Choo Choo! All aboard the train wreck. First stop

There is a running joke between my friends, I am such a partier that the only way for me to “party extra hard”, the way milestones should be marked, will require an ambulance, a lawyer, and my guardian angel. Lu turned 25 this weekend. The last birthday where it’s ok to work in a dead end job, be unsure of what you want to do with your life and unlucky in love—still a victim of the quarter-life crisis that runs rampant among educated suburbanites. Where else to mark the should-be-end of those uncertain years but NYC, the city of the perpetual adolescent? The city where even the kid who makes $25K working in a “creative” job, has servants on his payroll—the cabbie who drives his drunk ass around, the delivery boy who makes sure he doesn’t go hungry, and of course the laundry service that gets the vomit out of sheets. And with a birthday marking a quarter century of life, we had to bring the antics up a notch and play with people who are far more well known than just the boring executives who we usually hang out with. Fuck the gravy-train bar that has become a staple in our drinking repertoire, we sought out the holy grail—exclusive private clubs.

With an old older friend acting as host, bottles of Nicolas Feuillatte Champagne flowing and martinis that wet the pallet as our appetizer, Friday evening was on course for a page-six derailment.

A guy who I hooked up with, once told me, “Shannon, you have this way about you. You are incredibly charismatic but you use your gift to, instead, drag everyone down with you.”

Maybe he has a point.

It’s 5 minutes to six on Friday evening, Lu and Kate are hanging out at my apt, waiting for the official start to their vacation—when we are all reunited inside my apartment drinking. Knowing that I am swamped with work, they call in hopeful anticipation that I magically finished analyzing the spread sheets that were due tomorrow.

“Dude, I fucking can’t leave. Call our friend and push back the time. I need, like…45 more minutes?” I replied.

“Shan-non! Come on! Dude, it’s [insert hot club].”

“Lu, seriously, I need 45 more minutes.”

“Fine,” she says, begrudgingly, not fully understanding NYC work culture.

As she is about to hang-up, I blurt, “There are a few beers in the fridge, start without me.”

An hour later I finish the work that pays my over-priced rent, and make a pit-stop in the office’s ladies room to put the make-up on that transforms me from corporate cog into a semblance of myself.

Running late, I walk into my door, quickly changing into my heels, without time to pound a beer. It looks like I need to catch up.

We meet my friend outside the club because we fucked up the name we were supposed to give at the door.

Despite the change of scenery, I still haven’t let go of my work persona. I still answer questions using non-committal sentences, and play the part of the good hostess. “How was your trip?” “Did you enjoy the beer in my fridge?” “I hope you told you parents that I missed them!”

A few cosmos pounded, one chained-after another, allows me to let go of that person and within a half an hour I am telling my friend, who got us in, old college drinking stories about strippers, how I spend my weekends recovering, and my penchant for champagne and dinners I never pay for.

The train begins to lose traction on the tracks.

He leaves, not without inviting us to dinner. But, why would we pass up hanging out in [insert hot club]? Not even comp’d dinner able to lure us away. As soon as we say our good-byes and give our NY promises to keep in touch, we find a place at the bar.

“You know, if we order a bottle of champagne, it would be cheaper,” lured by contradictory frugality that only alcohol inspires.

“Yea, sure Shannon!”

Bottle #1 ordered.

We finish it. And proceed to order bottles 2 and 3. Keep in mind I’ve had about 3 cosmos, a bottle of champagne and no dinner…

And of course drunk girls are magnets for assholes. Especially the variety who use their job to compensate for unfortunate looks and just as pitiful attitude.

“Yea, so I work for [insert famous architect]. Yea, I am hoping to make partner in a few years…”

He drones on, leveraging the only thing that works in his favor—access to money.

Fuck that, I am going to have fun with this motherfucker, I think to myself. I don’t do well with people who like to think they are better than me because I don’t wear my accomplishments and access on my sleeve.

“Wait, you work for [insert famous architect]? Do you interact with him on a daily basis?”

“Yea,” he says boastful of his position on his corporate food-chain.

“Great, do me a fucking favor. Tell him that his cousin Shannon says hi and that the family hasn’t forgotten his behavior. And that without our great Aunt he would never have the capital to be half as successful. He is no self made-man.”

The asshole looks at me incredulously, half-believing the shit. I should have let it go…but I am drunk as fuck at this point and make more asinine allusions that don’t make sense. I continue to sip my 5th glass of champagne as I speak, making up shit.

Craving a cigg and alienating the man sitting next to me, I walk to the outdoor patio and see a hot guy who catches my eye. Since I am only attracted to gay men, and he is with another guy, I assume that he ‘bats for the other team’ and admire him from afar. But ciggs have a way of bringing people together, especially when you think that person is gay thus, the social-confines of male-female interaction are allowed to be ignored.

As I am in mid-sentence with hot guy’s friend, sharing the requisite conversation that accompanies a cigarette lighting, Kate runs over to hot guy and gushes, “Oh my God!! YOU ARE [insert really famous celeb].”

Drunk, she continues to gush.

Drunk, I need to combat her awe.

“Oh shit, I didn’t realize that it’s [insert really famous celeb], I thought you guys were together! Wait, you are not gay!?” I ask, incredulously.

“No, I am not gay!!”

Embarrassed, I walk away and Kate comes with me. We need a bathroom. For me to pee and for her to vomit. Lu takes over the conversation in our absence, without any idea what is going on.

[Insert really famous celeb]’s friend starts to talk to Lu, “You know I am not gay.”

Lu, having no context to the conversation. “uhm, ok. What is your name?” Trying to begin a conversation that does not revolve around a proclamation of heterosexuality.

“John. Yea, I’ve known [insert really famous celeb] for a while. I am visiting from LA. You know, seriously, I am not gay.”

“Ok, I believe you! You’re not gay!!” Lu proceeds to tell the guy about her dog, her aspirations for vet school and inadvertently stumbles upon his hidden passion.

“Oh, then you will love this!” John says, as he takes out a pic of his dog from his wallet.

Leaving Kate in the bathroom, I rejoin the group. [Insert really hot celeb] hovering as I walk in on John showing Lu pics of his dog.

When the guys leave Lu says, “Shan, so [insert really hot celeb]’s friend invited us to party with them tonight. He seemed nice but obsessed over the fact that he wasn’t gay. But then showed me pics of his dog. What a fucking closet case!”

We continue to nurse the third bottle of champagne and realize an hour later that Kate is still missing.

We walk into the bathroom where we hear dry heaving coming from a stall.

Lu and I look at each other, and walk in without knocking, empowered by intuition that it’s Kate. We see her, on the floor, praying to the false-God, mumbling slurred, ‘I’m fine’ greetings towards us. Her face doesn’t look up from the bottom of the commode. Watching her, collapsed at the bottom of a toilet, has a sobering effect on me and my responsibilities flood my drunken stupor.

“Lu, I need to get going. It’s late and I have things to do tomorrow.”

I leave in a taxi. Lu and Kate join me 3 hours later, phone #s in pockets, more drunk, but bellies fuller than mine with food substituting additional glasses of champagne that I pounded before I left.

Confronted, when I wake up, that I didn’t leave early enough because I am hurting-- stomach in flip-flops, wanting to take an axe to my head, pain.

We repeat the praises to Bacchus, each night she is here.

Tomorrow I’ll touch upon why my landlord thinks I am a perverted lesbian who is into orgies, the additional celebs we saw, the gender riot I started in the bathroom of a trendy restaurant, and the four figured bar tab we didn’t have to cover.

Happy 25th Lu!