Hello friends. If you have been wondering where I’ve been the past few days, the answer is: recovering. As cpottie has briefly noted in her blog, Tuesday night’s spontaneous adventure with her and E was a “Pandora’s box of epic bad life choices.” CP states:
“Long story short, I stayed at a stranger’s house and partied like I was seventeen again. Despite all of the frosh-esque partying, we still managed to make like 5 cars signal off the road so we could pass them, received zero speeding tickets, obtained a delicious McDonald’s breakfast, and I even rolled into my hair appointment on time this afternoon.” (Quoted in Love Blogs to Johannes, “Sir, Don’t You See We’re In A Sports Car?”)
Although cpottie’s account (which, as it was written in a state of Wednesday-morning hangover and partial still-drunkeness, is extremely impressive) wonderfully summarizes the event, today, after 2 much-needed days of recovery, I will attempt to paint for you the colorful mess that is the long version of her “long story short.” First, however, I must beg you to suspend your moral judgement — I am well aware of my moral-deficiency on this particular night, and how bad those choices were that will be confessed to you here.
Alright, so it all started Tuesday afternoon when I received a text message from E (who may or may not be Satan in one of his many mutable forms) asking if I wanted to go on a road trip in her father’s, as she described it, “soopa fast car.” A box of wine would accompany us, and we would find someone’s floor to sleep on after we arrived. Perhaps her reckless confidence was wearing off on me, because my usually-nervous self hastily accepted the invitation, adding only that we would have to leave after CP’s Goodbye Supper (”Goodbye” because she is moving away on Saturday). As we had no actual plans for this road trip and what would transpire once we reached our destination, this small condition was accepted without complication.
It was at this dinner that I picked up our third party, CP. Although she vehemently refused prior to the dinner, one glass of wine with her meal quickly changed her mind, and before long we were both throwing makeup and a change of clothes in our bags as E was on her way to pick us up. One glass of wine does not work miracles though, and she did insist that I call a motel to find out the rates before we leave, in case we had no place to sleep after we got there (my solution to sleep in the car did not meet with much enthusiasm). I was not willing to lose her from this adventure, so I agreed to call the number that she provided and ask them the questions that she dictated. The conversation with the motel receptionist went like this:
Me: Hello? Are you the motel across from Subway?
Receptionist: [Slight laugh] Yes, that’s us.
Me: Oh ok. Can you tell me the cheapest rate for a 2-person room?
Receptionist: $94 plus tax.
Me: Ok great. [Hangs up]
Now, if any prostitute-client pair showed up at that motel Tuesday night, I am certain the receptionist would think that prostitute was none other than your humble narrator, the earlier caller. But to continue…
E shows up, a little late, because she forgot the boxed wine and had to go back for it. A legitimate excuse — the boxed wine being essential to this adventure — and anyway, we have a Super Fast Car. We pick up CP and drive away, leaving her mother watching nervously after us, as if she knows this will be the last time she will ever see her daughter.
On to the highway. We make up for lost time by driving 160 km/h. Of course, this is problematic because not everyone is driving what I call a “sports car” (it is in fact a Honda Accord) and evidently not everyone has a death wish like we seem to have. E corrects this either by passing, or by tailgating so badly that we actually make the other cars pull over to let us by, as I yell through the window at them: “Excuse me, sir! Can’t you see that we are in a sports car?!” (Side note: My sincerest apologies to all whom we have terrorized in this fashion while I was rather tipsy on the wine).
After causing several cars to move aside, and, as CP notes, miraculously without receiving a speeding ticket, we arrive at our destination in record time — and 5 minutes before the liquor store closes, where we pick up an extra bottle of wine, a bottle of Sauza, and a Rockstar for chasing (as we had no lemons or salt). CP asks if the liquor store does Cash-Back, so she can get, as she puts it, “some chedda dollas”, and E gives me an “allowance” because I’ve lost my bank card. We get changed in the car and head to a mostly-frosh party right beside the police station, where we make the cheap boxed wine look even cheaper by pouring it into a Dasani bottle, in true underage, freshmen fashion.
I have gone into significant detail about these pre-drinking events, because I unfortunately forget much of what happened after the tequila ran dry (we managed to drink the whole bottle even though it was absolutely disgusting when chased with Rockstar) and the Dasani and Yellow Tail bottles of wine were emptied. I do, however, remember discussing movies with one fellow, and becoming seriously offended when he responded to my question, “With which Watchmen character do you think I related the most when I saw the movie?” with “Silk Spectre” — the sexy, pleather-suited female character who probably has the least depth of all the characters. Although, to be fair, my outfit that night wasn’t much more respectable than hers.
CP was much more successful in analyzing the freshman boys based on their clothing. Here is a piece of what I can remember of one such conversation:
CP: You are a Business student.
Boy 1: Yes, I am. How did you know?
CP: You are wearing plaid shorts. All the boys in my business classes wore plaid shorts.
[Boy 1 looks confused and offended; Boy 2 walks in from getting high outside]
Boy 2: [Excitedly] What do you think I am?!
CP: You were in Business, and now you are in Arts.
Boy 2: Wow! How did you know that?
CP: Because you are a stoner.
I will note here that I am in Arts, and so mean no offence to Arts students — though I cannot speak for cpottie’s meaning or intentions. Later, on the walk to the bar, about an hour after the conversation has been dropped:
Boy 1 [to me]: …What did she mean about the shorts?
The poor boy will probably never wear plaid shorts again. Other victims of CP’s drunken cruelty were the third-year girls who showed up later, whom she kept referring to as “young ones”:
CP: I don’t dance. I don’t have the youth of you young ones anymore.
Girl 1: I am only one year younger than you.
CP: Yeah but you seem young.
[Girls, all of whom are much bigger and tougher than us, look angry]
Me: [Nervous laugh] What she means is… well, that she is like an old woman. She is envious of how… ah… fun you guys are.
How we avoided getting punched in the face, I’m really not sure. Anyway, we made it to the bar without getting into a fight. I bought another drink despite the fact that everyone I looked at had two heads. The drink was $2.50. I tipped the bartender $7.50 because I liked her blue pants. An old man beside me initiated a conversation with me by commenting on the “loudness” of those same pants.
…A large gap in my memory here…
E has gone missing. CP wants to leave with Watchmen boy and Stoner boy (whose nickname, we are told, is KY. Yes, like the lube). On the way out, I find on a table E’s wallet with over $100, her cell phone, and all her credit and bank cards in it. We rescue it from the strangers who are now sitting around the table and walk back to the Party House, where we have decided to sleep on the floor rather than in the car or at the motel.
Still no sign of E, nor her keys that would allow us to get our things from her car. CP makes two beds, one from a mattress that she finds, and the other just a blanket on the floor. The boys leave, and CP chases after them so that they might “protect us” from other boys (her logic, not mine). The sounds of kissing and the like from CP and KY on the floor bring me back to when she and I were roommates in our freshman year, and she would do unmentionable things in the bed just 2 feet away from me while I tried to sleep innocently beside some boy whom she elected to be my date (and who, I am sure, must have felt like he got the worse end of the deal). I tell the boy on my mattress that I am very impressed with him for keeping all his clothes on, but that is about the extent of my kindness towards him as I turn over and go to sleep. He eventually leaves, but not before spilling water all over the mattress and blanket that I am sleeping on, and awkwardly giving me his phone number. Several wet and sleepless hours later, CP and I also decide it is time to leave. We gather up our things that are strewn about the room, one of which is her purse, which she had previously thought lost. Upon finding it, she declares: ”Here it is! [Hugs it tightly] Oh you are like Jesus and Christmas all rolled into one!” I found this comment amusing, but not as much as the departing conversation between her and KY:
CP: [Starts towards the door, then, apparently remembering him, turns] Ah.. well… see you later.
KY: [Looking both confused and in love] Ok… bye.
Me (trying to make it less awkward, and only making it infinitely more so): Have a nice day.
And with those final words, “Have a nice day“, we leave and go upstairs, feeling like prostitutes in last night’s bar clothes now that it is daytime. We find E in bed with the person who owns the house, which makes us both feel a bit better that he got something for his troubles of housing us last-minute. While we wait for her, CP lowers her voice and says to me:
“W, I have an EPIC hickey. [Pause] And I don’t even know the guy’s name. [Pause, and resume with tone of horror] All I know is that is nickname is KY!”
I thought all this was extremely funny (the hickey was indeed “epic”), until E called out from the bedroom that she did not, as we had assumed, have the car keys. Neither were they in her abandoned and rescued wallet. Some panicked searching did eventually reveal them to us, but not before intense fear of being trapped, sober, in this place so reflective of our own reckless freshman days, took hold of CP and I. Just a few days before her departure for Montreal, I think CP closed the University chapter of her life appropriately — by alluding to the chapter’s opening, showing how she has not forgotten that history, but also showing how she has grown and moved on. I feel as though this was the perfect finale, and I am glad I was a part of it — despite how awful I felt for the next two days.
I will wrap this up quickly, my good and devoted readers, because I have already taken so much of your time. The drive back, even with all of us severely hungover and partially still drunk, was just as fun and humorous as the drive there. We picked up McDonald’s Breakfast — a hangover essential — and hit the road, leaving a great many bad choices and embarrassments behind us. Even though we were a bit more cautious in our daytime driving, we still managed to make another 2 cars pull over to let us by, and raced a Sentra. This was occasioned by the personal slight I felt when that little Nissan dared to pass us:
“Did we just get passed by a Sentra? We are in a sports car and we just got passed by a SENTRA.”
We eventually left the Sentra in our dust, but only after it earned our intimidation by reaching speeds of over 160 km/h that we were too afraid ourselves to exceed in broad daylight. We somehow managed, as CP also noted, to make it home safely, without any speeding tickets or accidents, and in time for CP’s 1:00 hair appointment. LP got her daughter back in one piece, however hickey-ed up that one piece might be, and CP, E and I got to forget about responsibility for a little while before having to get back to Real Life — school, work, and all the other Big Kid things that September brings.
And, we got a whole slew of quotes that, as I never failed to acknowledge, “would make great Facebook photo album titles” Too bad none of us had a camera.
Here are a few of these quotes that have not been included above, and which are taken from the insightful introspect and retrospect of the drive home:
E: I don’t know what it is about me, that men just want to throw me around a room. I always come out with bruises. It makes me feel like a cheap whore. And my breasts — Some girls say they go through the whole thing and never even take their shirts off. My shirt is always the first thing to come off. Sometimes even before I kiss a boy my shirt comes off.
CP: Someone rocked an epic puke in the bathroom.
Me (as we come up behind another Honda Accord driving below the speed-limit): Why are we parked here? Excuse me sir… Can’t you see that YOU are in a sports car?
CP (after I’ve commented on her vulgar language): I do occasionally enjoy the salty ***k. (I’ve put the stars in, because what she actually said was much different from what I thought she said…)
E: I feel as though I have an intimate relationship with that Sentra now. Do you think he feels it too?
Me: Perhaps… perhaps it’s time to take a break from the tequila.
And it is. Tonight I drink coolers. And stay away from sports cars.
Until next time, I remain,
Your most humble, still-hungover, miraculously alive, potential-alcoholic,
-W-
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