Cocktails: The Sequel

And so I decided to sit up and give my surroundings a quick overview. But I pulled myself up a little too quickly and all of the memories (and lack thereof) rushed in and hit me like a semi-truck on a two-lane highway.

Everyone has regrets from a party. Everyone does something at one point or another where they are embarrassed with themselves. But rarely does anyone wake up in the morning (besides severe alcoholics) and regret the events of an entire night only because they can't remember them AT ALL.

I propelled my torso back onto the bed. My face pressed into the pillow and I stopped breathing for a couple of minutes, secretly hoping that the possibility of alcohol poisoning ending my pathetic existence might still be real. Yeah, not so much.

“It all started out so innocently!” I thought to myself. As soon as invitations went out that Monday, my friends and I started getting our little black dresses and strappy black shoes ready, and the tradition of eating lettuce (and only lettuce) began. The hosting fraternity had just gotten off of social probation and was ready to throw a party that would put them back on it.

It was time for Cocktails, the long awaited sequel.

Mike and I sat there in my room for a while trying to put together the pieces of our evening. It started with a big pre-party in our room. And I'm pretty sure that's where it all went downhill. Because that's when both of our memories decided to pull a Memento and all short-term memories were buried somewhere behind a thick smelly blanket of rum and coke.

Pre-parties: Just know that what we lacked in breakfast we made up for in tequila shots. Not only that, but all of our pictures from that night were from the pre-party—which means that we'd have to wait until others who were sober enough to take pictures at the actual party would surface. And I would just like to state for the record that those Webshots Community Photos will be the death of all our dignity.

Eventually we all filtered out of the room. The two block walk to the house was still pretty crisp in my memory. Amanda, my partner in drunken crime, decided that it was too cold outside to be fashionably late, so we gracefully stumbled over to the house. The journey was ridiculous. It was the drunk leading the drunk, resulting in possibly the most indirect route to our destination. Looking back it's pretty impressive we even made it there at all without a power nap on the concrete in front of Main Hall.

Upon arrival Amanda and I realized that we were the first scantily-clad females there. The forty guys I had seen for the past three years only in windpants—and if the mood struck them, khakis—were now actually looking adultish in their suit and tie ensembles. It was like I died and went to knock-off Armani heaven. I pretended like I wasn't drunk, handed Mike II my coat, got a drink from Mike III and that's where my memory decided to pack up its bags and say “Fuck you Simonne. You're on your own.”

I don't understand how your brain can consume ridiculous amounts of useless information—like quantum physics, biology, the entire language of German—but can't hold its liquor to help you remember one night of fun.

This is where my friend's testimonies of my behavior took over, but truth be told I can't mention their affidavits because their memories were chilling with my own somewhere and wouldn't make an appearance 'til morning.

So all I can really rely on are my brief encounters with consciousness. And the next one that I can recall was just so lovely! The recollection I had was throwing up into the bushes and having Jason walk me home—or come to think of it, maybe I was throwing up on Jason and had the bushes walk me home. I don't know. The bushes and Jason came together to form one giant shrub with limbs. It's one giant blur, but the talking plant said he'd walk me home so anything was possible at that point.

I threw up again in the comfort of my own toilet when the hedge plant guy had walked me to my door. Then I ran down the hall to my friend Steve's room where I believed I could pass out and wake up without any more embarrassment or damage to my now-deteriorating self-esteem.

Or so my poor inebriated brain thought.

The morning after these parties everyone always has a story. A story that involves them doing something ridiculous while trashed. Some people urinate on themselves, on others, on others' possessions. Others hook up with name-forgotten randoms, some puke, some get doodled on with Sharpie's markers.

But then there's me—who straddles.

It wasn't supposed to happen this way. I wasn't suppose to pass out in Steve's room, wake up trashed an hour later, run across the hall, break into the boys basketball room and straddle the university's star basketball player demanding to know why he wouldn't date me. Probably because at that point he thought I was MIXING MEDICATION.

We all have one of those friends who can't hold her liquor through the digestion process. And we all take turns holding back her hair. But it was a hard lesson to learn not to make her my backup buddy watcher. After all she weighs 110 pounds and I'm sure five pounds of that was all the lettuce and rum making a second appearance all over Mike VI's desk, floor and bed.

Barf-a-rina lacked memory matter as well, but apparently when she stopped barfing she spent the rest of the night dictating to the furniture where it should be moved, became angry when it wouldn't listen to her, wrestled with the lead couch and finally passed out. Leaving me, her best friend, for dead.

After the drama episode that is now referred to all over campus as the “straddling incident,” I came back to my room to find Jason/bushes passed out on my bed. So I walked out of my room, knocked on my neighbor's door and put in a request that she take the guy with the short-sleeved dress shirt elsewhere. She said she couldn't help me and told me to call security. Figuring that security was still unimpressed by my recent behavior, I kicked Mr. Short-Sleeved Dress Shirt out of my bed myself, locked my door and passed out again.

After all was said and done Mike and I went to brunch with a group of friends. As I dragged my hungover ass up for a third glass of water I ran into this guy Bryan who kissed me on the cheek and said, “Hey Babe, I'm glad we got to talk things out last night. I think this is really going to work out between us.”