Wednesday, November 21, 2007

a story came up at lunch yesterday...

I'm not sure what conversation brought this story to the front of my mind. I guess it doesn't matter. But as it came up yesterday and is still fresh in my mind, I will share it with you.
I don't know if you've picked up on this or not, but I tend to share certain embarrassing things I've done, or am thinking of doing, or said, or thought or whatever, fairly readily. I love it. I think I'm mostly a dork-o and have endless fun pointing out the silliness of me.
I love pointing out silliness in general, true, but I don't avoid myself as a target I imagine is my point.
This story, while quite funny, is very embarrassing to me. Much more so, as I have matured or something, than it was before. I used to be able to tell it with no problem. Yesterday, at lunch, I actually considered not telling it. I almost never shy away from sharing a humorous story, but yesterday I almost did.

Those of you who don't like to read long stories might wanna bail now. Those of you who do, hunker down.

I don't drink. I believe I've made it clear before, but maybe you missed it. I've been drunk I think 3 times. I've never had a hangover. I've never been told the following day after a night of craziness about some exploit with a lampshade while exposing myself that I just don't remember. I've never had that thing from "comedy" movies where you wake up next to some scary chick you can't recall getting into bed and doing LORD KNOWS what with.
I've had years long relationships with scary chicks... Never mind. Not now.
I am always the sober one. I'm always the one who is going to make the more informed decisions and drive and tell you what an ass you were last night. That's my job and I'm quite happy with it.
What I am not happy with, is the fact that I cannot ever use, "I was drunk." as an excuse for stupidly dopeass behavior.
I have to take responsibility for every decision I make. My only excuse is "I am not that smart." It kinda sucks. I sure could use the drunk-y card to pull once in a while.
This situation is one where I would like to have been able to use it.
The end of the summer after 9-11, so five years ago... Is that right? Was it really only five years ago? My life has taken some MASSIVE steps towards improvement in a short time. Yikes.
My friend's parents had a summer home in one of the Carolinas. North or South, I can't remember. Probably North. Let's say North.
They were selling their summer home in North Carolina as they didn't use it enough. My friend asked me and a couple of other guys to head down with him to close the house up to fully prepare it for sale.
As I was not working at the time, and had not been for some time, I was looking for ANYTHING to do, so I quickly agreed.
We went down and had a most excellent couple of days. While down there, someone made a massive batch of chili. Pounds and pounds of it. One night we all ate until we were sick, but there was still an enormous bowl of it left over.
In the morning, this friend said that he was going to eat all of the leftover chili. I bet him that he could not possibly. He made a counter bet. Not only would he eat all the chili in the bowl, but he would enjoy a lovely Twinkie immediately after.
I took the bet. He ate all the chili. But he did not eat the Twinkie. He didn't eat much of anything for a long time, in fact, and was frequently vacant from our sight and ,thankfully, sense of smell.
This was a trip of bets. A trip of gambling. We played a lot of poker. I was on one of those tears that make you think you should hop a plane to Vegas, right now.
Every card I needed came to me. I was pulling insane hands out of the air and was destroying everyone.
I took all the money they were willing to give me. No one wanted to play with me anymore, but I still wanted to play. Duh.
I offered this. Instead of playing for money, why don't we play for immunity? The person who won the next hand would have the ability to do ANYTHING they wanted, be as STUPID as they could, sleep with WHOEVER they wanted (who would sleep with them) and no one could say anything, EVER. No one could tell on them. No one could give them a hard time. Everything they did from the moment after the game until the time we got home, would be, forever, secret.
I'm sure I didn't use language with as much gravity as the above, but that was the point.
We all agreed and sacrificed a goat to seal the pact. The goat was made out of the Twinkies chili-boy couldn't eat.
Ooh. The tension.
I won the hand with something just impossible like I had a royal flush and everyone else was playing with CVS coupons.
Everyone laughed when I won because it would be wasted on me. I didn't drink and rarely did anything I would want to keep a secret. Oh, ho, ho. What a ridiculous turn of events!
Ah well, we said, let's continue our trip knowing Swarvey will never need what he just won! HA! HA, HAHAH!!
(/foreshadowing)
Our plan was to finish with the house and drive back up the coast to spend some time in NYC. It was still kind of a weird place to go, even a year after 9-11.
As we were driving into the city, another friend of mine looked at the lights they had once had in place commemorating the spots where the towers had stood. He looked out the window with childlike awe and amazement, followed the path of the massive beams of light into the sky and said, "Did they make those beams of light so they would be as high as the towers were?"
I told him, yes. Didn't he know the towers were 10,000 stories tall?
Dope.
We went to Hogs and Heifers. This is a kind of famous dive bar in the meat packing district. It's the bar the movie and subsequent chain of knock-off bars Coyote Ugly was based on. (There is actually some question on which bar really opened first. I don't care at all.) Chick bartenders dancing on the bar and yelling stuff. It's quite the spectacle. It gets insanely crowded. There is a small pool table in the back, but unless it's noon on a Tuesday, don't try to really play.
We were there at peak time on a Friday or Saturday night and were of course trying to play, when all of a sudden... We caught the attention of some LADIES. Oh yeah.

Disclaimer- This next bit involves some level of physical intimacy betwixt me and someone who is not Jenn.

I was speaking to someone who proclaimed themselves to be a "hardcore" lesbian. She said she had not been with a man in seven years and was interested only in the company of other female types. She said she had been drinking a bit. She said that even though she was a "hardcore" lesbian, she was attracted to me.
Up until I just wrote that, I always saw it as a massive compliment. Now that I read it, I wonder if I should.
In any case, she was a slightly (perhaps more than) drunk, mostly (in my memory) attractive "hardcore" lesbian (she said) who had taken up the hobby of chewing enthusiastically on my neck for a long period of time.
She asked me if I wanted to go into the bathroom with her as she was looking to expand the focus of this hobby.

Okay. So. Here's a picture of the door to the only bathroom in the place:

At the top of the door you see, strategically placed to be about eye-level with average height men, a sign. A yellow sign. It's hard to miss.
I know you can't read it from the picture, but the sign reads:
ONE PERSON IN THE BATHROOM AT A TIME
NO EXCEPTIONS

For future reference, here is a picture with a man standing next to one of Hogs and Heifers bouncers:


She lead me into the bathroom and as I was not at all drunk, that sign, and the signs immediate implications to me, hit me in the face. But I still went into the bathroom.
There was enough time for some more neck chewing and frantic grasping at my fly (I'll let you decide for yourself who the grasper was) when the bouncer from the above picture began pounding on the bathroom door with enough force to change the molecular composition of the iron hinges so that they began to look like a bowl of petunias who said, "Oh no. Not again."
After I shook the Beeblebrox out of my eyes, I timidly opened the door and was instantly grabbed by a hand the size of ten or fifteen hands and thrown out the back door of the establishment where I sat waiting for my friends to run to my rescue immediately which they just totally did not do at all.
They figured if I was dumb enough to get thrown out, I deserved to sit outside by myself for a while. I had no good argument to counter with and I hate that.
When the finally came out, they squinted into the sunshine to allow their eyes to adjust, then looked at me and said, "HOLY EXPLETIVES!!"
With all the enthusiastic neck chewing, I ended up with two rather massive hickeys on either side of my neck. Like, they went from my shoulders to my ears massive. They were instantly recognizable, by anyone within 50 feet of me, as being big, giant, hickeys on both sides of my neck.
So, while I had won total immunity to do whatever stupid thing I wanted to with no fear of interpersonal consequences, I had done a thing with immediately recognizable physical evidence that I could not hide.

I would like to have been able to use the "I was drunk." card.

4 comments:

Mark said...

But isn't the good part that you didn't have to hide what you did? You had immunity so they had look at your neck and not make fun of you or tell anyone what happened.

Did any of them meet any ladies?

You win.

mister swarvey said...

This is an optimistic, but nonetheless truthful view of the situation.
But...
It's kind of like you're in a death pact with your friends where you all agree to kill some guy that needs a good killin'. However, due to some unforeseen and missing narrative points you have to wear the dead guys head on a chain around your neck for the rest of your life.
None of your friends will tell on you, but everyone else will ask questions.

Stove said...

You know, whenever I have an analogy I need to make, I also immediately tend to jump right to murder.

mister swarvey said...

It's the go-to analogy. Ask any well known analogist.