FRIDAY
Friday was a hell of a day, Santa for my coworkers children at the work Christmas party, rocked a little graduation practice, then I made an ass of myself at Bdubs. I was easily the loudest mouth in the room, not an easy task when you're competing with like 50 TV's at full volume and a jukebox going in the background. Personally I didn't give a fuck though because it was my night to celebrate. I ended up drinking like 15 beers and flirting with a ton of waitresses... Then I drunkenly walked next door to the movie theater and watched Exodus. So beer and religion went together pretty well...
I wake up at like 4AM and just turn on my Ultra Groove playlist on spotify (I might add a link at the bottom if I think about it later). I lie there until the sun is coming up and realize I haven't slept more than a few hours tops. so I finally get off of my couch and get ready and roll over to campus. I've been in school 11 long years and I keep thinking to myself I started kindergarten the same way as I ended my college career, in a line single file... It's a good feeling to think that I finally accomplished something that I've been aiming towards my whole life up to this point. I've missed one semester of school since 1991 and for the record no one ever told me it would take me 23 years to finish up. During the ceremony I kept zoning out and going through a list of things in my head, things that I've went through during the pursuit of this degree, like one failed marriage, several ex girlfriends, many women, a ton of friends, two homes, two Trucks, one blue heeler. Yea it was worth it I think.
SANTACON
So my family and myself rolled out to eat right after graduation, and then I rolled up to Cincinnati for Santacon. I was running late with graduation and dinner and all. I made it about the time everyone else was completely fucked up. I get to my buddy's house and change my clothing and became "Tropical Santa" (aka Jimmy Buffet Santa) I had my beach shirt on, with some garland wrapped around my neck, a huge dollar store Christmas ornament hanging from the garland, my large straw hat, and my sunglasses. So after I get dressed I'm trying to figure out where my people are. My buddy calls me at the very least 15 times and every time ask me to hold on as soon as I answer... then when he did returned he passed the phone away to other people and I kept hearing I love yous, and congratulations, and one of the girls told me she needed a Santa to be an elf for in a slightly slurred speech pattern. My buddy knows this cabbie who I had already called to pick me up. I'm thinking while I wait I'm going to pound some gin and play a little catch up, so I finished off a half bottle of gin that I found and I hear a horn blowing out front. when I get in the cap he ends up knowing more about where they're at than I do.
When I hoped out of the taxi everyone kept saying I was their favorite Santa and that I did a great job on my outfit, and the whole time I'm just thinking "hell yea, I just wanted to wear shorts and be comfortable in a big ass crowd" and believe it or not but I was still sweating my ass off. I get in the bar and everyone is chanting my name drunker than 10 Indians, and everyone and their mom are fighting to buy me a drink. I'm thinking a guy could get use to this kind of thing.
The first person my eyes meet up with is this newly wed girl that I've had the hots for for years, she runs up gives me a great big long ass hug in her short little velvet Mrs. Clause outfit, not gonna lie I was digging it. She grabs me by the hand pulling me though the crowd to the bar orders me a drink and gives me another great big hug. I glance back though the crowd and there was my buddy's ol lady being all white girl wasted. She weaving in her seat looking at the floor, then she looks up and sees me and parts the crowd for her own great big congratulatory hug, and she started handing me pocket candy canes, so I'm standing here in the bar licking candy canes trying to figure out if they have plastic on them or not... I'm sure it was an odd site to anyone watching, thinking we were licking some kind of weird toad type candy. After about 5 minutes I just say fuck it and throw them in my drink. I finally see my buddy sitting off to the side, He's drunker than 10 Indians, and he's trying to tell me something about my graduation present and how he has no idea what happen to it. I personally thought it was amazing that the zoo keeper (aka: Big Boobies McGee) showed up after I got drunk and accidentally/drunkenly kept feeling her up about a year ago (for the record I was really interested and I thought she was too). She actually bought me a couple drinks talked too me for like 20 minutes and ask me if one the pictures in the bar was a girl with her "O" face. Not gonna lie I thought that was awful damn classy of her. Then there was also one of the twins, the one that I saved from the creeper back last month sometime, she bought me some drinks as well. Some red headed dick was there as well, I didn't know this guy but he was moving in on my territory. He kept telling these dumb fuck jokes and tearing snowflakes off the bar room ceiling... My Buddy and myself turn our attentions to this penguin wearing Mrs. Clause, we're all chatting it up and my buddy leans over and whispers something too her and she gives us the finger and doesn't say another word (not actually sure what he said). Needless to say I had enough booze in me to float a battle ship.
We rolled out to the next place which just happen to be a pizza place, I'm wondering around the place chatting it up with all the other Mrs. Clauses. My buddy ends up buying every slice of pizza that they have left and we mow though it, and his ol lady comes in for a bite of his pizza and gets denied well next thing I know I'm hearing the jaws music and shes about crust deep on my pizza...
Next thing I know we've crossed the river and we're on our way to another bar. we're all borderline messed up and it's only like 6, as in 6pm... The bar we're in starts playing that song fireball on repeat (a great marketing mimic now that I think about it) and my buddy's ol lady and the twin buy me some shots of fireball whiskey. This is the point in the night where I know things are about to get real. The twin leaves for a bit (later I found out she got sick) and this older woman comes up and starts dancing with me and my buddy's ol lady and she says "you guys just look like you're having soooooo much fun, I had to come and join!" we were having a pretty damn good time.We roll out to the patio and this is when things start to get right with the world, I've hit the drunken version of the singularity, Lost somewhere between god and man. I'm starting to bellow out Biz Markie - just a friend (because that's what a god/man would do of course). Everyone starts to join me with my drunken chorus. The Zoo Keeper ol dude and The Red Headed Dick show up out of the blue, while I'm telling some weird dude walking the streets to go fuck himself. The Twin ends up giving me a whole glass of what I thought was beer until I started drinking it. It turned out to be some hard cider which tasted like candy, and added fuel to the fire. The Red Headed Dick said something smart ass to me (or so I assume) and I ended up telling him that people who say those kinds of things back home end up going and fucking themselves... That dude didn't say a word to anyone the rest of the night. So after telling off The Red Headed Dick I'm stumbling down the street singing to the top of my lungs that Biz Markie song again, and I can here people chanting it behind me. I find this barrel laying on its side being used as a planter and I ended up yelling "watch me ride this bull" so there's a picture and possibly a video of that floating around... and I made the girls jump in the fountain (it was dry...)
On to the next bar, we roll in and I don't know if they never mop the floor or what be I've never been in there when I've not had to focus on keeping my damn loafers on. So I'm looking around and I see this short woman walking buy and I yell "HEY GIRL!!!" and she turns and looks at me and walks over to my buddy and myself. She's giving us both the "loopy sex me up" eye and she starts yelling at my buddy "SHUT UP AND FUCKING HOLD ME" then she looks at me and says "All of my men got put in jail tonight..." and to be completely honest I had no idea what that meant other than some people were serving jail time. Then she whispers something that I couldn't hear and she draws back and punches my buddy right in the face completely unsolicited to my knowledge. Then she turns to me and put her right hand on my man tit and her head old my chest and starts molesting me all soft like. Well when she gets finished she looks at me and says "Hey lets go the the bar that's in the back" and I'm all like "Ok, after you" I take three steps and do a 180 and step back up the bar. The bar starts to play Kid Cudi - pursuit of happiness (which I love) I start dancing and I see this short haired woman walk up and dance with some of my friends, so I've got this idea "Just move up on her and dance" so I did and her husband steps in... not gonna lie that dude absolutely loved me, I told him about the lady that punched my buddy and molested me and we we're automatic bros. Then we saw her stumbling back though the bar and we all start squealing like small children scared shitless of something. It was weird.
My buddy and myself walk out to the opening in between bars and I look back and see this strange woman again apparently she got kicked out of the bar and she was trying to get back in the side door of the bar. She's pulling really hard on the door and looses her grip and tumbles over some steps and she's just laying here on the walkway, and I'm thinking "should I check on her or should I keep walking" and before I finish the though I see her legs and arms go in the air and start twitching like some cockroach that got stunned under a shoe. I see the rest of our group and I start yelling "omg, look!!! look!!! look!!!" and they all give me high fives and don't realize what I'm even trying to get them to look at and where does she go when she's back to her feet??? straight for me and my buddy... So we took off running and got inside the next bar before she got to us...
So we're in the next bar and my buddy is ordering me a drink and we see this line of cougars. well the first one in the row makes eye contact and I hand her my large Christmas ornament and my buddy starts yelling "FEEL HIS BALL" and I yell "SHAKE IT SOFTLY" and all the cougars shake my ball while I'm making this god awful face... I glance over and I see The Read Headed Dick playing Golden Tee, FUCKING GOLDEN TEE... I mean why even come to the bar??? I guess I scared the hell out of him him when I told him to go fuck his self. I ended up wondering off to the patio for a breather, and then everyone else follows me outside. I get to watch a drunken rendition of Journey - Don't Stop Believin' with the choreography of my buddy's ol lady, then he burst though the door and called me Connie Chung, I really didn't know how to take that, still don't to be honest.
We finely decided to roll out, so we get in the taxi and my buddy's ol lady and the twin are yelling at the taxi driver to go though the drive though and he tells us its against policy, and I've personally never saw this before but my buddies ol lady gets so pissed off she blacks out and angerly sleeps to the next bar. While the twin is getting all angry from hunger pains. So we get to the next bar and my buddy and me roll in like a couple of rock stars straight to the bathroom, and his ol lady and the twin have to sit outside to catch their breath for like 30 minutes... They finally roll in, and my buddy and the twin get in a hat fight with my hat and my buddy flings it across the room and you would have though he just called my mom the biggest whore in town, I was flipping out "DAMN IT, GO GET MY HAT... GO GET MY HAT, ASS..." well some girl picks it up and says she's going to keep it and I ended up telling her you can because it's a family heirloom (yea my 2 buck goodwill hat is a family heirloom... my dad wore it when he crossed the border...) so she's freaking out going "OMG OMG, I'LL GIVE IT BACK IN A FEW MINUTES" so she does and when I get it back I lay it on the bar in front of me, the twin is looking at it really intently, then she says "omg I've got to fix your hat" and she starts reweaving the straw. So I'm sitting here watching this twin I'm really attracted too re-weave a dollar store hat... I was enamored with the process and couldn't look away until I noticed that my buddy's ol lady's head was face down into the bar top, then I started yell "SHE'S DOWN, SHE'S DOWN!!!" The twin and my buddy's ol lady tell me their leaving and I let them know I'll wait for my buddy, so they stumble out the bar while we pound a couple more drinks, then we leave like 10 minutes later.
We're stumbling down back alleys, pissing on garage doors and singing/mumbling sea chanties. I look down and I see this strange colored cloth and I realize it's the twin's elf hat so I snatch it up and put it in my pocket. I feel like we're walking slow as molasses, and then in the darkness I see a thin elf and a onesie that looks like a Santa outfit... I'm thinking to myself "what the fuck..." there's no way we should have caught up with them... either we sprinted (which sure fucking didn't happen) or they fell face down in the alley for a while... So we're back at the house and I decided to be proactive and pour everyone a glass of water, well the twin doesn't want hers and my buddy's ol lady is too drunk to drink it, so I ended up drinking all three glasses. My buddy's ol lady is basically mumbling to the floor at this point so they go on to bed which leaves me and the twin in the kitchen. We chat it up for a bit, She tells me about her dog and such, and then she tells me she has to go and look at her as sober as the Pope and ask "You sure you're ok to drive, lady???" and she says she is, but I still kind of wondered. honestly I was hoping she would say and we could put in a movie or something but it didn't happen. I walk to the living room and put in trains, planes, and automobiles, I pass out by the end of the opening sequence.
THE NEXT MORNING
So the next morning rolls around and I wake up on the couch as fresh as a daisy felling like a champion because I drank everyone's water the night before. I walk over to my buddies speakers and put on my Ultra Groove playlist and enjoy my morning with Al Green. My buddy and his ol lady get up a couple hours later and we all sit down and watch the Bengals play with my graduation present that didn't get misplaced, a bottle of my favorite booze in the world (Bird Dog Whiskey). we're mixing drinks and mixing drinks and mixing more drinks and before I realize we've drank and entire bottle of whiskey between the two of us just sitting in the floor watching football on a Sunday (aka: Sunday Funday). In the next 4-5 hours I run the gambit from drunk to sober to hungover, to ready to do it all again... I also have a graduation dinner at City Bbq somewhere during the hungover portion and I found a scarf and used it as a turban in the back seat of my buddy's ol lady's car... It was a good weekend.
GOING HOME
I sometimes roll out of my buddies house at 5am so I can make it back home and to work by 8am and this time was no different, other than I noticed that the river was a little calmer than usual, it was so still that you could see a perfect reflection of Cincinnati in the river, and it kind of reminded me of what a truly great life I live. I'm lucky to have a place like Ludlow to go hang out with friends and have misadventures, I'm lucky to see the river with that reflection of Cincinnati in it, I'm lucky to get to watch the sun come up over the AA Highway on my way home. I'm just a lucky dude in general....
