Do you know those movies about the down and out drug addict? Unkempt, unhealthy, unsavory? Needing a fix and needing it fast? A traveler in the sodden tunnels of humanity?
That's been me the last few days. But with alcohol.
I've been going overboard with overconsumption and I feel kind of like Julianne Moore in Boogie Nights. A bit twitchy, pale, glassy-eyed.
What is it about going on those tears of alcohol bingeing? Sometimes drinking just calls out to you and you heed the siren song.
It all started with "Around the World in 8 Wines," a wine tasting event put on by the Wine Brats, of which I am an esteemed member.
It began respectably enough. Five of us girls delicately sipping from quarter-full wine glasses. But soon, it became an all-out dash around the continents as some of us tried to flirt with the wine pourers for bigger samples.
Then, next thing you know, we've visited France four times, and are making third excursions to Argentina and New Zealand.
Two hour later, we're giggling around a table about things that no man would ever want to hear.
Finally, I decided to see what was up in Australia and the woman wine attendant who'd taken a liking to me earlier that evening (in a non-lesbionic type way), pretended to trip with a tipped wine bottle spilling innocently into my well-trodden glass, while she filled the thing nearly to the rim with fine Australian Malbec (you'd have to be a Wine Brat to understand). After laughing heartily at this folly, I downed my glass and realized with a lurch that I was in a bad way.
Not to be deterred, we retired to the hotel bar for more.
Finally, a taxi picks us up, and we debate the intelligence of going to the Nite Owl, a sketchy, Barfly-esque establishment that we'd all been warned by those who love us to avoid.
Somehow, logic made a brief appearance while we decided to skip the Nite Owl and head instead (this is where logic then took off for good) to our friends' Mike and Pat, who live a few doors down from my wine brat companion, Teresa.
Mike is home and sober.
He reluctantly invites us in and opens a bottle of wine.
Then, we settle in. I make a hot-dog-bun-n-peanut-butter samwich, while Molly asks to borrow a razor so she can shave her legs for a late-night visit to her beau's.
Teresa gets up to play a round of golf in the living room.
This is when I call Kev, who knows Mike well.
Kev is understandably concerned that Mike will never want to see either of us ever again.
I hang up with assurances that I will call a taxi to take me home.
Five minutes later, I call Kev again "just to say "hey."
Kev is not amused in the least, plus he's watching West Wing, his favorite show.
I hang up for the second time and start to tell Mike how I admire his fashion sense and how, for a man about to be 40, he still looks reasonably good.
I don't understand where I was going with this conversation.
Then, I bribe Teresa with a cookie, and ask her to call Kev.
Mike tries to talk sense into me, and says that from a guy's perspective, if a man wasn't particularly thrilled with the first two phone calls, it may be best to not make a third.
I laugh.
Teresa calls Kev, and hangs up about five minutes later, saying he sounded "sad."
I am concerned!
I must call again!
Kev picks up the phone saying, "I am coming to get you."
He comes to get me, looking apologetically at Mike as we leave.
I rush over to Mike and give him a hug, saying "Thanks for the talk."
Mike looks at me, like "what talk, you flibbertigibbet?"
We exit.
End scene.
Now it is Thursday morning. I am a shaking mess. I cannot stand up straight and I rue the day I was brought into this world.
Plus -- and I am banking on the fact that no one really reads this Blog -- there were black feces involved. Now, I am dying.
Of course, I am also hungry. So I eat life-sustaining foods like "Nachos Bell Grande," and "7-layer burrito." Later, I supplement this diet with BBQ potato chips and cheese and crackers. I do not drink enough water.
This is where I really start feeling like a brain-addled drug addict. I feel like a non-contributing member of society who should just be kicked to the gutter. I am unhealthy, mind, body, and soul.
Thankfully, I have book club that evening. I will feed my mind. I drag my wretched, wasted body to the meeting.
My temptress friend Teresa, who by the way, took both Thursday and Friday off work to better fuel her self-proclaimed Labor Day Weekend Booze Binge, is sitting there with a gleam in her eye and a wine glass in her hand.
She tells me, I will only feel better if I have more wine (the hair of the dog hangover treatment).
I comply.
After book discussion, we are all off to a bar to meet the aforementioned Mike, Pat, Kev, and a whole host of people gathered together for Mike's pre-40-b-day-bash.
The moment I step foot into this bar, I beeline for Mike to make my apologies for eating his peanut butter and hot dog buns, etc. the night before. He is laughing, as he comfortingly pats me on the back while whispering, "I didn't tell Kev that you flashed me last night, don't worry."
Now, I know I am in the Devil's grasp, as I try to remember if I ever really would have ever in a million years, please say I didn't, show Mike -- this friend of Kevin's, my boobs.
I look at Kev who is laughing quite hysterically, and I see that fun is being had at my expense.
So, for much of the night, Mike keeps making up things I did, while leaving me to search my brain for any recall of the fake event.
So, hear I am again, in a drinking situation, while I try to do damage control for the previous night's drinking situation.
I have a beer and some chili and am right back on the road to rotting my gut and brain.
Now, it is Friday morning, and Kev and I are supposed to go to Mike's 40th b-day bash tonight. Then, I have a supposed "Girl's Night" Saturday, and a couple's BBQ Sunday. If I make it through this weekend alove, I promise to write my memoirs, and donate all proceeds to the Betty Ford Clinic.