2003-09-12 - 11:22 p.m.
#122: No Need for a Big Night Out
Note to self: It's funny, I don't write anything in my journal for months even though I had a lot of free time to do so, and now that my free time should be spent packing things into cardboard boxes, here I am languishing away at yet another entry that details the times, tribulations and torture that is my life. I guess my bouts of inspiration does only come in bursts and moments of last minute panic. Either that, or I just plain don't like packing. All that heavy lifting and muscle strain and not a single woman around to admire me. Besides my mother. But that would be sick.
Well here I am after a days recovery after the night of September 10th, 2003. Wednesday. A day that will live on forever.... In infamy. It's a pity it didn't happen on Spetember 11th, cause then I could have made a whole lot of buildup about the importance and impact of that day and then lead into the complete blindspot event that is my first night of drinking to excess, clubbing then misfired attempts at smoking pot. Yes, so it's a pity it didn't happen that way. Because if it did I would have made sure I'd told a number of off colour jokes like "How many Iraqis does it take to bomb The World Trade Center?" and revealed my harsh insensitive interior wrapped by my soft, normally gooey and happy exterior-of-that-interior-but-still-interior wrapped by my wrapped also gooey and happy exterior wrapped by layers and layers of manfat. It's a good thing it only comes out when I'm feeling particularly belligerent, otherwise I might have been found floating face down in a pool of my own blood and bodily fluids with multiple stab wounds to my back a long, long time ago. If you want a 9/11 related thingie though, take a look back 2 years ago when I first saw it happening on the news. I was probably in a better state of mind then than I am now, which is becoming affected by that glass of Baileys I had to drink to empty the fridge that's getting sold and moved out of the house tomorrow. Yeah, "had" to drink. I'm such a liar.
But anyway. Wednesday. Wednesday evening. The night my downward spiral into sin and debauchery began. Actually it technically began on Saturday the week before, when Fergus came up to me at a regular AAC meet basically said to me, "Let's go and get drunk on Wednesday!" to which I replied in my absolute naivete, "OK". What I did not know was that Wednesday would be the day that my innocence and well-bred morals would be shattered forever with the big red shiny button of FATE. It was night so tremendously filled with sights and sounds and other senses-catching events that I can almost remember it all through the haze of thoroughly consumed alcohol. Admittedly, I'm also writing this entry under the influence of some more alcohol, so obviously I'm going to be waxing eloquent like all the other times I had alcohol and decided to write an entry. I mean, look two doors down. But this is me almost perfectly normal compared to what happened that night. I mean, I didn't really know what it truly meant to be absolutely, STAGGERINGLY drunk until that night. All else has been "buzzed" or "mildly sloshed" or "pouncy poof who can't hold his alcohol to save his life" until that night. And there were other things as well, which I probably won't be able to describe properly in this entry even with my divine-sent application of English in dashingly incorrgible and highly dubious ways. I really wonder if a language deserves to be mangled the way I do it. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some law against it. I mean, the French bloody well set up an INSTITUTION to "protect the French language" and their language is simply really bad Latin. At least English has the guts to admit it's the bastard child of almost every single European language (and abroad!). But, I digress. Back to Wednesday.
Wednesday evening. It started off oh-so-simply. I went out on a night on the town with my "hardly ever see them but it's a pleasure to when I do" friends, Fergus, Finn and Sara. Now, since we hadn't seen each other that often (except for Fergus. And Finn once only at a recent previous AAC meeting), conversation was obviously stilted, with me nodding emphatically whenever they said something and they doing the same thing out of mutual politeness. So it's a good thing that our first stop was not, in fact, an area of floorspace designated for clubbing (besides, it was only 8PM); but rather a Japanese-turned-Korean restaurant known at Osaka, where we were going to get staggeringly drunk before heading out to dance our brains stupid. We had a bottle of something called "sou-ja" (phonetically spelling that word, here) and four shot glasses, which should probably have indicated the potency of the fluid to me; but at the time I simply assumed it was just dinky cups which "proper" restaurants used to keep the drinking down. With a plate of some roasting beef as a shared meal to go with the drinks, we raised out filled glasses in a toast (to my moving to Australia and that I may get laid. I'm not sure if that was part of the first toast or not, since we drank to my move about 3 times) and drank it down in one shot. That was okay. It tasted not unlike a smoother tasting sake, and I would have almost mistaken it for water were it not for the fact that water didn't usually leave a strange, chemical-cleaner tasting film in ones mouth. And if it did, I'm never drinking tap water ever again without boiling it at least twice, that's for sure. Anyway, I felt pretty much okay after one shot. Sure I was chattering a bit more openly than per usual with friends I haven't talked to in a couple of months, but I chalked it down to the fact that everyone was doing the same thing. Besides, Sara was talking about buttsex, and I had to refute her claims that my butt was not for having sex with. At all. I'm not entirely sure about Fergus' though.
After about ten or twenty minutes of talking, we decided to have another toast of sou-ja, and to get another bottle with the finish of the current one. We toasted to the possibility of Fergus getting his job after a recent application, and also downed that shot in a single go. That too was okay. Sure, I was getting that mild "cotton wool" sensation that one gets when one knows he is getting drunk, but that was okay. I obviously wasn't going to get drunk any further than that despite more toasts because I knew exactly how drunk I could get. Our conversation also got a little bit louder, I'm not sure if I can remember what was said.... Surprisingly, I can remember most of what was said afterwards, but not before. Odd. And then another ten minutes passed, and another toast and another shot of sou-ja straight down the throat. Cut to 10:30, when we ended up with 3 shared dishes, 5 empty bottles of sou-ja and god knows how many shots between us all. I thought I was drunk before. I thought I had been drunk before. I was wrong. Nothing could compare to what happened to me after half a dozen or so shots of sou-ja. I was admittedly still somewhat coherent (which was more than can be said for Sara, who ended up missing a good chunk of the night after her shots; and less said for Finn, who seemed to be eeriely steady) but that coherency came at a price: I was being loud. At least, I was pretty sure I was damn loud. So was Fergus. We had to shush ourselves repeatedly (and with lots of helpless, simultaneous giggling) but it never worked, we somehow always managed to rile ourselves up to the point where we were shouting again. And what we talked about... God, I've been sworn to secrecy over half of the stuff we talked about, but I'm just hoping that none of the diners around us understood English, because if they did they would have heard us say stuff like, "Hitler was the best politically leader ever and he created the perfect society designed for success" (not in so many words, of course) and we were text-messaging people on our cellphones.... Specifically Josh, who had the misfortune to interrupt us in our happy hour and we decided to mass message him with.... Stuff. Oh and on a completely different and absolutely unrelated note, I learned the Japanese word for masturbation: "onani". Innit neat? ahem.
So we were drunk out of our minds, loud and sparking off topics of a dangerous nature. And I was swearing a blue streak, too. Normally, I'm not the kind of person to curse wildly in real life; but that night all the gloves were off and I was using variations of "fuck", "fucked", "fucking" and "to be fucked" as fucking punctuation. I was swearing so hard I was either an Irishman, or I was a walk-on extra from a Quentin Tarantino movie. It really sunk in that I was entering a whole new level of "drunk" when I decided to stand up and go to the toilet. To my sheer amazement, the room would not stay still. It would NOT stay still. I was just standing there and wondering why anyone wasn't feeling the earthquake I was witnessing. I tried walking. I was walking fine. Just not in a straight line, and certainly not steady, and the room was almost certainly still moving. That was some of the most fun I've had in recent weeks, trying to walk to the toilets. It was so much fun, I did it two more times in the evening, and giggled some of the way. And the toasts! What else did we toast to? I remember we toasted to me two more times, but everything else seems to be a blur; including the amount of time we had between shots. At first, we were supposed to only have shots at a rate of twenty minutes a shot, but towards the end we were having shots every 5 minutes. Perhaps even less. I distinctly remember spitting some of the sou-ja up due to the fact that my throat completely closed up for some reason. This really singed my nostril hairs. It felt like my entire nose was getting dipped in bleach.
So at about 10 or 10:30PM, we ejected ourselves out of the premises at 20 dollars apiece, satisfied in the knowledge that our money towards getting horrendously liquored up had been well spent. Especially for Sara, who had to walk out supported by alternatively Fergus or Finn. I decided that I needed to get a burger to settle my stomach, so we all shuffled towards Burger King that most reputeable of Burgerlords and I got me a triple cheeseburger and (for my own amusement) three ice cream cones to pass unto my three partners in drunkenness. The fact that Fergus and Sara constantly missed their faces trying to eat the cones was an unexpected bonus. After that, we decided to hang around Burger King a bit longer, obviously disturbing some of the patrons inside, and drank lots of water to try and bring ourselves down from this self-induced state of head cotton. Or rather, Finn and Sara did. Fergus and I decided to hang outside for a while (because we assumed they were just going to the bathroom. perhaps to do kinky things. we shall never know) and while we were out there, we were accosted by a middle aged Maori gentlemen whose job description was most likely "bridge dwelling bum". He had some sob story about not being able to get to Rotorua because he didn't have 10 dollars to pay for the petrol for his non-existent car to see his non-existent daughter and thusly, would we be able to spare him a buck? Well, Fergus and I did. I mean, we were both drunk sure, but we knew this old guy was a lying son of a whore. But we decided to be nice. Besides, this way I can honestly (sorta) say that I've been taken advantage of and given money away to some bum when drunk. Marvellous.
Cut to a couple more hours later. We were still drunk, wandering up and down Queen Street, and drinking more water to cycle the alcohol out of our blood (with very limited success). Since Sara was feeling a lot better (after throwing up a couple of times. urgh) we decided this was the best time to go clubbing at a place called "Retro", featuring the music from the latest and best hits of the 80s! Retro? Most definitely. At first, I was going to just sit down somewhere in a dark corner and abstain from gyrating my body with a whole group of strangers; but Fergus convinced me otherwise and soon I was there doing the whole "move to one side and shake your arms like THIS, move to the other side and shake your arms like THAT" rhythm. Admittedly it was off to one corner and it was in a small circle with all the others and I was drunk as a skunk, but hey! It was my first time. Cut me some slack here. I have to admit though, despite being a child of the 80s my knowledge of its music seems to pale in the face of the selection that played that night. Sure I recognised a couple of them, but most made me shake my head in bewilderment, or I only recognised the chorus. One song I remember was from Reservoir Dogs from the scene where Mr. Blond was dousing the tied up cop with petrol (I don't remember the title, unfotunately). It didn't occur to me at the time, but the chorus "Clowns to the left of me/Jokers to the right/Here I am stuck in the middle with you" seems strangely appropriate. Other songs included the theme from Ghostbusters, MC Hammers classic "Can't Touch This" (though I was actually singing the Weird Al parody version "Can't Watch This" out loud, "La Bamba". And erm.... That was mostly it for the songs I could recognise. Shamefully inadequate, eh? But still, I danced most of the time I was there and even managed to work off most of the alcohol out of my system. And I've discovered the secret to dancing at such establishments: Get drunk beforehand so you lose most of your inhibitions and just have a great time slapping your body around with complete strangers. Well.... maybe it's not true for everyone. But it certainly helped me. In fact, when I next checked my watch it was nearly 3AM and I'd been dancing with Fiin, Sara and Fergus for overly 3 hours (with a break or two inbetween). That was nuts.
From the club we took a ride by taxi back to Finns fathers place. And then we smoked pot right outside his house. Which smelled of fried eggs and made me desire eggs badly. The house, I mean, not the pot. I needed a full course English breakfast complete with scrambled eggs, sausages, omelettes, bacon, eggs sunny side up, buttered mushrooms and a boiled egg on the side. God, did that house make me feel like eating unborn chickens. But back to the pot. The pot (out of a shared pipe) was the least successful event of the night for me. Sara and Finn sucked in that magical weed like pros, but I took a deep lungful and brought it up coughing a mere second later. Fergus was completely unaffected thanks to the fact that the first time he tried, he missed breathing in the fumes, and the second time the pipe was (probably) completely empty. Most of probably come out of my nose and throat. I never really expected to reach a day when I'd be smoking marajuana. Of course, I never really expected to reach a day when I'd be getting drunk or clubbing. And the odds against it happening all on the same day was astronomically high. And yet, that night and early the next morning, against all those odds, I did all three. I think I can be proud of myself. I think. Thank god my mother doesn't know, otherwise she'd throw a tizzy. Definitely a tizzy. Possibly disownmentship, too. And then, after that night of magical adventures we went to sleep.
Only to wake up 4 hours later to greet the new day! 8:30AM saw us (and Finns immediate family) all shuffling out of the house in various ludricous gaits and states of hangover, lobbing ourselves onto Finns fathers van and off to Auckland city where we were all dropped off at 9AM and then seperated to go on our merry ways and continued transportation. Most likely home, or at least a more comfortable bedding arrangement than a sofa, and sleep the rest of the day away. To be accompanied before or after by a nice hot shower.
This was the point that I decided to go off and run errands in the city.
This was a stupid thing to do. Especially after having the night that I did. Especially if you're not USED to having the night I did.
But no, I thought to myself, "Hangovers don't affect me! A good amount of water and some brisk, fresh air and I'll be perfectly okay". So with this mindset I decided to set off and complete a series of tasks that I'd set for myself on Wednesday and as I was going to be travelling by bus to and fro, I might as well spend some time in the city on Thursday to justify the trip. It made sense when I thought this up. Anyway, my first task was breakfast. I needed eggs. So I went to MacDonalds and ordered me a Massive McMuffin combo with coffee and an extra hashbrown. And I ate it. So far so good. Then I decided to go down to The Warehouse to see if I could purchase something resembling gold buttons as a final addition to my costume for the cosplay party on Saturday. That was a no, and I was still okay. It was not until I was halfway up Queen Street that my body finally said, "Right. You've been out drinking and clubbing all night, you've forgotten that you haven't drunk any water since arriving at Finns place and you expect ME to handle all this walking and bright sunshine? Screw you, boitchedy!".
And thus I was made aware of all the niggling pains my body was being subjected to. My legs felt stiff and weren't walking right (I assume from all that swaying and dancing I did the night before. plus, I must have decided to walk differently last night to make up for my drinky-drinky brain cotton), my body also felt stiff and extremely dehydrated and I was noticing just how sharply the sun was stabbing its rays under my eyelids directly to my eyeballs. It was not a good time to be wandering around the city running errands. But I did anyway. In fact, I stayed in the city for 3 whole hours: looking for gold buttons, wandering uphill Queen Street to get to K-Road and my irregular dosage of Warren Ellis goodness, and then wandering back from K-Road to go to the University where I had to pick up a form asking for documentation over my acceptance into the University of Auckland and my examination results for the three and a half years I was there. And then finally, I got on the bus. After missing the first one because my shuffling to the bus stop was too slow. And after the bus was a thirty minute walk. And then home to sleep. And thus was the TRUE end for the 18 hours the world would never forget. Hotchaha.
And now here I am writing a journal entry all about it. Partially at Saras request (she suggested the title, even) but also because I feel a need to note this down. And now I need to go to sleep. And possibly write another entry two days later after the cosplay party that's scheduled for tomorrow. Tata!
