Happy...New Year?

It was the last day of 1982. I was 15.3 years old and dumb as shit. Without benefit of any measurable wisdom or possession of a fully formed brain, my head was a labyrinth of Swiss cheese and painfully slow synapses firing at about the rate of a snail oozing down a dry sidewalk in the noon day sun. This, however, did not stop me from forming a plot. A plan. A wicked proposal to bestow upon my parents a fabrication so transparent it could have been arrested for indecent exposure. A huge mistake.

I was a grade-A, semi-professional fibber and usually got away with it. But my inflated teenage ego and cheese brain didn't seem to grasp the idea that this was New Year's fucking Eve and I was at the prime age to get myself into big ass trouble. Of which my father knew better. Much better than I. He was wrapped around my finger but no dummy when it came to me, a holiday known for debauchery, and the liquor cabinet. This nights points would all go to dad. And then some.

By the time I was a sophomore in High School I hadn't had much experience with booze. A childhood of sipping drinks from my parents and one super-lame episode of taking miniscule tastes of Gin, Vodka and Scotch, all from square tupperware containers covered in saran wrap snuck out of a friends house. Then "acting" as if wasted from a negligible amount of alcohol. All at the tender age of stupidlevin. So it was fair to say I didn't know what the fuck I was doing.

At that time in my life I was bff's with a girl who lived directly across the street. A strange girl named Debbie who was lost in the middle of a large blended family of insane step-siblings, insane full siblings, one unfortunate product of the marriage, and bizarre absentee parents who drove matching Mercedes and kept very large sex toys on their dresser. This family was the talk of the neighborhood and hanging out at their house was like being in a live-action soap opera. It was great.

Debbie was one year my junior but a total gamer. In fact, she'd grow up to be a much bigger gamer than me, although her weekend habits came with a huge dose of crazy. One episode was so heinous that I was through with her after witnessing one particularly bad screaming freak-out over nothing. But on this night Debbie and I were still tight and decided that since both sets of parents were going to be out for the night we'd do some of our own partying.

Debbie was already at my house to play some "board games" and witnessed the warning speech I received from my dad. Before my parental units had left for their shindig my father looked me right in the face and said, "Betty. Do not touch the alcohol. Betty. Do you hear me? Do. Not. Touch. The. Alcohol. BETTY! You're not going to touch the alcohol are you? DON'T TOUCH THE ALCOHOL!!"

I batted my eyelashes and clicked my tongue, cocked my head sideways and with righteous indignation said, "Like, oh mah gawd, Dad. Like NO WAY. Like, I don't even like like the taste of Al-Coh-Haul. Like, COME ON. NO WAY. JEEZE."

And he smirked at me wearing a disbelieving "uh huh, right" look on his face and with an air of suspicion told me to be a good girl and they'd see me later. My mother never said a word but I'm sure they'd talked about it. They proceeded to leave in a cloud of Chanel No. 5 and Old Spice and left me alone with Debbie and a liquor cabinet stuffed to the edges with bottles. No good could come of this.

Before we got down to the business of being very stupid I needed to prepare myself. I'd heard something about not drinking on an empty stomach and devised another brilliant plan to line my guts with what I thought would be the perfect antidote to the drinking I was planning on doing. So I scarfed down a huge toasted bagel loaded with three quarters of a brick of cream cheese. Did you know dairy totally curdles in a system drowning in booze? Neither did I.

After my really smart dinner we opened the cupboard and chose our poison. Vodka.

Straight Vodka.

After deciding that it tasted like rubbing alcohol and burned the first layer of skin off my tender lips we got a little inventive. First we added some orange juice then mixed it with some Coke. Ah, OK, now we're getting somewhere. I was still pretty full from that bagel but you can't just sit around and drink without having some appetizers, right? A few green olives, some left-over Christmas cookies and a few sweet pickles. Perfect.

After we'd consumed Jebus knows how much Vodka we decided to go gallivanting around the neighborhood. What a perfect way for 2 teenage girls to spend New Years Eve. Traipsing up and down dark streets without anyone knowing where we were. This plan was getting even more genius by the minute.

We went over to Debbie's house first where we discovered her insane slightly molesting older step brother had swiped an unopened bottle of Triple Sec and hid it in his closet. Thanks to her hooligan weird little brothers, they'd stolen the bottle from the older brother and gave it to us. They were in for quite the ass-pounding later on but for now it was all ours. I'd never heard of the stuff but it looked OK and I'd pretty much numbed my taste buds to nothing by now anyway so what the hell, crack it open and let's give it a try.

More drinking ensued, but we didn't feel like hanging out with 2 annoying grade school boys who's idea of a good time was farting in our faces so Debbie thought it would be fun to go hang out at another kids house somewhere in the neighborhood.

Now, mind you, when I say "somewhere in the neighborhood" I'm not talking about a quaint little area where your friends live a stones throw away. We didn't reside in little houses all nestled together like sardines in a can. Every house was huge, they sat on lots anywhere from 1 to 3 acres, we didn't even have sidewalks, and it was hilly. Really fucking hilly.

I didn't really know who this chick was except she was also a freshmen and after we got to her place I realized it was the same house who'd found my runaway doggie a couple years before and planned on keeping her and totally ignored the lost dog sigs we'd plastered all over a 5 mile radius. Except I'd found out they had her by accident when I was crying about it on the bus and some kid heard me talking and told me their neighbor had found a dog like that so I didn't like this girl out of principal because the hell? Tried to keep my fucking puppy. Didn't stop me from raiding her parents liquor cabinet, though.

Let's take a count of consumed drinks, shall we? There'd been anywhere from 2 to 9 shots of Vodka consumed at my house. We'd each taken many hearty swigs of Triple Sec at Debbie's house then proceeded to drink more from the bottle as we walked the thousand miles to the dog nappers house. So that makes...um...2 very drunk teenagers.

Now, since our Swiss Cheese Very Stupid brains were floating around in our dumb heads on a sea of booze, we thought it would be cool to drink some more. As we stared at all the bottles to choose from someone, I will not take credit for this although I don't remember who came up with it, said, "Let's make Suicides." Then someone, again, I will not take cop to this, asked, "What's a Suicide?" And it was told by someone, I don't know who, that a Suicide was a drink consisting of all the liquors you have. Brilliant.

We fished through the kitchen and found the perfect containers for our refreshment. Giant plastic cups the size of a claw-foot bathtub. Someone began pouring. A splash of this, a glug of that, a drop, a snort, a recipe for fucking disaster that's what that was. We raised our Very Bad Idea's Suicide's in the air, toasted the holiday, and began to drink. I'm sure I proclaimed it tasted great but really, at that point you could have served me a steaming pint of dog shit and I would have thanked you kindly for the sweet elixir.

As my eyes began to swim in my head Debbie and I bailed on the beotch and managed to stumble back to her house, where we found ourselves standing outside her bedroom window swaying in front of the bushes and trying to figure out how we were going to get our drunk asses back in. A karate chop was executed and a screen was murdered and we sommersaulted through the opening onto her floor laughing like morons.

Things get really fuzzy from here but I distinctly remember her evil little brothers coming in to the very spinny room and yelling about how bad I stunk then force-feeding me toothpaste straight from the tube to mask the smell of the 4 gallons of rotgut I'd consumed. Debbie was nowhere to be found so I can only imagine what she was up to. And I think I kissed a dog on the mouth.

I woke up, passed out, woke up, spun in a tight circle, passed out, woke up, watched a giant poster of a crashing wave threaten to drown me, then hauled my wasted self to the open window where I hurled a technicolor yawn onto the nextdoor neighbors iceplant 10 feet away. I think there was a sonic boom reported about the same time.

The next morning, after a fitful, sloshy sleep, I woke up next to Debbie, both of us fully clothed in dirty pants and puke-stained shirts and felt like someone had put a foot up my ass, poured lighter fluid and battery acid down my throat, threw fiberglass into my eyes, stuffed my ears with a thousand tiny crashing cymbals, put my nipples into a set of jumper cables, lined the insde of my shoes with thumbtacks, rolled a cement block across my back, pulled both arms out of their sockets, and ran over my entire head with a tour bus full of fat fucking frenzied Falco fans.

I quickly prayed for death than changed my mind and opted to guzzle a glass of tepid tap water from a dirty bathroom sink instead and started the trek home. 2 minutes later as I was barfing that entire glass of water on Debbie's driveway, and pushing my eyeballs back into my skull, I was forming a dazzling lie to tell my parents. Food poisoning. Yes! That's what this clearly was. They'll buy that for sure.

I dragged my corpse up the 90 degree hill that was my side of the street and through the kitchen door where I was greeted by my mother who just slowly shook her head at me as I stammered something through my drooling maw that sounded normal inside my pounding head but came out reminiscent of a belching bullfrog being squeezed through a keyhole.

Gaaaaaarrrrrr bluuuuurgh raaaalllllloooooob. I'm sick.

She looked at my bruised face and ratted hair. Surveyed the purple circles crawling across my eyes like rabid slugs and gave a sniff of suspicion towards my walking-distillery self. Then she sent me to bed where I remained until dinner time alternately shaking and sweating with a few trips to the toilet where my body wretched and heaved until every drop of moisture was expelled through a variety of orifi.

No one came to check on me the whole day which normally would have concerned me because, wtf? I had food poisoning here. But I was so sick and slightly worried that I might die at any moment so I didn't much notice the absence of parental concern. About 6:00, our normal dinner time, I was called to the table. I tried to refuse but my mother was adamant. Get your ass in here NOW.

I shuffled down the hallway trying to keep all of my skin from sliding off and within a few steps the overwhelming aroma of some nasty Italian concoction smashed me square in the face. You might have well stuck a clove of garlic up my nose and simmered the house in tomato sauce.

I gingerly sat down at the table where my father was already seated, clenching his jaw and sending a steaming stream of fury my way. I was 90% retarded at this point and still didn't get it. Had no idea my jig was long up. Until my mother sat a piping hot, greasy, cheese smothered, dripping, repulsive, the most disgusting food I've ever seen something she'd never made before and never made again, plate of oily pungent putrid chicken parmesan in front of me.

It was a red nightmare.

That I had to eat.

She made it.

To gross me out.

On purpose.

It worked.

I sighed and held my taxed tummy and took a bite. Chewing with a half-hearted effort I attempted to ignore the flavor explosion in my mouth. A mouth that should have avoided any and all food for at least 24 hours. A mouth that was ready to give up solids forever.

I managed to gulp a few bites down before I gave my mother the saddest most sincere Bambi eyes I could muster and breathlessly begged to be excused. My father continued to fume and was about to deny my request when my mother pulled an extremely uncharacteristic move of actually being on my side and throwing me a bone of sympathy, of which I can literally count on one hand in my whole life that she's done this, and laser-beamed my dad across the table. Before he could squeak a word out she let me go back to bed, leaving the congealing mess of a dinner behind.

I slept for 12 hours straight and gingerly approached my mom the next day since she wasn't chopping me into tiny pieces with one look like my dad was. She barely held back her laughter and asked me if I really expected them to believe my cacamamie story and by the way, dad MARKED THE BOTTLES YOU IDIOT CHILD.

I was shocked! She also told me that my dad was so mad he'd gone on and on the whole day hoping that I'd puke again and again and again. I was pissed about that for a long time but I get it now. How could I have been so stupid? Swiss cheese brain, that's how. Stupid, dumb, botarded 15 year-old asshat Swiss cheese damn brain. Stupid.

I waited a whole year before I did that again.