Numero Uno: 21st Birthday

It's all come down to this. Number one. Let's not beat around the bush.

The 21st birthday. The milestone of drunkenness for every red-blooded American. Our parents had the luxury of celebrating It three years earlier than we did, which meant that they could have possibly celebrated this momentous occasion during high school.

While the earlier the better is always a good thing, three extra years of illegal drinking give you some needed experience which comes in handy when you try and do the 21 shots.

My birthday is in August, at the end of the month, which is a mixed blessing. If you throw a party, you can have things outside, which is always fun. But for those college years, it often comes around the start of the Fall semester.

My freshman year, it was the day I moved into the dorms. My sophomore year, it was the Friday before classes started. My 21st Birthday, it was a Sunday, the day before classes start. Not good.

But it meant that people could come out with me on Saturday night, since it led into Sunday.

So I moved into my apartment on Friday, I spent all of Saturday drinking Gatorade (gotta stay hydrated, you know), and we threw a party Saturday night. Some people came over, and we spent the last few hours of illegality drinking beers and playing Foosball at my apartment.

When the time came, we headed down to a bar, and that's where the madness started. Shots all around, including the dreaded "Sweaty Mexican Lumberjack" One part bourbon, one part tequila, one part Yukon Jack (a sweet liquor), and one part Tabasco sauce.

While it sounds (and is) revolting, it's not as bad as a "greasy Mexican lumberjack," which contains a generous dollop of mayonnaise. No thanks.

So that was my first shot of the evening. I couldn't tell you what the other ones were, except I know one was a "prairie fire" a delectable concoction of tequila and hot sauce. The bartender recommended it. Cunt.

I remember very little about the rest of the night. I woke up with that same straight line of vomit coming out of my mouth, this time it went all the way to my loveseat. It was also the first and only time I ever threw up the next morning. I threw up straight lemon-lime Gatorade around noon. So much for the benefits of staying properly hydrated.

I turned on some DVD of the King of Queens, which as I have discussed, is a guilty pleasure of mine.

When I finally gathered myself, I headed over to my computer. There was an instant message from a friend, a guy in the fraternity, the guy who happened to move into the fraternity house as I moved out.

It started innocently enough.

"Hey, what's up?"

"Not much, feeling like absolute shit."

"Haha, yeah I bet."

Then, a shadow comes over the horizon.

"How much do you remember from last night?"

Uh oh. "Dude, I don't even remember leaving the bar."

"Oh. So you don't remember coming over last night?"

"Nope."

Uh oh. How bad could it be? Whatever you're thinking it was worse.

"Well, you came in and bashed my door down with a baseball bat, and screamed at me and my girlfriend for quite a while."

....

.....

I disgust myself. Flashes started coming back. Me, with a baseball bat. Shove the bat through the door, "Shining" style.

Him and his girlfriend, staring at me with the most pissed off, disgusted, yet disbelieving look on their faces.

And that's it.

I go over to the house, and the door is in utter wreckage. Beaten savagely off the hinges. Holes all over the place. Wood splinters everywhere.

Looks like I'm about to be the proud owner of a brand-new door.

I spent the next few days measuring, buying locks and a door, and installing it. If you don't think it was the most awkward moments of my life sitting their fixing this door, while his girlfriend was sitting there, then you're wrong.

As the door got fixed, more details came into play about that night. Apparently after my brutal attack, I started to walk home, unbeknownst to anyone else in the house. Apparently I made a call at 2:15 or so (and my call log confirmed this), saying I didn't know where I was.

I was literally a stone's throw from my house, in a Taco Bell parking lot. Of course, I couldn't see my house because I was face down on the pavement. Drowning in dignity, no doubt.

My friend finds me, and takes me back to my place, which happens to be locked. I decide to open it with my keys, and by that I mean, run into the door and fall down. I assume my friend was able to find the key and deposit me inside.

I was hungover for days, and I didn't even go to the store and buy my first thing of alcohol until almost a week later.

Although I never got pneumonia from the night, the sheer savagery of the attack on the door makes it the drunkest I've ever been. I'm usually not a mean drunk. Sure, I like to be a jackass sometimes, but I don't get in fights, and I rarely cause intentional property destruction.

This night my friends, I was angry, like an old man trying to send soup back at a deli.

Don't know why,.. nor does it matter now. And it's not like I learned anything, since most of the stories took place after that night.

But that night has yet to be topped, and probably won't until I got out Jimi Hendrix style and choke on my own puke.

Just thinking about that story makes me hungover.

Bonus Honorable Mention

Speaking of birthday drunkfests, let's go back in time to the second time I ever got drunk in my life, my seventeenth birthday.

It was the summer before my Junior year in high school, and my family had just moved. I lived in the basement, and we had literally moved three weeks before, and we still weren't all the way unpacked. In the basement was a bunch of bottles of liquor, in their own box.

My parents don't drink a whole lot, but when people came over, they would buy a bottle, or get one as a gift, and not drink much of it. As a result, they had quite a stash of barely opened bottles of all sorts of liquor.

It was this very same stash that got me in alcohol-related trouble the first time. I snuck a fifth of Stoli out, and took a sip at a friend's house. It tasted like rubbing alcohol, and I refrained from drinking for another few years.

Anyways, on this birthday, my friend stayed over, and we spent the evening going through all of these boxes, taking a sip from one old-ass bottle after the next.

I know I was pretty drunk, and it was the first time I had felt like that, like I could do anything better than anyone, and that my opinions were the most intelligent opinions anyone had ever come up with.

I had to wake up early the next morning to buy my books for school, and that was when I experienced my first hangover. My brother says he drank for a few years without a hangover, but I don't think he was drinking hard enough.

It was the first of two times I came to a high school function hungover, and the second was graduation. I had a party at my house, my parents got a keg, and I remember being late, and reeking of Bud Light. My friend also jumped off of my balcony and broke a tree. Good times.

Well, that's about it for this wee. I hope you enjoyed my tales of drunkenness as much as I enjoyed living and re-living them.

There are a lot of stories I didn't get to, but I tried to include the most notable in this list, hence the honorable mentions. 7,169 words of complete and utter failure.

And I'm sure there will be plenty more stories to come, especially with Buffett Day coming up in a week.

Good night, and go fuck yourself.