AT THE REHEARSAL DINNER THE night before my friend Mike got married, the Pastor — who also happened to be the father of one of the groomsmen — told Mike he should be well-rested and clearheaded on the day of his wedding, and that he should go back to his hotel room early to prepare for the biggest day of his life.
Five hours later, we were at a club downtown watching a girl in fishnet stockings do acrobatics on silk scarves hanging from the ceiling when Mike decided it would be a good time to run outside and play hide-and-seek.
“Did I do a good job hiding from you guys?” he asked me and my friend Luke — another groomsman.
Luke, to Mike: “Yes, Mike, you did,” even though Mike “hiding” was just him standing in front of a wall.
Luke, to Me: “I think we need to take Mike home now.”
We walked Mike to a long flight of stone steps that led to the ground level and asked him “how [he] felt about stairs” in his current state. He responded by sitting on the hand rail and trying and slide down. He fell, but caught himself, somehow wrapping his arms and legs around the railing like a koala (less gracefully than a koala, maybe, but it’s hard to compare, as I’ve never seen a koala quite that drunk).
An hour before that, we were at a bar called “Tilt,” which based on its name should be full of pinball machines but wasn’t. Mike had just had a beer or two, followed by a a glass of vodka, followed by a mix of vodka, pineapple juice, and blue curacao called a “Blue Lagoon.” Blue curacao is literally blue — it’s Triple Sec with food coloring — and dyes its drinker’s mouth blue too. One of Mike’s fraternity brothers mused, “How hilarious would it be if Mike’s mouth was blue when he said, ‘I do?’” and implied that he’d force Mike to guzzle Blue Lagoons all night if that would work.
Note also that throughout our time at “Tilt,” Mike was wearing a huge, white novelty bow — the kind you see in Lexus “December to Remember Sales Event” commercials — on top of his head. I don’t know where it came from, but it looked ridiculous. I think Mike realized that, so he removed the bow but wrapped the end of the ribbon around his neck like an ascot. That made it worse.
Two hours before that, the restaurant hosting the rehearsal dinner followed up the meal with an open bar. At most open bars, they water down the drinks to save money. Here, as if the bartenders were trying to bankrupt the restaurant, the “mixed” drinks were almost pure alcohol. Luke asked for a “vodka soda” and basically got a “vodka.” My Mojito — the house beverage — tasted like rum with a light syrup drizzle and a handful of raw mint leaves thrown in. Look up “Mojito” on Wikipedia and the first seven words of the entry are as follows:
“Traditionally, a Mojito is not very strong…”
Meanwhile, I saw Mike down a pair of dirty martinis before we went to “Tilt.” Knowing the bartenders’ M.O. — and given that martinis are just straight gin or vodka with a drop of vermouth — I can only imagine what the they did to make them even stronger. For all I know, Mike’s martinis were made with grain alcohol or gasoline.
Finally, two hours before that, the Pastor told Mike to take it easy.
We all know how that turned out.
To further emphasize how useless that advice was, Luke and I got a call from Rob — Rob was groomsman who was also the Pastor’s son — at 9:30 the next morning to see if we wanted to stop by Mike’s hotel room to start the day with Mimosas. We accepted.
I tell this story to provide context: my friend Mike is the most “grown up” person I know. That was my recollection of him before the wedding — it had been two years since the last time I’d seen him — and nothing happened that weekend to change my feelings on the matter. Because it’s hard to define what “grown up” means anymore.
Nick and Glenn of Clikit or Tikit have each told me stories about when they discovered they at least looked like adults. Nick was walking behind a woman at a subway platform and saw her clutch her purse to her chest and quicken her walking pace when she noticed Nick out of the corner of her eye.
“That reminded me I needed to shave,” Nick said.
Glenn, meanwhile — if I remember correctly — missed the last train back to Connecticut for the night and tried to sleep on the stairs at Grand Central Station. A cop woke him up and said, “Hey, buddy, you can’t stay here.” Because a kid’s allowed to get “tuckered out” and take a nap anywhere, but an adult just looks homeless.
I hit a personal milestone two months back: my 25th birthday. I was going to write about it immediately afterward but there wasn’t a good hook; it was just another story about acting stupid in New York again (and again). But now that I’m framing it as a mature contemplation of aging, I can discuss — guilt free — acting stupid in New York.
The evening in question was really two nights after I turned 25. The day I turned 25, I stayed home to host a screening of the film we’ve been working on and a feedback session about changes we might make to the final cut. My sister baked a platter of cupcakes to celebrate my birthday but they went untouched because we were all about business. Okay, fine, I ate two. But still… business.
The next night, I met two high school friends, Katie and Luke, in Stamford. Katie talked how she’d just gone on her first sales call that week to answer questions for clients. Luke wanted to make vague plans for a vacation several months away so he could to take time off his soul-sucking job. Two other friends, Dennis and Tommy, couldn’t come out. Tommy wasn’t feeling well, and Dennis — a substitute teacher back then, just hired for a full-time position — was busy grading papers before graduation.
Everyone was acting way too grown up. The next night, Friday, I wanted to go to New York and act stupid, like a kid. I did act stupid — believe me — but for once it was like an adult.
This is the third in a series of stories involving my friend Ted — “TED talks,” if you will — which you won’t because that name is already taken — but I did because now people searching for them might stumble on this page by accident.
This “TED talk” begins at a cigar bar, a stretch for me considering I’ve spent large portions of my life deathly afraid of smoking. When I was six years old, I was so concerned about getting lung cancer from secondhand smoke that if my parents took me somewhere people were smoking — like a restaurant or baseball game — I’d hold my breath as long as I could until we left. I expected them to be proud I was so health conscious, but they were reluctant to encourage behavior that made me dizzy and almost pass out.
Later, as a teenager, I had to get over my fear of cigarettes because I had cool friends. That’s what I considered smokers to be — cool — thanks to aggressive cigarette marketing campaigns I’d been exposed to since childhood. It’s also the reason I’ve never smoked a cigarette to this day: I’m not cool enough.
Back to the cigar bar. It was in the Village. I knew we made the right choice of activities when I saw a guy who looked like the Dos Equis “Most Interesting Man in the World” at a table by the window. But we sat by the bar, because the bartender was cute. Neither of us were in a position to take anyone home that night, but such is the power of a cute girl.
“I’m an actress,” the bartender said.
“Oh, cool. TV? Independent features?”
“Student films!”
“Student films? Why didn’t you say so? How exciting!”
“I didn’t know anything about cigars or do any kind of job like this before working here,” she told us, “but the owner hired me anyway and basically lets me run the whole place.”
Here’s how unqualified this girl was: when she wasn’t handling customers, she practiced striking matches to overcome a “match phobia” she had. On a theoretical list of things to be comfortable with in order to run a cigar bar, “matches” might be near the top.
After about the sixteenth match, Ted and I decided to take advantage of their BYOB policy and duck out to a corner store to buy drinks. As we were browsing six packs of craft beer, a tall can near the bottom of the adjacent refrigerator window caught my eye.
“Is that Four Loko? I thought that was illegal.”
For those unfamiliar, Four Loko is like ambrosia, the mythical “nectar of the Gods” in Greek mythology, in that you may have heard of it but have probably never seen it, and it’s supposed to get you crazy fucked up. Four Loko is a “malt liquor energy drink,” and the secret to its power lies in the combination of an “upper” (caffeine) with a “downer” (alcohol), which can feel quite pleasant, though side effects may include: your heart stopping.
“Should we buy a couple of these?” I asked.
“Later,” Ted said, “Let’s have a few beers first.”
He grabbed a pack of Dogfish Head Ale, but we couldn’t stop staring at the Four Loko. We’d never seen an alcoholic beverage more plainly designed to appeal to children…
The name: a “cool” misspelling of an easy-to-spell pair of words.
The flavors: blue raspberry, fruit punch, green apple, etc.
The design: camouflage meets Bubblicious.
Finally, its location in the convenience store refrigerator: 2nd shelf from the bottom. Hard to spot for an adult male of average height but eye-level for a toddler.
We bought our beer and went back to the bar. The match-phobic “actress” popped the tops and cut our cigars. Ted’s was bigger, which prompted me to make a crack about penis size being related to cigar size, until I realized that the “penises” in question would be going in our mouths.
I’m not a smoker, as I said, so I approach smoking the way I do most things: with extreme focus and diligence. When I wasn’t talking, I was puffing the cigar, and I wasn’t talking much because the conversation got monopolized by another guy at the bar telling a story about working on a “top secret project” for an unnamed software company trying to create a digital microchip that could replace silicon because silicon has physical limitations but a digital microchip’s power would theoretically be limitless. It took several years and millions of dollars to find out it was a dumb idea. I could’ve told him that, but I didn’t say a word, and my cigar didn’t need to be re-lit once before I finished and stubbed it out.
It’s hard to say what else we talked about. My poor memory may be due to what happened later. I’ll get to that now.
We paid our tab and went back to the corner store, 2nd shelf from the bottom. “All they’re missing is a cartoon mascot,” Ted said.
One last indication that Four Loko is for children: the taste. It’s like a slushy with the ice melted, or one that never had ice because the machine malfunctioned and just spit out syrup. I guess they intended to have the sweetness mask the taste of the alcohol — there are four “drinks” in a 23.5 ounce can (thus Four Loko) — but the sensation is merely delayed. It bypasses your tongue and hits the back of your throat and the pit of your stomach instead. It’s a lingering, slow-building unpleasantness, like the aftereffect of having a wet towel snapped at your balls.
We loved it!
Not Four Loko itself, obviously, but being treated like rock stars for drinking it openly in the street. A group of twenty-somethings literally clapped and cheered as we passed them on the sidewalk.
“Four Loko!”
“Yeah!”
“Woo!”
I raised my can as a toast and took a huge gulp to wild applause. Then I waited for them to leave so they wouldn’t see me grimace while trying to swallow it.
Even better was the reaction we got at an indoor/outdoor chicken shack, the look of fear in the eyes of the guy behind the counter when he saw the Four Loko cans: “You guys need to leave. Right away.”
“Can I just use your restroom?” Ted asked.
“No. I will not serve you. You need to go, right away. Please leave. Please leave now.”
It was like one of those scenes in a movie about racial tension where a Korean shop owner grabs a bat from behind the counter when Black people enter his store. In our case, the guy was black and we were white — and because it was a chicken shack, he would’ve had to grab a thigh or drumstick instead of a bat — but it was similar in that we’d done nothing to make trouble.
Actually, it was only after we weren’t allowed to order chicken or use their restroom that trouble started.
First — because being denied access to a restroom didn’t mean Ted no longer needed one — we located a payphone. If you’ve never seen a New York payphone, it looked like this:
Ted told me to stand guard for him, then walked in and pretended to make a call while pissing onto the sidewalk below. “It’s a trick I’ve seen homeless people use,” he explained. As Picasso once said, “Steal from the best.”
(Just to make sure I myself don’t steal, the above photo comes from the “Markus Hartel street photography blog.” Click the image above to see more beautiful photos of potential places to pee in New York.)
Second, we still needed to eat. Neither of us had eaten since lunch, and chugging Four Loko on an empty stomach was a bad idea, on par with wearing a bow on your head or using a ribbon as an ascot.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the fact The Crocodile Lounge serves a free personal pizza with every beer is an unbeatable deal. There’s a place called “The Gold Room” in Los Feliz that does a beer, a shot of tequila, and a taco for four dollars, but pizza trumps all. The only issue, on this occasion, was that you have to order the beer to get pizza, and the last thing either of us needed was more to drink.
How unnecessary was another beer? I wasn’t even able to order one by myself. Ted ordered for me, because I was so obviously hammered that just me talking to someone would’ve gotten us both thrown out.
While Ted ordered, I leaned on the counter where they served the pizzas to compose myself. It worked. I started to see things more clearly, like how inappropriate Ted was being by ordering two additional beers for the Hispanic guys working the pizza counter, then insisting loudly that they drink them because “[they] need to enjoy themselves!” The guys were polite enough to toast Ted and take a courtesy sip before serving our pizzas and sending us on our way. I grabbed a shaker of spicy red pepper flakes and started shaking it onto my pizza. Afterward I realized I was still extremely drunk, because I don’t like red pepper flakes — at all — and my pizza was covered with them.
I ate the pizza anyway but drank my beer quickly to counter the spiciness. So I ordered another beer, which meant another pizza, which meant we’d be there awhile. Ted and I grabbed a two-person table and sat down.
Unfortunately, there were already two people at the table.
We found ourselves sitting with a nice couple from Northern New Jersey. Ted introduced himself with slurred gibberish, then covered his face with his hands. While he faded fast, I started a surprisingly competent conversation about how nice Northern New Jersey is, and more broadly about rental prices in various cities in the United States. I cracked a few jokes and seemed to be winning them over, even as their table was now taken up by two total strangers — one of whom was now laying halfway across it, sound asleep.
I’ve said before that I met Ted at camp, but never went into the specific circumstances of how it happened, circumstances which are perfect for this entry about “growing up.”
Camp was located at Franklin and Marshall college in Lancaster, PA, and each camper was assigned a dorm room with one roommate. On move-in day, I arrived first, and lay on my bed with the door shut reading the fourth Harry Potter book. I’d just returned from a twelve day trip to Nova Scotia with my grandparents, where they taught me about my Scottish roots and took pictures of me wearing dorky hats. I was a very docile and well-mannered 13-year-old.
Then Ted arrived.
He said, “Hey,” and started unpacking. The first thing he unpacked was a stereo. He plugged it in, popped in a Rage Against the Machine CD, and turned it up loud while unloading the rest of his suitcases.
Remember, this happened while I was lying on my bed reading the Fourth Harry Potter book. It was the new one, I was about 100 pages from the end, and I couldn’t hear myself think. All I could hear was…
Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me.
Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me.
Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me.
Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me.
FUCK YOU, I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!!
FUCK YOU, I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!!
FUCK YOU, I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!!
FUCK YOU, I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!!
(“Killing in the Name” lyrics courtesy of sing365.com)
I didn’t like Ted at first, but I got over it fast. He knew all the coolest music: Rage Against the Machine, The Smashing Pumpkins, Oasis, Ween, Cake. When I played him what was popular in Connecticut at the time — the ska band “Less Than Jake” — I found myself apologizing. “I guess it’s more supposed to be dance music,” I said, and then realized how stupid that sounded. Not only did Ted know music, he dressed stylishly (for a 13-year-old) and even convinced our camp counselors to bend the rules on things like letting us hang out in girls’ dorms or go off campus. It felt like authority figures tried to earn his respect. Even though he was two months younger than me, he seemed to be years older than everyone.
“Hey, wake up.”
Back at the Crocodile Lounge, one of the bouncers prodded at Ted’s shoulder to get his attention.
“He’s with us,” I said.
“I don’t care, man. Can’t sleep here. He’s either gotta wake up or go home.”
Once again: kids get “tuckered out” and adults look homeless.
Ted lifted his head off the table, groggy and confused. Then he stumbled into the bathroom and vomited into one of the urinals. The bouncer immediately revoked the choice to “wake up” or “get out.” It became more of an “and” thing.
I thanked the lovely couple from New Jersey and we left. I chased down a cab and directed the driver back to Ted’s. I steadied Ted walking up the five flights of stairs to his apartment. I made him drink water, sent him to the bathroom to vomit some more, and then he passed out. I had to leave early the next morning but got a text message at around 2PM:
“Hey, I don’t remember what happened last night. Did you get back okay?”
Of course. I’m a pro. I took care of both of us. For once I felt older than Ted, which worked out because I technically am.
And while my other friend Mike is most grown up of all, it was my Luke — the youngest member of his wedding party — who got him back to his hotel room after he got drunk enough to play hide-and-seek as an adult. Luke, who made Mike drink not one but two glasses of water to curb his inevitable hangover and had a wastebasket handy in case he got sick. I was there too, but Luke took the bulk of the responsibility himself. That’s the biggest part of being grown up: taking responsibility for other people.
But the most fun part of being grown up is what happens before that.