You Deserve a Drink: Boozy Misadventures and Tales of Debauchery (11 page)

I set up the tourney March Madness–style, with sixteen people competing in a bracket that we taped up on the wall of our private room, away from the heated competition of the main room and the crooning of the a cappella gospel. Not that they didn’t sound great—I love me a good bass voice—but it wasn’t exactly pumping me up. I needed less “This Little Light of Mine” and more Prodigy’s “Firestarter.”

As in any good tournament, a trophy had to be awarded to the winner. Luckily, making trophies is one of my hidden talents. Pro tip: You can essentially make anything into a trophy as long as you have gold spray paint and a hot-glue gun.

This is the one I made for the party:

A jumbo can of black beans provided the necessary heft for the base, topped with a regular-size can of garbanzo beans for the second tier. The top is a dollar-store T. rex figurine. But a keen eye can see all the details that really set this homemade trophy apart from others. Upon close examination, you’ll see that the T. rex is holding its own Ping-Pong paddle—and that, my friends, is the tiny magnifying glass from a glasses repair kit. In addition to the dino having the proper sports equipment, you will also notice that he is wearing a tiny bandanna around his neck. The very same bandanna that I was rocking that night. BOOM! It is those minute details that make a five-dollar trophy something that adults will fight over.

Competition got heated, and not just because a basement bar full of people in September is steamy as hell. We kicked off the first round of the bracket and immediately could tell that people were in it to win it. People were giving it their all—backhand serves,
hard-core topspin, nonchalant nip slips for distraction. They were so hard core that I was knocked out in the first round. This is shocking for two reasons:

1. Me losing at Ping-Pong is like the 1993 Chicago Bulls not making the playoffs.
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AND FURTHERMORE:

2. Who the hell doesn’t let the birthday girl win?!

I’ll tell you who: my friend Alan. He came in wanting to win that night, and he wasn’t going to let minor details like whose birthday it was stop his momentum. Alan is hilarious. He drives an orange Vespa, has a pipe collection, plays the ukulele. In fact, he got me into playing too—so much so that we had a group that would meet occasionally and play ukuleles, sing songs together, and have cocktails. We called it Uke Group, because obviously it needed a name (my obsession with clubs never wavered in adulthood). I have a very distinct memory of us meeting in Prospect Park in Brooklyn to picnic and play our ukes when the weather finally broke to spring. There we were, a bunch of semihipster adults surrounded by containers of hummus, playing “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain” on our tiny instruments as a group of kids rode by on their bikes. We actually sang softer until the “tough kids” passed, like we were gonna get beat up by twelve-year-olds. As soon as we were in the clear, we broke into a rousing rendition of “Clambake.” Alan was nice enough to even make a website for Uke Group so we could print sheet music before meetings. Depending on when you get this book, it might even still be up: www.ukegroup.net.

Alan’s passion wasn’t only for tiny stringed instruments. He wanted that trophy and spared no feelings for the birthday girl. I was bummed, sure, but the real job of the birthday girl is to keep the guests happy and get crunk. I watched the other rounds play out and noticed that someone else had the eye of the tiger:
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my boyfriend. He was swinging that paddle like he was the long-lost Caucasian brother of the Williams sisters.

As luck would have it, Alan and Boyfriend were the final two in the series. At this point, I was D-R-U-N-K. As the fierce opponents took their respective sides of the table, I stood in the middle addressing the crowd.

“Listen up, ladies and germs! We have come to the championship round of my berfday Ping-Pong bonanza. The winner of this round will walk away not only with pride but also with this sweet-ass T. rex trophy that I hand-made. Gentlemen, take your positions . . . pe he he, positions . . . and play ball!”

I felt like Cha Cha in
Grease
when she lifts the handkerchief to start the race.

The match was neck and neck, the crowd watching the Ping-Pong ball like cats watching a laser pointer. There were oohs and aahs. It was like the live studio audience of
Family Matters
. When it came down to game point, I saw the fire in Boyfriend’s eyes. In my tipsy brain, he threw that tiny white ball in the air and slammed his serve like Roger Federer. In reality, it was probably just a normal small Ping-Pong serve, but gosh darnit, he won! He took it home!

Unfortunately, I didn’t want to take a certain thing home, and that was the trophy I’d made. What’s the fun in creating such a dumb prize that people are vying for just to end up bringing it
home yourself? I suggested we give it to Alan as a token of his hard work that night. It had been one of the greatest birthdays I’d ever had and I wanted to spread the cheer. But that wasn’t going to fly. In fact, Boyfriend was straight-up offended.

Yeah, he and I fought for a good hour about how I didn’t appreciate him defending my honor. I can only imagine the amount of eye rolling that must’ve gone on in the driver’s seat of that cab as we argued about Ping-Pong in the back with a small golden T. rex between us, my boyfriend going on and on about honor like he was William Wallace defending Scotland! Like most drunk fights between couples, it ended with us both passing out, waking up the next day, and calling a truce mainly because neither of us could remember the fight enough to throw details in the other’s face. The fight didn’t last, but that trophy did. And on top of the fridge is where that T. rex lived for the next several years. It’s currently defending my honor somewhere in a storage unit.

’80s Prom Kickball

Sometimes you just have to take the things you love most, smash them together, and see if it works. In the case of my twenty-third birthday, those things were kickball and ’80s prom dresses. Don’t think it makes sense? I’m sure the first person who combined peanut butter and bacon got some crazy looks from their friends. And on your birthday, of all times, why not combine two things you love while also making people bring you gifts and sing you “Happy Birthday”? It’s an unbeatable idea. Other combination parties that I could have based on this theory would be:

1. White Wine and Watching Reruns of
How I Met Your Mother

2. Making Crafts and Eating Kraft Macaroni and Cheese

3. Champagne and Shopping for Candles Online

4. Spanish Tapas and Swiffering

5. Margaritas and Masturbating

The greatest part about unlikely combo birthdays are all the looks you get from passersby. Take a moment to imagine walking through a park: the dogs, the joggers, the two dozen drunk adults playing an intense game of kickball in taffeta (which can be extremely chafing, FYI).

When all was said and done, our drunk
Footloose
-looking asses poured into a karaoke bar. Karaoke! One more thing that I love added to this birthday. Unlike my first night in New York, this karaoke session didn’t end with a chipped tooth. It did, however, end up with us being kicked out of the bar as I wore a hot pink cummerbund like Rambo.

Ninja Night

At this point you’ve heard of my eccentric birthdays and thought,
Okay, I get it, those parties were in your twenties. You’re allowed to be
an idiot.
To that I say, hold on to your panties. Because my thirtieth birthday was the cream of the crop.
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When it came time to plan my three-oh, I knew I had to step it up. None of this child’s play of dressing up in sequins or dancing to “Y.M.C.A.” Hell naw. This was the first time people could legitimately give me “over the hill” cards, or a cane with a horn on it. I was over the hill and all about the thrills. So I decided I was going to have a Gun Party!

Okay, before you go all long-winded political Facebook post on me, I don’t mean real guns. These were pellet guns; they couldn’t do that much damage. I know, because I’ve been shot in the ass with one as punishment for losing a game, and it didn’t break the skin.
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This shoot-out party was going to be one for the books. The only downside was that I was super busy at the time and needed some help. I knew the exact right person for the job: Topless Tuesday cofounder Melissa. You might recognize her from stories in this book that end with me being either half-naked or on drugs. She is the type of woman who goes fountain jumping naked in L.A. and regularly attends monster truck rallies, a girl you could call on a Sunday to see what she’s up to and hear, “Not much. I ate a weed brownie and saw a show by myself at a marionette theater. What are you up to?” A word of advice, if you have a friend like this, your wild card: She is the
perfect
person to throw you a birthday party. Relinquish all control and just hand her a guest list.

We held the party at our friend Ryan’s warehouse. Ryan owns a prop shop, which is basically a huge warehouse where he builds crazy shit for commercials. From the outside, there isn’t much to look at: a random brick warehouse with a chain-link fence and a
couple of cars parked outside. It looks like any typical canning factory or place for a murder, but on the inside it’s
heaven
.

To paint you a dusty picture, one time when I was leaving Ryan’s after a cookout he told me to watch out for the pack of wild Chihuahuas. I laughed and thought what a cute visual wild Chihuahuas would be. After all, I am the owner of a Mexican Hairless named Beanz.

Don’t readjust your contacts. No, that is not the slow hyena from The Lion King. That is my four-pound best friend.

Can you imagine being chased by a pack of these? Worst-case scenario, you trip and get tickled to death by their tongues. But sure enough, I pulled out of his gate and a pack of tiny, grizzled Chihuahuas, hungry for blood and Pup-Peronis, stared me down from across the road. Individually they couldn’t do much damage, but together they could destroy some ankles.

The party was set up with multiple shoot-out challenges. You had your pellet gun shooting out lightbulbs, a Chinese star being thrown at a foam bull’s-eye, a blow dart you had to get through a hole in a piece of plywood to pop a balloon ten feet behind that. It was intense! We all took turns going down the roster, and lots of folks were decent shots.

Other highlights include getting an actual crossbow as a gift, swinging from a large hanging rope while singing “Wrecking Ball,”
and meeting my friend Tyler Oakley’s mom, Jackie. Jackie was visiting Tyler from Michigan, and my party happened to fall on the last night of her visit. Tyler, not wanting a total case of FOMO, asked if he could bring her along. Of course, I immediately said yes! I had seen Jackie in a lot of Tyler’s videos (he is also a YouTuber) and knew we would get along perfectly. I’m real good with moms, y’all. Here’s proof: