I'm Having More Fun Than You (15 page)

TAKE IT TO THE HOUSE

No matter how old I get, there will always be a special place in my heart for good old-fashioned house parties. I’m not the only one. There’s an entire faction of twentysomethings and thirtysomethings out there who live seemingly mature lives—but only to the naked eye. Take my friend Mike, an accomplished software developer in New York whose downtown apartment has actually been passed down for years to successive generations of graduates from his fraternity—like an off-campus party house. Or my buddy Justin, a producer here in LA who had trouble finding a new apartment because he couldn’t find one big enough to fit his beer-pong table. Unfortunately for him, “Hardwood floor quickly soaks up cheap beer” is typically not an amenity found on Craigslist.

Women my age have stupid fucking birthday parties. I love that they wear a little party dress and tiara, crimp their hair, and invite five hundred dudes. That’s if their party is at a bar; if they decide to have it at an apartment, it’s even worse. You see, despite my penchant for taking over a friend’s house for a rager, one thing I outgrew years ago is dressing up. On average, one in four Evites I receive from chicks is for some sort of elaborate costume/theme party that reminds me of sophomore year. If you’re a strong, independent woman nearing thirty, you should not be throwing parties entitled Pimps & Hos, Forties & Hos, or Golf Pros & Tennis Hos. Unless you want to do Regular Guys & Hos, in which case I’m in.

The last time Justin (he of beer-pong table fame) had his annual Super Bowl party, he decided not to get a keg because it was just too much of a mess. That turned the first quarter festivities into a game of “Let’s see how many fucking beers we can jam into this fridge.” The thing is, given all our combined years of drinking experience, I am still struck by my friends’ complete inability to purchase the right amount of booze. It’s an inexact science by any measure. I feel like half the time the cups, ice, and liquor run out in about forty-five minutes, and the rest of the time the party’s host is left with a bounty of alcohol so great that ten months later I find myself back at my buddy’s place polishing off a frosted-over bottle of Skyy and asking, “Wait, dude, is this left over from St. Patrick’s Day?”

If anything is going to stop an all-night rager from continuing, it’s not gonna be the neighbors or the cops. It’s gonna be that guy with the downstairs bathroom that gets all fucked up when you have a party. I always feel bad for downstairs bathroom guy as I’m pissing on his toilet seat and rifling through his year-old copies of
Maxim.
Strangely enough, though, the next morning I forget all about him.

Walk-up apartments on really high floors can be great for parties, because whenever someone gets to the door it’s a grand entrance—newcomers exult in having made it all the way up and then comically overdo the heavy breathing. Plus, the party goes all night because people would rather drink stale beer and make idle conversation than climb back down all those fucking stairs.

Ultimately, my favorite thing about house parties is that they usually present a rare opportunity to do kegstands. I actually once cut my lip trying to do a kegstand. And when I say “once” I mean it was less than a year ago. That’s right, I still enjoy the occasional kegstand. To me, a kegstand is the ultimate display of defiance. Because a kegstand requires two things that are not always readily available: a keg and enough crazy friends willing to hold you up. When you get to be my age and can still look around to find both, well, life is good.

WASTED

For the past six years, I’ve organized a mid-afternoon pub crawl through New York City for my friends in lieu of a birthday party. There’s just something about drinking during the day that appeals to me. I think it might be the drinking during the day part. When I turned thirty, I decided that would be the last year. I don’t know, for some reason vomiting in the street in broad daylight seems fine at twenty-nine but a little uncouth at thirty-one.

I wouldn’t say I’m a bad drunk, just an inefficient one. I tend to lose all short-term memory. One night when I was still living in New York, Chi called me sixteen times to tell me where to meet him. By the time each call ended and I put the phone in my pocket, I had forgotten the address. Chi also likes to say that I’m a terrible person to tell your secrets to because I get drunk and reveal them. But technically that’s not true. I usually get drunk and reveal my own secrets, which is actually worse.

It bothers me that every liquor ad has a little line at the bottom that says, “Enjoy responsibly.” First of all, you can’t really enjoy liquor responsibly—that’s an oxymoron. Furthermore, responsibility is subjective. When Triplet #2 was living in London for a year, I visited him, drank too much, and threw up in his apartment. That was irresponsible. But I threw up in the garbage can, which was responsible. But the garbage can didn’t have a bag in it, which was irresponsible. And it was mesh, which is just plain gross.

When I was with Triplet #2 in Australia, I took him out for his birthday. Our other friend on the trip, Jen, was able to get us upgraded to a gourmet suite in the Sydney Marriott. This worked out well, as I was able to utilize the bucket that held our complimentary champagne to vomit in profusely after taking three birthday shots for every one of Trip 2’s. The following day, we were scheduled to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the top of which offers spectacular views of the Opera House and the rest of the city. Unfortunately for me, one of the prerequisites for scaling the bridge was passing a breathalyzer test. Even at 3 p.m. the day
after
drinking, I still failed. Don’t judge me.

One year I was out boozing with the boys in South Beach when I started to get that tickle in the back of my throat. Of course, my first instinct was to throw up
in
my BlackBerry. I literally took my BlackBerry out of my pocket, held it in front of my mouth, unlocked it, and then vomited into the keyboard—into the nooks and the crannies. Broke it completely. But the worst part was calling T-Mobile and trying to get a new phone. I was sitting there in Miami with my fucking PukeBerry, talking to the customer service rep, and he wanted to start “troubleshooting.” I remember the guy said, “When you go to Tools, then Options, what do you see?” I scrolled through, looked at the screen, and was like, “Um, pizza. And some corn.” There’s always corn in there, right? I don’t even eat corn. Forget about fixing the phone, I just wanted to know where all that corn came from.

I once dated a girl who claimed to be a raging party animal like myself. However, no one gets drunk and embarrasses himself quite like I do. When this chick claimed to be a bigger idiot than me when wasted, I actually took offense. I said, “Are you saying that if we were equally drunk, you could out-embarrass me? No way!” And she was like, “But Karo, if I’m drunk and someone tells me to do something stupid, I’ll do it.” I said, “Darling, if I’m drunk, I come up with the stupid ideas myself
and
execute them. I’m like a one-stop shop of embarrassment.” That really put her in her place.

When I hear a tale of drunken woe—a friend who pissed off his girlfriend so bad she broke up with him, or a chick falling down a flight of stairs—my first reaction isn’t empathy, it’s relief. “Thank God that wasn’t me.” I’ve just been on the business end of too many inebriated disasters. I’ve found that sometimes the most discomfort occurs not right after I make a faux pas, but later, when I try to apologize for it. Many years ago I was out with my buddy Zach and I just completely insulted his girlfriend right in front of him. I believe I told the girl I wanted to “fuck her sideways,” which doesn’t even really make sense. The worst part, however, was calling Zach a few days later to apologize—and waking him up. Saying “I’m sorry” to someone you just jolted out of a deep slumber merely adds injury to insult.

One of the side effects of voluntary alcoholism is amnesia. Nobody likes that call from a friend the morning after who asks that ominous question: “Dude, do you even remember what you did last night?” My heart sinks. My mind starts racing. I start thinking about all the crimes I possibly could have committed. It’s the worst feeling. I got that call from a buddy once and it turned out that the night before, I grabbed a girl’s tit right in the middle of the bar. And it was Claudio’s girlfriend. And it was the first night I’d ever met her. And that’s how I introduced myself.