I felt strangely ok this morning when I left the house. No headache, I could breathe, and was relatively alert. Which eventually led me to believe that I was still drunk. I never feel that good after drinking that much so few hours before. These things always make me suspicious, like there's a loose wheel or something. It would be nice if I had somehow developed a super-metabolism. Anyway, it all started back in December, 2001...
I had just finished a guitar lesson- guitars being all the rage back then- and upon stepping inside my Brooklyn apartment builind, got a call from Rodzilla, whom I had not seen in many moons. She was at her school's Christmas party and wanted to know if I wanted to get a drink. I said sure, since I was coming back into the city in a short bit to meet people for drinks anyway. She said she didn't feel like waiting around for too long, so after wolfing down a quick dinner, I high-tailed it back into the city and waited for her in a bar for 20 minutes. Typical. Anyway, I hadn't seen her since storming off in a rage more than two months ago. I feel much better now. For some reason, when I got up yesterday morning, I knew I was going to see Rodzilla at some point in the day. How odd. So we had a few drinks, a few laughs, and debated the sexual preferences of the two men to our left. They looked fairly straight, but on man's sweater and the way he was wearing his scarf seemed to swing the vote to gay.
So eventually I contacted James and Rodzilla and I decided to take a cab over toe 4th st. and Lafayette. The plan was to meet our old college friend and my former roommate Rick, who you may recall by the name of Bitchard. He's in business school at UNC now, and is home for the holidays. It was his birthday, so there was all sorts of carousing planned I guess. Along with him was another college friend Jason and his girlfriend, whose name I forgot 11 seconds after hearing it. Anyway, before all that, we had to find Matt, who was walking south from Astor Place. While we walked up Lafayette, we passed a man that I thought looked suspiciously like Kevin Kline. I asked James and Rodzilla, but they didn't see him. Matt also missed him. So as we turned around and walked back south to meet rick, we saw the guy in a parking garage. Matt mockingly said "Look, it's Kevin Kline." I said, no, it is. And he's like "Oh yeah, he really drives a PT Cruiser" as the attendent drove his car down. So when he turned around to get in his car, and we could clearly see that it was indeed him, he saw four morons standing there with their mouths agape. As he pulled out of the garage and drove away, I yelled "ASSHOOOOOOLE!" his little line from A Fish Called Wanda. I thought that was pretty funny. I would imagine he got tired of that pretty quickly.So we found Rick outside of Seraphina's, and we walked down to Joe's Pub or something. It didn't look like a pub owned by any regular Joe. It had lit bars and tall skinny beer glasses and plush couches. Which all means expensive drinks. There was going to be a band there that night, some sort of Ukranian punk rock band, so they were going to collect 10 bucks from anyone who stayed, so we got the hell out of there. On my suggestion, we went over to Fuel, which until recently was called Phoebe's, on 3rd ave and 4th st. It was the only place I knew that was closeby that was halfway decent. As soon as we got there, James came up to me and said "This bar blows. I can't believe you brought us here." What a dick. Anyway, from there, it was a lot of steady drinking. I guess we weren't there that late, about 1:30, but it felt like a long time. After a few beers, Rodzilla insisted on doing shots to spread holiday cheer. So there were a few rounds of those. Rodzilla and I also had the inevitable little chat, but all seems well. And I must say, she looked pretty fine in her red christmas pants. It was really good to see Rick too, especially since he didn't punch me in the neck or poke me in the chest. Though he did lick the side of my face, which made me uncomfortbable. If he's not physically assaulting you in any way, Rick's a really fun guy to get drunk with. Anyway, the other details of the evening are sort of hazy. I nearly fell asleep in the cab. I made some pierogies shortly after getting home, despite feeling really sick and dizzy. If you'd have watched me eat them, you'd probably have wanted to throw up too. It was fairly savage and primal. Somehow I managed to crawl into bed without throwing up, though I slept with the trashcan next to my bed.
Pictures from the evening (Matt looks really weird in all of these):
Rodzilla and James at Joe's Pub. The other day James said "I hate it when I get in a picture where I'm actually giving a real smile."
Matt and Rodzilla, who was very proud of her festive red pants, and insisted on posing with Matt in his red shirt.
Through some smoke and haze
Rodzilla felt obligated to take this picture at a very artsy 45 degree angle
James, holding a martini glass. It wasn't his.
Rodzilla, who seems to have been the prop of the night, with Rick