I'm Having More Fun Than You

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I'm Having More Fun Than You Page 12

by Karo, Aaron


  There is another type of brogreement implicit in all friendships: a solemn promise not to let your buddy become an asshole. Ever try to wear a shirt with lots of buttons or pockets, or get a radically new haircut? Your friends destroy you as soon as you enter the room. They’re not doing it out of malice, but out of love. It’s their job to make sure you stay true to yourself. As twisted as it seems, constantly denigrating each other’s self-esteem ensures that no one ever gets too big a head—which is what so often leads to girls’ friends being reduced to an ever-rotating panel of dyed blondes who don’t share any history. For guys, this mechanism can mean giving you job advice or making you take off that fucking thumb ring before leaving the house. It is this solidarity that makes brogreements in the business world carry so much weight. After all, legal contracts can always be challenged in court, but who would dare renege on a commitment to a friend who once stopped you from popping your collar?

  At thirty, the crux of male friendship is that our boys are now split into two camps—the single ones we carouse with and the married ones we only see on weekdays. But both groups are equally important. Bachelors need their friends in serious relationships. Whether it’s someone to make fun of, a comfortable place to crash, or a glimpse at what middle age is like, my married buddies are a valuable resource. I solemnly swear to continue to give them shit, eat their food, and occasionally thank them for reminding me how much fun I’m having. The necessity of having single friends is just as crucial. They are not just wingmen, but also a means to better rationalize bachelorhood. My nocturnal adventures will always seem less deviant as long as I can point to a buddy I’ve known my entire adult life and say, “He was there too!”

  CHAPTER 5

  THE PURSUIT OF HAPPY HOUR

  I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

  WINSTON CHURCHILL

  I think that people’s reaction when I tell them that I don’t drink coffee is equivalent to my reaction when people tell me that they don’t drink alcohol. The fact is, getting drunk is an American tradition—one could say the values we cherish most include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happy hour. I was indoctrinated into the culture at an early age. The first time I ever got smashed—at the Triplets’ house, in high school—is still the drunkest I’ve ever been. I threw up in a popcorn bowl for five hours straight and haven’t touched a screwdriver since. But that hasn’t stopped nightlife—with its allure of endless liquor and chicks whose principles are degraded by said liquor—from becoming an integral component of my bachelor experience. When presented with the prospect of hitting the bars after a long day, single dudes carefully consider their options. The angel on one shoulder says, “Stay home! You’re gonna have four overpriced beers and get shot down by every girl anyway.” The devil on the other shoulder says, “But if you go out, you might get laid. You don’t want to pass up some ass, do you?” Ever wonder where the devil is later, when you’re paying for those expensive drinks and there’s not a chick in sight? I bet he’s trying to bang the angel.

  PICK YOUR POISON

  It’s a simple fact that once you get married, you go out and get drunk less frequently. Often this is simply because making plans for two downtrodden people is more difficult than making plans for one person who has no obligations or moral center. Another reason is that married guys really have no need to enter the meat markets I call bars. They’ve found their prize and are now content to have a glass of wine at dinner and cry themselves to sleep. For bachelors intent on landing their next one-night stand, though, there is no other option besides picking our poison and heading out on the town. We’ll rest when we’re forty.

  I’m always dumbfounded when, in the movies, one guy asks another guy if he’d like a drink, then just pours into a glass with ice cubes some generic brown liquor, which the other guy proceeds to drink, no questions asked. At what age do all men receive a memo declaring that they must accept and enjoy any brown liquor handed to them? Because I certainly didn’t get it. I stick to the classics: vodka and beer. If I was at a buddy’s place and he asked me if I’d like a drink, and then he just started pouring scotch into my glass, I’d be like, “What the fuck are you doing? You got Amstel or something?”

  I hate bars that have a selection of, like, five hundred different beers. If I wanted to feel like an idiot ordering from an overly extensive and confusing menu, I’d drink wine. I’m a man who likes his beer served in a red Solo cup with a hint of Ping-Pong ball residue. Keep it simple. (Side note: Apparently, attempting to cleanse Ping-Pong balls by repeatedly dipping them into the same cup of tepid water is not hygienic. Who knew?)

  When I offer to buy a chick a drink and she asks for a martini, I know I’m in for a world of hurt. That is the most poorly designed glass I have ever encountered. When a girl requests a dirty, essentially what she’s saying is that either I’m getting martini all over my sleeve, or she’s getting it down her cleavage as I try to hand it to her.

  * * *

  OBSERVATION

  Mixed drinks are like masturbation: only you know exactly how you like it.

  * * *

  When I switch to the hard stuff, I follow a few tried-and-true rules. During the afternoon, I never drink the soda or juice that I might be using later that night to mix with liquor. Cocktails taste much better if you haven’t recently tasted the mixers on their own. I also only drink mixed drinks that I make myself. I just don’t like other people making my drinks and I hate the weak shit that bartenders mix. So once I get to the bar, I’m all about vodka on the rocks. And, finally, I try never to buy tequila shots unless I’m in Mexico. Very bad things happen when I drink tequila stateside. I mean, very bad things happen when I drink tequila in Mexico too, but at least I’m experiencing the local culture.

  I’m always the guy who gets a stray ice chip in his shot. It’s horrible because, for a millisecond, I think I’m gonna choke to death. Then I finally swallow, remember how much I despise SoCo lime shots, and wish the ice chip had just finished me off.

  When I’m at the bar and I take that one extra, totally unnecessary shot, I end up having to give myself a pep talk. I rip the ill-advised shot and then start muttering under my breath, “Oh God, that was a bad idea. I’m starting to salivate…please don’t puke. Choke it back. Choke it back, Karo! Try not to cry. Where’s the bathroom? No, if you puke you’re gonna have to start drinking all over again and you have such a great base going. Just breathe. Breathe…OK…I think it passed. OK, one more shot.”

  DUE DILIGENCE

  When I’m going to a bar, I concern myself with only two questions: are there gonna be chicks there, and can I get in? If I tell a girl about a bar, the first thing she asks is, “What kind of music do they play?” Honestly, if I think about the last ten bars I’ve been to, I couldn’t name one song that was played. Bon Jovi could show up and do a surprise set and I’d be completely oblivious.

  If I’m researching bars online before going out, I turn to Citysearch. But what always bothers me about the negative user reviews is that they’re often written by someone who only went to the bar once, couldn’t get in, and is really pissed off about it. You don’t see a lot of truly candid positive user reviews. Probably because they’d sound something like this: “I never heard of this bar, but this chick I texted told me to meet her there. I was real fucked up so I don’t really remember what the place looked like. I threw up in a urinal in the bathroom and I lost my credit card. The girl I texted ended up ditching me but I went home with some other girl whose name I did not know and she touched my penis. This bar rocks and I’d go back again if I could find it.”

  And if I’m having a birthday party or something, and I ask a girl to recommend a bar, she’ll always ask, “Well, what are you looking for? Because this one place has a jukebox and they play fun ’80s music and then at midnight there’s a DJ and you can dance and it’s so fun!” And I’m like, “Um, I’m looking for not that.” If one of my buddies says, “I went to this bar onc
e, I don’t know if it was that good, but I met this chick there and I got a blow job—” I interrupt, “Done! That’s where we’re going! Sold to the place where my buddy once got a blow job!”

  * * *

  OBSERVATION

  Have you ever been to a swanky club in the middle of the day when the lights were on and seen how disgusting it actually is?

  * * *

  Here’s an experiment: pick a bar that you go to a lot, then ask a friend how many people he or she thinks it holds. They’ll inevitably respond with, “I don’t know. I’m not good with that kind of stuff.” I’ve never heard one person ever claim basic competence at being able to gauge how many people can fit in a room. I bet even the fire marshals who post those annoying capacity signs are just making it up.

  Despite the fact that Los Angeles is full of ridiculous, Entourage-worthy tail, I still believe that this city is severely lacking in nightlife. Sure there are cool bars, but there are fewer of them, they’re much farther away from each other, and they’re much harder to get into than any other city I’ve partied in. Plus, the weird thing is that all the venues are either shitty dives or really upscale—there’s nothing in between. In LA, there is no Goldilocks of bars.

  Every major city should have a designated district of karaoke bars, thus preventing me from walking into one by accident. Nothing is worse than enjoying a mellow evening of binge drinking with the boys when suddenly some chick starts belting out “Like a Virgin” from a karaoke machine at a volume fifty decibels louder than a space shuttle launch. In a perfect world, karaoke would be limited to bachelorette parties and Tokyo.

  THE PRE-GAME

  Most sloppy nights in the life of a bachelor are not spontaneous. When it comes to getting drunk, premeditation means knowing ahead of time that tonight you’re gonna do something dumb. It’s been a long week of work, you haven’t been out in a while, the whole crew is finally together, and before that first round even comes, you’re thinking to yourself, “In a few hours, I am planning on doing something I’ll regret.”

  * * *

  TERMINOLOGY

  To me, the phrase “Let’s grab a drink” is both the rallying cry and the secret password of bachelors everywhere. For some reason, no one uses that phrase until they’ve graduated college, and then they use it so frequently it becomes virtually devoid of meaning. If you really think about it, you only actually grab a drink with about 10 percent of the people you say it to. Of that 10 percent, most think you literally want to have a solitary cocktail and exchange pleasantries or discuss current events (these people are often married or lawyers). The remainder—whom you quickly recognize as kindred spirits—take “grab a drink” to mean “let’s get blackout shithammered.”

  * * *

  My buddies routinely call me up and say, “Karo, you have to come to this bar. There’s a 25 percent chance there may be cute chicks there.” And I say, “Dude, I have the flu, I have a funeral at eight o’clock in the morning, it’s pouring outside…I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” Girls call their friends and say, “Kate, you have to come to this party, there’s definitely gonna be a ton of cute boys there. And it’s open bar. And we’ll pick you up.” And she’s like, “I don’t know…I’m wearing really comfy sweatpants.” What is it about an elastic waistband that makes it such an obstacle for chicks to leave the house? I can just imagine the girl’s roommate yelling, “Kate! We gotta go! The building’s on fire! We have to evacuate!” And she’s like, “But I’m wearing these sweatpants. I’m on the couch. Grey’s is on…”

  I’m sorry, but wasted Saturday night plans must be confirmed. Ever run into a friend you haven’t seen in a while at the bar on a Saturday night, and in between shots of Jäger and your twentieth beer, you make plans to get lunch or something the following week? And then your friend gets mad at you for standing him up when you don’t show? I don’t think that’s fair. Standing someone up implies you knew you had plans and chose to ignore them. But having no recollection of meeting the person in the first place should absolve you of all wrongdoing.

  * * *

  WHERE’S THE BAR?

  I recently went to a bar where the cross street was actually Cross Street. Trying to explain to my friends how to get there was like playing drunken “Who’s on First?”

  * * *

  On the East Coast, you have to dress up to go out—everyone’s been negged at one time or another for trying to wear sneakers into a club. On the West Coast, you have to dress down to go out. Really down. When I’m standing in front of the mirror in my apartment in LA on a Saturday night, I often think to myself, “Wow, I look way too nice right now. I match so well they might not even let me in. Hmm, I should muss up my hair, throw on some flip-flops, ripped jeans, a mesh hat, and a weird thrift-store tuxedo shirt. Yeah, then I’d fit in.”

  VELVET DOPES

  I still enjoy going out as much as I used to, but I’ve long since given up on going to any lounge or club that might be hard to get into or involve waiting on line. I’m so over that shit. And please, don’t insult my intelligence by even mentioning the word “list.” Seriously, I’m thirty years old and I’ve been through this countless times. The list does not work. The list will not get you in. The list does not exist. Get the fuck out of my face. But, um, you know what…why don’t you put me on it anyway. You know, just in case.

  Still, every once in a while—in a moment of weakness—I’ll agree to go out somewhere like that and soon find myself arguing with a chick wielding a clipboard. The weekend should be about unwinding with friends and drunkenly hitting on everything that moves—not about playing games with someone beneath me just so I can go inside and take a fucking piss.

  When it comes to getting into an exclusive bar, guys suddenly lose all their ability to estimate. You know when you call inside the club and the dude who is going to help you get in asks who you’re with? I quickly survey the eleven guys and one girl that is my crew and then say, “Um…it’s like two or three dudes and, uh, like six girls, six or seven girls.” Then I end up on the sidewalk trying frantically to recruit stray chicks to come in with us in order to counterbalance the aggressive amount of cock that I’m rolling with. The desperation makes me feel like a telemarketer. A girl walks by and I’m like, “Excuse me. Hi, how are you? Would you be interested in coming in—no, wait. No, come back. Shit!”

  I often find that the bar next door to the more exclusive bar that I really wanted to get into but couldn’t is more fun anyway. And that’s not because I’m bitter or anything. The truth is, if I show up at a lounge with five dudes, and they laugh before barring us from entry, I fume with anger. But if we go somewhere else with the same ratio and get right in, I question why any decent establishment would allow such a thing.

  * * *

  OBSERVATION

  The longer the line outside a bar, the worse it sucks to wait, but the better it feels when you walk past everyone on your way in.

  * * *

  When I go headlong into the night, there’s always one foe who’s determined to make me wish I stayed home: the bouncer. My all-time favorite bouncerism is when the guy says he can’t let anybody else into the bar because the fire marshal will shut the place down. I never imagine some bean-counter posting capacity signs, but rather a burly fireman with a giant hat, an axe, and a hose running up to the bar yelling, “We got a call that this place is full of dudes!”

  Sometimes I wonder if bouncers have a certain quota of people they have to throw out of bars in a given month. Seriously, why isn’t there a bouncer code of conduct? If you get treated unfairly, there’s no recourse, save for writing a nasty review on Citysearch that just makes you sound like a petulant douche. Bouncers should be moved from bars to stadiums and airports, where they could eject inebriated fans of the opposing team and unceremoniously pound on idiots who still don’t realize they have to take their shoes off before going through the fucking metal detector.

  Just like certain restaurants have a BYOB policy that
allows you to bring your own wine, clubs should let you bring your own bottles of liquor. You would still pay for beer and mixers, as well as a small corkage fee. Admittedly, this idea would never fly, but at the very least let’s stop referring to paying five hundred dollars for a bottle of Absolut as bottle “service.” It should more accurately be described as getting torn a new asshole but at least having a booth to sit down and rest it.

  I just don’t think I’ll ever get used to going out in LA. On one hand, I respect the fact that there are some lounges here that are so exclusive they don’t even have a line—either you get right in or you never get in. At least they’re upfront and don’t waste your time. On the other hand, just when I think I’ve got LA nailed, she bitch-slaps me in the face. It’s a Saturday night, I know exactly where I’m going, exactly what time to go, and exactly whom to ask for when I get there. Then I roll up in a cab only to see a red carpet, spotlights in the sky, and paparazzi everywhere because the club is closed for a movie premiere. Fuck me.

 

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