You Deserve a Drink: Boozy Misadventures and Tales of Debauchery (26 page)

After an extremely hot forty-minute shower (apparently, just because paint is “washable” does not mean it won’t stick to every single arm hair like superglue), I worked up the courage to talk to Erika. I sat nervously in the living room and waited for her to come home from the gym or some other place equally productive, only adding to me feeling like shit. When she finally did come home, we talked it out. I probably cried because that is what I do when I am anxious, violently hungover, and fresh out of Totino’s. Plus, we were twenty-one-year-old girls. It’s a fact that
every
conversation between twenty-one-year-old girls ends with some sort of tears. She was pissed but quickly got over it, because that is what friends do. She went off to study or do something else superhuman in my eyes as I settled in for a marathon of
Trading Spaces
. And then my flip phone rang. It was Rachel calling.

“Mame! You were the hit of the party last night with your Kamikaze shots.”

“Oh yeah? That’s good to know! ’Cause I took a million of them. I am definitely paying for it today.”

“Well, that’s not all you’ll be paying for. . . .”

She went on to tell me that my blue ass was so drunk that I kept losing my balance and walking into walls. Her beautiful, freshly painted walls were now stained with royal blue.

Nowadays the Smurfs are more popular than ever. Every toy store has an aisle filled with Papa Smurf figurines and Brainy Smurf Trapper Keepers. But what you won’t find is that discontinued blue creature who only lived for one night. The legendary Hot Mess Smurf.

“But Mamrie! Where are all the pictures of you when you were a kid?” I can hear you screaming into this book. Look, I couldn’t find them. My family doesn’t keep organized picture albums to reminisce about by the fireplace. To get any old pics, I have to wade through random shoe boxes with photos just thrown in haphazardly. That is who we are! Don’t judge us.

But to make it up to you, here are a few more pics from Halloweens past, specifically college.

My sophomore year, my suitemates and I went as the Royal Tenenbaums. I even had Richie’s falcon, Mordecai, a fake chicken painted brown and wired to my arm. Seeeeeeexy.

And here is my senior year of college, when we went as Sexy Tetris.
Tetris
because that game rules. Sexy because we were wearing it.

4 regular tea bags (or you could use flavored, whatever tickles your pickle)

8 oz bourbon

3 oz lemon juice

2 tbsp honey or simple syrup

3 cups frozen peaches

Put the tea bags into the liquor for 1 hour. Think of the tea bags as someone in a bad marriage. You don’t want them staying in there too long or it’s going to end up bitter. Then combine everything in a blender and blend! Add ice or water, depending on the consistency you want. Ideally, this is served in a leftover mason jar from your perfect cousin’s perfect wedding. Extra point if it has a twine bow. This recipe makes about four servings, ’cause let’s face it, making frozen drinks is annoying. If you asked for one while I was bartending, I would shoot you a look so evil that you would’ve thought I’d just been asked my weight.

“
S
weet Home Alabama,” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, is a southern anthem. As soon as its iconic guitar riff starts, people start hooting and hollering without a second thought. There’s something about those down-home lyrics that conjures up memories for people, like riding down the road in a pickup truck with the summer air blowing in their hair. For others, it’s drinking beer with friends at a summer barbecue. For me, it’s forty hours of community service.

This story, like most that end with the cops, begins with a road trip. And just like any good road trip, it’s gonna take a while to get there. So, buckle da fuck up!

It was my sophomore year of college, and fall break was coming up. Unlike spring break, no one gives a shit about fall break. It’s the Kelly Rowland to spring break’s Beyoncé. It’s basically a four-day weekend, so most students just stay on campus. At best you go home and see your folks and make out with your high school boyfriend to reaffirm that you “still got it.” But I’ve never been one to half-ass something, so I decided to make the best of my fall break and road-trip it to Alabama to see my friend Virginia. No, that is not a riddle. A lot of girls in the South are named after states. Even more are named after their mothers’ maiden names. You roll up onto a college campus in the South and it’s all, “Hollingsworth, hurry up!” or “Don’t forget the Solo cups, Scarborough!” I’m personally glad I wasn’t named after my mom’s maiden name, Mayhall. Mayhall is an adorable name said normally, but when people yell it when they’re drunk, they sound like donkeys in heat. It’s tough enough being named Mamrie. I never got to have those personalized stickers and pencils that kids coveted. I’ve never rolled up on a beach souvenir shop and found a tiny surfboard key chain with my name on it. The closest I got was a spoon with Mamie Eisenhower’s name on it that my mom added an
R
to. But it wasn’t the same as a key chain, not that I needed a key chain as an eight-year-old. I did, however, need a key chain ten years later, when I drove eleven hours south to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. (Go ahead and put on a helmet, ’cause I just busted out a beautiful Segway.)

Yes, I did say eleven hours. Some people might be too intimidated to do a drive this long by themselves, but not me! I love a good road trip . . . and even a bad one like the movie
Road Trip
. I spend half of the drive pretending I’m a VH1 diva and the other half talking out loud to myself. This usually involves telling someone off from days earlier whom I didn’t have the balls to tell off in the moment. It’s cathartic, and I do it constantly. Why, driving in
the car the very morning I wrote this chapter, I told off the waitress who’d rolled her eyes at me at Olive Garden last week.

“B’scuuuuse me! Don’t put ‘unlimited breadsticks’ on the menu if you don’t mean it! You need to change it to ‘five free orders of breadsticks with a side of attitude on the sixth.’ Also, bravo on the slogan ‘When you’re here, you’re family,’ because I haven’t felt this judged since Thanksgiving 1997.”

Driving alone also means there is no one to judge the amount of snacks you consume, with the convenient follow-up of no one being able to judge the amount of farts you rip. There are times when I let my farts go so hard in the car that it makes me go the speed limit. Not because I am worried I’ll get a speeding ticket. I do it because I am worried I’ll be pulled over, roll down the window, and accidentally kill the cop via fart suffocation.

So knowing that I could entertain/exhaust myself in the car, I headed on my one-woman road trip. Eleven hours and five days’ worth of sodium later, I rolled into Tuscaloosa completely exhausted. I got to Virginia’s house and it was a sea of cowboy hats, cutoff jean shorts, and pink plaid shirts tied at the waist. Had I taken a wrong turn and landed in a Daisy Duke cosplay convention? Before I could ask someone where Jessica Simpson was signing head shots, Virginia ran over to me, squealing, and hugged my neck. She was definitely a few games of beer pong deep. Apparently, all these people were at her place pregaming for the night’s activities.

“Are we going to a Barbie rodeo?”

“No, dude. We’re going to a fuckin’ Lynyrd Skynyrd concert! They’re playing on campus.”

“Are you fucking serious?”

“No, I’m fucking Dalton, but I am telling the truth.”

She nodded, grinning ear to ear. This was followed by one of those hug-and-jumps in unison while screaming. Virginia had been after Dalton for years.
And
I was about to hear “Sweet Home Alabama” played
in
Alabama. It was perfect timing, like randomly
walking up on Jay-Z and Alicia Keys performing “Empire State of Mind” in Central Park. Or going to Venice Beach for the day only to find David Lee Roth busting out a toe-touch and singing “California Girls.”
*
Or being in Rome and saying “When in Rome” after you do anything! I was
all
about hearing “Sweet Home Alabama” in its rightful place. After all, I was raised in North Carolina. Ninety-five percent of radio stations were classic rock.

The news perked me right up, and I joined in the pregame festivities. The show was exactly as expected: a perfect mix of drunk college kids knowing only “Sweet Home Alabama” and older locals calling out for B sides that Skynyrd has never played live. Everyone in the crowd drank enough whiskey to numb the pain of knowing it wasn’t the original singer. Granted, the guy has been with them since 1987, but you still always know in the back of your mind it’s not the original. Sarah Chalke did a bang-up job as Becky on
Roseanne
, but she was always the replacement Becky.

I proceed to get ripped on whiskey and might’ve cried a little during “Tuesday’s Gone.” Once all the lighters were extinguished in the crowd and everyone felt how badly they had burned their fingertips on them, we stopped by a food cart. I was ready to go right to bed after finishing my late-night snack, but Virginia had other plans.

“My sorority is having a mixer! You have to come.”

A mixer?
Oof.
For those of you who aren’t in college, or the closest you’ve come to partying in the Greek system is being late-night wasted at a falafel shop, a mixer is a party between a sorority and a fraternity. I had been to one with a friend before, and it felt like fifty arranged marriages meeting for their first dates. The last thing I wanted was to be a cock block between Beauregard and Georgia, or whoever the fuck I would inevitably offend later in the night.

“Come on! The Delta Chi guys are super fun!” she pleaded, seeing the disinterest in my face despite it being currently stuffed with cheese fries.

“The only Delta I want to associate with is Delta Burke.”

I knew for a fact that
Designing Women
reruns were coming on at midnight on Lifetime. As much as I wanted to curl up to some quips from Annie Potts, Virginia had a pouty face. She really wanted to go, and I didn’t want to be a boring guest, so I caved.

“It’ll be fun! We don’t have to stay long. And it’s not even being held at their house; it’s at this random bar a few blocks away.”

We got to the mixer and it was just what I’d suspected. Everyone looked exactly the same as a Carolina frat/sorority scene except the accents were slightly thicker. The same clothes, the same jewelry, the same drunk guy named Harrison Edwards IV who was threatening to take his pants off. The only thing that felt foreign was the surroundings. This “bar” felt more like a church’s rec building. It was painted-white cinder blocks, wood paneling, and folding tables set up with beer pong. People were playing darts in the corner.
*
The bar was already barely stocked, and when I ordered a whiskey ginger, the ginger ale was served out of a two-liter.

I quickly realized that this wasn’t a real bar. This was a makeshift bar set up in a random building. They didn’t want everyone to have to trek back to the frat house and lose steam, but they also wanted all the underage members to be able to drink without an ID. This was the modern equivalent of a speakeasy. Except instead of the password being “piccadilly saxophone” it would’ve been a Dave Matthews Band lyric.

And like any good speakeasy, it got busted by the cops. These
cops were hip to this fake bar game and wanted nothing more than to make a few Delta Whatevers shit their pants in fear their parents might find out about their college-y ways.

“Okay, everybody. When we come around, I want everyone to have their IDs ready!” Officer Okra exclaimed with way too much pride. It’s like, dude, you are busting up a beer pong party. There is no need to act like this is
The Wire
.

The officer went through the lineup, examining each Alabama license like it was the Da Vinci Code. When he came to me, I had a slight moment of panic. Did I use my fake ID? Did I even have my real ID? Back at Chapel Hill, I was so used to whipping out my ID that made me a graduate student named Emily who was twenty-four, but here, for once in my college life, I didn’t use a fake ID to get into a place. There had been no doorman. I’d never claimed to be twenty-one. There was no drink in my hand when they busted the joint. I was in the clear! So, I confidently handed over my actual North Carolina driver’s license showing my real age of nineteen.

The officer scrutinized it and I started to sweat. He looked up at me. “Ma’am, it’s obvious you’ve tampered with this ID.”

“That’s my real ID, and it says my actual birth date. What’s the problem?”

All confidence I’d had two seconds earlier vanished. Had I given him my fake?! All the blood rushed from my face and I turned white as a ghost. Luckily, I naturally have the complexion of a ghost, so I hoped he didn’t notice.

Normally in telling this story I might call this cop an asshole and breeze past the embarrassing details, but since I am trying to write an actual truthful book, I will be honest despite the following being more embarrassing than the time I waited in line for seven hours to get lottery *NSync tickets my senior year of high school. This “tampering” that Colonel Mustard Greens was referring to? It was real. And it was born from a desperate moment in college.

You see, during my first two months of college, I was still seventeen and it
sucked
. I really wanted to
vote
go out dancing at the
eighteen-and-older clubs with my roommates and get older boys to buy us fishbowls of blue alcohol. So, one night, in my under-eighteen frustration, I took a thumbtack and tried to scratch out my birthday to say 1981 instead of 1983. As someone who was a bartender for
many
years, I now realize that this is a laughable act, but desperate times call for desperate measures. After a few good scratches, I knew I’d made a mistake and stopped. The license still said my real birth date—it just looked like someone had gone off on it with some sandpaper or stuck it in a rock tumbler. It looked so amateur. It was like rolling into a bank with a novelty check forged by Mickey Mouse and saying you’d just inherited Disney World—pure, stupid desperation.

I couldn’t deny it. I was scared when the officer pulled out his little book. I didn’t even like to drink Alabama Slammers; now I was going to be thrown in one! I held my breath as he wrote on his little pad. When he was done, he handed me over a ticket for underage drinking. Not that bad! Until I looked and saw there was a court date on it for thirty days after the issue. But that’s not all! The officer didn’t only serve me a court date and a massive pain in my ass; he took my license.

I begged him not to.

“I’m driving back to North Carolina by myself. Can I please just have my license back?”

“No, ma’am, it’s been tampered with.”

“But what if I get pulled over and then I’m driving without a license?”

“Don’t get pulled over,” he told me. Great advice from a so-called enforcer of the law. That was right up there with “Be sure to pull out.”

I was bummed. I tried to shake it, but that was the truth. I left Tuscaloosa the next day with a pit in my stomach. And that wasn’t from all the consolation biscuits I’d eaten to suffocate my feelings. I drove back to North Carolina carefully, trying my best to not get pulled over, which meant actually doing the speed limit. That
eleven-hour drive turns out to be more of a fourteen-hour one when you actually adhere to the law.

Back in my dorm room, my roommates and I all sat around telling each other about our fall breaks.