The Drunk Knight

“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”

-Hunter S. Thompson

Well, after the longest “one week” delay in the history of everything I’m back to finish my story! Excited? You should be and you are. That’s why I love you, gentle reader, that’s why I love you.

Before I dive back into my tale, perhaps a quick recap is in order. For I well know not a single one of you remembers the first part nor will reread it. Bastards. Sorry, that was mean. I only hurt because I love too much. The recap:

•Using my super-rad twin powers of deceit and shamelessness, I hitched my wagon to my oblivious coworker, Ben, in order to attend a college graduation party to which I was not invited.

For this guy. You buying that?

• I picked up Ben and tried to coerce him into scoring me cheap booze from a shady liquor store.

•He refused, forcing me to do the deed myself.

•I succeeded in getting a bottle of floor varnish masquerading as vodka (along with some orange juice) and we headed to the party.

•I wasted many, many words establishing the story laid out in the above four bullets. It’s okay because words are my soldiers and they died honorable deaths. If that previous statement made any sense whatsoever it would almost be poetic.

Anyway, without any further ado (wait, is it “ado” or “to do”? I‘d Google it, but I know that would open up a three hour rabbit hole that would somehow end with me drooling and glassy eyed reading plot synopses on Wikipedia of every third season episode of Three’s Company, and having no idea how I got there. Did I mention I have the attention span of a coked-up mole rat? Have you ever seen a mole rat? They look mental as fuck. In short, I really need a fact checker/editor.), let’s continue the story.

“Yeah, I dropped out of 3rd grade. What of it?

Arrival

By the time we got to the party I was panicked. Not being invited, I envisioned the guest of honor, Liam, dropkicking me in the balls for showing up to his party uninvited. That or maybe he’d just ask me to leave. Either way, I’d be mortified (and possibly have a heaping helping of ball pain to boot). Ben and I walked to the door and rang the bell. I steeled myself for the worst: “What if Liam saw us coming up the walk and grabbed a pot full of boiling water to hurl in my face when he opens the door? Man that would eat all the dicks.” In my mind, that was a plausible scenario. After a brief eternity, the door swung open. Standing there was one of Liam’s relatives. Sweet relief! This guy had no idea I wasn’t invited. Now if I could somehow avoid Liam for the rest of the night…

Naturally as soon as we entered, Liam appeared and walked over to us. He was drunk and seemed really happy to see us. There were no questions like, “What the fuck are you doing here?” or “Why haven’t my trained attack bees stung you to death?” thrown in my general direction. Didn’t matter, my nerves were still rattling around. He shook Ben’s hand, then mine at which point I blurted out, “Hey man good to see you. Congratulations! I got you a gift and left it on the gift table. I hope you like it. Thanks for having me!” We had been in the house for approximately 18 seconds. I had no gift, only a brown bag stuffed with shitty vodka and off-brand orange juice. And there was no gift table. As my brain fired a sarcastic “Seriously?” at itself, Liam grinned and said, “Thanks, man! You didn’t have to do that!” Yep, Liam was hammered. Lucky me! I was in and it was about to be on. Time to get boozy.

Party Like a Rock Star: Courtney Love Style

Feeling like a complete fucking idiot for that whole gift table comment and also feeling quite awkward for essentially being a party crasher, I tried to find a quiet corner to myself. That’s what people do at social events, right? Isolate themselves and pound hard liquor? I said hi to the people from work that I knew, went into the backyard, grabbed a red Solo cup (because of course), and poured myself a drink.

At 17, it’s safe to say I had no idea how to drink. You’d think it would be intuitive: pour liquid into round hole in face. Swallow. Repeat. But I had never mixed a drink before. All I knew was I needed to get that low-rent vodka in my body, STAT.  So I started pouring 50-50 drinks – that’s half vodka, half OJ for those of you who, like me, struggle with math. (We really need a ribbon to raise awareness for Sucks at Math. Maybe something in plaid? That always struck me as a confused color. Plaid it is.) I pounded the first drink. Nothing. Well, other than my throat and stomach experiencing a vaguely ‘on fire’ sensation. Clearly I needed to up the alcohol to juice ratio. I went up to 75% vodka (I think. Sucks at Math, remember?). It was harsher than tabasco sauce on a paper cut, but I got it down. Now I felt something, but I wasn’t sure if that something was just drunkenness or the fact that I realized right at that very moment that I was suddenly the most charming motherfucker at this party.

Ladies…

I went from wallflower to social butterfly in about 15 seconds. Still, I didn’t think I was drunk yet. At this point, I started pouring full glasses of vodka with a hint, a whisper, a soupcon of orange juice. OJ was now a delivery system for shitty vodka and, before I knew it, I had killed the fifth. I can’t tell you how long that took, maybe one hour, maybe two, but rest assured that I was dangerously intoxicated at this point, or what doctors refer to as “So Fucked Up.” I can’t recommend pounding a fifth of vodka at any age, but it was an especially poor choice for a 17-year-old with minimal drinking experience. Surely this would not end well.

You didn’t expect this to be three parts, did you, but here we are. The thrilling conclusion, including the event that changed my life, arrives next week. Seriously. What? Don’t give me that look. I swear, it’s already written.

Tags: Animal House, Bluto, Drunk, Mole Rat, Screwdrivers