You Deserve a Drink: Boozy Misadventures and Tales of Debauchery

by Mamrie Hart

  Every time my mom was going to Winston,* I would beg her to let me go to DZ while she ran her errands. Technically, I don’t think you are supposed to drop off your kids, but like I said, I was of the older echelon of kids there (plus the staffers probably pitied me—let’s be real).

  Check it out, Dame DZ is back. She’s gonna crack a hip one of these days.

  I don’t understand. Is this a brilliant ploy to get babysitting jobs?

  Based on the way she just knocked that four-year-old over to get to the rope ladder, I don’t think so.

  When my eleventh birthday rolled around, I knew what I wanted: my ten closest girlfriends and five guy friends to all go to Discovery Zone with me. And, by God, my folks agreed. I don’t blame them. After all, DZ was way less scandalous than the skating rink (my second choice). At the skating rink, there were way more dark corners. Plus they had designated songs for couples skates. Call me a prude,* but a bunch of fifth-graders holding hands while skating to Boyz II Men’s “I’ll Make Love to You” had to be a disturbing sight for parents.

  The party was a blast. We climbed the ropes, crawled through the tunnels, and zip-lined into the ball pit. Which, I will say, is pretty brave of me, considering one time I jumped into a ball pit at McDonald’s only to realize some kid had vomited right beside my landing spot. Have you ever tried gracefully getting out of a ball pit without the balls moving? It does not work. Those vomit balls avalanched on me, and my Happy Meal was not so happy anymore.

  As thrilling as the obstacle course was, the real fun happened in the bounce castle area. This was the part of the obstacle course most tucked away from all the immature eight-year-olds. It was also farthest from the chaperones’ watchful eyes. It was there, among the primary-color tubes of air, that I suggested a game after a failed attempt at “Spin the Hat” (we were resourceful).

  “I know a game we can play. I remember hearing that older kids would play it back when I lived in New Jersey.” I had their attention. “It’s called Sleeping Beauty. All the girls lay down in a circle with their eyes closed. The boys walk around and plant a kiss on each girl. If you are kissed and can feel like it’s your Prince Charming, you open your eyes and scream out, ‘Sleeping Beauty!’”

  Here’s why this game was brilliant:

  A. Because even at eleven, I was figuring out ways to make finding love a competition, years before The Bachelor. There was no strategy. You could only “win” if you felt enough of a spark from that pop kiss to claim victory.

  B. I made that shit up on the spot. This was no game I’d heard of in New Jersey. This was something I came up with in that bounce castle, ’cause let’s face it, birthday girl wanted to get smooched!

  I lay there on the bounce castle with my eyes closed. I was completely still with my arms folded across my chest, but on the inside I was freaking out.

  Please don’t be Jeff; let it be Eddie. Please don’t be Jeff; let it be Eddie.

  After the third or so kiss (three seconds long, closed mouth, basically an extended peck), I decided, Screw it! I am going to open my eyes on the next boy. I felt the face come closer to me. My eyes were closed so tight you would think I was watching The Exorcist. A perfect, sweet kiss was planted on my Dr Pepper Lip Smackered lips. Just as I was about to open my eyes and yell, “Sleeping Beauty!” I heard Leslie scream it first!

  I instinctively shot Leslie my strongest evil eye. Trust me, if looks could kill, she would’ve turned to a pile of ash. The rage behind my superthick glasses cooled, however, once I noticed who her Prince Charming was.

  It was Jeff! Boom! In ya face, Leslie. I had been secretly harboring a grudge against Leslie since she and Eddie had couples-skated to “Bump N’ Grind” at her birthday party. But being the bigger person (literally; Leslie was seventy-five pounds soaking wet), I still invited her to my party.

  Looking at Leslie with Jeff, I couldn’t help but feel jealous. Sure, she had just risked injury by kissing those braces, but she won Sleeping Beauty! That envy lasted all of twenty seconds when I noticed that the prince I was going to open my eyes to was . . . Eddie. My big crush. Later that day Eddie would ask me to be his girlfriend while we played Skee-Ball. I played it cool and said, “Only if I hit the one hundred hole on this next ball.” I hit it. I ruled at Skee-Ball then, and I do now. We lasted two blissful weeks, complete with holding hands that day and waving to each other in the lunchroom a total of seven times before calling it quits.

  Once we were all DZed out, the boys went home and all the girls came back to my place for a slumber party. We sugar-rushed off so many M&M’s that you would’ve thought they were cocaine flavored, and then we made up dance routines to En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind.” It wasn’t until our sugar crash, when all of us girls piled onto a big pallet on the floor to give each other temporary tattoos, that I heard the news. Apparently it wasn’t just any old pop kiss that had made Leslie wake from her sleeping spell. Jeff had slipped her the tongue. Looks like there were lots of things discovered that day at the Discovery Zone.

  Studio 54

  If you want your birthday to be a fun and memorable one, instill a liquor-only rule. If you want your birthday to be so fun and memorable that everyone blacks out and can barely remember it, instill a liquor-only rule.

  This was the only regulation for my twenty-first birthday party. “No beer, no wine, only liquor, all the time.”* I know what you are thinking. Twenty-first birthday? Lemme guess, you probably put on some dumb tiara and proceeded to take twenty-one shots along a bar crawl until you threw up in the streets. Ummmm, do you even know me at all? Of course I did that.

  But I grand-marshaled that puke parade the night I was turning twenty-one. The birthday shindig was the next day.

  It all started with a ridiculous green jumpsuit. For some reason, while I was walking through Nordstrom (I was feeling fancy that day), a lime green halter-top jumpsuit caught my eye. Probably because it was greener than a shaved kiwi. If I had accidentally rolled up on a green screen, I would’ve been a floating head and arms. I knew I had to have it. I looked at the price tag. Seventy-five bucks?! Well, that wasn’t going to happen.

  At the time, I was working at a bar called Woody’s, which served cheap beer and cheap wings. In fact, I worked there the majority of my college days. I won’t lie, it can be tough as a female to work at a place that is also a slang term for a boner. College guys aren’t exactly the classiest folks after eight pints of Newcastle. Anyway! I worked hard at Woody’s. My budgeting process for buying things would always end up being broken down into how many chicken-wing bones I would have to clean up to make that amount. At around a dollar tip per dozen wings, that jumper was looking like nine hundred bones. But I didn’t care. When a mother goes into an orphanage and sees the baby she knows is hers, she doesn’t say, “What are the legal costs of this adoption?” She’ll pay whatever it takes. And I felt the same way about this glorious getup.

  Once I officially had the lime green halter-top jumpsuit in my life, the next issue to solve was where the hell I was gonna wear this thing. And so I used my old rule of thumb for ridiculous clothing purchases: If it doesn’t work in everyday life, make it work by throwing a theme party! I knew immediately that the theme for my twenty-first was going to be Studio 54.*

  Studio 54 is not only the inspiration for a terrible movie starring Ryan Phillippe and Neve Campbell; it was the name of a legendary club in New York during the ’70s and ’80s. It was disco! It was celebrities! It was eventually shut down because of tax evasion!

  But for one fateful night in September 2004, I wanted to reopen the infamous hot spot in my shitty rental house. I told all my friends they had to dress in disco-era clothing. It can be tough to get good ol’ boys whose idea of dressy clothes is their least stained basketball shorts to don polyester shirts and high-waisted pants. But after a little coercing (and me physically dragging them to Goodwill), everyone was game!

 
My roommates helped and we decorated our house with cheesy decorations from Party City. We stocked the bar with all the cheap liquor we could afford and filled the fridge with two hundred Jell-O shots. To really put the classy cherry on top, I filled a huge bowl with condoms, individual lube packets, and mints. Hey! I was single and it was my birthday. I wasn’t taking any chances.

  (Quick advice: If you are going to throw a party with lube packets as party favors, swiftly dispose of any that didn’t get taken by guests. I would recommend doing this the following morning, or at least before you drunkenly eat french fries in the dark. Astroglide is no substitute for ketchup.)

  I’m just assuming I didn’t make any hors d’oeuvres for this party and that is why I’m biting a condom. Whore d’oeuvres, anyone?

  Everyone got rip-roaring plastered within the first hour, and I couldn’t have been happier. As things tend to do, the rest of the night got a little blurry. Thank God we had all those disposable cameras lying around so we could piece together the evening. Twila Falstaff made several trips to the CVS photo counter the following week.

  A few things were obvious in the light of day: My roommates each had their crushes in bed with them, my friend Stacey ended up on my couch with a UNC basketball player, and I have no idea how he got word of the party. And this twenty-one-year-old birthday girl was the only party guest who didn’t get laid.

  Ping-Pong Tourney

  I am a fiercely competitive person, which might seem surprising considering I don’t give a shit about sports. I do, however, give a major shit about tiny sports. If it is a miniature version of a preexisting sport, I turn into a maniac. Seriously. I could be in a sports bar during the last game of the World Cup, and I’d ask the bartender to change it to Ellen. But if there’s a foosball table in said sports bar? It’s on.

  But my true tiny calling is Ping-Pong. I think I love the idea that I can get super competitive while not really having to move my body all that much. The lack of movement, however, doesn’t stop me from letting out backbreaking groans and wearing tennis skirts.

  In New York, down in the West Village, there’s an amazing bar called Fat Cat that has at least twenty Ping-Pong tables and always some random a cappella gospel and doo-wop group singing in the corner. The crowd there is great: guys trying to teach their dates how to put backspin on a serve, along with no-nonsense players who never talk and wear wrist sweatbands unironically. It was the perfect spot for my Table Tennis Tourney Birthday!

  I set up the tourney March Madness–style, with sixteen people competing in a bracket that we taped up on the wall of our private room, away from the heated competition of the main room and the crooning of the a cappella gospel. Not that they didn’t sound great—I love me a good bass voice—but it wasn’t exactly pumping me up. I needed less “This Little Light of Mine” and more Prodigy’s “Firestarter.”

  As in any good tournament, a trophy had to be awarded to the winner. Luckily, making trophies is one of my hidden talents. Pro tip: You can essentially make anything into a trophy as long as you have gold spray paint and a hot-glue gun.

  This is the one I made for the party:

  A jumbo can of black beans provided the necessary heft for the base, topped with a regular-size can of garbanzo beans for the second tier. The top is a dollar-store T. rex figurine. But a keen eye can see all the details that really set this homemade trophy apart from others. Upon close examination, you’ll see that the T. rex is holding its own Ping-Pong paddle—and that, my friends, is the tiny magnifying glass from a glasses repair kit. In addition to the dino having the proper sports equipment, you will also notice that he is wearing a tiny bandanna around his neck. The very same bandanna that I was rocking that night. BOOM! It is those minute details that make a five-dollar trophy something that adults will fight over.

  Competition got heated, and not just because a basement bar full of people in September is steamy as hell. We kicked off the first round of the bracket and immediately could tell that people were in it to win it. People were giving it their all—backhand serves, hard-core topspin, nonchalant nip slips for distraction. They were so hard core that I was knocked out in the first round. This is shocking for two reasons:

  1. Me losing at Ping-Pong is like the 1993 Chicago Bulls not making the playoffs.*

  AND FURTHERMORE:

  2. Who the hell doesn’t let the birthday girl win?!

  I’ll tell you who: my friend Alan. He came in wanting to win that night, and he wasn’t going to let minor details like whose birthday it was stop his momentum. Alan is hilarious. He drives an orange Vespa, has a pipe collection, plays the ukulele. In fact, he got me into playing too—so much so that we had a group that would meet occasionally and play ukuleles, sing songs together, and have cocktails. We called it Uke Group, because obviously it needed a name (my obsession with clubs never wavered in adulthood). I have a very distinct memory of us meeting in Prospect Park in Brooklyn to picnic and play our ukes when the weather finally broke to spring. There we were, a bunch of semihipster adults surrounded by containers of hummus, playing “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain” on our tiny instruments as a group of kids rode by on their bikes. We actually sang softer until the “tough kids” passed, like we were gonna get beat up by twelve-year-olds. As soon as we were in the clear, we broke into a rousing rendition of “Clambake.” Alan was nice enough to even make a website for Uke Group so we could print sheet music before meetings. Depending on when you get this book, it might even still be up: www.ukegroup.net.

  Alan’s passion wasn’t only for tiny stringed instruments. He wanted that trophy and spared no feelings for the birthday girl. I was bummed, sure, but the real job of the birthday girl is to keep the guests happy and get crunk. I watched the other rounds play out and noticed that someone else had the eye of the tiger:* my boyfriend. He was swinging that paddle like he was the long-lost Caucasian brother of the Williams sisters.

  As luck would have it, Alan and Boyfriend were the final two in the series. At this point, I was D-R-U-N-K. As the fierce opponents took their respective sides of the table, I stood in the middle addressing the crowd.

  “Listen up, ladies and germs! We have come to the championship round of my berfday Ping-Pong bonanza. The winner of this round will walk away not only with pride but also with this sweet-ass T. rex trophy that I hand-made. Gentlemen, take your positions . . . pe he he, positions . . . and play ball!”

  I felt like Cha Cha in Grease when she lifts the handkerchief to start the race.

  The match was neck and neck, the crowd watching the Ping-Pong ball like cats watching a laser pointer. There were oohs and aahs. It was like the live studio audience of Family Matters. When it came down to game point, I saw the fire in Boyfriend’s eyes. In my tipsy brain, he threw that tiny white ball in the air and slammed his serve like Roger Federer. In reality, it was probably just a normal small Ping-Pong serve, but gosh darnit, he won! He took it home!

  Unfortunately, I didn’t want to take a certain thing home, and that was the trophy I’d made. What’s the fun in creating such a dumb prize that people are vying for just to end up bringing it home yourself? I suggested we give it to Alan as a token of his hard work that night. It had been one of the greatest birthdays I’d ever had and I wanted to spread the cheer. But that wasn’t going to fly. In fact, Boyfriend was straight-up offended.

  Yeah, he and I fought for a good hour about how I didn’t appreciate him defending my honor. I can only imagine the amount of eye rolling that must’ve gone on in the driver’s seat of that cab as we argued about Ping-Pong in the back with a small golden T. rex between us, my boyfriend going on and on about honor like he was William Wallace defending Scotland! Like most drunk fights between couples, it ended with us both passing out, waking up the next day, and calling a truce mainly because neither of us could remember the fight enough to throw details in the other’s face. The fight didn’t last, but that t
rophy did. And on top of the fridge is where that T. rex lived for the next several years. It’s currently defending my honor somewhere in a storage unit.

  ’80s Prom Kickball

  Sometimes you just have to take the things you love most, smash them together, and see if it works. In the case of my twenty-third birthday, those things were kickball and ’80s prom dresses. Don’t think it makes sense? I’m sure the first person who combined peanut butter and bacon got some crazy looks from their friends. And on your birthday, of all times, why not combine two things you love while also making people bring you gifts and sing you “Happy Birthday”? It’s an unbeatable idea. Other combination parties that I could have based on this theory would be:

  1. White Wine and Watching Reruns of How I Met Your Mother

  2. Making Crafts and Eating Kraft Macaroni and Cheese

  3. Champagne and Shopping for Candles Online

  4. Spanish Tapas and Swiffering

  5. Margaritas and Masturbating

  The greatest part about unlikely combo birthdays are all the looks you get from passersby. Take a moment to imagine walking through a park: the dogs, the joggers, the two dozen drunk adults playing an intense game of kickball in taffeta (which can be extremely chafing, FYI).

  When all was said and done, our drunk Footloose-looking asses poured into a karaoke bar. Karaoke! One more thing that I love added to this birthday. Unlike my first night in New York, this karaoke session didn’t end with a chipped tooth. It did, however, end up with us being kicked out of the bar as I wore a hot pink cummerbund like Rambo.