The story starts with a 110-pound drunk girl in 3-inch heels supporting my 220-pound drunken ass as we waddled through the icy streets of Allston at 3:00 AM Sunday morning. Tes and I had just left Julia’s party, after heroically attempting to finish a keg with the help of only 16 friends (we failed). We were trying to find a cab to split that would take us back to our respective homes in Somerville. Well, we would have been splitting it, if I were carrying any money (I actually did have cash…I just was too drunk to remember that detail).
I know this little tidbit might sound like it triggered some epiphany about how I need to drink less and make better choices, but don’t worry…this isn’t that kind of a story. I’m just relaying it to illustrate how it was possible for me to still be hungover two days later on Monday morning. Thankfully, I didn’t have to go to work. However, I did have to attend a mandatory volunteer service project (now there is an oxymoron). I would be assisting in some capacity at the Mayor’s Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration at Faneuil Hall. It wasn’t that I was dreading this, exactly. I just wasn’t there for any altruistic reason. I was ready to do this “good” thing, but I was only there because I knew that it was required of me. Given my choice, I probably would have been at home, practicing my golf swing on my roommate’s Wii.
The event was fairly disorganized, but it was interesting. There were so many ministers and politicians making uncomfortable small talk that I felt like I was living in an episode of The Wire. After we finished setting up, serving lunch to old people, and cleaning up, I was free to get on with my day. A few weeks back, Dan and I had made a pact to go drinking after every service project. We had a great time getting to know Julia when we did this in December, so we figured that it should become a tradition. Even though I was dragging, I didn’t feel like this was a challenge I could back down from. We try to get everyone to join us, but only the guys (C.J., Chantha, Dan, and I) were game.
We decided to go to The Tap, a crappy Faneuil Hall area bar that at least had the good sense to realize that it was crappy and price its beer accordingly. We started out with the best intentions. Everyone was planning to have one or two beers, and head home since we all had work the following day. Of course it didn’t turn out that way. The problem with drinking with my co-workers is that we are all very competitive. So when C.J. calls out Dan and Chantha for not drinking fast enough, instead of laughing it off they respond by chugging and ordering another round. I continued to sip my first drink slowly (I could still taste Saturday’s two-day old alcohol), but realized that I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. As a round of shots was ordered, I realized that I had to complete some work before I got caught up in the quickly escalating drunkenness. The bar was nearly empty (as it should be at 6:00PM on a Monday), so I retreated to the back corner and began to call the parents’ of my basketball team. I can sympathize with Jimmy McNulty…making professional calls from a bar can be a little distracting.
By the time I had finished talking to all of the parents, things were getting slurry at the bar. Dan and C.J. were arguing about which one of them is better looking, Chantha was hitting on some girls for us, and I needed another drink so that I could stomach it all. After awhile, we started to discuss what we were going to do next. Three options were presented:
1) Go Home – I was in favor of this option, but I wasn’t ready to be the first to blink.
2) Go to the Glass Slipper – When this was suggested, I laughed and said that there was absolutely no chance that I was going to end up there.
3) The Worst Idea Ever – I am not going to say what this idea was, or even who first suggested it, but I’m just going to say that The Bay of Pigs was better thought out. New Coke had its finger closer to the pulse of the popular climate. Britney, with razor in hand, had a better understanding of the long-term ramifications.
Worst of all, it looked like people were really going to follow through with the Worst Idea Ever. Fortunately, I was with drunken people and drunks are nothing if not suggestible. I realized that no one would commit to the Glass Slipper unless we all were in, so I wholeheartedly jumped on the strip club bandwagon. I was sober, had zero desire to go, but was ready to do this “bad” thing in the interest of saving my friends from themselves.
The Glass Slipper was just as bad as I anticipated. Before we even walked in, C.J. and I had been insulted by the doorwoman (He was a “pussy” for wanting to watch hockey, I was sarcastically called a “young’un” after she checked my ID). Inside wasn’t any better. Monday day shift talent was onstage. C.J. was drunkenly introducing me as Cooper and Chantha was calling himself DeShaun. The first dancer who talked to us told us to get the hell out and go to a normal bar, after we politely turned down a private dance. Within minutes, C.J. was talking about leaving, Chantha was watching a video of his baby cousin on his phone before passing out in the booth, and Dan was sitting in a booth by himself so he wouldn’t be associated with us. It cost me $20 and two hours of my life, but it did give me something that volunteering at the MLK celebration couldn’t. I knew that I did some hard work that I should be proud of.
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