ChamPAIN Tuesday

I love champagne. I used to stock bottles of my favorite vintage in my fridge, just for a pick-me-up on a bad day (drinking problem much?). So when my friends and I found out that a bar downtown was having unlimited champagne on Tuesday nights for $25, served out of a giant bathtub by a midget in a pirate suit (don't ask me why), we obviously made immediate plans to go.

As I should have earlier anticipated, the night turned into an absolute shitshow. Apparently a case of champagne + my friends + a midget= just a complete and utter disaster.

Since this is Manhattan and we pretty much can't go anywhere without running into someone that one of us has slept with, of course this guy that bestie R may or may not have had sex with, Vanilla, walked into the bar. It turns out that he was there for his girlfriend's birthday party. The second Vanilla spotted R, he looked like he wanted to poop his pants and appeared constipated for the remainder of the night.

The girlfriend and her friends were clearly not fans of ours after they figured out the situation, which resulted in a little bit of a turf war. Thus, on top of the readily available champagne, we drank even more in an attempt to combat the awkwardness. This accounts for the multiple blackouts that occurred later that night.

I thoroughly blame the midget for what ensued. He took a hankering to me, so much so that at some point when I indicated my glass was empty, he responded by blowing a raspberry on my belly button. Luckily I was sufficiently inebriated and did not respond by kicking him in the balls. The (maybe) positive outcome of his affinity was that my glass was rarely empty, since he kept topping me off.

I noticed that Vanilla was nearby talking a very, very cute boy, so I injected myself into the conversation by discussing the baseball game that was on TV. The moment Vanilla's girlfriend saw him casually talking to me and R, she came over to claim him and give us dirty looks.

The boy and I hit it off, which really wasn't a hard task since at this point in my drunkenness I could have hit it off with a bar stool. When R asked him what year he had graduated from college, he told her 2010, which raised some eyebrows since that would mean he's still in college. He then corrected himself and said 2008, and red flags should have gone off, but once again, I wasn't thinking clearly.

S and R decided it was time to take shots, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but I have come to the conclusion now that hard alcohol and champagne DO NOT mix. This, of course, made us even rowdier than we were before. I have little doubt that we were the loudest, most obnoxious people in a twenty block radius.

Very very drunk at this point, I found out that the boy's apartment was a block away, which was much closer than mine and so I announced to him that I was staying over but he wasn't getting any. His reply was less than enthusiastic, but I don't think he realized that I meant it. Or maybe he was just optimistic.

I don't know what it is about me that makes guys lie about their age, but it's definitely a recurring theme in my life. Curious about the boy's vagueness about his graduation year, I asked him how old he was.

Him: Er, 25.

Me: Really, so what's your birth date?

Him: October 4, 1984.

Me: Really?

Him: Uh, yeah.

Me: Well, show me your ID.

Him: Why?

Me: Because I don't believe you. If you're telling the truth and that's really your birth date, I'll have sex with you right now.

Him: No....

Me: Why not?

Him: I just don't feel like getting my ID out.

Me: I may not know much about guys, but I know this much. If you are not willing to do something effortless like pull out your ID for the guarantee of sex, then you are clearly lying.

Him: Fine....I'm 23 1/2. I didn't want to tell you how old I am because I know girls like you and you wouldn't talk to me if you knew how old I am. You think you're so cool just because you're older.

I made a mental note to remember this conversation so I could tell my friends and make fun of the fact that he still counts his age in half years and then crawled into his bed, entirely intent on going to sleep, and hoping that the morning-after hangover wouldn't be terrible, when he kissed me. I was exhausted, but figured that a little making out couldn't hurt. Boy, was I wrong.

In his over enthusiasm while we were making out, he ended up tossing me off his bed. I am a little fuzzy on how it went down, but I landed on my foot and ended up howling in pain on his floor. Drunk with a throbbing foot, I demanded he bring me painkillers and a glass of water and then was so annoyed that I wouldn't let him touch me again and went to sleep.

In the morning, he woke up to go to work, awkwardly gave me his phone number, and left me alone in his apartment. When I woke up a few hours later, the hangover hit me like a brick wall and I found myself prostrate in his bathroom puking my guts out with my foot swollen to twice its normal size and black and blue.

I called S to let her know that I was still alive and the zygote had not kidnapped me, but that I was trapped in his apartment because I couldn't walk and I was seriously sick. After laughing at my predicament, S responded by yelling, "You're still at his apartment? Go home! Grab a plastic bag, steal one of his socks to wear over your broken foot, get your shit together, and get in a cab. If you puke in the cab, you puke in the cab. We've all been there. Just get the hell out of there!"

I did as she said (minus the sock-stealing) and eventually stopped puking long enough to limp my way out of his apartment and literally hop into a cab. The entire ride home I kept repeating to myself, "Don't puke. Just make it home and then you can puke. Just make it home. Then puke." I was a hot mess: nauseous, hair a disaster, clothes wrinkled, pants unbuttoned, hobbling on my left foot. My doorman took one look at me and burst out laughing.

I spent the remainder of my day dividing up time between the bathroom and my couch where I iced my foot and tried to keep it elevated to lower the swelling.

I called my soon-to-be-doctor friend T to get his advice and he reassured me that my foot wasn't broken but it sounded like I had severely torn a ligament so it would take a few weeks to fully heal. And then he asked me if this was a sex injury. I laughed outright and told him this was absolutely not a sex injury to which he responded:

"Well then it serves you right. When you go home with a guy, that is a verbal agreement that you are going to have sex with him. You didn't follow through on your side of the bargain and so you got punished with a sprained foot. That's a fact."

And shockingly enough, even taking into account my limp and the fact that my friends have started calling me "Gimpy," I was not the worst off on Wednesday. Girlfriend A woke up on her floor, fully clothed, in a puddle of vomit, covered by a slew of bruises and cuts of indeterminable origin. After careful examination, we have reached the hypothesis that she fell into a bush on her way home, before getting sick and passing out on her floor.

To sum up, what did I learn on ChamPAIN Tuesday?

1) There's a reason the word "pain" can be heard in "champagne."

2) Champagne and hard alcohol together are astronomically evil.

3) A midget pouring champagne in a pirate costume is just as ridiculous and extraneous as it sounds.

4) Boys lie about their age all the time.

5) When you renege on agreements by going home with a guy and then not sleeping with him, you will be punished with physical injury; in my case, a bruised foot and the inability to walk normally for the next few weeks.

But clearly I haven't learned my lesson because as soon as the foot heals, we're definitely going back again.

Bring on the (cham)pain!