You Deserve a Drink: Boozy Misadventures and Tales of Debauchery (6 page)

I know Kelsey H. isn’t the smartest—I’ve actually seen her eat a fake apple—but have you seen her abs? They are amaze. She’s in!

Mary Catherine is seriously at least four pounds overweight, but her dad does own the largest Sea-Doo company in the Southeast. She’s in!

Topless Tuesday, on the other hand, celebrated all looks and body types. The only mixer we needed was ginger ale for our bourbon. So on our “bid day,” we decided to take a classier approach. Melissa and I dressed up in our nicest silk robes (yes, there was more than one silky robe option) and had my roommate drive us around to each new member’s house. There, on their doorstep, we would hand them a formal, handwritten invitation (with a personalized poem inside) and a glass of champagne to toast their membership. The whole thing was risqué and ridiculous, but there was an air of elegance to it. Well, until we got to about the eighth or ninth house, and then we were just drunk girls in robes, cheersing
way
too loud. I might’ve puked in a yard—who’s to say?

The following Tuesday, we invited the newbies to the first-ever Topless Tuesday Welcome Potluck Dinner. We were throwing it at Melissa’s house, and because it was only a minute’s drive away, I wore jean shorts, a silk robe, and nothing else. However, I did have my deep fryer and ingredients for fried okra.
*

I parked my Honda behind Melissa’s house in the yard. I knew a lot of people were coming and there was limited parking, but we were close enough for me to park in her grass (a true sign of friendship in the South). As I rounded the house to her front yard, I saw a few new members headed inside and decided they needed a proper welcome. I put down my FryDaddy full of grease, opened up my robe, and shook my goods while singing out, “Welllllcome to Topless Tuesday, bitches!”

Just as I was about to ask them to help me carry my shit, one of them turned around and spoke.

“There’s a For Rent sign in the yard. We were just hoping to see the house. . . .”

Standing there, robe open, ta-tas to the moon, you could’ve heard a cricket blink. It was a silent standoff. They looked shocked. I looked naked. They looked at my boobs. I still looked naked.

We stood there, not knowing what to do for what felt like an eternity but was probably ten seconds. I had to make a move.

I could’ve apologized, could’ve told them that now probably wasn’t a great time to see the place. I could’ve. But where’s the fun in that?

“You wanna see the house? Sure! Come on in. Just a heads-up, though, we are having a party. So you’ll have to stay for a drink.”

I led them right into the pandemonium. Talking Heads played on a record player in the corner, and twenty girls in their bras or nahs happily did their thing like it was no big deal. There was a topless gal organizing her cheese tray, another one pulling a slow-roasted pork shoulder out of the oven. It was like a twelve-year-old Mario Batali’s wet dream.

Just as I was about to completely lie about the square footage of the place, Melissa rounded the corner with a tray full of cocktails. She handed the tray to one of the shocked guests and said, “Two questions. Would you like a Singapore Sling? And who the hell are you?”

“They saw the For Rent sign and wanted to take a look at the place.”

“New friends! Let me show you around.” With that she whisked them away for the grand tour as I called out after her, “I’ll try to keep you
abreast
of any more visitors!” followed by a wink and pointing of a finger gun at myself in the hallway mirror.

The rest of the night was a total success, bewildered guests and all. We stuffed our faces and even organized a calendar designating each member a Tuesday to lead the lesson or activity. It was the perfect kickoff for what ended up being a solid year of Topless Tuesdays.

Here’s where I want to take a moment and tell you why I loved this club so much. I’m sure a lot of you read this and wonder,
Why no shirt? Couldn’t you have learned to knit and get drunk while also keeping the girls under wraps?
Of course we could’ve. But here’s why I think it was important.

I want to tell you about a certain TT member. Let’s say her name was Claire. Claire came to her first Tuesday not knowing what to expect. She had heard us talk about our club before but didn’t know if the toplessness was just something we talked about for shock value.

When Claire came to that initiation potluck, I saw her act shy for the first time since I’d known her. She had a great time socializing and drunkenly dished out her cobbler, but she left her shirt on the whole time. About two Tuesdays later, I walked in and saw that Claire was in her bra. A month later she was in tassels. Three months later and the girl was teaching me how to play Chinese checkers butt-ass naked.

You see, the club was never about the nudity. It was about creating a space, a day, a group of people you didn’t need to impress with your body. Girls spend so much time trying to look good in front of each other, and for what? Do I really care if my friend has a muffin top? Do I give a shit if another friend has weird nipples? FUCK NO. Topless Tuesday was a judgment-free zone. And becoming that comfortable without clothes around my friends actually made me more comfortable
in
my clothes all the other days of
the week. Topless Tuesdays was a place to go,
Ah, nobody is perfect. Literally, no
body
is perfect.
So, why do I stress about mine?

Fast-forward to present day. My friends Hannah, Grace, and I do a live show called the #NoFilterShow, which we tour around from time to time. We do a lot of audience participation, I do a live
You Deserve a Drink
segment onstage, and it always derails into ridiculousness.

Don’t mind us. Just three adult women in pencil costumes orchestrating an entire stage show around fart sound effects.

During one of our recent shows, while doing an old-school dating game bit, I was dressed as an ice-cream sundae and Grace was dressed as a wedge of cheese, with Hannah serving as our host. It’s
a silly audience-participation bit that involves (naturally) a lot of puns about whatever costumes we’re wearing. Grace and I usually delve into terrible, self-involved characters who are more concerned with creating the weird story line than actually talking to the audience members who are trying to date us.

Anyway, as I was sitting there laughing onstage, having fun with my friends, an audience member took it upon himself to scream out “saggy tits” at me. Yes. Go ahead and reread that sentence; take it all in. Saggy tits.

I was flabbergasted. Normally I would’ve shot back a superclever response in my character’s voice, but I was so caught off guard, I actually kind of blacked out. I only realized from GIFs on Tumblr the next day that I made the guy stand up and told him I was going to murder him. But, like, in a “fun murder” way.

I should’ve told him that if I have saggy tits I can at least get a breast lift, but there is no operation or amount of money that can ever lift his saggy-ass personality. But I didn’t, and I hate that I didn’t. Luckily, Grace, in her cheese-wedge glory, backed me up and told everyone to subscribe to his YouTube channel, youtube .com/imadick. (Which is probably an actual channel at this point, so I’m sorry–slash–you’re welcome to whoever owns it.)

All comebacks aside, here is why that arsehole threw me off so bad. I read all kinds of insanely rude comments on my videos. On the Internet, people have the protection of anonymity and say things to you that they would never say to your face. While I hate that aspect of YouTube, it comes with the territory, and I chose to make myself vulnerable to it. But this wasn’t YouTube. This wasn’t a comments section.

This jackass took a moment when everyone was having fun and decided to be rude about my body. This makes zero sense, and for a variety of reasons:

A. I was dressed as an ice-cream sundae—the least boob-flaunting outfit of all time!

B. This wasn’t a high school improv assembly you are forced to go to because it’s also chock-full of latent antidrug messaging. This was a show that everyone in the audience (this guy included) paid twenty-five euros for.

C. I am the most self-deprecating person I know. I’ve probably made a joke about tucking my tits into my shoes before, because that’s what I think is funny. It’s funny because it’s
self
-deprecation—not someone else making a dig about my body to my face.

My ego wasn’t hurt; I was just mad. And here’s why. I am totally comfortable in my body, despite whether I happen to be taking care of it or whether I’m carrying some extra weight. But that might not be the case for everyone who was in that audience. I have no doubt that a good majority of the girls there were super uncomfortable with that statement. If this guy could say rude things to the person onstage, what kind of shit would he say to the girls at the table beside him?

I wish I’d had my Topless Tuesday crew to march onstage in their various shapes and sizes and give him a dose of reality, to show him what actual women look like. They aren’t just the waifish models in his mom’s L.L.Bean catalog that he steals to jerk off to in his bedroom. I’m sure Melissa would’ve promptly asked him to pull his balls out so we could judge the sag level of those bad boys.
*

That
is why I think my club was important. No, we didn’t solve mysteries or get our own landline. But we did, for a magical moment in time, have women feeling a little more comfortable about their bodies, throwing caution (and Spanx) to the wind. If that arsehole had yelled “saggy tits” at Claire on week one, she would’ve shown up to week two wearing a turtleneck over a snowsuit. But
not at week five. At week five, she would’ve thrown her cigar at him and shimmied across the stage while we all cheered behind her. Dare I say it? Topless Tuesday was the
titz
.

Don’t get me wrong—I don’t think you need to be naked in front of your friends to gain more confidence. I’m just saying that pushing yourself outside your comfort zone a little only makes your comfort zone that much bigger. I am sure I just ripped off Oprah or some self-help guru with that last sentence, but fuck it. It’s true.

And for all you folks still curious about Jacques, I never did find out how he knew about my club. But I did know how to get a solid grade on that two-hundred-word paper. Instead of the paper he wanted us to turn in on our favorite movie, I did him one better. Using the girls from my club, a black-construction-paper censor bar, and my club taking turns saying
“Oui!”
one hundred times, I created my own movie. It was titled
Filles D
é
chaîn
é
es
à
Paris
.

Girls Gone Wild in Paris.

I passed the class.

H
ere is my first Quickshot! What’s a Quickshot, you ask? Easy. For some of these stories, there is so much more I want to cram in, but I don’t have the room (that’s what she said).

So, rather than rob you readers of the exhilaration of my humiliation, I decided to include these countdowns throughout the book. No need to whip up simple syrup or buy some specialty endangered bald eagle egg liqueur; just pound a shot of your choice.

This particular Quickshot is about Internet comments! I don’t think I’m breaking new ground here by saying that people can be HUGE DICKS on the Internet. And I’m not just talking about when you google-image the phrase “huge dicks.”

I’m actually really lucky. For the most part the comments on my videos are super positive. And when someone does have the audacity to write something shitty, it is quickly thumbs-downed by so many people that it disappears. It’s like a personal army of positivity. Despite my clique, a few shitty comments do manage to eke by on every upload.

Here are some examples of mean-spirited comments that have made me laugh. Let it be known that I’ve gotten some beyond-awful ones before, but I don’t want those dicks who are secretly fans to read this book while wearing their
YDAD
shirts and have
the satisfaction of seeing their comments in it. Instead, here are three different types of people who like to troll.

Please note that I left out their actual usernames so as to protect their identities. Please also note that more than one had a One Direction reference in their names. Them 1Ders are intense!

The Rookie

First of all, in the words of every passive-aggressive southern woman, bless her heart. I would like to think that this is simply a case of bad AutoCorrect. Like when your mom texts you what she’s cooking for dinner and it turns “meatballs” into “my balls.” But if it is an AutoCorrect fail, riddle me this—why is “ur” still spelled like that? Hmmmm?

What we really have here is the case of the rude ten-year-old. She wants to say terrible things online. After all, that’s what all the cool kids are doing. She just hasn’t reached the point in her life where she knows how to be mean. She’s heard girls call each other skanks at school and always looks shocked even though she doesn’t know what it means.

Like when I was in fourth grade and the song “Baby Got Back” (a.k.a. “I Like Big Butts”) was the jam of the summer. I have a very vivid memory of hanging out at the Yadkin County public pool and wearing my favorite peach-and-yellow French bikini because I knew my crush, Steel, was going to be there. Two things might’ve stood out to you in that sentence: The fact that I wore my cutest suit when I had the body of a cardboard cutout. And the fact that my crush’s name was Steel. I have no idea what ended up
happening to that guy, but I’m gonna guess he ended up a porn star or a comic book hero.

Anyway! A group of cool dudes were standing in a circle rapping about their love for big butts, and on the line “I get sprung,” Steel said, “I get spermed.” Everyone cracked up laughing. I had no idea why that was so funny. Not a clue. But you bet your ass I laughed. Probably too hard. Before anyone could catch on to my maniacal laugh of confusion, I excused myself to go get some more Airheads from the snack shop. Luckily, I got away with it. Unluckily, this was before the Internet, and I can never take back asking my mom what “spermed” meant.

This is that same scenario but in written form. She obviously wants to call me a “virgin” but doesn’t know what it is or why it is offensive. Because if she did know what it was, I guarantee she would not be calling me that!

Really, chickadee? The girl who in this video says the words “Queefer Sutherland” has never been physically intimate before?

I guarantee ten minutes after typing this, our sweet commenter helped set the table for dinner, where her parents would ask her how her piano lesson went and her rascal of a younger brother would flick peas in her face.

And furthermore, since when has being a virgin been an insult? Even when Tai called Cher a “virgin who can’t drive” in
Clueless
, the only part that seemed really mean was the “can’t drive” part. When you are sixteen and someone calls you a bad driver, she may as well spit in your face.

Speaking of bad driving, when I was sixteen years old, I drove through a telephone pole. True story. I’d had my license for three weeks and had a cute little used green VW Jetta. One morning, I was waiting to pull out of my road when I noticed there was some gunk on my driver’s side window. It looked like someone had hawked a loogie on it. I rolled down the window to see if it would scrape off, but no luck. I pulled out of my road, manually rolling the window back up. I looked again and saw the loogie had just smeared
everywhere. Fucking gross! As I was staring at the Jackson Pollock of snot and holding back dry heaves, I ran off the road and smashed into a telephone pole. I wasn’t even going that fast, but as soon as I hit and the airbags deployed, my knee-jerk reaction was to hit the gas. I broke that pole in half like “Macho Man” Randy Savage snaps a Slim Jim.
*
Pretty embarrassing. Pretty stupid. But, so help me God, you better not have told me I couldn’t drive or I would’ve cut you out of my life.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is don’t call someone a bad driver. But also, young girls, don’t consider calling someone a virgin an insult. It’s not. Having your virginity is nothing to be embarrassed by. In fact, it’s more a bragging right than an embarrassment. It is way more embarrassing to put on a tough-guy act and call someone the misspelled name of a very respectable and beautiful American state.

The Weirdo

Where do I even begin with this one? Seriously. This person is pissed because she was searching for Viking Bra Tutorial. I can’t even be mad at her for unsubscribing. In fact, I want to slowly infiltrate this person’s life via the videos she likes and gradually become her best friend.

I’ll probably have to pretend to be into opera and wear a hat with horns on it for a while, but I really think it will be worth it in the end.

The Hypocrite