Bringin' it Down from the Attic

(I found this while writing about the current New Years, snack on it while I finish the current one up)

Over the last six years there are only three New Years Eves that I can actually remember. One rang in the year 2000, when the world didn't explode like everyone predicted, and another was last year's dignity holocaust that was the Disney Cruise. The worst, the one that is a serious black mark on my list of holidays, will always be New Years of 2003. I was somehow reminded of this at the bar the other day and relived the nightmare during my seven-ish hours of drinking with Jennifer Jones and her friend Brad. It was just as embarrassingly entertaining as I'd remembered before trying to permanently purge it from my memory years ago, but since it's brought down from the attic, let's pass it around.

The winter in mention, I had been dating a girl for over a year. She was very conservative and sweet (I love how any time you call a girl "conservative" it obviously insinuates that she constantly shot down any attempt at anal sex), but was extremely emotionally fragile. That New Years we decided to go to one of those hotel parties in Northern Virginia where you pay $150 and get a room and a ticket to drink as much as you can before the ball drops. These parties are always lame because you end up getting a drink and then walking immediately to the end of the line to wait in it for another. This night had gotten off to a bad start earlier because my girlfriend's friend was being a cranky bitch and trying to ruin the night for everyone, just because we couldn't get reservations at Outback Steakhouse. We got back to the hotel, changed, did a little pregaming, and headed down to the hotel basement / dance floor / open bars and started to drink. And drink. And drink. We forced as much liquor down before Midnight as possible and counted down the ball drop.

That marks the beginning of a chunk of about two hours that I don't remember.

The next thing that I do actually remember, is standing in the hall outside of my hotel room dressed in only my boxers and feeling like my bladder was going to explode momentarily. Then hearing the door click shut behind me. I had gotten out of bed to piss and opened the wrong door. The VERY wrong door. The hall was filled with people in suits and dresses, and one practically naked drunk idiot pounding on his hotel room door and screaming the word "Kristin." There was no response from within. She was completely passed out just as I had been until the gravity of the situation had slammed me back into consciousness.

The pain in my bladder was becoming so crippling that I needed a game plan, and it was becoming quickly apparent that getting back into my hotel room was not in the cards. I looked around, and chose the lesser of several evils; I sprinted down four doors and pissed in the stairwell. That's actually not entirely true. As I was making a pond on the very open, very concrete, and very echoey stairwell floor, I heard a door open a few floors above and the steps start to come down. I pinched off the stream and headed down another set of stairs, ending at the ground floor. There were only two doors. One led back into the hallway system, the other led outside. It wasn't like I could throw open the first door and hose down the hallway, so I opened the door to the parking lot, looked around, and seeing that the coast was clear, I quickly stepped outside and started pissing again, now on the side of the hotel.

*Click*

I had just managed to lock myself out of the entire building. There I stood, in a hotel parking lot off of Route 50 in Fair Oaks, in my boxers, in the middle of January. I had no choice but to walk back in through the front of the hotel before my limbs started breaking off from frostbite. So I did. I put my tail between my legs and marched right into the front of the hotel, straight into a crowd of people in dresses and suits waiting for their taxis. It felt like I stood in their jaw-dropped gaze for three full hours while no one budged. I pointed towards the front desk.

"Excuse me."

I parted the Red Sea of partygoers and marched up to the desk, which formed the border of one side of the crowded lobby. I tried to ignore the mild snickering.

Lady: "Can I help you?"

Me: "I, obviously, need another key to my room."

The two guys next to me gave me the once over in disbelief. She made me another key and I walked over a ways to where the elevator was, and waited for half a minute while I could feel everyone pointing through my back. The elevator was coming up from the basement, and was full. By this point I was almost immune to the reactions. It opened, and I got in with several other people.

Guy: "Hey so you...... uh..."

Me: "I sleepwalk."

Guy: "OH! Oh. ok. "

I got off at my floor and got into my room. I was still totally wasted and now furious that my girlfriend hadn't woken up to me pounding on the door. Obviously, it wasn't her fault. At all. But I guess subconsciously, if my New Years was getting ruined I wasn't going down in flames alone. I berated her into tears about why she didn't answer the door; she kept apologizing for something that wasn't her fault. Then came the instructions to "Go to bed. Leave me alone" once she was worked up and I was again ready to pass out. What a dick. The next morning was one of those "let's just not talk about it" decisions, which I was more than ok with.

Seriously, who would want to discuss a night of utter humiliation? Not me.