Date: 22 Feb 96
8:00am - My roomie Bryan, myself, and two other guys got off work, after having done the graveyard shift, and though out bodies felt as if it was about seven in the evening, our watches said that it was the middle of the morning. We had worked hard and each of us had a severe thirst for some booze, but since the bars wouldn't have opened for another couple of hours, we decided to get a bottle of hooch and pour our own morning drinks instead.
We left the work location and boarded the 6 Train back down to the Village, where the liquor stores always open early. We made a pit stop for a few gallons of orange juice, then stopped in the liquor store a few streets over for a gallon of vodka. I initially wanted to drink Bloody Marys all morning long, but was out-voted, as I had only a few dollars to contribute to the booze kitty. Though overruled on the kind of drink, due to my poverty, I didn't mind too much, so long as there were drinks to consume.
Our group retired to my apartment, where we began mixing some of the most flammable drinks I've ever consumed. I think Bryan was adding the orange juice to the vodka simply to give it some color. I would choke down a few swallows and then throw some more ice into the glass, in a sorry attempt to make it more swillable. It was the spring time of 1993, and I knew it would be a fun afternoon of pleasant weather and lethal drinks. Certainly we'd pull off this drunk without a hitch. I was wrong.
10:00am - By then, we were starting to feel the effects of the strong drinks, and the level of the vodka in the bottle didn't seem to be diminishing quickly at all. A few phone calls were made and more people began stopping by for a drink on their way off to their respective jobs. Most of them, still reeling from their previous night's beerfests, were kind enough to exchange their unfinished twelve-packs and cases of beer for a few Screwdrivers, as we all know that it's much more difficult to detect vodka on someone's breath that it is to smell beer. I was really happy by this point, as I was walking around the mid-morning party, with a beer in one hand, one in my pocket, and a nice mixed drink in a giant plastic cup in the other hand. I vaguely recall yelling repeatedly how cool it was to be trashed before noon on a weekday as I turned the stereo volume ever louder.
12:00pm - The party was in full swing. Several individuals discovered the spray paint that Bryan had hidden under the sink and had jumped out the kitchen window, onto the roof of the bar next door and proceeded to paint various slogans on the apartment building across the way: FUCK YOU, I AM DRUNK, SLAYER RULES, ANARCHY, et cetera. Though I should have known better, I jumped out the window as well, grabbed a can of spray paint and scrawled a large pentagram (?) on the side of an air conditioner on the bar's roof.
At this time, about half of the drinkers were getting really trashed, so they either left or decided to lay down for a while before moving on about their business. Bryan and I continued drinking, however, because the bottle of vodka was nowhere near to being finished. The beer that had been delivered had slowed our progress considerably, but we were not deterred from our mission: severe midweek intoxication.
As we stood on the roof next door, the midday sun beamed down upon us as we surveyed the results of our drunken spray paint rampage. I began to experience the alcohol sweats as well as the spins, so I climbed inside away from the sun and peeled off my shirt. At this point, I was wearing the following: combat boots, socks, running shorts. I opened another beer and relaxed on the couch for a while.
2:00pm or so - By this point, my memory is hazy at best. Evidently the booze went rapidly to my head as I fought the demons of physical collapse, which were nipping at the heels of my consciousness. Suddenly, drinking had become more of a challenge than a hobby, but I was determined to not only drink the duration of the day away, I also wanted to pass out with the clear knowledge that every drop of booze within reach had been consumed.
Three of us remained drinking: myself, Bryan, and one young lady who had stopped by for a drink several hours previous, and never quite got around to leaving. As I sat on the couch, vigorously trying to finish the beer that was slipping from my hands, Bryan and the chick were fooling around in the other room. As their slurping noises emanated from their room, I emitted a few myself as I raced to drink as much beer as I could before I collapsed on the kitchen floor.
3:00pm - Despite being thoroughly trashed, I decided that I would need to get a second, third, and fourth wind, and damn fast. What would bring me back to my senses? Some domestic household construction! While I was searching through the cabinet for the bits to Bryan's electric drill, I discovered the antenna to my police scanner. Yeah, that's it! I'd hang the scanner antenna from the fire escape, so I could get better reception for when the cops are called out to our apartment to shut us up. Information is power, and if information will keep the cops way from me, I'm all for that!
I grabbed the antenna, the thirty feet of cable that came with it, walked through the bedroom (where Bryan and the chick were still makin' out) and crawled out onto the fire escape. [For those of you who were there, this is the same fire escape where we kept the Thanxgiving Keg.] Somehow, I assembled the antenna correctly and attached it to the cable. Now all I had to do was balance myself on the rail, so I could reach the area from which it would be best hung. I grabbed a beam above me and hoisted myself onto the cast-iron ledge.
Had I lost my balance, I would have fallen three stories onto the cement below, but being as that I didn't, I'm able to sit here and write this shit for you. Even when thoroughly trashed, I can usually recognize the dangers involved with various drunken stunts, usually.
3:15pm - As I was fiddling with the screw attachment for the antenna, the window closed behind me, was locked, and the blinds were drawn on the inside of the window. I guess Bryan decided that he and the chick needed some privacy, and he didn't bother to check to see if I was in from the fire escape just yet. No problem, I figured, as I'd simply finish hanging the antenna as they were taking care of business; it would probably take about ten minutes or so, no problem. Problem.
After they finished "playing around," they both passed out, and despite my screaming and banging on the window, they were dead to the world. By then, it was beginning to get dark (and cold) outside, and I was damned if I was gonna spend the remainder of the night passed out on the fire escape. It was definitely time for Plan B-- get back into the building via someone else's window.
Fortunately, the apartment across the hall was vacant at the time, and while we were partying, some construction workers were renovating the apartment's interior. Though they were still working on the place when I opened the window, I could care less. I was drunk, hungry, half-naked, and cold.
I'm sure it was an interesting sight for them, as I fell through the windowframe while trying to crawl in. I landed with a loud, drunken THUD on the floor, got up and while dusting myself off, kept saying something to the effect of, "Good work gentlemen, good job. I'm just gonna come in through the window here and leave out the door, okay?" I don't think they spoke English, as they each had a genuine look of perplexity on their faces. I smiled and walked right out the door and into the hallway.
Like a moron, I had not only bolted our door from the inside, I had also left my keys and wallet somewhere in the apartment, so I was pretty much at nature's mercy. One minor thing in my favor: I had cashed a paycheck earlier and had several hundred dollars in cash on me. All I had to do was get to a phone and call upstairs.
4:00pm - As I ran up and down St. Mark's Place, drunk, half-naked, ID-less and with several hundred bucks on me, I decided that I'd best buy a shirt before I froze to death or had to explain matters to the cops. I went into the first t-shirt shop on the block and picked out a very suitable t-shirt for the occasion. It was black and had huge white letters that said NEW YORK FUCKIN CITY on both sides. How very appropriate.
I then ventured over to San Loco for some dinner. Had Chino Latino been open then, I would certainly have chosen them first, but I made do with what was available. I ate the Burrito-Loco slowly, while sipping on a bottle of Tecate, knowing full-well that I'd have plenty of time on my hands to waste while I waited for Bryan and the chick to come to their senses and wonder where the hell I was.
5:00pm - After repeated phone calls and excessive screaming into the answering machine, Bryan finally picked up the phone. After explaining the situation in brief, he agreed to buzz me into the building, where we could regroup and determined what our next move would be. I walked back to the apartment, was buzzed in and I proceeded upstairs. Bryan's "friend" was nowhere to be found. Evidently, she had heard me screaming into the answering machine and hastily left as my threats of physical violence became increasingly graphic with each successive call.
Upstairs, Bryan and I discussed what we did and did not respectively remember of the afternoon, then decided to further re-live the afternoon over more drinks. We ventured over to Downtown Beirut, where Bryan proceeded to get severly drunk and puke all over the bar, thus resulting in our expulsion. Ahh, but that's yet another sad tale of our drunken endeavors that's probably better left unsaid for the time being...
JOEL