You Deserve a Drink: Boozy Misadventures and Tales of Debauchery

by Mamrie Hart

  One year she decided she was sick and tired of having to put on makeup every day (I guess it’s hereditary), so she done went and got it tattooed on. Yes. I do mean an actual tattoo needle went on her eyelid to give her eyeliner. By the time all the elements were finished, she had more tattooing on her face than most inmates. It actually looked nice (Still does! Hey, Aunt Audrey!), but the process sounds like some lost Saw torture.

  And Audrey somehow convinced my grandma, in a moment of weakness, to get her eyebrows filled in. Grandma Nette kept her eyebrows shaped, but she’d always have to fill them in with a pencil. Not anymore. She went for it. It was good for a couple of years—that is, until Grandma Nette stopped caring about keeping her eyebrows plucked and let them grow free. Only problem was, they were growing slightly off from where the tattoo was. The only thing worse than one set of eyebrows to maintain on your face is having to keep up with two.

  #godbless #family #justbrow’sing

  Getting a Tan

  Everyone looks better when they have a little sun kiss to them, right? Spoiler alert: I have never looked sun kissed. Ever. I’ve looked sun sexually assaulted before, but never kissed. I’m either white as a ghost or lobster red. Totally solar bipolar.

  If I’m on vacay, I always try to “lay out” at the beach. I sit there with my Corona, moving my bathing suit bottom every five minutes to see if I’m starting to show color. On the beach, it looks great. But when I go inside and shower to get ready to go out for the night, I’m redder than an embarrassed lobster.

  People say, “Well, the sun is super harsh but you can always get a little color in a tanning bed.” Trust me, I tried. Granted, this was before it was a known fact that getting into a tanning bed is basically about as safe as crawling into a jumbo George Foreman grill. When I was in high school, tanning beds were all the rage. Everybody wanted that caramel-colored, slightly burned–smelling skin for their prom dress, and my skin always paled in comparison.

  For whatever reason, the tanning bed places in my county were always tanning/video rental stores. Whoever first decided that people were missing the convenience of getting a base tan and renting Troop Beverly Hills in one place is a genius. If there were more convenient combo places like this, I would be better at grooming. Places such as:

  Eyebrow Waxing and Computer Ink Replacement Store

  Bangs Trimming and Belated Birthday Cards

  Teeth Whitening and Tire Rotations

  Luckily, I’ve grown to like being pale as a ghost. There’s something regal about it, plus it’ll prevent me from having wrinkles when I’m older. Sure, I might’ve been the pasty girl at prom, but when I roll up to my twentieth high school reunion, all those sun-kissed gals are going to look like California Raisins in cocktail dresses.

  But Even with All These Gripes, the Fact Remains . . .

  ... I still look fine as hell.

  Right in the Nuts

  Glass bottle of Coke

  ½ oz homemade grenadine

  2 oz white rum

  Salted peanuts

  For the grenadine, all you are going to need is unsweetened pomegranate juice, sugar, and half a lemon. We aren’t making that radioactive shit that people put in Shirley Temples—this is the real stuff. Take 1 cup of your unsweetened juice and put it in a saucepan over medium heat. Add ¼ cup of sugar, stir till it dissolves, then crank that puppy to a boil for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool before adding the juice from your half a lemon. Ta-da! Grenadine.

  Now, get one of those adorable glass bottles of Coke. Take a big swig out of it, then add the homemade grenadine and the white rum. Then drop in the peanuts.

  Throw in a straw and enjoy your delicious, boozy, old-school drink. Bonus: At the end you get boozy cherry-soda-infused peanuts.

  Classic me, one cocktail deep and I already got a mouthful of nuts.

  The phrase “We need to talk” in a movie usually means one of three things. If it’s a boss to an employee, your ass is fired. If it’s girlfriend to boyfriend, your ass is dumped. Parent to child, and your ass is about to get two Christmases. I got my “We need to talk” the summer of 1993.

  I am a child of divorce. I wish I could say this is traumatic and makes me unique, but these days almost half of American marriages end up in divorce. Getting hitched is basically like playing the roulette table. Both are a fifty-fifty chance of losing a shit-ton of money, but at least with roulette you have a waitress bringing you free White Russians. I am actually taken aback when I meet someone my age whose parents are still together. It’s like seeing a unicorn, or meeting a virgin on the Jersey Shore. I can’t help but think there must be something super fucked-up in their family to keep up this charade. Are both parents so closeted that this loveless marriage will go with them to the grave? Did they accidentally murder a pizza delivery guy in the early ’80s and marriage is the only guarantee that neither will rat the other out? People like to say it’s actually things like children and eternal love, but I’m willing to bet they’ve got a body in those floorboards.

  I learned that my parents were splitting up a couple of months before starting fifth grade. The summer started off normally. As far back as I could remember, my mom would take us to see my dad for a few weeks while he shot In the Heat of the Night in Atlanta. It’s true. My father was an actor when I was growing up. On this show, which ran over eight years, he was the comedic relief. His character was a goofy, sweet cop named Parker Williams. Goofy? Actor? I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Except my apple can be quickly carved into a pipe in a pinch. Anyway, I spent those eight summers on the set of the television show, terrorizing craft services and begging the hair and makeup trailer to glam me up. This year was no different, except that first we were making the trek to Texas for my mom’s family reunion, which my siblings and I all groaned about for various reasons. First pain in the ass was finding food along the way. It’s tough enough getting any nourishment while on the road, but put a pack of three picky eaters in your backseat and you’re screwed.

  My brother, Dave, who had recently discovered black hair dye and deep-rooted angst, refused to stop at any large chain restaurants that contribute to the homogenization of our vapid society, or something along those lines.

  “Well, I for one don’t know what the heck Dave just said, but I am craving the hell out of some Cracker Barrel and I think there’s one just past Charlotte off Interstate 77,” my sister, Annie, added to the mix. She was a few weeks out from having to get braces and was ready to get her corn on the cob on while she still could. Meanwhile, I was already a vegetarian and knew my meals for the next five days would consist mainly of french fries and other words that restaurants use for their version of french fries.

  There was no light at the end of the tunnel. We were driving twenty-four hours to meet a bunch of old fogies who wanted to pinch my cheeks. Even at nine years old I knew that my whole extended family was broke, so the possibility of charming prehistoric Aunt Millie and ending up in her will was nonexistent. Besides, I didn’t want to be the heir to the Mama’s Family cassettes she taped off the TV. But there was one bright spot to our trip: We were going to be staying in a hotel. And hotels had pools.

  The promise of a pool could get childhood Mamrie to do anything. If a kidnapper had approached me in a sketchy van and said, Do you like candy, little girl? I have tons of candy in this van, I would’ve asked him what type of candy he had in there and then given a manifesto on how much I hate watermelon flavor. And I had a lot of opinions about it. Like how watermelon is delicious and refreshing but watermelon flavor tastes nothing like it, how sickeningly cloying it can be, how it gave me headaches . . . I would’ve been left in a cloud of exhaust before I could finish. But if a kidnapper pulled up in a sketchy van and told me there was an inground pool in the back of his house? Forget it. Sorry, parents—call Soul Asylum to stick me in a music video, ’cause my ass is halfway to a basemen
t cage.

  In addition to us Hart kids and Mom, my aunt Debbie and cousin Josh were going to drive in their car. This would save my mom from having to have all three of us kids in the car at the same time.

  We would be meeting my aunt and cousin a few hours down the road, so the trip started with all of us piling into my mom’s Maxima. This was no ordinary Maxima, though. When my mom had gotten it new a few years back, she’d made a classic Hart move and immediately fucked it up by rear-ending another car. A parked car.

  Normally this would be frustrating, but my mom took it in stride when the guy at the garage said he could get her a deal on a new front bumper. Cut to two weeks later, my mom shows up to the garage and she’s got a mustard yellow bumper on her burgundy Maxima. It looked hideous. But since my mom is a mom and wired to bring as much embarrassment to her kids as possible, she loved it. She thought it looked like her car was smiling! So, we were the family with the yellow-bumper car.

  The trip down was surprisingly uneventful—lots of singing along to the B-52s, cheering every time we crossed a state line, and seeing who could get the most truck drivers to honk their horns. The only sliver of drama that occurred was when I found myself in my mom’s car, having left my beloved stuffed animal, Chee-Chee, in my aunt’s car. That cheetah and I were inseparable. I went on adventures with it, brought it on every trip, made watercolors of it. My brother knew that I loved this toy more than my own siblings, so he took this sweet bond and used it to torture me. One time, I walked into my bedroom and Chee-Chee was hanging from a noose from my ceiling fan. Not traumatizing at all. As soon as I realized that Chee-Chee was in Aunt Debbie’s car, it was over. Dave and Josh proceeded to reenact Rocky in the back window with Chee-Chee as I screamed in horror until my mom got my aunt to finally pull over. Mind you, this was before cell phones, so any car-to-car communication was done solely with charades. Besides that incident, we were able to get to Texas safe and sound.

  We arrived at the family reunion and proceeded to . . . ya know . . . reunion. To be totally honest, I don’t remember very much about those three days. The only things that really stick out in my brain were that I hit it off with a distant cousin who brought her Treasure Troll doll collection, and I had to constantly explain why I didn’t want to try deviled eggs.

  I’m not sure if you guys know this, but the Deep South has a serious boner for deviled eggs. Like a “call your doctor if your erection does not go down after eight hours” boner. For a region so rooted in Christianity, I find it surprising that the most scarfed-down app has the word devil in it. People cannot believe it when I say I don’t want one. And it’s not because I’m a vegan (yes, yes, I know—pelt me with chicken fingers as I beg for forgiveness), but because I think it’s a real risky move to put a bunch of people in a small church rec center and have them stuffing their faces with boiled eggs. If, God forbid, someone should light a match, the church would be left without a congregation.*

  I also got practice in the art of learning how to avoid conversations with octogenarians who want to talk about your namesake.

  Oh, the original Mamrie once saved a Confederate soldier? Well. I once conquered the six-pound burrito at Bandidos Taqueria. So suck it!

  But those interactions with the old folks weren’t all bad, considering the amount of candy I was given. A piece of taffy from Great Aunt Roberta here, some caramels from Uncle Leroy there. Seriously, why is it that all the candies aimed at senior citizens are tasty tooth extractors? It wouldn’t surprise me if Mary Janes and Bit-O-Honeys were made by a top denture manufacturer.

  Candy was all right and all, but there was a different treat that really stuck with me from that trip. The particular part of Texas we were in was known for its peanuts. Honestly, there was peanut everything. Peanut candy. Peanut barbecue sauce. Peanut-oil fried chicken. If you were a kid with a peanut allergy in this region, then you were going to be a straight-up Boy in the Plastic Bubble à la John Travolta.

  There was one southern tradition involving these legumes* that I became obsessed with. And that, my friends, is peanuts and Coke. Yep, you read that right. Peanuts and Coke.

  I can’t remember which old relative showed it to me at the reunion, but once he did, I was hooked. What you do is you take a small glass bottle of Coke, like the ones you can find at a general store,* and a single-serving pack of shelled and salted peanuts. Take a couple of swigs of Coke, then use your hand as a funnel and drop the peanuts in. It’ll fizz up for a second, but what you’re left with is a salty-sweet palate party. Your Coke is the slightest bit salty, and then when you are finished, you shake out your sweet peanuts. Sounds weird, but it turns out it’s a pretty old-school tradition from all around the Southeast. Trust me, I’ve dated boys who play the banjo, and they have confirmed it.

  Anyway! Once everyone was full and ready to part ways and fart for days, we all piled back into the smiley Maxima and were on our way. But instead of heading straight to Dad’s place in Atlanta, my mom decided to take my siblings and me to San Antonio for a few days. Having been obsessed with Pee-wee Herman since the tender age of three, all I wanted to do was go to the Alamo and ask to see the basement. We did go to the Alamo (no basement, story checks out), and we had the time of our lives eating our prepubescent weight in queso dip and swimming in the pool at the quaint little Crockett Hotel. I was all about that diving board. Endless hours were spent with my sister daring me to touch the drain in the deep end, since we had both just seen Stephen King’s It.

  On our final night, after my mom made last call on the pool, my sister and I went back to our room to start packing up our little suitcases (Dave had his own adjoining room, no doubt scouring the channels for Skinemax), when my mom told us that she “needed to talk to us about something.” Straight out of an after-school special, she sat us both down at the foot of the bed.

  Like the wonderful woman my mother is, she used every sweet, generic way to break the news of the divorce to two young girls sitting in wet swimsuits. She made sure we knew how much she and my dad both loved us, and how it was in no way our fault, but they were no longer going to be together.

  “Your dad and I are still very good friends; we just aren’t going to be married anymore. Do you understand?”

  After a few seconds that felt like months, Annie cleared her throat. My sister was known for being a drama queen (I’d seen her have a category 4 meltdown over gum in her hair), so I braced for impact. She started to speak, her voice breaking. My mom clutched her hands as she finally got the words out:

  “D-d-does this mean we get two Christmases?”

  I almost slow-clapped. My mom was so worried about us being heartbroken about the news, but Annie just got to the fucking meat of the matter. My mom seemed a little taken aback as I looked at her, waiting for an answer.

  “I’m not sure how holidays will work yet, girls. But I just want to make sure you understand everything I’m telling you. Your dad and I will no longer be together as a couple, do you understand?”

  We both looked at her with what can only be described as “naw duh” looks. That was the level of our shock—a.k.a. not very much. I think I cried for a second because you’re supposed to, you always see it in TV and movies, and if I didn’t cry, that would be weird, right? I mean, fuck. At this point in my life I can cry from a sentimental Subaru commercial, but for some reason, over-the-top emotions weren’t happening for me at that time. It’s like when you see a toddler bust his face and he just sits there dumbfounded. He’s only gonna cry if you acknowledge his fall. If a toddler falls in the woods and no one’s there to see it, trust me, that kid doesn’t make a sound.

  My parents hadn’t really lived together since I was three. My dad would come home every few months or on holidays, but he’d sleep on the couch. I didn’t know this wasn’t normal. My mom was dropping us off at my dad’s Georgia apartment, not staying and hanging out with her husband. Being a little kid, I never really caught
on that my parents had been separated for over five years. They decided to tell my sister and me when we were old enough to understand. Kind of weird? Yes. But I’ve never been a parent before, so there is no judgment. (But I will say that my parenting methods will involve a lot less wool over my kids’ eyes, and a lot more gin in my mouth.)

  So now it was all out in the open. I was one of the statistics. I didn’t need to ask if it was my fault. I didn’t need to make sure they still loved me. I didn’t need to milk this thing like an old, dehydrated cow. To prevent confusion down the road, my mom did encourage us to ask questions. I obliged, asking her things like, “When can I get back in the pool?” “What time does the pool close?” “If you remarry, do you think your new husband will have an inground pool?”

  The next day, we left San Antonio bright and early. My aunt Debbie and cousin Josh were heading back to North Carolina, so it was just us Hart kids back in the car. My mother put on her peppiest front.*

  “All right, kiddos, I really think we can make this fourteen-hour drive in one day. Who’s with me?”

  Shockingly, we didn’t hit the road with the same gusto that we had on the way down. My “honk honk” arm motions to truck drivers were in slo-mo. It was more of a “honk if you get around to it, but don’t stress yourself.” “Love Shack” didn’t have the same spirit behind it after I found out my home was no longer a shack of love. The tin roof of my parents’ hearts? Rusted. My mom did what any good parent does to cheer up her kids: took us into a convenience store and let us pick out whatever we wanted. Fuck chips. Fuck pretzels. I was getting peanuts and Coke.*

  I sat in the back of our yellow-bumpered Maxima, sipping on my treat. And hey, at least we were making good time—that is, until we heard a loud bam! Either Emeril Lagasse was cooking gumbo in our car or we’d hit a major road bump. Sure enough, it was a flat. We all piled out of the car and stood ten feet back on the shoulder as my mom attempted to fish out the spare.