Maximum Beer, Minimum Wage

A little more than two years ago, after I’d gotten discourteously dumped, I had pretty much resigned myself to a life of miserableness. This was, of course, long before I decided caring is strictly for suckers, so at the time, being alone was just about the worst thing in the world. This was further magnified by the fact that my roommate had chosen the week I go the boot to start dating his current girlfriend, and had decided it was the most opportune time for him to begin canoodling with her in our living room, and being just about as schmoopy as humanly possible whenever I was within a several foot radius. But after six weeks of my super pathetic behavior, I forced myself to cheer up when one of my best friends from college, Diego, came to visit while he interviewed for residency programs.

Diego is one of my most reliable friends. We met the first day of Freshman year, and although our various friends cast us aside at various points in time (usually always because they, too, were mid-schmoop with some loser neither Diego nor I approved of), we stayed faithful to one another, and always had each other’s backs. We were both perpetually single (which in college is totally fine, because being single when you’re twenty doesn’t carry nearly the uncomfortable weight it does when you’re rounding the bases toward thirty, no matter how you spin it), and sometimes a little bit whiney about it. Yet finally, the summer before I got broken up with, and after many long, sufferable years, Diego found himself a fabulous lady. She wasn’t making the trip to Boston with him, and I was secretly a little happy to know I’d still have ostensibly Single Diego for my wingman and things could be just as they were in college.

As soon as I picked Diego up from the airport, we went and picked up a thirty-rack of beer as if we were still in our decrepit apartments in Baltimore, looking forward to graduation. He had interviews for the next forty-eight hours, but by Saturday night all of Diego’s various medicinal obligations had been settled and a full scale college throwback weekend officially commenced.

A few weeks earlier, I had won a free happy hour at a bar in Boston. On the designated night, all my drinks would be free, and anyone I brought with me could drink for half off for two hours. I scheduled the event for when Diego was in town and told all my friends to be prompt so we wouldn’t miss a moment of immoderation, but when my group of twelve assembled it became clear I had made a very, very big mistake: everyone was coupled up. Only Diego and I stood alone as non-lovers, and even he had betrayed me and had a girl back home. They all strolled in holding hands, cuddling from the cold, adjusting one another’s scarves and hat-ruffled hair. Juuust perfect. But still, I tried to enjoy the free beers and forget I was, yet again, alone. I mean, if free drinks don’t make you feel better, nothing will.

We staked out a nice place for our group right in front of the bar. Throughout the two hours, I ordered beers from the same tattooed bartender with an atrocious Boston accent. I promised him I’d generously tip him at the end, despite the fact my drinks had been free. He seemed doubtful, but I insisted I would be true to my word. As the clock closed in on the end of our two hours, I still had half a beer to go, but didn’t want to pass up the opportunity for another free drink. I nonchalantly handed my half-full beer to a friend, turned around, and ordered another one. This is what happened next:

Tattooed Bartender: Are you trying to steal a beer?
Me: Um...no?
TB: You think I’m stupid?
Me: Noooo... [When inside I was saying, “Yes!!”]
TB: Who do you think you are? You’re trying to steal from us! I see your friend with the beer!
Me: OK, I’m not trying to steal from your bar. I will happily pay for the Bud Light.
TB: You going to tip us?
Me: I had planned on it.
TB: No you’re not.
Me: OK. Fine. I’m not.
TB [in a dramatic rage!!]: You probably don’t even make forty grand a year!

First of all, at the time, no, I did not even make forty grand a year. Second of all, let’s be real here, I bet EVERYONE who wins these happy hours pulls the same stunt at the end of their allotted time. Do I look even remotely like a criminal? Was I trying to hold you up? Are you the owner of this bar? No, no, and no. Plus, most importantly, just what is it about me that could possibly say “minimum wage?”

I turned around and told my hand-holding friends about what an a-hole the bartender was, and as I did so, Diego excused himself and headed to the bar. As he did, and entire cascade of cocktail napkins landed on my head. The bartenders were throwing napkins at me (Ooooo, I’m so terrified!!), and despite Diego’s efforts to assuage them and assure them I was not a kleptomaniac, we all chugged our remaining drinks and make a hasty getaway, the bartenders trailing us, informing me I was no longer welcome at their fine establishment. Let me tell you, there’s no better way to boost one’s self esteem than by being banished from a bar via napkins, under protection of a slew of boys who all have girlfriends, and all eye you with that “Ah yes, now I know why you don’t have a boyfriend” look. Lucky me. 

We ended up relocating to a classically dirty dive across the street and danced like teenagers until the doors were closed. It was just like being in college again, surrounded by couples who were all over one another, invisible yet again despite my momentary surge of (unwarranted) attention. Diego might have been there, but soon enough he, too, was blabbing on and on and on about his girlfriend. And then, in the cab, just as I was beginning to think that maybe things really had changed, maybe I really was the only single person left on the entire planet and that I was doomed to perish beneath a mountain of cocktail napkins, he told me with his head hung in shame that he had ironically first told his girl he loved her while drunk and dancing to Chris Brown. It was classic Diego, silly and weird and beyond awkward, but if there was hope for him, then there had be hope for me, too, even if I did fish a cocktail napkin out of my bra that night.

My nefarious self and the Bud Light in question

P(ee) is for Preakness

If you never went to the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore before 2009 when they banned BYOB, then you pretty much missed out on the greatest event of your entire existence. Apparently there is also horse racing going on at Pimlico, but you’d never know it, considering people line up before 7:00am with backpacks filled with alcohol and funnels, massive coolers of melting ice, and everything from dollies to Red Flyer wagons piled high with Jenga towers of beers. All the girls wear cute, summer dresses, which by the end of the day are completely slathered in mud and vomit and various other bodily excretions. Guys are shirtless by ten and sunburnt by noon and peeing just about anywhere. It couldn’t be more disgusting. Or more glorious.

The second time I went to Preakness I met a bunch of my guy friends at the entrance to the track, and, as usual, I was the only girl in the group. We were lugging folding stadium chairs, snacks, and our weight in the High Life, and when they opened the gates to the infield, my face was promptly mashed into the hairy back of my already-shirtless friend: there was a crowd push as if we had somehow been transported to a middle school girl convention at a Justin Bieber concert. Soon enough though we were setting up shop right by the fence with my friends’ old fraternity and even more guys, all of whom considered me just another Bro.

Knowing that none of these dudes were remotely interested in me, and not being able to bear the thought of ruining a perfectly adorable dress, I’d gone totally redneck and worn my overalls. Being deemed entirely undesirable wasn’t exactly a newsflash though: my undergraduate career was essentially spent in a fraternity basement, as literally the only girl in attendance, and getting hit on not a single time. It was initially disconcerting, but over time I got used to hearing the phrase “Sasi doesn’t count; she’s not a real girl.” Usually it was fun being just another one of the guys, but sometimes it resulted in some unsavory experiences, and treatment to which no other girl on the planet would ever have to succumb. Preakness naturally became some such instance.

A lot of insanity happens at Preakness, from the port-o-potty races (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIcyFSYhvV4), to the mud wrestling in the inflatable kiddie pools, to the general debauchery of flinging full beer cans at the boys who mount the tracker trailers parked in the infield or the girls who stupidly scale the shoulders of some dumb dude they most certainly will never see again and bear their saggy chests for all to view. As you can imagine, with tens of thousands of people drinking for close to twelve hours in a relatively confined space, the need to pee becomes apparent early on. The port-o-potties are located in the middle of the infield though, and it’s a pretty long trek to get there, no matter where you’re camped out. As a result, the girls take the hike, and as mentioned before, the boys pee, well, anywhere. 

That year, since we were sitting next to the fence and the track, all my dude friends unabashedly peed through the chicken wire, while I whined about how they had it so easy when it came to relieving themselves; just the thought of having to eventually brave the overflowing toilet bowls and lack of Purell at the port-o-potty station made me queasy. But then someone came up with a genius idea, one they wouldn’t have dared suggest to a “real” girl: several guys would form a small circle around me, their backs to me, pinky-promise not to peek, and let me do my business. Not a soul would see and I could avoid the port-o-potties. Hooray!

But let’s take a moment to discuss how gullible I am: I will believe anything. It’s embarrassing, really, especially when two years ago my friends once informed me that Webster’s was removing the word “Gullible” from their dictionary...and I earnestly asked whether or not it was true. So when all these guys pledged their allegiance to my honor and my need to pee, I didn't think twice. How kind of them to offer such a courteous service! I let them form their circle, and began to take my overalls off (it was here where I finally realized why all these girls were wearing dresses, most likely sans undies). But as I’m sure you’ve already guessed and clearly I did not, as soon as I had my overalls unhitched, each boy in the circle took one giant step forward. There I was, fully exposed, squatting above a fluffy tuft of grass in my panties with my overalls around my ankles. Thanks, guys. That was marvelous.

Eventually, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I had to go. This was far into the afternoon, and people were now stumbling around in various degrees of nakedness and intoxication. I announced my departure, and in the first show that I was anything but just another Frat Bro, my friend Jeremy chivalrously said he’d take the excursion with me. We brought a few beers for the road, and set out, dodging drunken grandmas and trying not to step on those passed out in puddles of mud, sweat, tears, and booze. We were halfway there when a guy, shirtless, in cargo shorts and Rainbow flip-flops (typical), staggered in my direction. He stopped when we got close, teetered back and forth, looked me straight in the eyes, took out his junk, and peed, right there. On. My. Feet.

Jeremy and I stared back at this guy for a few seconds, both of us downright mystified. What is the proper response when, in a massively public forum, someone pees on you? Was I some sort of slick, red fire hydrant? Did I bear a striking resemblance to the average porcelain throne? Was there just something about me that broadcasted to the universe that I enjoyed being peed upon? (For the record: I don’t.) After several seconds of shocked silence, Jeremy treated me like any other male friend and instead of defending me in some way--like perhaps telling the guy you just don’t pee on strangers, let alone female strangers--he doubled over in laughter, fell to the ground, and writhed in hysterics in the mud, unable to breathe or believe that I literally just got peed on. 

When we got back to our area, Jeremy instantly told everyone what had gone down, sparing no details. I was sort of glad he did: there was no way anyone would have believed me had I not had an eyewitness. The wet-naps had long since been used to wipe off cell phones and my friends’ sticky nipples (don’t ask), so I poured a beer on my foot, hoping it would at least semi-sanitize the situation, while guys slapped me on my sunburnt back and roared with laughter: "Dude, that's so funny!" Not a single syllable of concern passed their lips. Then again, why would it? I wasn't a "real" girl anyway. All in all, it was a day to remember, but let’s just say neither I nor my flip-flops will ever fully recover.

8:00am (Note the peeing perpetrator in the background.)

And here's a bonus one for you, that only vaguely explains the lack of wet-naps...

Put Down the Drink, and Step Away From the Dance Floor

I had a friend who lived in Miami who I’d go to visit pretty frequently. We went to college together, and although basically everyone who so much as glimpsed him from across an eight-laned highway immediately deemed him a grad A dirtbag, we always had fun together and somehow, through no fault of my own (or so I tell myself), things always always got just a little bit out of hand.

Maks lived in a fancy-pants building downtown and the first time I went to visit it became patently obvious he had been putting his womanizing skills to good use: literally every fake-boobed girl (or mom for that matter) who walked by us in the halls was all too excited to say hi, grip his biceps with delight, lick his earlobe (ew), and be on their merry way, their immovable and overexposed chests glistening in the Florida sun as they stepped outside. By my third trip to see him, he had cycled through close to two dozen “girlfriends,” and was currently lamenting the fact that his new target, Lucy, seemed unequivocally uninterested. “Woe is you,” my Still Single self said, rolling my eyes and flopping on the inflatable mattress he had set up for me in the living room. Some people’s lives are just so hard.

It was on this particular visit that we went to the club his family owned. The word “club” here, however, meant the establishment was much more like Ricky Ricardo’s Tropicana, than, say, a “real” Miami club like LIV. Instead of a Cuban theme, Anastasia’s was wholly Russian and located in some strip mall on the outskirts of the city. I was fairly skeptical when we rolled up: what kind of supposedly fine dining and exceptional entertainment venue is located next to a Publix and Gold Toe Sock store? But the drinks would be free, so I was in no position to complain. Bring on the borscht!

Anastasia’s, however, turned out to be nothing like what its Quik-E-Mart exterior seemed to portend. The gilded ballroom was filled with tables of loud Russians decked out in sequins like it was the 80’s in the Catskills; a live wedding-sized band in starched white tuxes got their groove on to Top 40’s like the Black Eyed Peas; girls who looked like the Russian Olympic gymnastics team swung from the ceiling by ribbons, while contortionists bent and writhed in various locations around the dance floor; and the wait staff focused very intently on what you were saying because they, too, like the vodka we were downing, were imported directly from Russia. 

After dinner, when the stroganoff and piroshkis had been cleared, I was shuttled over to the bar. After promising I wouldn’t breathe a word of it to anyone, Maks told me that the girl he had been pathetically pining for and had simply refused to return his affections was actually one of the girls in a bedazzled bikini dangling from the ceiling. But just as I was offering up some faux words of encouragement, the bartender began juggling several alcohol bottles, a handful of ice cubes and garnishes, did a behind the back hand off, followed it up with a spin and a twist and some sort of complicated Cha-Cha move, and then quickly extinguished a small fire before the most wondrous looking blue drink I had ever laid eyes upon was presented to a lady with a gargantuan Louis Vuitton purse. “I must have that drink!” I squealed to Maks, who looked at me as if I had instead demanded we could go to Toys-R-Us and purchase one of those pink plastic Barbie mini-Jeeps. Now.

When my own blue drink was unveiled before me, I clapped with glee and sucked it down like a champ. This is where, not surprisingly, things started to get weird. As soon as I drained my cocktail, the infamous Lucy bounded over, all glittery hairspray and eyeliner and, as one might expect, Maks more than immediately forgot I existed. Within seconds he was rubbing her knee and whispering in her ear, his eyes moist with who knows what sort of repulsive, affected emotion. Typically, I was left to my own devices, alone at the bar, while Maks and Lucy slipped away into the recesses of a red velvet couch in the far corner. Knowing I should’ve seen this coming miles and miles away, I sighed, and ordered another on-the-house blue drink and befriended the cute Russian behind the bar. I mean, come on, I really had no other choice.

Somehow, between the bartender’s acrobatics and Maks’s pitiful efforts to woo Lucy, it turned out to be three in the morning and I heard myself pleading with Maks to get one of the singers to do a Justin Timberlake song: “Any JT song!” Eventually, Cry Me River filled the now almost empty ballroom and there I was, dancing, twirling around all by myself, blue drink in hand, in the middle of the dance floor, like the closing credits to some feel-good movie about a lonely high schooler. But after my personal serenade was finito, I realized I was too, and bounded over to Maks to announce I was ready to go home. “OK,” he said, and threw me the car keys which, due to a loss of any and all coordination, I didn’t even come close to catching. “I’ll meet you in a sec.”

Maks and Lucy came out to the car after what I thought was only a few minutes, but had evidently been over an hour. We took the twenty minute ride home, and as you should all know by now, I of course got car sick, and puked out the back window for about nineteen of those twenty minutes. Maks was not impressed, to say the least, and immediately hustled Lucy into his bedroom when we returned. Somehow I managed to get into pajamas and under the covers on the inflatable mattress while Marvin Gaye started blasting from Maks’s bedroom.

The next morning, the sun was beating directly on my face before nine. The mattress had somehow deflated entirely during the night, and I woke up on a flaccid piece of plastic atop a very hard tiled floor. As I groaned my eyes open, standing over me was Lucy, now in tiny shorts and an even tinier tank top, with Maks’s hands in both her back pockets. I mumbled some sort of good-morning then rolled over, hoping to die. But if I didn’t have a headache then, I most certainly did over the course of the next forty-five minutes while Maks and Lucy retreated into his room and reenacted the previous evenings activities that, thankfully, I had been practically unconscious for and missed entirely during the first go-around. When they were through, we went out to the car to drop Lucy back home and from the rear passenger side window to the trunk, a blue, sticky, vomit-y substance covered the car. “Oopsies,” was really about all I could offer before sprinting to the nearest garbage can and heaving up whatever was still left in my stomach. 

Just another night (alone) in Miami.

Giant blue drink in FL several years later. I'll never learn...

You Other Brothers Can't Deny

Not having really anything to do with relationships and how they tend to unnecessarily impact my life, my butt gets a lot of undue attention. I don’t particularly understand it at all: it’s not like I’m some long lost Kardashian sister, or the illegitimate love child of Jennifer Lopez. It’s just a butt if you ask me. And yet, it has still caused some hilariously weird exchanges in various locations, all of which I can only assume are the direct result of the perpetual absence of a domineering dude in my immediate vicinity just dying to exert the powers of Boyfriend over anyone who comes near.

Once, at a gay bar in New York City, I found myself wearing my favorite pair of white jeans. They happened to have a sparkly lightning bolts on the back pockets, which I suppose could attract uncalled for observation, but this tale occurred while I was sitting down, and therefore the glitter really just had no bearing whatsoever on what happened next. While my friends went their separate ways in the club, trolling for boys wearing wife beaters and skinny jeans, I sat on an unused speaker and enjoyed my cocktail. When I was just about finished with my drink, a tall man of an indeterminate ethnicity walked over and tapped me on the shoulder. “Girl! You got some junk in that trunk! You better Work! It!” And then, after an exaggerated snap of confirmation, he disappeared into a crowd of fabulously perspiring men, leaving me with many a query: first of all, I was sitting down! How, pray tell, did this guy have any remote idea of what my rear end looked like? And second, who even does that? Comment on the behind of a stranger? But that question, I suppose, is one I shouldn’t even bother asking because, as had been established very early on in my frequenting of gay establishments, anything and everything is always on the table (or speaker, as the case may be). So I took it as a compliment and tried to figure out how one might go about “working it.” I mean, what else was there to do?

A few years later I was at a bar in Turks & Caicos. (What a shocker, right?) I was with a few friends, all non-permanent residents like myself. A large, dreadlocked dude in a wrinkled, velour tracksuit had already accosted us, offered us weed, and then brandished his handgun as if it were some sort of business card. “No thanks!” we’d stammered, then sucked on the straws of our enormous blue drinks. Having already shown us his 9mm, however, he was now of the belief we were all BFF and refused to abandon our little posse. In a bar packed with people, we could only assume nothing too horrible would transpire, so we politely answered his questions and did our best to not engage him in further conversation. Yet, while all this was going down, a local walked by me, clearly checked out my butt, kept walking, then turned around to look again. “Girl,” he said in that affected voice all dumb white people think black people use when they want to sound sassy, “You got a black girl’s bootie right there! Uh huh!” Now, to this day I am not entirely sure as to what that entails, but it did finally clear up why back at home in Newton, Massachusetts, where the population of black men is hovering at around .03%, I am essentially invisible, and why, when on an island in the middle of no where, I am suddenly and very strangely some sort of goddess. Here I was, thinking it was my sparkling personality that lured in these island guys, but, alas, it seems it is only my “Black Girl Booty” which apparently acts like some sort of man magnet. It’s weird, to say the least, but I suppose I’ll take it. Why not?

My man magnet, as we can call it, has manifested itself in some other hysterical instances. Not unrelated, in college, a boy I was totally (and stupidly) in love with, informed me with intense seriousness and after careful inspection that I had “child bearing hips.” Oh. Well, thanks! Just what every twenty year old girl wants to hear!

A few months ago, I dragged my friend to a bar in Boston that claims to have Southern flair. But let’s be real here: all I could hear over the pork rinds and PBR’s was “Bah-stahn” and “Cahh” and other various mind-numbing phrases that should never be uttered with a Boston accent. I left my friend to flirt with some nerdy boy who had recently suffered the same elbow injury that she had (omg! It must be fate!!) and wandered around the bar looking to speak to someone who might prove to be at least slightly acceptable. As I was concluding my loop, some guy grabbed my wrist and offered me a slice of his pineapple pizza. I respectfully declined, and as I walked away, he grabbed my wrist again, then proceeded to tell me just how much he appreciated my “black behind.” Seriously? I wasn’t sure what else to say besides thank you, and even that seemed entirely inappropriate. I wriggled my way back to my friend and refused to speak or stand up for the rest of the night.

And then, just the other week, while again in T&C, I found myself the subject of another butt conversation, while a handful of my friends spun me around as if I were in the midst of a Dirty Dancing rumba routine, each weighing in on the White vs. Black butt issue. I guess it would be weirder if we weren’t already at a greasy dive bar on an island, and I wasn’t the only girl with a harem of adoring men surrounding me, and I hadn’t already drank my weight in Coronas and Jager Bombs, but at the time it seemed perfectly normal. I guess the funniest part of all is that despite their keen interest in the quality (and quantity?) of my behind, I know all these guys quite oppositely think of me as a little sister, and wouldn’t hesitate to fight for my honor with only a snorkel and a flip-flop if the opportunity arose. 

So in the end, yeah, I’ll take the compliment as it is intended and happily go about my business, all the while knowing that as I walk away there is inevitably some creepy dude with something to say as I do so. But just don’t think for even half a second that I don’t always, always think more than twice before putting on a pair of jeggings.

And here they are...

*Insert Lawyer Pun Here*

A few years ago it seemed like everyone I knew was in graduate school. The good news for me was that their enrollment in various Masters programs allowed me the opportunity to pretend as if I were as well: I often found myself at law school, med school, or business school functions for Students Only, griping about imaginary student loans and that horrible class entitled Torts. But those crafty grad students usually saw through my lies within the first awkward conversation. I was then introduced as “My friend from undergrad,” and was immediately inundated with questions about it was like out there in the Real World (something, let’s face it, I actually know absolutely nothing about). I always attended these events hoping to score some new friends and maybe even meet a guy whose main goal in life wasn’t to achieve the ever elusive trifecta of Fantasy Baseball, Football, and Basketball champion. But, alas, nothing of the sort ever transpired (much to my my mother’s chagrin, it should be noted), and being at a law school Bar Review turned out to be exactly the same as being at College Night for $1 beers on a Thursday. Sigh.

Two years ago, however, my friend Kiki, the one I left in a snowbank on New Year’s Eve, invited me to her law school formal. “It’ll be fun!” she promised. The event was to be held at a fancy hotel in Boston on a Saturday night. Kiki and her non-law school boyfriend, along with what seemed like three dozen friends, had reserved a hotel room for the evening for pre-gaming and post-gaming and various in-between activities, none of which struck me as even mildly enticing, so I said I’d just meet her there when the formal started. (As a side note: who even knows that many people? Let alone knows that many people who are all willing to contribute to and attend the same thing? I have serious issues just rounding up “friends” to come out for my birthday.)

I arrived late, hoping to avoid being the one non-law school school weirdo there, alone on the dance floor, a vodka tonic in hand. But instead, I was met with a snaking line of excessively intoxicated law students waiting to gain admittance, and none of whom I could ever imagine representing me in a court of law at any point in even the most distant of futures. There was lots of, “Ohmygodddddd, and then he TEXTED me!” and “Whatever. She is, like, so totally stupid,” and various other cringe worthy comments I endured while waiting in a line of poorly frocked girls and boys in crooked bow ties.

At the front of the line, I accepted two drink tickets and a plastic Hawaiian lei, checked my coat in what looked like it was once a public shower facility, and entered the main hall where the formal was being held. Thankfully, I found Kiki almost instantly: not so thankfully, she had been drinking for close to six hours already, and was far more enthused about the formal than I could ever imagine being myself. She dragged me around to meet all her friends. Putting a cupcake in each of my hands, she told every boy who came within a twenty foot radius of us, “This is my friend Sasi! She is a fabulous writer!” which even though said while under the influence, made me feel like less of a loser than I usually do: Kiki is by far my biggest fan and also most avid proponent of me “owning” this whole Wannabe-Author schtick I’ve got going on, and every time someone asks what I do, she jumps in before I can start in on my self-deprecation and says “She’s an author!” It’s untrue, but sweet, and I will happily accept the fact at least one person out there has faith in me. The future lawyers at the formal, however, once receiving the news of my highly unsound life choice of becoming a writer, tightly smiled and were all suddenly overcome by an intense urge to head to the bathroom, scampering away as if terrified they might catch whatever ghastly malady had befallen me to make such a downright stupid decision. 

After it was clear not a single dude in the entire place was even going to be mildly interested, we headed to the dance floor. I’m unsure how many of you have witnessed several hundred law students trying to Get Jiggy Wit’ It, but let me tell you, it is a sight to behold. I was just waiting for some kid to bring out his glowsticks, or perhaps a portable DDR mat. I did my best to partake, although, those two drink tickets were not nearly enough to catch me up to Kiki’s level or to make me think dancing in such a public forum was even a remotely reasonable idea. (Although, as shown below, I apparently quite enthusiastically acquiesced.) At one point, Kiki’s boyfriend tried to dip her and instead let her fall flat on her back on the floor slick with punch and watered-down beers. We then decided it would be wise to leave, and with the event coming to a close at a whopping 12:30 am, there wasn’t really much of a choice anyway.

Kiki bounded back upstairs to the hotel room after asking me around twenty-five times if I was OK to get back home. I assured her I’d be fine, and as I watched hundreds of coupled-up law students groping each other on their way out, I slipped outside alone, to wait in the freezing cold for a cab.

If you don’t know much about Boston, you should know this: there are no cabs. None. On a Saturday night, if you decide to go home post-midnight, you will probably wait for a cab for a solid forty-five minutes. I stood outside in the can queue with a group of people who clearly had not been at the formal: there was a pair of scantily clad transvestites, a group of men who I am sure were extras on Duck Dynasty, and a girl who kept hiccuping and crying because she couldn’t find one of her shoes (which, judging by the looks of the other one, was no travesty). So I waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually, when it was after two in the morning, I was sober as a bird, and all alone in a sea full of freaks, I did what I’ve sadly found myself doing fairly frequently these days when I need rescuing: I regrettably called my mom.

Now two in the morning, I traipsed across Copley Square all alone, my legs so cold I could no longer feel my knees, and waited on the corner for my mother to fetch my twenty-six year old self. I climbed in the car, tired, cold, and frustrated, and heard just what I was dying to hear after a weirdly sober evening where I was blatantly looked over like some checkout girl at Costco: “Sooooooo, meet any nice lawyers?” A Jewish mother’s work is never done.

No way, José

Although you probably know, mostly because I never fail to seize the opportunity to mention it whenever it is (or isn’t) relevant, a few years ago I spent an entire winter in Turks & Caicos working on my tan, breaking the hearts of various island men, and writing the Next Great American Novel.

When I first began my extended stay, I really didn’t know anyone outside my parents’ friends which included an Englishman who owned a dive shop and a woman who owned my parents’ cleaning service who would take me to buy essential groceries and requisite beer. Everyone said, “Oh, you’ll make friends down there!” and I thought, “Come on, absolutely not. Where am I going to make these alleged friends?” But as it turned out, I did makes friends, many of them, in fact, and ironically, today, as I sit here writing this from my island home and my cute, green, island (flip!) cell phone alights with text messages, I can safely say I have far more friends here, on a rock in the middle of the ocean, than I do in Massachusetts, a state I’ve called home almost my entire life. 

In the beginning, when I didn’t have any friends, I didn’t mind being alone at all. I wrote every morning, read on the beach every afternoon, and watched the entire series of Friday Night Lights on DVD, crying at the end of every episode. But one day, after swimming laps, a guest at the resort where my family’s condo was asked me a question about the pool. In response, I found myself blabbering on and on about the weather and my dog and my undergraduate major, which was, suffice to say, far beyond the reaches of “Why, yes! The water temperature is lovely!” As the man nervously smiled and backed away slowly, I realized it was about time I go out and start talking to other human beings besides myself before something really bad happens and I end up like Jack Torrance.

I wasn’t sure where to start, but thought I’d hit up one of the only island bars by myself first and see how it went. This is something I would never do in Real Life, but somehow I managed to muster up a bit of courage and haul myself into a bar stool solo. The initial reaction to my lonesomeness was this: islanders and tourists alike were seemingly immediately overcome with pity, and feeling bad for the tan girl in the headband by herself at the bar, chatted me up, invited me out on their yachts, and bought me more Jaeger Bombs than any slightly-sane person should imbibe in one sitting. Overall? It was a roaring success. The looks of sheer sadness on people’s faces when they approached me, their Southern drawls slurring into their Presidentes, was the epitome of irony: Please! Feel bad for me! I’m stuck in paradise with no one to bother me and no job to go to for four entire months! Suckers.

I soon branched out to going to the casino alone, too. I discovered that the casino has a pick-up and delivery situation: they will come get you wherever you are, bring you to their fine establishment, then, after you’ve lost all your money on roulette, drop you back home, all for free! I decided to start using them as my personal chauffeur service, so not only did I score a reliable way around the island (since I didn’t have a car), I also made some money playing the slot machines like a hunchbacked old lady in Atlantic City. I befriended the waitresses, managers, and, of course, the casino van driver, José, who, because of the fact I was nice and courteous and, apparently, the only eligible female on the entire island, fell in love with me.

José would shuttle me around, happy as a gnome, asking me to marry him and doing what is perhaps the most spot on and amazing impersonation of Bruno Tonioli you can imagine, which made me collapse into hysterics every single time. I didn’t know much about José, but his incessant marriage proposals aside, he seemed normal and fun, and I never really thought twice about hopping in a car with him, a virtual stranger. He worked for the casino--of course I trusted him. Then again, isn’t that how all Natalee Holloway mysteries begin?

One night, after winning a whopping $93.00 on a slot machine (a lot, since I had been betting only five cents at a time) and enjoying many a free cocktail, I sauntered outside to have José take me home. Now, before I go any further, as we’ve previously established, I get absurdly sick on any and all moving vehicles: I practically have to take a Dramamine before I get on the stationary bike. This horrible affliction, however, becomes much more prominent if I’ve been drinking. I could be totally sober, able to walk straight lines on the side of the road without a hitch, but throw me in the passenger seat of a car after even a single beer, and you’d think I just outdrank a defensive lineman eight times over. I’m sure you can already see where this is going.

That night, when I jumped in the front seat with José, he asked if I minded accompanying him on a couple pick-ups. “Sure!” I said. I mean, why not endure a few more marriage proposals? I could always use the ego boost. 

A “couple” pick-ups, however, turned into over an hour of driving down unpaved, twisty and turning roads in the middle of no where on the island. Feral dogs growled in the dark, hermit crabs crossed the streets like ducklings, and after only five minutes, I had my head hanging out the window like a dalmatian trying to get a suntan. We were fairly far from my own home, and until all the appropriate guests had been picked up and dropped off, I was held hostage in the casino van, turning all sorts of shades of green, clutching my stomach in nauseous agony. José kept making jokes, doing his Bruno impressions, and laying the compliments on as thick as peanut butter, totally oblivious to the fact that I was ready to hurl out my innards in their entirety. By the time we pulled into the parking lot of my family’s condo, I was gulping down vomit and trying my very best not ruin the interior of the van. I scramble out of the car, incapable of saying good-bye (let alone “Of course I’ll marry you!”) to a now heart-broken José, and sprinted to my own bathroom where I hugged the toilet seat for the next twenty minutes. 

Gosh, even when someone does pay attention to me, I just can’t seem to keep it together. Or down. Whatever the case may be.

Foam Me Once...

Freshman year, throughout my college career, and long after I received my diploma, I essentially maintained the same core crew of friends, a group who lived in my  dorm and all of whom I met on that fateful first day while I hung my *NSYNC posters above my extra-long twin-sized bed and organized my Saucony sneakers by color. One member of my group is a boy named Pat. He lived in the room across from mine, and despite my misgivings after our initial nerdily competitive conversation about what our SAT scores had been, we became close, and remain so till today. Pat had a roommate of undetermined Hispanic origin who slept beneath a Che Guevara flag, eventually succumbed to peer pressure and join the fraternity of which all my male friends were brothers, and today lives in South Korea, which is sad because it’s so far away, and also hilarious, as Pat has a well-known and congenital passion for tiny Asian girls: he now basically resides in his own personal Disney World.

After a first semester where all my friends proclaimed loud and clear they had zero desire for a boyfriend or girlfriend, second semester rolled around and Wammo! Somehow everyone was coupled up except for me and Pat. We didn’t quite know how it happened, and at first thought not much would change: our friends’ newly acquired significant others were mostly in our clique anyway, so wouldn’t it just be more of the same? But in the whopping ten years since my Freshman year (ugh, could I sound like more of a fossil?), I have learned that regardless of age, upon the acquisition of a mate, everyone immediately morphs into a sort of fun-detesting, boring loser type of Power Ranger. I still have no idea why this is: just because you have a boyfriend or girlfriend, why does that mean you now need to pretend you’re always tired? Or that going out isn’t your “thing” anymore? Or that we’re “too old” for this “sort or stuff,” whatever that means? This mutual exclusivity of fun and boy/girlfriends first reared its tedious head that second semester when Pat and I would be ready to go out and come to find that our friends were instead engrossed in a game of cards on someone’s linty dorm room carpet. We quickly learned there was no point in holding out hope that they would get ready “Right after this hand!” and soon stopped asking them to go out with us entirely. 

Each semester, one of our school’s fraternities threw the always-popular foam party. In the spring, when Pat and I arrived in our bathing suits, cans of the venerable Beast Ice in hand, we immediately knew we’d made a mistake: apparently everyone else at school had decided to stay at home with our other friends, too, as there were only about fifteen other unsavory and unsanitary coeds in attendance. In the fall, when we’d gone to the same event, the basement rooms had been packed wall-to-wall with us stupid freshman, sweaty and foam-covered, like some excessively eccentric scene out of a bubble bath commercial. Shrugging our shoulders in the now virtually empty basement, we brought our beers to the dance floor and milled around the corners like we were at a middle school dance. The party got slightly more fun as the crowd increased, but I was still raring to call it a night several hours earlier than usual.

I tend to exaggerate just a tad in these blog posts, but the following scenario, I promise, actually occurred precisely as I am about to describe it (and lives on to this day in the general lore amongst my friends). At one point during the party I went to get a beer and when I returned, I kid you not, this is exactly the scene I witnessed: Pat had been standing on the edge of the dance floor when he spied a girl, Ellie. He extended his arm and pointed to her, much as you might when in grade school and trying to pass blame on the someone else for kicking sand into the eyes of the kid no one liked. After he pointed at her, Pat rotated his hand and wiggled his index finger, beckoning her to come hither. I burst out laughing, but was silenced immediately because not only did she obediently follow the direction of his finger, like some sort of bizarre slutty magnet, she then wrapped her arms around him, and within about .03 second they were making out. My mouth hung open. How does that happen in real life? Who falls for something like that? Pat and Ellie sucked each other’s mouths dry out for the better part of an hour, while I looked on in disbelief, alone, with lavender scented foam clinging to my shoulders and fraternity floor sludge caked between my toes.

The next day I told everyone, and I mean everyone, about what I had seen go down and no one could believe Pat had snagged a girl like that. “She must not go to school here,” we’d hypothesized, as just down the street from us was a handful of other colleges all known to be the general breeding ground for the comparatively, um, less than intelligent. But soon it became clear that Ellie was actually a student at our school, and within days she was also Pat’s girlfriend. I couldn’t believe it. In fact, when I think about that night right now, I still can’t believe it. I mean, OK, maybe Pat could snag a girl just for a night that way, with that wriggle of a finger, but as a real girlfriend? Who perpetuated as such for several months? No. Way.

It became clear almost immediately, however, that Pat and Ellie were really meant to be. He found her comically kooky as she knitted during all her classes, (which turned out to be totally mesmerizing as I found myself walking between classes, daydreaming about just when she might actually finish that chenille afghan she’d been working on), wore vintage dresses and Amish hairstyles, and, like Pat, enjoyed using excessively big words just for the fun of it. Sadly, Pat and Ellie broke up over the summer, and even though their relationship had started out in the strangest of ways, I couldn’t help but think they really had been perfect for one another: one day, while a group of a dozen of us had waited for everyone to be ready to go to lunch, Ellie turned to Pat and said, “You are so...diabolical!” before nuzzling his nose and gripping his belt loops. They then laughed manically--and seriously--together for several minutes. So if that, dear followers, isn’t enough to make love last, then I honestly have no idea what is and am doomed to spend the rest of my days happily alone and, well, undiabolical.

(No picture this week since apparently my Freshman year was so long ago, no one even had digital cameras then. I'm basically a Styracosaurus. Ugh.)