If You Can't Handle Your Liquor...

If you've ever drank in your life, you've had one of those nights when it all goes wrong. The ones where you ened up hugging the toilet or making a complete ass of yourself in public. The latter can lead to some pretty shitty situations, but the former is by far the worst experience one can have while drinking. There's nothing quite like waking up hungover, half naked, and wedged between the sink and the toilet bowl. Every one of these nights inevitably follows the same terrible path to the ultimate destination of using a bath towel as a mattress. It begins like any other night, you get hammered and possibly text your ex-girlfriend looking for a booty call. Then as more alcohol soaks into your bloodstream, you start yelling obscenities at old men you don't even know. A little farther down the spiral and maybe you threw up in a fake potted plant in the corner of the bar, or have been relegated to plastic cups because you shattered half of the bar's stock of pint glasses by knocking them off of your table. A little embarrassing, slightly asinine, but you're still conscious (mostly) and upright (kinda) so everything is peachy. The bottom of the spiral into alcoHELL, things get bad. Not just "my friends laughed at me" bad. I mean, "my friends refuse to talk to me anymore" bad. Maybe it was your first threesome, which normally wouldn't be a bad thing. But in this state, it was probably pretty likely it was your first threesome that topped the 500 pound marker, and that's without tallying your hefty ass in the total. Reasons like this are exactly why I'm such a huge advocate for knowing your own limits. My limit comes approximately one six pack after I start throwing things and yelling at everyone. I know, for me, that another shot or beer past that limit and I will be cleaning up my dinner, sixteen hours after eating it. I have had the good fortune when in situations such as hugging porcelain, knocking over my own cup of drinking water, and then laying in the puddle...in someone else's house, that it was at a place like Blake's mom's house. She loves me like her own son, and to this day gives me shit about my night of acting like I'd never seen a beer before. But I've learned from these experiences. The only times I have nights like that are when I am on a mission to get belligerent, or when I severely miscalculate the amount of booze I'm pouring down my throat. Some people don't learn from their mistakes, and those are the people who should be taking notes from this chapter.
We had a kid named Kris who came down to the house for a week or so. Just a normal college kid looking for a little vacation. He was a distant relative of Lee's who the rest of us had never met before, but we let him stay in one of the extra rooms. We should have known from his first day in the house that the kid was gonna be a problem. He had barely set his luggage down when we had him shotgunning beers with us. He got a little buzz from the first few beers and started in on how he was a heavyweight drinker and how high his tolerance was. I remember Blake and I looking at each other and the challenge was born. At the time, we were the two biggest guys and heaviest drinkers in the house, and we weren't gonna let some weekender come into OUR vacation and take our title. We decided we'd call his bluff and I grabbed a handle each of Crown Royal and Skyy. We had nothing to chase the shots but pre-mixed cocktails, and for the sake of the contest, we held off on those so that we could drink more shots. Blake and I each filled up a large QT cup with water and sat down at the table. Water wasn't the best chaser, but it was a lot better than nothing and I sure as shit wasn't gonna take numerous shots without anything to chase it.
We got our first inkling that Kris was gonna have a bad night when he walked out of the kitchen with his chaser. In his left hand was a giant mug filled to the brim with skim milk. The thought of it alone made my stomach turn. He sat down at the table and we started with our contest. We alternated between shots of Crown and Skyy. Water was a terrible chaser, but there was no way milk was any better. He kept up for about an hour and finally tapped out just as Blake and I were starting to get REALLY drunk. We had gone through around eight shots of Crown and seven shots of Skyy each, so we were all feeling pretty lit. I was happy then that I'd been chasing my shots with water because the water itself had already soaked into my stomach, and I still had plenty of room left in my stomach if I needed it. Kris on the other hand had been steadily looking sicker and sicker as he threw back more shots, and we knew it was only a matter of time until he threw up. He should have known not to challenge two professionals. As we got up from the table celebrating our victory, the time came. Kris took off to the bathroom and we heard him start to throw up. As the noises came fewer and farther between, we figured he had emptied his stomach and sent Lee in to check on him. Lee came back out laughing which puzzled me until I heard the story.
"Dude, he's fucking crying," Lee said. Blake immediately started laughing. I was curious as to what the fuck happened.
"Why is he crying?" I asked.
"I guess he thinks he has alcohol poisoning and tried to call his mom and she didn't answer," Lee told me. No fucking way. That was too funny. I walked back with Lee to the bathroom to make sure he wasn't actually dying and to this day it was one of the funniest things that's ever happened to me in a bathroom in my life. Kris was laid out over the toilet, propping himself up with both hands, dry heaving into the bowl and sobbing like a little girl.
"Call an ambulance, I'm dying!" he sobbed.
"Dude, you're fine. If you're still conscious and still talking, you don't have alcohol poisoning," I told him, trying not to laugh in his face.
"Gimme the phone, I'm calling them." He dialed 911 and held the phone up to his ear. "Hi, yes, I think I have alcohol poisoning.......I dunno, a lot.........my name is Kris.......Address? I don't know it.......No, I said I don't know the address.......WAIT, NO!" He turned and set the phone on the counter and started sobbing again.
"Well? They coming?" I asked. He answered between sobs.
"No, they *sob* hung up *sob* on me." Holy fucking shit. Not only was this kid throwing up a nasty concoction of milk and liquor, but he had just been hung up on by 911. At that point, we decided he was fine and just playing it up and making his own situation worse for the rest of the night. We went back into the living room and sat down to play PS3. Every so often we'd hear Kris yell from the bathroom that he hated us and we weren't his friends anymore. It was hilarious. He was legitimately pissed at us for not calling an ambulance to come get him, and he wasn't THAT drunk. About an hour or so later, he came walking out of the bathroom wiping his mouth, sat down on the couch, and didn't say a word for the rest of the night.
He didn't drink more than a few beers the rest of the week that he stayed with us, but he did manage to ruin another night of drinking for the rest of the house. The last night that he was supposed to be crashing in the house, we invited the local college's women's volleyball team over for a party. They didn't have any matches for a while so they agreed and about ten of them came over. After a long night of drinking games and obnoxious flirting, we decided to get into the hot tub. Three of us from the house stripped down to our boxers and five of the girls went topless wearing nothing but their thongs and we climbed in. Alcohol and hot tubs is a wild combination, which is discussed in more detail in another chapter, but that night it led to wonderful things. The drunker the girls got, the more free they became with each other. After a few beers in the hot tub, they were making out with each other, rubbing all over each other as well as us, and the night took a turn for the epic. Imagine five hot, nearly naked, girls all over each other like it was late night Cinemax. It was about the time that they started taking each others thongs off that Kris came wandering out to the hot tub and got in. At first we didn't mind because he stayed quiet and in the corner, but after a while it became clear that the hot water and steam was just amplifying the few beers that he'd had that night. His eyes started to look glazed over and he began telling the girls what to do like he was directing a porno. After a few minutes, he sat back down and closed his eyes. We thought he was asleep when after about five minutes he sprang upright and his eyes got wide.
"Oh hey sorry guys" he mumbled.
"What the fuck? Shut up, Kris," Lee snapped at him.
"No, really, I just pissed in the hot tub," he announced, "Sorry, I'm really fucked up right now." The entire group stopped dead. Granted, we had chemicals and chlorine and all that shit in the tub but are you fucking kidding me? The girls all immediately bailed out screaming and rushed inside to clean themselves off. Lee, Joe and I hopped out and jumped into the pool to rinse off what little, if anything, was actually still on us. As we climbed out of the pool, dried off, and went into the house hoping to continue what the girls had started in the hot tub, we saw all five of them come out of the bathroom at the same time, fully dressed and not making out with each other at all.
"Goddamnit, FUCK!" Lee said. He immediately made a beeline out to the back porch where Kris was still soaking in the tub and punched him square in the side of the head. Kris got out of the hot tub slowly and, without a word, went into his room where he stayed for the rest of the night. Apparently six beers, hundred degree water, and ruining three guys' once-in-a-lifetime chance was enough to take the energy out of him. We ended up just hanging out with the girls, drinking and bullshitting all night, and it took all of us another two weeks to get in any of their pants, when it should have been sealed that night. Nobody has heard from Kris since he left the next morning, and even Lee has avoided talking to him at family reunions and holidays because he was still the most pissed out of any of us about what had happened. It just goes to show you that if you can't handle your liquor, for the sake of your friends around you, please don't drink.