Yessiree Bob-o!
That's for everyone's claims to my inability to drink.
Short - they called me. Too small to do it - they said.
Doesn't look like the type that could hold her liquor - they condescended.
Drunk before a bartender winks, and other sorts of dinkiness.
Pah! Shot thru the mouth aren't ya, pettifoggers?
I put them piffles to rest.
I put down 8 ringing shots of alcohol in under 3hours and then furitively threw up at the bar while everyone danced the jig in my celebration.
Atleast that's how it sounded. Pounding feet, heaving chests, penney whistles, low whistles, bodhrans, the endearing uilleann bagpipes, fiddles in the back ground. The gagging sounds and the fainting bonnies.
It's unfunny how celtic-like victory over prejudiced inability to drunkeness makes the Beatles, Stones sound like musica principale irlandese.
Gaelige even.
I spoz it has to be my fearful fascination with jiggers.
those flailing legs. oh dear!
The evening of above mentioned eclectic indulgences started with a merry men hat.
Wait for it.
Ah - yes the makings of an interesting story scraping along on its one foot.
Indeed merrywood fanfare - Complete with feather. On my friend's head. Sherwood style. Voila!
What was it that Robin Hood, whenever he succeeded at pillaging the rich ruffains that crossed his forestial path, said? Somehow Voila - seems provincially incorrect.
Anyhoo - when I was in England...I also happened to stroll through the droll and harmless Sherwood Forest - and like a good lil soldier with a consumers gold heart - i stopped at the ye nouveau merrymen gift shoppe and picked up a gag gift.
Gag she did. Coz it was completely and rudimentarily inappropriate a week after her birthday.
And yet the "ye the jolly good merrmen" chant, went down with a roar.
So, thence went the beginning of the evening with the hat and a bold effort at recreating a lovable mexican tradition (at Chevy's).
From there we piled into the stunningly clean SUV of my birthdated friend, and drove circles to the Lebanese Taverna. Lovable place with a delectable menu.
11 tapas/mezze, several loosened belts and tongues later, the five of us sat back with contented sighs and compared the number of bed buddies we'd recently had, like any well-adjusted bunch of mezze eating humans.
Here I'd like to take a moment and say that we were all at the same point at that moment in the evening. And from that point onwards - we deviated.
We then, in an move to make a fun evening funnier, headed to the Blues Club down the street - after several circular (and wrong) shortcuts, we finally made our still sober selves into the club.
Here we supplanted ourselves at perfect distance from the bar and from the nude covered wall.
and proceeded to shake boot. This continued in its own inimitable fashion. A shot, a wiggle, a laugh, a line of the song, a shot, a wiggle, a snort of incoherence, the stones, a shot, a waggle, a sudden grab at a tantalizing derrier, a shot, a stumble, a shot, a shot, a short trip to the ladies room.
Then the big cahuna of shots - Johnny Walker and a Guiness chaser - sent the alcohol careening around the corners of my circulatory system at breakneck speed, screeching at my 100proof liver.
Finally a buzz.
This my friends is the moment in the story where I wish my mistake pointer outter person not only made her presence known and in her own fashion denounced me, but also had the ability to do all this over the exceptionally loud beatles-sounding jiggers and clouds of barsmoke.
(My mistake pointer outer person is the lady who plays Prof. McGonagall in the Harry Potter movies - giving me her distinctive glare and a shake of her daunting yet bonny head, while grimly saying - I daresay that was a mistake Mr. Potter. I haven't yet been able to get her to say my name. It is an ongoing effort.)
two more buttery shots later I called it a night and in a conspiratorial whisper designed to send the Bartender into travails of delight and future escapades about my dear friend BB, I beckoned to him and sibilated "Say are you really married" while inconspicuously pointing out the wedding band on his finger. He nodded with a sad smile and before I could explain my context gave me a sympathetic eye and kept his distance from me all evening. Even though - he was the one who filled my cup of watery joy all the rest of the tumultous riot of a nite.
Several times during the evening I had to ward off strangers asking me if I was drunk enough to dance. I started out with a much practised look of disdain and condescension and how-dare-you-bother-my-drunken-meanderings-into-the-land-of-nod HEC NO, and proceeded later (when my speech started to fail) - to drop my purse whenever someone bothered me.
Well - to my quiet glee - this seemed to work. The there was the business of separating the people we knew from the jumble of lips that were sucking on them.
All in all we came out of the evening mildly scarred by the daring of strangers and newer and blurry discoveries about people you know.
An eventful - car racing episode later - we got home in a not-so-dashingly clean SUV and crashed sequentially at the kitchen sink, bathroom floor, the porcelain bus, floor and then on the bed with no small amount of grace and snored until next morning when the agony of a gallon of alcohol kept us on our knees most of the day - clawing for that gatorade and vit B, and shushing the sounds of floorboards and mildmannered lesser life forms, and cursing the sunlit world for it brightness.
All in all a brilliantly wicked experience.
