowski/Jason Voorhies hybrid. Anyways, around 1:00 AM we decide to leave and get some food. Somehow, I end up talking to this group of girls on the street and manage to convince them to come take more shots with us at this bar that we are passing. After we drink, Jeff is talking to a brunette girl, Blake is talking to a girl who looks just like him, and G and I are talking to a blond (who obviously prefers G to me…now that is an event that will lead you to take a long look in the mirror). Anyways, not 5 minutes after meeting us, the girls asks us what is wrong with Jeff and calls him “creepy”. The next thing he knows, Jeff is waking up in bed next to this same blond. He doesn’t know her name, he doesn’t know how he did it, and neither do we (we had left him at the bar with these girls after he…rightly…assured us that he was getting somewhere). I am honestly not sure how I am going to be able to write regular columns without Jeff around for material.
6) Reid’s Broken Glasses – After a long night of New Year’s Eve Eve drinking, the night was coming to an end. The sleeping arrangements in Blake and Amir’s apartment weren’t too exciting…there were three air mattresses and one very comfortable couch. I noticed Reid was getting up from the couch to get some water, I capitalized and jumped on the couch to try to claim it for the night. Without missing a beat, Reid jumped on top of me and started humping my leg. Two seconds later, Blake jumped on Reid, quickly followed by someone jumping on Blake (Alex? Jon?). Everyone's friends have latent dispositions when they are drunk...right?While I was being violated, a pair of glasses fell on my face. Drunkenly, I thought I softly set them down on the table. Unfortunately, I underrated my drunken strength and I accidentally threw them across the room, into a wall, breaking the frame. Umm, sorry Reid.
7) The Reading – Before the New Year’s Eve Party, we all gathered in Blake and Amir’s apartment for dinner and drinks. In what may become an annual tradition, we re-read the easiest column that I never wrote. If you haven’t read it before, or have not read it in awhile, I think that it might be time that you take a look. “I appreciate you taking me seriously and valuing who I am.”
8) Blake’s New Girlfriend – At first, I wasn’t sure what to think of Blake’s new girlfriend. She was quiet (possibly because she was present during “The Reading” and I wasn’t sure how she would fit in with our group of friends. At the New Year’s Eve Party, she set my mind at ease. After a few drinks, she came up to me, skipped the small talk, and said, “Aren’t you glad you aren’t that fat girl standing by herself at the food table on New Year’s Eve?” I guess she’ll fit in just fine.
9) The Party – The party at the Wyndham was pretty amazing. Everyone was dressed to the nines, the liquor was top shelf, and I can’t remember the last time there were so many gorgeous women in one place. The party was divided into two floors. The lower floor was packed with the beautiful people of Chicago. There was a light show, girls were dancing on stage, and the dance floor was packed. The only problem was that there was a 15-minute wait for drinks. After awhile, we grew tired of this and decided to check out the scene on the upper floor. Upstairs was much emptier, the people were noticeably less attractive, and the DJ was ridiculously corny. But, there was absolutely no line for drinks. I remarked that I felt like we had moved to the JV party. Someone said, would you rather be drunk with the JV team, or sober with the varsity. Of course we stayed upstairs. I am still not sure if this is heroic or sad.
10) The Hospital Incident – When the lights came on at the Wyndham, we drunkenly began wandering the streets of Chicago in search of an after-party. It didn’t take long before we realized that we were lost. Fortunately, Blake and Amir realized that we were right next to the hospital where they work. To celebrate in the New Year and take out some frustration from the old one, Blake and Amir decided to relieve themselves on the building. When Jeff saw what was happening, his eyes lit up. After a spectacular fall on the ice, Jeff made it just in time to turn an unsuspecting Blake’s body so that he was now facing an even more surprised Amir. As Blake put it the next day, “I got to pee on my place of employment and my roommate, and I couldn’t even be blamed for it. Not a bad way to ring in the New Year!” Indeed.
2 comments:
You should perhaps go a little easier on the college girls. In case you have forgotten, your little sister is one now. And I can vouch that, unless completely trashed, a girl will not seriously hook up with guys of your friends' standing. And if they do, they laugh in shame with their friends the next day as they eat their hangover "breakfast". Sorry.
Ahh Meg...so wise, yet so naive. If you were to replace the words "hook up" with "date", then you might be on to something.
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