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My High School Reunion
Haynes Lee Alternatitle: Rammspieler Loves the Alcohol and the Alcohol Loves Rammspieler
Haynes Lee Alternaalternatitle: Alcohol: The High School Reunion
Hayes Lee Alternaalternaalternatitle: High School Musical Reunion
by Rammspieler
Man's greatest invention next to fire.
If there is one other thing that you would not expect to see yours truly participating in besides actually getting a date or having a social life, then it would be me going out to any sort of party or voluntarily interacting with people and having to put up with the idiocies that humanity likes to throw out. Much like Doom, I have grown to loathe the idea of social gatherings when they are not limited to any number of people less than five and those five attendees do not happen to be your close friends. Yeah, I might feel differently about concerts, but that's just my guess because none of my favorite bands ever come here. But alas, to show you fuckers just how much I love you and to uphold the fine spirit of Gonzo journalism and satire that we at The Daily Raider adhere to, I figured that if there was one life experience I have not reported on yet, it would be going to some sort of party for the sake of writing an article about it. Well, I went to such a party and have come back to write about it for the benefit of my readers. Did I enjoy it? I'll be honest and say that while it was not something I would normally enjoy, if there is one saving grace to Puerto Rican get-together, it is the copious amounts of alcohol that tend to circulate at such gatherings. While the quality of the alcohol may be questionable, at least it does make things more bearable. You'll see what I mean as we get on with the narrative of the night's proceedings.
So how did I end up going to my high school reunion? The short of it is that I knew it had to be coming up this year, what with me finally getting out of high school in 1998. Then logically there was going to be a reunion to celebrate ten years to a wasted three years in Puerto Rican public upper education and I was just waiting to be invited, if at all. The long part takes off when one day when I was leaving the checkout at Walgreen's when I noticed my class president was there. I was hoping that she wouldn't notice me because I hate casual encounters with people I know in public settings. Call it "social anxiety disorder" if you like, but think about it. An acquaintance or worse, one of your more removed great-aunts or cousins that you only see during funerals or during large family reunions, shows up and all of a sudden they want to ask about how you're doing, what you've been up to, how's the family and chat about "old times" even though whatever old times you may have shared have been brief and not very noteworthy. There they are chewing the fat while all you want to do is make a break for it while trying not to act rude and respond with a series of a-has and u-hums. I honestly don't know how people with more developed social skills can pull it off or why they bother. The nerve of some people, holding up foot traffic for the sake of idle socialization! But she recognized me anyway and called me out to tell me that the class now had a Facebook page and that the reunion was coming up. And then it dawned upon me. I hate social gatherings, yet I needed an article. Right then I decided that my anguish and suffering has always served as my greatest material and this would be no different, so I was going! Only problem was securing the necessary funds to cover the quota they were asking and I knew that it was all going to go towards a DJ playing various genres of Latin music and cheap light beer. But I was in no position to complain. In the end, alcohol is alcohol and I know that Doom would agree with me on that. [Except for beer. FUCK BEER. -Doom.] That was like about three or four months ago so I had plenty of time to get ready and by getting ready I mean just sitting back and waiting at the last possible moment to do anything.
It's not like I had any particularly good reason for going. After all, my high school years weren't exactly all that great. Those were the days the late 90s! Several things about the times come to mind. KMFDM was in its Golden Age when all those classic albums like Nihil, Xtort and Symbols came out. "Du Hast" was getting so much airplay that it doomed Rammstein to become nothing more than a one-hit wonder and fodder for German stereotype jokes in the States. Pokmon, Furby and Tamagotchi were invading America's shores and establishing the beachhead for what would eventually become the Japanification of children's entertainment and create an entire generation of fucking otakus and sub-par copycat cartoons. Sony beat Nintendo in the ever ongoing Console Wars for domination of the 32-64 bit generation of video gaming with a console that was originally designed as a CD-ROM peripheral for the SNES, called the Playstation. This was also the time when "eXtreme" culture took off thanks to Mountain Dew and MTV after it stopped being about the music and before it became a primarily hip hop channel. And who could forget Eric and Dylan and the day they took justice into their own hands and rid the world of potential future Golden Retriever brained suburban idiots and showed us all that the only way to get justice in this world is to do it yourself? Those were my formative years and I look back at them with some nostalgia for those simpler times. Yet I know that if I were to take a time machine back to those days I would hunt myself down and kill my younger self for being the naive fuckstick that I was and in effect cause a Grandfather Paradox of sorts were I would cease to exist in this present time. So I would just give my younger self a good beating and cut "him" up in strategic areas thereby making some badass scars on my present self.
I remember how back then I was pretty much convinced that I was going to end up either fucked up beyond recognition or killed in the cesspits that were the school bathrooms with my balls being flushed down the shit clogged toilets and my head thrown over the fence that separated the campus from the surrounding pasture area and the cows would be licking my head for the salt just because I was terrified. I was still adjusting to life in rural foreign Puerto Rico after a childhood spent in what in retrospect would be just as bad as rural Puerto Rico, suburban Carmichael, California. Only in California, people spoke a language that I could speak flawlessly, look intelligent and not get any slack for it whereas in rural Puerto Rico I was already branded as the "gringo" despite being as Puerto Rican as the rest of them and therefore I was to be regarded as a novelty and if I spoke out I would sound like a dumbass with my whack Californian accented Spanish which was already bad to begin with considering how I was learning hillbilly Spanish courtesy of my new surroundings and even to this day I still sometimes fuck up with what is a past tense or present tense or what is a male or female word (in Spanish there is gender distinction with words). It was thanks to the whole language issue alone that I started out on a wrong foot with most of those who would become the very same classmates that I would follow from 8th grade 'till graduation.
You see, back in my mother's day, when a kid fresh from the States would come into the Puerto Rican public education system, the standard practice was to hold them back a year, regardless of their academic record, with the idea being so that they could "acclimatize" to the new language at a slower pace. At least that used to be true during my mother's day. But by the 90s I guess that the educational system was either sued for this practice or they realized that they would eventually get sued for such discriminatory practices. They did the next worst thing, though, which was to put me in the same group as the "slow" kids. Although there was nothing slow about them; they just simply didn't give a fuck about learning. In retrospect, I don't blame them. The public education system here is that bad and the teachers are only in it for the meager paycheck. So it's hard to be enthusiastic about learning when your teachers don't care about you as they already have you written off as a lost cause. It's pretty easy to imagine what happens when a nice kid like I was who always used to get picked on at school back in California by fucking yuppie trash was dropped amidst a group of would be juvenile hall inmates if they didn't already serve time. Whereas a yuppie bully would merely taunt you and pretend to be all badass with his brand name threads and popularity and would get the lesser kids to beat you up, I was in a situation where I felt like I would be coming home with serious injuries, if not dead, and all because I looked at one of these project dwelling hoodlums funny. I was terrified and stayed that way until 12th grade. I would walk the halls during breaks alone. I hardly if ever spoke to anyone and whenever I played hooky from class I used to hang out in the library pouring through the old encyclopedias. I think my greatest achievement during my teen years was that time when I wrote some small anti-spousal abuse play for a youth group my mother worked for and it was performed at my then old middle school. Only some of my teachers knew about it and hardly anybody at school knew about it. So considering my rather lackluster adolescence it was only the right thing to do to show up at my reunion. If only to get the reactions of people when they hear me uttering more than a few syllables. Besides I wanted to check out all the hot chicks who were a part of my class and see who stayed hot, what fat chicks became hot or which hot chicks put on weight.
With only a few days until the party I had to prepare and I had to do so basically with a budget of $50 and some old chewed up gum. I had to part with some old games that were collecting dust on my shelves as well as my copies of Battlestar Galactica seasons 1 and 2.0 (fucking Ron Moore and his lazy ass selling the second season in two parts and both at full price!) But in the end it allowed me to get a badly needed haircut sans the kickass dye job I always wanted of going Magneto silver. I also got myself a decent jacket over at the Salvation Army which means that I now have official DIY punk cred because no way in hell was I going to go in what passes off for elegant casual wear here. I could just pull off the same effect by doing what Europeans do and wear a dress jacket over jeans and my prized Megaherz Kopfschuss shirt with clown Alexx pointing his Glock. The end result is simply getting all cleaned up and going out with no fuss and not feeling any less of a Rivethead for it.
It was supposed to be for 8:00 in the evening but it's always good to be fashionably late to these things. So I left at 8:30 but even that wasn't enough to not make me look like a time obsessed geek who is always preoccupied with getting to places right on the dot or Japanese as we shall soon see. The only thing hampering everything was the lack of a proper notebook and writing utensils. I normally don't bother to take notes while doing field research for articles like Doom does, but I figured that if I was going to get drunk I might as well bring some pen and paper to write shit down before I get it mixed up in some alcohol induced daze. Besides it would give other party goers something to talk about. Seeing as how I wasn't going to get either pen and paper at home I decided to fuck it and just go. By the time I reached town there was typical Puerto Rican small town shit going on in the form of some mass family horseback riding outing out on the streets. These types of activities are to be expected in small towns like this. Hence why I hate horses. People out at night on horses shitting on the streets and riding around aimlessly and slowly while holding up legitimate street traffic and pretending that there horses are drag racers and seeing how far their horse can go in a straight line in as little time as possible. They might as well attach a parachute break to the horse's ass and install a speedometer on the damn things! But it also meant that the local school supply shop was open late as they also sell ice cream and liquor. Whodathunkit? School supplies AND rum all in the same place! Unfortunately they didn't have any nondescript notebooks so I had to settle for a Batman Begins themed one. It was either that or Hello Kitty.
And so with notebook in hand and looking all dapper I made it to the premises only to find that rather than coming in fashionably late, I made a total nerd out of myself and got there "early" despite it already being 8:30 in the evening. In fact I came in just at the same time our class president came in. So it was me, class president and her husband, and some other chick from our class and her husband. There was a signature book in the lobby and I was asked to sign it. It asked for everything from your name to any possible web sites and it had some empty space in the back pages where you could tag it. I think I was the only idiot to ever tag that stupid thing with the Daily Raider's site address because as I would find out later on that night only ten more people signed and my shitty tag was still the only thing written in there. So whomever has the book in their possession will know where to look up this article once it's posted. The night was still young and boring and I had the urge to blame someone for it. I had the sudden and random ass urge to call Lemansky and chew him out for ruining the damn thing by proxy and making people stay away from the premises. But then I remembered that I didn't have long distance on the phone and I certainly had no wish to have a new asshole from those who actually pay for the damn thing. I also didn't have his number despite him posting it on our staff-only boards and bugging us about it on group chats. By this time several more of my former classmates have already arrived. Most of them being the hottest girls whom I used to go to school with and even after ten years they still looked good despite some of them already being married and with kids. The thought of what would of have happened if I asked any of them out back in the day, would I be a different person by now, comes to mind. By this time I was already jotting down my notes and drinking in the scenery and atmosphere of the place when I notice that someone was staring at me. I didn't remember him from school so I assumed that he was with the sound crew setting up the DJ equipment. This incident was only the beginning of what would later on become one of the running questions/jokes of the evening. "Why is Rammspieler carrying around a Batman notebook and writing in it?" I wasn't Rammspieler. I was fucking Rorschach to these people.
Artist description of my appearance according to the partygoers, courtesy of Dave Gibbons.
By now one of the newer arrivals has noticed my presence and greeted me. The price of being social is especially high in Puerto Rico where the concept of "personal space" is a strange one to this Latin culture. After 15 fucking years and I still have issues with people I hardly know coming up to me and shaking my hand like if I was their best friend for life or in the case of women, greeting them Old World style with a kiss to the cheek. I don't mind it so much if I have to greet pretty women for obvious reasons. That is unless they happen to be my older female relatives (read: all of them that live in Puerto Rico). But I still get that creepy feeling on my hand whenever I have to shake hands with anybody. It's a reminder that my personal space has just been violated, I guess. It's even worse when you factor in the average Puerto Rican's tendency to literally BATHE in those cheap imitations of brand name perfumes and colognes. Moderation with perfumes/colognes is also an alien concept here and I suspect that it's because most people still don't bathe at least twice a day here. So my hand now reeked of cheap cologne and the DJ finally started playing his dreaded set list of varied Latin genres like Bachata, Merengue and fucking ReGAYton. In theory everybody was supposed to be getting up by now and start dancing around like crazy. It's supposed to be in our Latin nature to do so! And yet another stereotype was broken as NOBODY got up to dance! Either the particular tune being played at the moment sucked or we lacked the quorum necessary to start dancing. I will never know. What I did notice however was that there was a karaoke screen set up and that only meant bad news in my mind. So I started looking for my nearest emergency exit and instructing myself in the proper evacuation procedures in the event of a catastrophic emergency like being egged on to get up and sing or something.
In between worrying about being forced to belt out tunes to a TV screen and accidentally jamming my finger into the chair joints I started to take a closer look at my former classmates. At first glance, besides those of us who have undergone radical transformations over the years looks and personality wise (a good example being yours truly and my long greasy Otaku hair being replaced by a short, mane gable, punk style crew cut and my half-assed and patchy goatee having evolved into a clean shaved face and finally into a pseudo-Victorian style Darwin beard) it may look like nobody has changed. Then I notice that indeed there has been change. Who would have ever have thought that 27-28 would be the new 40? People coming in and talking about their careers and the wife/husband and kids. Normally one would expect that sort of talk at the 15th anniversary class reunion. But here in Puerto Rico people marry young for the most insane reasons and you already have people my age with two kids and a 30 year mortgage. The symptoms are obvious. Some of us came in with already visible slight wrinkles and a gray hair or two. It's things like that that make me wonder sometimes if I'm better off being single. Say no to the ancient social ball and chain known as marriage and office jobs and yes to disposable income and ridiculous amounts of free time! Also, one of the class fat chicks has gone from morbidly obese to only moderately so. I guess that should stave off diabetes for a few years.
Yet another former classmate whose name escaped me (as most of their names do. All I recognize is faces as apparently people know me yet I hardly know anybody. Great times those were, being the school outcast!) came to greet me. Our conversation lasted a good minute or so and he was amazed that this was the longest conversation he's ever had with me. I can imagine that he's not the only one who feels that way. With good reason of course. He said that he came all the way from New Jersey (which for some reason was home to our biggest number of fans before we all decided to show our love and appreciation for Comrade Stalin by giving the site the "Hammer and Sickle" makeover) yet he wants to come back to Puerto Rico because it sucks over there. Of course life sucks if you live in Jersey! Doesn't anybody watch The Toxic Avenger anymore? However, I personally think he's making an even bigger mistake in wanting to come back home. Gas prices aren't going to get any cheaper out here nor are the politicians going to be any more reputable. My advice to him would be to go even further up north. Go to Canada! Yes, it's going to get colder and snow even more. But at least the liquor is stronger as Doom can attest to! Speaking of liquor, I do seem to recall that two of the alternative titles I put do allude to a wild night of alcohol consumption and all that is good. Well this is the part where the real fun begins.
Now you have to keep in mind that while Puerto Rico can attest to the titles of being both the second happiest place on Earth (with Denmark being the first. Yeah, that caught me by surprise too.) and being among the countries on Earth with the highest amount of alcoholics (right next to Russia and Finland I believe) it's no small wonder how both titles are possible. Most of us want to be happy and the easiest way to achieve said state is to drink your way there. Fuck it if you can't afford to pay your bills or your debt! Just drink your problems away and leave the worrying for tomorrow when you can just drink your paycheck away even more! However, while most are likely to disagree with me, I can't speak for the quality of the alcohol consumed here. Particularly the beer! You want to know why drinking Heineken makes you a beer snob around these parts? Because Heineken is the good beer to be had around here that is reasonably priced and can be found in most places. I'm lucky to find Sam Adams at a supermarket in a nearby town and it's just their regular lager and apparently Foster's is a "seasonal" product. What the fuck?! Beer isn't fucking wine! There is no fucking season for when to best make beer! There may be some seasonal varieties of beer, but come on, Foster's?! It's just your garden variety Australian beer made in Canada! So if my preference for Heineken and other premium beer makes me a beer snob, then what do the masses drink? Budweiser? Milwaukee's Best? Miller? How about a Corona? Nope. People here prefer to drink LIGHT beer! Like Coors Fucking Light and a local brew known as Medalla Light. I don't care how many international awards Medalla Light claims to have won, it still tastes like carbonated horse piss to me, as all light beer tends to taste. I live in a society that subsists on light beer and rum much like how Russian society only subsists on vodka. In-fucking-credible. So it was of no surprise to me when I finally mustered up the courage to brave the small crowd at the bar only to find that the only beer available was Coors Light. For lack of any better way to start off the nights drinking binge, I take it.
The only beer in the world that has to rely on marketing gimmicks to trick innocent Third Worlders to drink it. The ploy works well.
The music has already transitioned from generic Caribbean-Latin music to Reggaeton. Disco lights and an empty dance floor are included. That's because everybody that is just arriving are still out in the foyer.
As I drank away at my beer I was reflecting on how my family says that I suck at drinking. Give me a six pack or a few good drinks and I can magically transform from an anti-social wallflower into a jabbering idiot! But from where I see it, since when was drinking ever about enjoying the shitty taste of alcohol and less about getting plastered? At least that's what my family thinks so New Years Eve is definitely a night they hate to remember. I on the other hand am grateful that I can get fucked up relatively quickly. In fact, if I drank enough, I might even be able to hit on women with ease! It's something that I haven't tried yet and if I didn't know that most of my female former classmates didn't come in with another dude in tow I would have loved to put it to the test. At least that's what I thought at the moment. But later on, as you will see, that mindset changed. So amidst the sea of beautiful women came out the only one of them that I have ever had a decently long conversation with. Granted that was five years ago, but I remember her well because she was perhaps the only chick whom I asked for her number without going into a severe anxiety attack. I think I did it back then because I figured that if one of the hottest chicks from school was talking to me, then why the hell not? Of course I changed phones shortly thereafter and I never did get around to calling her, but considering that she still treated me in a friendly manner after all these years, I was starting to reconsider my initial misgivings about putting my theory to the test.
It was time for another drink, but I still felt some slight inhibitions about going up and asking for another. I love alcohol yet hate bars. Go figure. It was then that I wished that I had a camera on me. The reason I didn't bring mine was for lack of batteries. If I were Doom, there would be no doubt that I would have stolen the one sitting right in front of me. But what would be the use if I was going to get caught anyway what with me using it to take pictures of the party and its owners noticing it and my risking getting kicked out of the festivities and not being able to go to the next one. No matter. I'll just pull some pictures off of Facebook or something if need be. Some fucker also shut off the air conditioner. Because of that, I was seriously contemplating about putting aside my bullshit inhibitions and brave the crowd for another drink. So I did and came back with a cocktail of orange juice and this passion fruit liqueur with a Brazilian name that just so happens to be made in France and who's number one international market was Puerto Rico. It's not bad at all but I know that I'm still a long way from being the alcohol connoisseur that Doom is. Fuck for all I know I might as well have been drinking one of those faggy chick cocktails that women seem to like so much! However, since the bartender didn't look at me funny I assumed otherwise. One of the bitchiest girls of the class showed up as well as my annoying neighbor. The girl is still as bitchy and fat as ever and my annoying neighbor is the most hilarious closeted homosexual ever! Both claim to be Christians. Christians my ass! I do kinda feel sorry for my neighbor though. I imagine that if it weren't for the fact that he still lived at home with his bitchy mother, he would be more open about the whole thing. Which is why it creeps me whenever I see him going off to some church activity or another involving small children and young adults. And since he's a teacher I fear for those kids he's teaching biology to.
+ 
= 
It was good. But I still couldn't shake off that feeling of having something up my ass.
I was now on my third drinking of the evening, a rum and coke cocktail. Now that is definitely a guy's drink! It was also with drink in hand that I reflect on the longest conversation I had in the evening. Not with a former classmate, but with a classmate's husband and bored like me guest. What made this particular conversation stand out? Politics! Okay, so it's not unusual for any conversation to drift into politics in Puerto Rico. Over here any conversation, no matter how irrelevant to our current state of political affairs may be, rest assured that we will find a way to politicize the conversation. But nope. There I was out in the foyer and the guy asks me if it's true that I write for a website. I say yes and describe the concept of Gonzo Satire to him within the best of my ability when he starts talking to me about how we need an armed revolution to throw off of ourselves the chains of tyranny from our federal government oppressors. He even tells me about the existence of armed militia groups made up of doctors, lawyers, engineers and other bullshit professionals that you will find in abundance in these parts. Revolutionaries composed of mainly members of the ruling class. I have to admit that it's a novel idea, but isn't the whole point about socialist struggle to revolt against said class? I think that if these militia groups were real they must be about as effective as your average Cheetos Brigade from Montana. I also think that they are in it just for the kicks and pretending to be somebody exciting as opposed to some boring suit in an office fucking their secretary or worrying about securing tee time at the country club. Then again, we were both drunk and he was mistaking armed bands of revolutionaries with his paintball team. I dunno. But while it's safe to say that we were in agreement in that the only thing that can turn this godforsaken island around is plenty of guns and some IED's, I think that the reasons why we want one are different. He wants it because that's most likely what he learned from his bearded liberal pseudo-revolutionary college professors. He's an engineer and his particular school is known to be full of their type. Fucking wannabe Che Guevaras all of them. But whereas the majority of the poorly named "socialists" of Puerto Rico just limit their dreams of an armed struggle and the socialist utopia that would arise from the ashes of their Cuban style revolution to just that, talk, I on the other hand follow a different model and different reasoning. I say we do it old school and have ourselves a Bolshevik uprising! Fuck Castro and Che and their mountain guerrilla warfare model! People need to be fucking pissed and angry and take to the streets just like they did during the French and October Revolutions! We need to see the streets turn red with blood dammit! We need to see our good governor's decapitated head on a pike on public display! We don't need Latin American socialism. We need a fucking Uncle Joe and Grandpa Vlad!
Now this is a cocktail for a man.
When I finally came in it was time for a toast. We all went upfront and actually had a moment of silence for two of our classmates who died over the past ten years. One of them, like most of the rest, was someone I didn't even know by name. The other one, well... Let's just say that I for one won't be missing him. He was one of the fuckers who actually made my life hell in school for real and not because I imagined it. Yeah. I'm a bad person. I know. I don't care. Once that was out of the way some of us were asked to come up and address the class. It was because of my insistence on pretending to be Rorschach writing in his journal that I was asked to do the same and say a few words. I didn't get up. But I did tell them what it was for. Thank you, Rum and Coke!
Pure unadulterated evil.
Yes, it is thanks to Rum and Coke that I have come to realize that indeed I do love alcohol and alcohol loves me. Alcohol loves everybody equally, no matter what race, color or creed. It loves you more than any non-existent god ever will. Alcohol has become my personal savior and redeemer. For if there is anything in this material universe that can bring out the best in any man, it is alcohol. How did I come to this sudden realization? Because besides the fact that thanks to my good friend alcohol the festivities instead of being downright boring soon became tolerable, I found myself doing things that I normally never dream of doing on a sober mind. I was being more sociable than I normally am! I wasn't afraid of telling whatever chick that came to greet me how beautiful she was looking that night! GIRLS WERE NOT AFRAID OF BEING CAUGHT DEAD BY MY SIDE! If that isn't an event in my life worth looking fondly upon, then I don't know what is. But yes. No more was I a nervous wreck within the vicinity of gorgeous women. I have found the key to conquering the fear of women that my fellow social anxiety sufferers have been searching for and it is not a fucking e-book or thousand dollar seminar courtesy of fucking Mystery and Co. Drink, my friends, for you shall live in fear no more! I just wish somebody would have put up that picture of me with who I've always considered to be the two hottest girls in school. The pubescent hormone overload-driven fantasies that I used to have of those two. That old song "Ebony and Ivory" would pretty much describe them well. Then I asked for a scotch on the rocks. If there was a drink that could ever be considered as pure and unadulterated evil, it is scotch. I wouldn't recommend it to novice drinkers.
This one goes out to my homies over at the LS forums.
Hilariously Closeted Homosexual Neighbor noticed that I was around and noticed my notebook. He made a stupid attempt at being funny by lisping at me that he was hoping that I wasn't a terrorist. I'm not the terrorist. Maybe my drunken revolutionary friend might be considered by some to be what is generally known as a "terrorist" but as I've said, even I have my doubts about that. Me, a terrorist? Oh fuck it. Sure, I'm a terrorist. I'm the terrorist who will strike fear in the very same institutions that these people hold dear. Religion, politics, ignorance and their happiness. If I must wage a guerrilla war against something, then let it be against the very institutions that have enslaved these people into perpetual stupidity. There. I gave a sneak preview of an article that may never come
Then alcohol drove me to a point that I never thought I would ever reach. Remember the girl that I talked to five years previous? Welp, guess what? She is the "Ebony" in the "Ebony and Ivory" equation that I used to pine after in school. We've been chatting on and off during the proceedings and in my alcohol driven state of simultaneous bliss and apathy I went ahead and did it. I asked her out on a date. I ASKED HER OUT ON A DATE! I honestly didn't know what drove me to do it. I guess I figured that with being drunk I had nothing to lose. Fuck pride and dignity! I'm going to ask somebody out and that somebody had better be an attractive young woman! So I asked her if she had plans to see The Dark Knight when it came out and if she would like to see it with me. She said yes. And it felt strangely anti-climatic. I wish I would have done that years ago.
But no matter what, the party had already reached its high point for me if it even had a high point at all. No amount of alcohol was going to save this trainwreck. I later found out that indeed they did fire up the karaoke and that of the few people who were brave enough to try it, Ivory was amongst them. I guess people started to fucking dance as well. However, when it takes your party five fucking hours just to get warmed up, you know that unless there was a really good incentive to go (decent looking women and booze), then it's time to get depressed. Now they are planning a 10.5 year anniversary reunion for this Christmas for those who currently reside outside of our insular confines and always come back during the holidays to be with family. I hope that it goes better and the cover charge will be worth it. Although I doubt that after reading this I'll even be allowed to be near the premises. But in overall I got "free" drinks that left me with a splitting headache. I got some rare pictures taken. I GOT A DATE. Etc. Let's see if on our 15th anniversary I'll be showing up with a BDSM escort like Crispin Glover.