One To Many… A Tale of Drinking Part 1

Well I am trying to go through my archives and see if there are any stories that I like to tell a lot that never made it to the blogosphere. And I have yet to find the tale of my 21st birthday in the archives. So I thought I would tell that story since it involves a large amount of a few beverages.

So May 20th 2004 was a day I had to work and I also had to work on the 21st. So the 20th I worked 8hrs and got off work. Went out paid a bill and came back to a grocery store to buy my first 6 pack of beer. But before I share that experience let me digress for a minute and talk about my first time drinking ever. I had never drank before except when I was in New York City of October of 2003 I got a little smashed on some wine while in Little Italy. On this wonderful Red Wine the name escapes me at the moment. So I stumble out of the place and laughing having a good time. The guys I am hanging out with we stumble back to the hotel and the guy I am sharing a room with says “We should ride the subway check it out while we are here” I am like “Dududue that sounds schweet lets go” so we get in the elevator go down cross the street. Go into the subway and we find a way and we pay $2 each for a pass to get on to ride for 4hrs or something. So it’s around 11pm or so or 10pm (whatever) and we somehow end up in Queens. It’s late we are two white guys and we are like umm yeah where are we. So we go down some stairs up the other side. We hear this loud thumping. Like those idiots in cars who are making themselves deaf to listen to music and show off a shitty car in hopes that some girl will be attracted to the thumping and perhaps remind them of sexy and hopefully the vibrations mean to these guys that it will vibrate so much it will get the girls panties off. But I digress. So I look over and see a “posse” of black guys getting jiggy with it.  My friend and I are trying not to be noticed in a subway station at night in a place that is alien to us. A train comes a few seconds later and we get on that. We get off in the first sign of Times Square since that is where our hotel was located. I believe it was a Monday night and we saw Virgin Records. That huge store you see when you see any footage of Times Square with the neon red bars on the front of the building.

But anyways we are still a bit tipsy from the wine and we go inside and Paul Van Dyk is spinning some techno for his new record Reflections. Good Tunes but I was amazed by the 4 floors of this store. Any genre of music on every platform. LP, CD, Tape, SACD. DVD-Audio I was like Woah! So Paul Van Dyk’s new CD gets pushed out in carts and I grab a copy and get in line. I like to think I was the 4th Person to get this CD in all of New York but I am sure that could be debated but I was 4th in line at the release party so There!

I stumble across the street back to my Hotel and Crash while listening to my new CD. My roommate for my stay in New York wasn’t much of a drinker either. So the wine hit him just as hard but I think we both slept really great that night and as always the next morning I didn’t have any negative side effects just the memory of going on the Subway getting a killer album and lots of laughs. On a side note the next day when I was at Sirius Satellite Radio HQ I was in the lobby and I saw Paul Van Dyk in person at the Studios and not speaking any German I walked over to him and asked if he would sign my CD. Which he did and I felt pretty honored to have an autographed fresh copy of his new CD.

That was my first story of drinking. But back to the first legal purchase of Beer. So I go into the store and walk over to the beer section. I don’t want to get a wine and have it suck and I am looking at the selections of beer. I didn’t know crap about it at the time not knowing what is good but the few little sips of Miller and Bud have never made me really want to try them ever again. So I got Smirnoff Triple Black. Walked up to the cashier and she checked my ID. Not being able to add or subtract like a typical cashier she had to type it in. The receipt had Happy Birthday and Be Safe! I took it home and had a drink. Realized that it was pure shit and dumped it out. So my Dad calls me and says he is taking me to get some drinks. So I am like cool sounds good alright. My Dad and I are not exactly the closest of family members but save that for a different day. So we go to the local Tribal Casino and I get carded at the door. You have to be 18+ to enter the casino and if you are not 21+ you have to wear a pink bracelet. This time I got carded and got Happy Birthday and no Bracelet. I go to enter the bar area and get carded again by a big dude in a suit. Always good times, for some reason big people in suits get a nod from me. Something about that just speaks power. The idea of a big guy in a suit beating the shit out of me if I get out of line for some reason makes me think that I am safe if someone else gets out of line. But I Digress, I sit down and the waitress cards me again so that makes 3 people all in the same building that have carded me. My Dad and his Wife order me my first drink which is a Lemon Drop. Now it came in a rather fancy glass with Sugar on the Side of the glass. Now if I recall the order you suck on a lemon, drink the liquid and then lick the sugar off the glass. Interesting experience but for some reason it didn’t gel with me that well. I like to take the time to enjoy what I am putting into myself and although it tasted good I found myself wanting another one and I don’t think it would have been like that had I gone slow but it was good.

I don’t really recall much after that other then trying different drinks of all kinds I think I had 4 and then I got taken home because I had to work the next morning. I remember riding in the car on the way home and the road was like some kind of liquid that was just really intense and coming home and just having some laughs and called some people to share in my drunken state.

Work the next day was rather slow going. Those fluorescent bulbs are not exactly easy on the eyes but make for an interesting experience. I guess I could be told that was a hangover symptom but I didn’t feel the desire to kill myself or losing my will to live or anything. So it was a negative result which I learned later I needed to consume more water that would prevent this from happening again and perhaps some aspirin or Tylenol.

So after this fun time I had to finish off that day of work and then I got the weekend off to celebrate my birthday…….

Actually lets get to the WEEKEND BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION STORY in Part 2 of One to many… A Tale of Drinking..