Booze II

This is a follow up to the immensely popular blog posting “booze”.  Unfortunately for myself, I do not have a shortage of such stories.  Writing these down often makes me wonder how I am alive and have never been to jail.  This is not fun for me.

I’m just going to crash at Dan’s: 

Myself and several friends partied the night away at a popular spot in Cleveland’s West Bank of the Flats which, at that time, was just a massive river-walk of bars and debauchery.  This particular bar was an 80’s themed bar and offered a drink, mostly consisting of Bacardi 151, called the Top Gun.  I had five of these drinks, over the course of about three hours.  I remember doing the shoulder dance with some forty eight year old lady for at least two of those hours.

At the time I lived in Cleveland Heights which would have been a fairly hefty cab fare, clear across pretty much the entire city.  So I got the brilliant idea to just walk to Dan’s apartment (basically across the street) and crash there. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t call Dan until I had arrived at the entrance to his building.  After about 3 harassing, one after the other, 4 AM phone calls to Dan, he finally answered his phone.  I told him that I was at his apartment and to let me in.   He then told me that he was in Canada.  He had told me that he was going to Canada, which is why he wasn’t out with us in the first place.  I don’t know why I thought he was home or how I could have forgotten which country my best friend was in. 

So I call a taxi, after all it was my only recourse.  The taxi said he would be there in ten minutes.  So I grab a seat on the sidewalk, on top of a retaining wall with a bunch of plants behind me. It was one of those huge concrete, decorative planters with a bunch of Tulips and shit in it.  At some point, I laid back into the plants and must have gotten very comfortable because I didn’t wake up until 9 AM the next day.   Now, at the time, I was working weird shifts and had weekdays off.  So I remember this was a Monday morning at 9 AM in downtown Cleveland. 

More responsible people, who were likely on their way to work were bustling by me in the streets. People were offering me change.  They thought I was a vagrant instead of some kid that got so hammered at an 80’s bar that had missed his cab and passed out drunk in a flower bed for five hours.  I took their change.  How I did not get arrested or mugged is absolutely beyond me.  My cigarettes and lighter were stolen. 

How I got rabbit punched on St. Patrick’s Day:

I am not sure which St. Patrick’s Day this was but as usual I started drinking downtown at around 8 AM With my friend Steven and some other friends.  Steven is one of these people who can drink all day long.  I on the other hand am really not.  You can find my friend Steven on any St. Patrick’s Day, still going strong late into the night, generally with lipstick all over his face, his shirt missing, his pants filthy, but still ready to party. 

I cannot do this.  Generally by 2 or 3 PM on St. Patrick’s Day, I am so shitfaced, that all I can think about is getting home and passing out.  So after a day of bar hopping, who knows how many shots, green beers, cocktails and at one point being thrown out a bar because Steven knocked over a ladder which broke a window, and calling a newscaster a shithead while he was live on the air, it was time for me to get home. 

We had taken the early bus from Steven’s house in Old Brooklyn downtown in the morning so I assumed I could just take the bus back to his place now in the late afternoon.   He told me that his door was unlocked and I was welcome to go in and pass out. 

Unfortunately, I had no idea which bus to get onto to get back to his place.  I did not pay close enough attention that morning.  Adding to my confusion was the fact that I was absolutely hammered and could not properly communicate with anyone.  So I basically just got onto the first bus I saw.  I passed out on the bus and woke up with the driver yelling at me.  I had reached the end of the bus line and I had to get off.  I needed to be in Old Brooklyn, but this bus had taken me to a town called Parma Heights.  Luckily I was able to locate where I was on a map at the bus station and found that I was less than two miles from where I should have gotten off. 

So I began to walk, in the rain from Parma Heights to Old Brooklyn.  It is now about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I am wearing a green lay that I came to realize had colored my shirt and neck green throughout the day, and I am completely shitfaced.  

I did not piss at the bus station like I should have.   Now I am stuck in a very thickly settled, residential area with nowhere to relieve myself.  It is the middle of the afternoon, so I couldn’t really just duck behind a couple of trees like you can do at night.  Finally, I reached a boiling point, I couldn’t hold out any longer.  I did the best I could to hide myself behind a tree, on some guy’s tree-lawn in order to urinate.  I began to relieve myself on his front lawn.  I thought I had gotten away with it and was sort of laughing to myself when out of nowhere, some guy, who I assume was the home owner, ran up behind me and rabbit punched me in the back.  I learned the hard way about how painful it is to be punched in the kidneys while urinating.  It felt like a bolt of lightning had struck me in the back and exited out of my junk.

The man yelled something about calling the cops but by then I had run a good block away from him with no intentions of slowing down.  I glanced behind me and noticed that he was quite a rotund individual with no chance of chasing me down, even as drunk as I was.

After much trial and error, and having walked through a Taco Bell Drive through, I made my way back to Steven’s house to find him already there and past out.  Had I waited another 30 minutes, I could have just taken the bus with him and avoided being rabbit punched by an obese man in his front yard. 

The North American Golf Tour:

 One summer when I was 23 or 24 me and a good friend were invited to play on a local golf “tour” called the North American Gold Tour.   We accomplished this marvel, by demonstrating, to the “commissioner” that we both carried a 5 or less handicap throughout an entire calendar year.  We were able to prove this to him, by scanning and emailing copies of our own scorecards to his yahoo email account.   These scorecards were not from any sort of commissioned, supervised events, they were just me and my friends golfing and drinking as usual, doing a half assed job of keeping score and then emailing the scorecards to this guy who allowed us to join his golf tour.   So I immediately found the entire thing ridiculous and refused to in any way take it seriously. 

For the sake of this story, you also have to keep in mind that this particular tour, went by what is known as the Callaway Handicapping System.  All that you need to know about this system is that it is incredibly complex and complete bullshit.

The story starts the night before my first tournament.  My friend had a party in his yard which I attended.  I had to be at this tournament at 7 AM the next day and it was only a few miles from where the party was.  So it made sense for me to crash there and then head to the tournament the next day. 

The party got a little out of control.  Myself and my friend Matt mixed up a batch of what we called Blue Goo.  This is a plastic milk bottle, that you wash out, then fill with nearly an entire bottle of Vodka.  You then add sugar and a packet of Blue Kool-Aid.  We were a classy bunch back then. We drank the entire thing and past out around 4 in the morning. 

We woke up to my alarm two hours later and had one hour to get to this golf course and play in the first ever golf tournament of our lives.  My friend Matt has always been able to mask a hangover a lot better than I can.  When I am hung over, everyone around me knows about it. 

I arrive at the golf course and am immediately paired up with two of the biggest, straight-edge, Kaki-short wearing yuppie douche bags I have ever seen.  These men were taking this very seriously.  Meanwhile I am in jeans and am wearing a collared shirt, but only because I have to in order for the golf course to allow me to be there. 

I realize after about two shots that attempting to play golf was a huge mistake.  My sluggish pace and general disdain towards my playing partners has already worn their patience with me thin.  On top of all this, it turned out to be one of the hottest days of that summer and I could not have possibly been more hung over.  After I tee-off on the fifth hole, I told my playing partners that I had to go piss in the woods.  But I could not make it to the trees before vomiting in front of them right there on the tee-box. 

My playing partners walked off sighting the tournament rule that if someone in your group is slowing you down, you do not have to wait for them. 

I lumbered on alone, after about 12 holes; I was so hot that I took my shirt off.   My shirt smelled like Vodka and my jeans were absolutely soaked with perspiration.  This was one of the longest days of my life.  After all of this, I was really not golfing all that badly.  I was basically playing scratch golf. 

Little did I know that I was in the third to last group.  And it was customary for all of the groups who finished before mine to wait around the 18^th green and watch all of the other groups finish.  I hit a terrible approach shot about 25 yards over the 18^th green into all of these spectators.  They then stood in amazement as I come into view as a person with no shirt on, visibly hung over, sun burnt, tired, and sweaty, and dirty man.  At this point I was just dragging my golf bag behind me, not even able to lift it off the ground. My lips were a bluish, whitish, dehydrated hue and I couldn’t breathe without wheezing.  Several people went as far as to ask me if I was okay and if I could continue.  I was forced to play my chip surrounded by this mass of men who are all wearing their top of the line golf polo shirts and khaki pants, looking at me like I am some sort of criminal.

I managed a great up and down and ended up paring the hole.  A member of my group begrudgingly signed my scorecard vouching for its accuracy.  After all, it was accurate.  I ended up 13 over par for the day, not exactly a great round. I quickly got myself into the club-house to find my friend Matt in similar shape, drinking about a gallon of Iced Tea.  Before I could sit down, the Tour “Commissioner” asked the two of us to follow him into a ball room that was part of the club house.  We handed him our scorecards, and he yelled at us, mostly me, for a good five minutes about how he expected better conduct out of us.  I didn’t understand this.  How can you expect anything out of someone you had just met, for a period of five minutes, 6 hours earlier? 

In a stunning turn of events, my 12 over par, combined with the complete horseshit of the Callaway Handicapping System won the tournament.  I had the eighth worst score of the day, but thanks to their ridiculous handicapping system I walked out of there a winner. 

The look on those yuppies faces as I walked out of that club house, with three hundred of their dollars, fighting a horrendous handover, smelling like a bottle of vodka, with no shirt on, is one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen.  I dry heaved in the parking lot a couple more times, tossed my clubs in the back of my truck and went home.  I never played on the North American Golf Tour again.