Originally written: January 7, 2005
I’m like a lot of folks when it comes to New Years Day. I spend it hungover and looking back in disappointment on the night before, trying to piece together all the events and analyze why they didn’t coalesce into something that matched all my expectations. But not this one. I went into this one with no delusions of grandeur, and ended up with so many hilarious memories that I can pretty much guarantee that all New Years Days from here on out will be spent hungover and disappointed – as there’s no way they’ll match the laugh-quotient of this one.
Three days of friends, comedy, and booze…
Thursday night was Leo’s birthday, and a big group of us – most of whom have raised hell together since high school – met up at a local pub to celebrate. We hung around for hours filling the bar with cigarette smoke, talking about our various Christmases, and drinking cold domestics. Around midnight, Jenn corralled the group and herded us all into cabs to go continue celebrating her husband’s birthday at a hipster underground (literally) danceclub.
The club was dead. Presumably most of the crowd was huddled in their homes, preparing for the events of the next night. So we stood around an empty dance floor, watching the occassional member of our gang get out there and dance poorly. I don’t dance. And I especially don’t dance when there’s a circle of my friends watching. But the empty club made for a great time, as we all just hung around chatting with each other, and not having to deal with jokers like myself staggering into the other sections of the bar to annoy strange girls.
At one point I really had to take a leak. But every time I walked over to the unisex-one-toilet-bathroom, someone else charged in and slammed the door. On my third try or so, I approached the three girls who were standing outside the john, waiting on their friend. “You guys waiting for the bathroom?” I asked, looking dapper and interesting. “Yes,” they tersely replied. “Cool.” I nodded, suavely turned around and walked away, then lost my balance and almost tripped over the chair beside me. Ladies, if you only knew what you were missing…
So we closed out the club and we all hopped in our respective cabs and headed to our respective pads. A few of us headed back to my place. I immediately begin digging into my fridge, grabbing whatever shit was in there and stuffing it in my stupid mouth. When I grew bored of that, I decided to go annoy my pal hJon who was trying to snooze on the couch.
I grabbed a cheese dog and a handful of roastbeef and proceeded to attack hJon with these weapons of meat. At one point, I was playing the role of a surgeon. Imagining the roast beef was a roll of gauze, I’d rub it all over poor half-awake hJon’s face, and once I’d determined the wound was clean and ready for operation, I’d stuff the hot dog in his eye. hJon would moan and bury his face in the pillow, and I’d yell, “hJon, watch it! You’re getting meat juice all over my pillow!” Trying to be a respectable guest, he’d lift his head up off the pillow, and get himself another eye-full of Oscar Meyer. Ah, fun with meat!
The following night was New Years Eve, and everyone from the night before all met up at Lauren and Z’s place to begin the festivities. Club Z, as we affectionatley call it, is walking distance from the bars and has a back porch that looks out onto the city streets. We laughed and drank beer and played air-jazz drums to the delicate stylings of Chuck Mancione. And any stranger within a block of us probably got to enjoy the tunes as well.
Around elevenish, those of us guys and girls who are still single began to get anxious to go hit the bars and find ourselves somewhom with whom to share a New Years bang – KISS! I meant to say kiss! So, we gathered up the gang, a group Jager-bomb was shared, and we were all off on the prowl.
We found ourselves at a local tavern in the Highlands and pushed our way towards the bar. Man, this place was packed wall-to-wall with revelers. Had the Fire Chief walked in, he probably would have just said, “Ahh, fuck this,” and grabbed a drink and lit up a smoke. We crowded into the spot that seemed the least crowded – which it would seem, was due to the fact that it was the only available walkway to get from one end of the bar to the other.
We toasted the New Years with champagne and beers and Jager shots and laughs… until chaos erupted. Suddenly, the beer was splashing out of our pint glasses and we were getting violently pushed back by the waves of revelers behind us. “What the fuck is going on?” we yelled, until the crowd parted, and two big fucking idiots came barreling through, throwing punches at each other. Their respective loser friends were trying to seperate them, but these big fucking galoots just kept swinging. One of the guys’ face was covered completely in blood. Good. All this was going on right next to us – I think I got a drop of the dude’s blood on my jacket. Lauren threw her champagne on one of them – like’d you do to calm two fighting dogs.
Look, I don’t care if people want to fight. Hey, if you’ve got the kind of job where you can go in the next Monday with black eye, than hell, punch away. But if you’re gonna start that shit in a bar, especially in a bar that’s packed beyond maximum capacity, then you’re a fucking turd. Every time you swing and miss, you’re hitting somebody else. And chances are, at least one of the swings is going to hit a girl. So be proud, tough guys – you punch women. Idiots.
You fuckers are the reason why they don’t keep the bars open all night.
Eventually, these dorks were dragged outside, the crowd quickly filled the vacancy they had left, and everyone went back to having fun. Throughout the next couple hours, our group began to filter away, finally just leaving me and The Cop and Katie and Jenn G. – the singles who were gonna ride out the bar as long as they’d let us. Then a lightbulb popped up above my head, and I turned to Jenn and told her my plan for some Great Comedy.
“So, whattya think?” I said. “You in?”
“Sure.”
“… Seriously???”
And with that, I crossed my arms and we zipped my jacket up over them so I had just a couple of sleeves dangling at my side. We headed over to the bouncer sitting on a barstool next to a line of dudes waiting for the Men’s Pisser.
“Hey, man, look, I got kind of a problem here… It’s really embarrassing, but…um… well, I was in a car accident recently and broke both my arms…and well, wouldn’t you know, but uh, it’s New Years Eve and…well, I’ve got diareha. REAL bad, man. And..uh..I need my ‘sister’ here to…well…you know… uh, help me out when I’m finished…”
The bouncer laughed and nodded, and we got in line for the Men’s Pisser. We proceeded to repeat my tale of woe to all the waiting randoms. They were sympathetic to my plight, and let us get in front of them. As we were entering the bathroom, one dude asked if the the wreck were my fault.
What? Here you are, meeting a dude who’s about to engage in one of the most embarrassing (and hilarious) acts possible, and you want to know who’s fault it was??? Fucking law student, I guess…
So my “sister” and I walked through the Men’s Bathroom and into a stall and closed the door behind us, and then burst out laughing. “AH HA HA HA!!! We did it! We made it into the stall! AHHH HA HA HA HA!!!” We then immediatley turned around and exited the bathroom and joined our friends at the bar.
Mission Accomplished.
Man, I was really proud of that one. I felt like we were a couple of pioneers blazing the trail of Bar Comedy. If any of those dudes in line had come by later, they would have seen the no-armed diarahea-sufferer laughing and yelling about “The Ultimate Comedy” with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. Both functional.
We all headed back to Club Z and joined the others on the back porch, where we joined in on a mad air-guitar jam session to some classic rock. Man, we were rocking. Furiously. Man, so much air was being rocked, you wouldn’t believe it. Then, some tall drink of urine in a doo rag that we didn’t know walked up, and I guess so badly to join in the fun but didn’t know how to use a door, so he just ripped through one of the screen windows.
“What the fuck are you doing, dude???”
We started yelling at this dork, along with his dork friend in a sport coat. Enraged. The Cop woke up to the racket, and ran outside and begin yelling at the dude, snapping into full-on cop mode. The bandana’d idiot was so drunk he didn’t realize he was talking shit to a guy who could take him to jail. Finally, one of their girlfriends came over and apologized for her friends and promised that they’d return in the morning to fix the window. I wanted to put the moves on her.
We then sat back down and went back to hanging out and having fun. Then a crack addict stumbled up to the porch and began talking gibberish. One of the guys in the group handed him a slice of pizza through the hole in the screen window. The crack addict wolfed down the pizza and then just stood there, talking more and more nonsense. So, I convinced Leo to stand up and face in the direction of the crack addict. I stood behind Leo, with my arms out in front of him like they were his. And while Leo opened and closed his mouth, I crouched behind him, talking, moving my arms up and down. I was hoping the crack addict would get creeped out when he saw this strange man with weird arms who’s voice didn’t synch up with the movement of his mouth. But, The Cop told me to knock it off and stop harrassing the guy…
Finally everyone stumbled back inside to find a place to sleep. When I got in, all the couches and beds and pillows were taken, so I sprawled out on the hardwood floor. I lay there for a while with my eyes open. I wasn’t tired. Damnit. The fun was over and I wasn’t tired. Now what? I figured maybe if I read a little, I’d fall asleep. I reached over to the coffee table next to me and grabbed the first magazine I could feel. Playboy. Damnit. Nothing wrong with Playboy of course. It’s great! But, I was afraid my plan would actually succeed and I’d fall asleep reading it, and in the morning everyone would wake up to find me passed out nose-deep in a nudie mag. As if I wasn’t creepy enough already. So, I put it back, rested my head on my hands, and waited for sleep to take over…
I was quite content with how the night had turned out. Two full nights of fun with great pals. What more could you ask for? I was ready to call it a success, and little did I know I still had another full day of adventure to go. Little did I know I’d spend the first day of 2005 with my “Ghost of New Year’s Future”….
To Be Continued…
