This Decade Is off to a Great Start
Things haven't been very "adventurous" in my life through the final portion of 2009, so I haven't had much of a reason to post. New Year's Eve, however, had a few sufficiently interesting moments.
There were little moments that really amused me (like having so many people from different spheres of our lives and different areas of residence in the same geographic location again, and some of said people meeting one another for the first time), but the big moments were the ones that made it a totals hitshow. (oops, I think I misplaced a space there :-p)
Big Moment #1: Erik has a new special lady! She's very pretty (perhaps she's blind, and they'll have a relationship like Alicia Masters and The Thing) and, unfortunately for Erik, she spent the first part of her stay at the party throwing up in the bathroom and the second part passing out in one of the other rooms.
Big Moment #2: Two female friends of mine started making out in the middle of the dance floor, and continued to make out even after they toppled to the floor. In the biggest C-Block of the night, the hostess decided to pour champagne all over them and their nice, dry-clean-only clothes. When pressed for a reason why she did this, the hostess answered, "It was hip-hop." I thought to myself, if I broke the bottle over her head and said "it was punk rock", would that make it okay?
Big Moment #3: Not so much a moment as a chain of events, really. A party guest (who we will refer to as GM, for Generic Male) showed up having already drunk half of a flask-sized bottle of Jack. After proceeding to finish the bottle in a timely manner, he poured himself several screwdrivers that were entirely too heavy on the vodka. As a pre-emptive measure (and a generally good idea for the party) I went to the 24-hour corner store to pick up a loaf of bread for making toast. Unfortunately for everyone (especially the bathroom,) by the time I returned with the toast it was already too late. Despite his theoretically strong constitution, GM soon found himself lying semi-conscious on the bathroom floor in a pool of his own vomit. His friend (who was also extremely drunk, but still capable of basic motor functions) was doing her level best to attend to him, but couldn't physically lift him. I managed to get GM up to a sitting position next to the toilet, and it seems like there's nothing else I can do for the moment, so I left them be and headed down to the kitchen to make more toast for other drunk partygoers. After a few minutes, I headed out to check on everyone and found that GM's friend was insisting we call an ambulance. None of us had initially thought the situation was that bad, but GM certainly wasn't getting better. He managed to limp down to the entrance with the help of some burly friends, and wait on the stoop in the freezing cold while we tried to call an ambulance. I went to speak to his friend about this, only to find that she had flagged down a random passing truck on the street and was trying to force them to call 911 for her. It took some doing, but I managed to convince her that the nice couple in the pickup truck she's talking to weren't the right people for the job, and I placed the 911 call for her. She, by the way, was wearing a vomit- and alcohol-soaked dress with very little insulation in sub-freezing weather, and refused to go inside until GM was safely in the ambulance. We all did what we could to convince her to take 30 seconds to put a coat on, but she insisted that she wouldn't be distracted for anything, including her own basic survival needs. She attempted to call 911 from her phone, but ended up getting in a fight with the 911 operator, who she believed to be callous and unwilling to help (a slight paraphrase for posterity's sake.) I ended up taking over the call, and the operator assured me that the first call was already registered and that an ambulance would be along as soon as they could send one. It was at around this point that I decided to call GM's girlfriend, who had not been at the party. After a very confusing initial call (wherein she was half-asleep) she finally got the message and agreed to wait for my post-ambulance update. Meanwhile, the other hosts had their hands full with GM, who kept pitching off his chair and into the snow on their front lawn. When the ambulance finally arrived (accompanied by a fire truck, for some odd reason) they managed to stabilize GM and get him into the ambulance. I called GM's girlfriend again, and let her know which hospital she should go to in the morning to pick him up from. From here, the next and final task was to console and reassure GM's best friend, who felt guilty for not monitoring his alcohol intake and for insisting that he go to the hospital. I tell ya, if we had a way to instantly sober people up, there would be a lot less drama and heartache in this world.
DAMAGE TOTAL: 3 ruined outfits (2 women's, 1 men's) and 1 utterly destroyed bathroom. Expenses include a wasted bottle of champagne, a crap-ton of cleaning supplies, and hospitalization fees (ambulance ride, banana bag, overnight stay.) A completely ridiculous send-off for New Year's Eve parties to start a new decade - priceless? Hmmm, something tells me Mastercard might suggest a few changes to that one ...