One Drunken Night In The Life Of A 20-Something

The weekend starts on Thursday night. Get off of work, skip the gym, head straight to the liquor store. Pick up a 36 pack of Bud Light, a handle of Grey Goose, a 100 pack of red plastic cups. Make calls to 6 of your closest friends and tell them to spread the word.

Get home, change into shorts and a cute top, start sipping on your first beverage of the night and loosen up from the work week.  Set up the pong table and make sure all the valuables are stowed away to prevent repeats of past accidents. People start arriving and the party has started.

You’re making the winning shot in beer pong and feeling pretty nice when your best friend reminds you that it’s officially power hour, so shots are in order. Power hour leads to party hour and it’s time to head to the city.  Someone arranges to use their parent’s minivan and next thing you know, you’re cruising with 12 people in back seat, music blaring and ciggy wiggys being passed round and round. Life is glorious.

Get to the club and head straight to the front of the line.  No bottle service needed for entry, just your connections. Rolling deep and sexy has its privileges. Head straight to the bar and order 36 shots.  Cause a spectacle when the entire bar is lined with beverages that will be consumed in less than 8 minutes. Cheers to being young, hot, fabulous, and very, very drunk.

Dance with a random group of European bachelors on Sabbatical- whatever the fuck that means. Just  nod and “mhm” like you give a shit. Take tons of a pictures you know are going to be deleted in the morning but pray one of these douches does not find one of you on Facebook.  Drunk goggles do not result in life long friendships. Flirt until you squirt, but please–no giving out numbers or revealing real names.

Ditch the Europeans for jumbo slice, quick pita, and empanadas. Feel like a hero when you procure extra hot sauces at no cost from the empanada guy through extensive flirting. Realize on your way home that the empanadas come with hot sauce for free any way and feel like a total #fail.

Bug the shit out of your DD on the way home and laugh in their face when they complain. “This is your right of passage as an alcoholic 20-something, this is hazing baby!” Make them stop three times on the way home for you to pee on the side of the road and use up half a bottle of hand sanitizer in your state of drunken obsessive germaphobia.

Get home, throw some blankets and pillows at your equally inebriated friends, and set seven alarms for you to wake up in the morning. Finally wake up at 645 am to the sound of your seventh alarm, spooning the handle of grey goose and lying next to what would have been a glorious spread of drunken delicacies the night before: half a slice of jumbo slice, a third of an empanada, a barely-touched quick pita filled with minced lamb. Gag. It is no longer last night.

Throw some clothes on, pop a piece of gum, wake up and kick out all your friends, and race to work. See your boss from the corner of the office giving you a death stare as you chug coffee and respond to emails. Cringe a bit as he approaches you and says, “So, what did you do last night? How are you?” You laugh and shrug stating nonchalantly, “Oh, nothing, you know, just a quiet night with friends.”  Feel even stranger when he just says “hmmm” in an ominous tone as he leaves your desk.

It’s not until your lunch break that you realize that you are FUCKED. No, not just fucked, PROPER FUCKED. You go to the bathroom and look in the mirror in horror, realizing why the entire office has been staring at you like you are a social pariah. You see a huge penis drawn in sharpie on your forehead (how did you not look in the mirror this morning?!), and a little note from your DD on your cheek: “Hazing is a bitch. <3, DD.”

Just another night in the life of a 20-something.