The Useless Black Bra
and the Stinkin’-Drunk
Twelve-Step Program
Joel and I had driven down Eighty-sixth Street five times in succession. We were looking for Jeff and Jamie, our friends who we were supposed to follow and pick up after the Tally Ho, our favorite bar, had closed.
They had left ten minutes before us, since both had decided to walk the half-mile back to Jeff’s house because they were so smashed that there was no way that either one of them could find the street, let alone drive their cars.
Now they were nowhere in sight.
Jamie had quit drinking a year ago to avoid all of the extremely embarrassing things she had done in public when her alter personality, Otis Campbell, took over. Tonight, Otis was back with a vengeance, his presence evident after she drank her first five beers. Before she had even set foot in the Tally Ho, her eyes had rolled back in her head, and she had already fallen out of her shoes a couple of times. We saw her grasping for the jukebox for stability as she swayed back and forth, trying hard to focus on something, plugging in quarters to play her favorite Gin Blossoms song, “Hey Jealousy.”
As she hummed along, she explained to Joel that she had a Psychic Pregnancy lighter. If it lit, she was pregnant. If it only sparked, she wasn’t. She flicked the lighter, and it sparked.
“My boyfriend doesn’t think he’s fertile,” she slurred, her eyes crossing. “But I tell him, ‘Shooting blanks makes just as much noise, baby.’ ”
Even I gasped.
But now, at 1:30 A.M., we couldn’t find her or Jeff.
“At what point do we abandon the search and go home to finish getting drunk?” Joel wanted to know, since he had become quite tired of the whole escapade.
In a matter of three minutes, however, Joel was going to understand that a drunk girl is never a pretty girl, even if her condition begs for the click of a camera. It was definitely worth his wait.
There is a series of steps that a drinker takes to reach the pedestal of Stinkin’ Drunk, a chronological collection of actions that take place in order to fully guarantee that they will achieve the Full Fun Potential of the night.
Fun-and-Frolic Jamie has graduated from this school with honors.
THE STINKIN’-DRUNK TWELVE-STEP PROGRAM
Step One: The Call of the Drink
It beckons to you, you simply answer it. It sounds like a good idea, it feels right, but you decide you will not go too far.
Step Two: Economics
If funds are low, and you don’t have an entire paycheck to blow, you must decide whether to do the Poor Man’s Drunk (i.e., drinking on a completely empty stomach) or if there is some possibility that you can con others into providing for you.
Step Three: The Suitable Drinking Partner
Finding the appropriate person may sometimes prove a little difficult, but a sensible choice has no substitute. You must be careful not to choose a beginner, because you will inevitably end up taking care of them and wiping up body fluids, but you also must be careful not to choose someone who will be functioning well enough when you pass out to stick hot dogs down your pants or cement your eyes shut with toothpaste.
Step Four: The Clink of the Ice, the Crack of the Tab
The first sip that holds beautiful promises, the initial lick of the lips that christens the inebriation that lies patiently ahead. The drinker begins to feel at ease, shedding the sober skin in thicker flakes after each and every drink.
(The next eight steps can follow in rapid succession or may occur simultaneously.)
Step Five: Sad Reminiscing
“I don’t care if I saw him naked on the couch with that girl who works at Dairy Queen, I know he really loved me. Why did he leave me? Why? Can anyone tell me why?” The most worthless step of the entire twelve. It usually concerns relationships and can lead to potentially hazardous DWIs—Dialing While Intoxicated—which entails calling everyone you ever dated, since you are convinced that it is a completely excellent idea.
Step Six: Wanting to Get Naked and Asking Strangers to Do the Same
Usually done after the DWI has already taken place, and the drinker has been rejected again.
Step Seven: Math
You start figuring out how many hours it will be until you have to be fully functioning again. “I can sleep fifteen more minutes if I skip a shower,” “I’ll wear what I’m wearing now and won’t have to waste time looking for something clean.”
Step Eight: “It’s Ten ’til One” Inventory
A quick assessment that no matter how much liquor you have, it will not be enough and you must get more, and NOW, because it is the most important mission you will ever embark on in your life.
Step Nine: Let’s Get a Snack, Too
A journey to a drive-thru, because you are much too drunk to sit in a restaurant, though you are okay to drive. Purchase twenty dollars’ worth of fast food that will most likely reappear in an altogether different form before sunrise. You will eat things at this point that you would not normally feed your dog, like convenience-store franks or three-for-a-dollar tacos.
Step Ten: I Love Being Me
You are witty. You begin feeling beautiful, sexy, and thin. You
really
want to be naked now, and just about everybody is looking good. You will not think twice about sticking your tongue down a stranger’s throat in a room full of a hundred people. You may also feel the need to tell assorted people that you love them, and this is a good indication that you should probably go home.
Step Eleven: Invisibility
You believe that you are invisible and can do things that will bear no witnesses, like peeing in a bush or puking on the sidewalk. It is at this point that you will not remember the last thing you said or that you decided that the street looks like a very good place to lie down.
Step Twelve: The Complete Loop
You lose the ability to communicate, with the exception of nodding your head. Also evaporated is the decision-making process, all of your money, the use of your limbs, and, quite thankfully, consciousness.
When we finally found Jeff sitting in the street, he had successfully arrived at step ten.
“We were hiding from you,” he giggled as he got in the car. “We saw you drive down the street five times. Aren’t we good at hiding?”
I was mad. “Where is the other half of the Moron Twins?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he offered. “I lost her.”
“You lost Jamie?”
“Yeah. She thought this was my street and started running, sort of. She was falling down a lot,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll find her. I bet she’s still hiding.”
I drove up the street. I drove down the street. We couldn’t find her. We drove around the neighborhood for forty-five minutes, checking behind shrubs, fences, and cars, following leads from various people on the street who had seen a drunk girl stumbling down the road in several different directions.
We drove back down the street where Jeff had lost her, each of us searching a side of the road.
“Stop,” Joel said dryly. “There she is. She’d probably better put her shirt on, though. ‘Hey Jealousy.’ ”
I thought he was kidding. I prayed that he was kidding. But as I got out of the car and walked toward Joel’s side of the street, I saw Jamie, lying like a corpse in someone’s front yard, a desert landscape, topless. The only thing she had on above her waist was a black bra, which wasn’t doing her a whole lot of good anyway.
“I remember now,” Jeff said. “She kept saying that she was hot.”
Since Jamie had drunk her weight in beer and resembled a sandbag with arms and legs, it took the three of us to lift the Little Mermaid up enough for me to put her breasts back in their proper place. She had little pieces of gravel stuck to her back.
This beat the time that she threw up in her purse at some dive bar but got us thrown out; this beat the time I lost her at a bar and found her an hour later, passed out on the hood of my car, parked directly in front of the main door, as boys threw rocks at her; this beat the time she was dancing at another bar, got too close to the stage, and fell into the drum set, completely destroying it. And this certainly beat the time that she went to a party at her Danish then-boyfriend’s parents’ house and yelled to the other Danish guests, “
Shmorgedy borgedy norgedy!
This is America, people, so speak goddamned English!” When the boyfriend made an attempt to salvage whatever dignity either one of them had left, he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder like a bag of grain, only to hear the chilling gasps of seventy Danes as they witnessed the American girl peeing herself.
Tonight, however, she had earned her Ph.D. in the Stinkin’-Drunk Program. She had, without a doubt, exploded the night’s Full Fun Potential limits, probably with the help of the Psychic Pregnancy lighter—and especially with the click of Joel’s camera.
The Little Guy
When my best friend Jamie finally broke up with her evil boyfriend who had the personality of a raw potato, I considered it a hallowed day. It was the kind of relationship in which she had to carefully hide all of her best qualities, the qualities which I most admired in her: her pack-a-day devotion to Benson & Hedges, the talent she possessed to effortlessly paint a verbal masterpiece of profanity that could rival the mouth of any dockworker, and the facet of her that we called “Fun and Frolic Jamie,” the portion of her personality that could be easily talked into anything after a twelve-pack. Like the night we found her drunk, topless, and unconscious in a neighbor’s desert front yard, a photo of which may have contributed to the disintegration of the love between Jamie and Potato Boy.
I was thrilled when she broke it off, because this meant that I would be the sole beneficiary of half the pair of Page and Plant concert tickets Potato Boy had given Jamie for her birthday—in addition to a surprise weekend trip. At the beginning of that trip, their plane landed near a swamp. Jamie looked confused, though Potato Boy responded with an unmistakable glow and the smile of a retarded child in a toy store.
“We’re in Salt Lake City!” he said gleefully. “We’re spending the WHOLE DAY at the Mormon temple! Happy birthday!”
To an atheist like Jamie, it was a slight disappointment, especially since she had packed swimsuits and cabana wear instead of undergarments and shirts with collars. The trip then took a definite turn for complete horror when Potato Boy suggested that they really make it a special birthday and asked her to join him in a lifetime of happiness, fulfillment, and devotion.
She smiled and held out her hand.
It was the next logical step, he said, and she nodded with tears in her eyes.
Then he asked her to convert. He continued by saying that his entire ward had been praying for her soul to save her from hellish damnation, since it was apparent that she was gliding straight into the welcoming arms of Satan. When I heard that, I had no choice. I slipped the topless photo in the mail and licked the stamp.
After she told me the split was final, I jumped in my car and headed over to her house, making a pit stop at the drive-thru liquor store. When I walked through the front door, however, I saw her immersed in a full pout as she sat on the couch.
“I have all of the ingredients to make Fun and Frolic Jamie!” I said, waving a twelve-pack in front of her.
She didn’t say anything.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “I bought imported!”
“It’s not that,” she said bitterly. “He kept the tickets! HE KEPT THE TICKETS!”
“The Page and Plant tickets?” I asked in disbelief. “Potato Boy kept the Page and Plant tickets? He doesn’t even know who they are! He thinks they sang ‘Jesus Is Just Alright.’ ”
“I know, I know!” Jamie said. “I just let him think they were a Christian band so he’d buy good seats. My dastardly plan has backfired!”
“Don’t worry,” I said quickly. “I know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody who works for the concert promoter.”
“It’s a drug dealer, isn’t it?” she questioned.
“You think it’s a bad idea?” I asked.
“If he can get us good seats, I don’t give a shit. I’ll even throw in a copy of the topless photo,” she said.
Two days later, I got a package from FedEx with two Page and Plant tickets in it.
I bestowed these upon Jamie, but there was still one more problem.
A long time ago, when we were in seventh grade, we went to our one and only dance ever. Jamie was haunted by a short boy who had, judging by his aroma, bathed in a boiling vat of Brut and smoked several cigars. He chased her all night, until he begged her so shamefully to dance when “Stairway to Heaven” was played that she considered it charity and said okay. He held her tight. She held her breath. He nestled his greasy little cigar head on her shoulder. She spotted his dandruff. Then he popped a boner. It was a very long song. Even to this day, when that song comes on the radio, she actually smells the stench of cigars and cheap aftershave, and feels something little rubbing up and down her leg. It’s torment, pure and simple.
“What if they play ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ and I can’t get away from it?” she asked when I showed her the tickets.
I told her not to worry about it. I said I was sure that Robert and Jimmy were probably pretty embarrassed by that song by now, and, unlike Don Henley and Glenn Frey, who abandoned all of their Eagles pride by releasing “The Boys of Summer” and “Smuggler’s Blues,” they’d rather drink gas than play it.
Anyway, we had other issues.
“Remember,” I told her, “when we go to the show, dress like you once drove a Camaro.”
But when we got there, I wasn’t at all prepared. Did you know that they still make ankle boots with fringe on them, and that tube tops are still alive and thrashing in certain parts of the city? I didn’t. I thought for sure that elastic had some sort of expiration date, or a tag inside the tube top that was stamped best if used by 1978. We were the only women in the whole damn arena wearing bras.
“Somebody needs to tell these people that Stevie Nicks doesn’t even wear gauze anymore unless she has an infected flesh wound,” Jamie said.
We decided to find our seats, which were not very good: directly offstage, but fourteen rows up and next to the stairs. We could see down into the backstage part, where all the equipment and roadies were.
That’s when we saw an odd little foreign man in green shorts and argyle socks trying to squeeze his way backstage and, after a couple of ill-fated efforts, he finally succeeded.
He met up with a backstage guy who whispered to him, they both nodded, and they started making gestures with their hands as if they were measuring something, like a block of ice or a well-packed kilo of cocaine. The odd little man pulled something out of his back pocket and handed it to the backstage guy, and he took it.
We couldn’t believe our good fortune. We were witnessing what was possibly a celebrity drug deal, and we couldn’t take our eyes off it. We were hypnotized.
Until the little guy looked up and saw us.
“CAUGHT!” Jamie cried as she looked straight ahead. “He saw us! He saw us! Don’t look over!”
We stared straight ahead for five whole seconds before curiosity bored a hole in my self-restraint, and I HAD to look over. I got caught six more times, and the last time we were caught spying, the little guy was giving us the thumbs-up.
We, cordially, responded the greeting. Thumbs-up.
“I play bongos,” he yelled up to us.
“That’s nice,” we yelled back.
“I play bongos for Led Zeppelin,” he insisted.
“Sure you do,” I screamed back. “And my dad’s the singer. You can forget it, we’re not going to have sex with you, little man.”
Just then, the lights went down, the opening band took the stage, and the real fun began. Everyone in the arena was either piss drunk or crazy drunk, and due to our choice seats on the aisle next to the center stairs, we got to see a bunch of people fall down. As the night moved on, the harder they drank and the harder they fell. And some just plain stayed down.
Except for one man. He stumbled down the stairs, beer in hand and more, oh, so much more, in his belly, and looked for a place to call his own.
“Hey,” he slurred, tapping the man seated behind us, “move over. Move over there. Lemme sit down. I wanna sit here.”
The man behind us stoutly refused, and the beggar continued down the aisle until he tapped another man a couple of rows ahead of us. I saw the man stand up, turn around, cock his elbow, and pop the beggar square in the jaw with a crack so loud I heard it over the band. It was so hard that the beggar man caught air as he was lifted off the ground and flew three rows back, spraying himself and everybody else with what was left in his beer, which I knew in my heart was pure backwash.
People clapped.
The beggar man didn’t get the hint. He stood up, and, like the complete jackass he was, tried to shake hands with the man that had just busted his lip open. He probably thought that the punch was a manly way of kissing.
“Hey, clown,” the other man warned. “You come near me and I’ll clock you again!”
“WHY?” the beggar man whined. “WHY? You’re the one who spilled my beer! Is that fair, man? My BEER!”
He was about to get another kiss, this one puckered up to his nose, when security galloped down and took him away as he kicked and screamed and bucked.
That was when I noticed that Jimmy Page looked odd. He looked like my Pop Pop dressed up in my Nana’s clothes, but his face was wide, as wide as my butt. I was staring at his face when I saw another face jumping up behind him, smiling widely and happily.
Thumbs-up!
“Jesus, Jamie!” I shouted. “The drug dealer’s onstage! The drug dealer is onstage, and he’s got a bongo drum in his hand!”
“I know,” she answered with a laugh, “but your dad’s having a little trouble with the high notes.”
And there he was, our odd little man, dancing, playing, and waving at everyone, singing along. Our little guy. We were proud. We were really proud, especially when he had his little solo bongo-drum part, when the camera captured that smiling little face and projected him across the three big screens above the stage. That was our guy!
He was having a great time, such a great time that after everybody left the stage, he remained, as if the thousands of people were clapping just for him.
Well, at least we were. We were clapping for him and for Page and Plant, who had the very good sense not make us climb the Stairway to Heaven.
The odd little man stayed, long after the rest of the stage had fallen dark, with the thunder of the crowd still roaring, looking out at them and smiling broadly, with his thumbs raised straight up toward the sky.
I doubt that Potato Boy, down in the good seats, had as much fun.