Drinking & Parties Stories
Bad decisions, fuzzy memories, and stories that start with “I was drunk…” Party stories rarely end well.
Drinking & Parties
My friend Dave is getting remarried, and he invited me to his bachelor party in a dive on the outskirts of town that I'm pretty sure used to be a Chinese restaurant. I got there at 9 PM, an hour before the designated time for "optional pre-drink festivities," and had the whole bar to myself, a scenario that only occurred to me later would be extremely awkward.
Drinking & Parties
Fumbling around my kitchen, I knock over a jar of cocktail stirrers, shattering its fragile contents in a mess of colored plastic. It's exactly 7:03 PM on what I've determined is the perfect party-throwing Saturday.
Drinking & Parties
My hand involuntarily tightened around the cold glass as I stared at the pulsating DJ's eyes, their gaze flicking towards me, then away. I've been pretending to know this song for hours now, nodding along like some sort of rhythm-deprived robot.
Drinking & Parties
My aunt's famous three-tiered Jell-O mold was already wobbling when I arrived at the outdoor BBQ. The last time I was this close to my second cousins, I was 14 and wearing a Nirvana t-shirt.
:)
Drinking & Parties
Sometimes I get the itch to paint the room a shade of chartreuse, not the walls, people - I'm thinking the entire party. A lone jazz clarinet floats through the air; I'm not sure who's blowing into it, but I think it's hypnotic.
Drinking & Parties
Somehow I've made it out of my childhood, only to find myself trapped behind a crowded bar in my early twenties, desperately trying to recreate someone else's idea of a rite of passage. My friend Rachel hands me a neon-green beer koozie and I awkwardly place it around an almost-empty Pilsner.
Drinking & Parties
The smell of sweat and stale beer clung to me like a bad tattoo as I stumbled out of the crowded bar, arm in arm with a guy who claimed to be a neurosurgeon but looked suspiciously like a middle-aged hipster named Dave. We had met exactly four minutes prior and were, somehow, in the midst of planning our first joint karaoke performance in Japanese.
Drinking & Parties
The ice clinked against the side of the glass like a hesitant greeting as I rummaged through my coat pockets for the cash to pay for yet another overpriced beer. People laughed and shouted in the background, a disorienting maelstrom of sound I'd grown accustomed to at parties like this one.
Drinking & Parties
Sporadic bursts of laughter punctuated the room's thick silence like fireworks in a thunderstorm. It was probably the third or fourth time I'd spilled my drink, but nobody seemed to care – mostly because they were too preoccupied with trying to get the DJ to play their favourite song.
Drinking & Parties
The fog from my forgotten whiskey hangs over the dance floor like a bad smell. I weave past strangers' shoulders, eyes watering from the smoke and cheap cologne.
Drinking & Parties
Sometimes, when the fog machine in the basement is on and it's my birthday, people tell embarrassing truth or lies about me and I'm expected to toast with a plastic cup of warm punch. Last year, my friend Rachel claimed I once sang the entirety of 'I Will Always Love You' on the subway, which I vaguely remember now that you mention it.