This weekend I had dinner with a couple friends who happen to be blog fans and they requested some scandal. Apparently my current happy state is not even remotely as entertaining as the insanity of my past. Imagine that. I am unwilling to create drama with Chet merely to amuse my readers, but luckily for all of you I have plenty of old scandal left to share. Here is my story of how I decided that I should quit drinking Jack Daniels when I went out. Enjoy.
For the record, Jack has been good to me for the most part through my sinning years. I am not a beer drinker, never have been, and Jake and Coke pretty much came along on all my single lady adventures. I am also not really a huge drinker, but singlehood is a time in life where I found myself drinking more - not because alcoholism and singles go hand in hand - but because I simply socialized a ton more than when I was in a relationship. Staying in and watching movies all weekend with a significant other while shunning the world = adorable and fantastic. Staying in and watching movies all weekend with yourself while shunning the world = antisocial and depressing.
Until about six months ago, Jack was always easy going down and smart enough to be gone the next day when I opened my eyes with no unpleasant aftertaste or headache. Then he started to turn. Originally, I thought it was simply a strange, random event. I never get hungover when I drink Jack....maybe I was just already slightly sick and partying brought the rest of it all on? Maybe I was really tired and it made me sick? Because I was certain it wasn't Jack, so certain that the thought never even crossed my mind that I was hungover.
The next strange, random event on Jack left me with memory holes. (Maybe Jack was just being good to me still and erasing all the bad spots of the night?) Unfortunately, I remembered enough to know I let a semi-stranger drive me home and abandoned my two other friends in a (very) misguided attempt to hook them up. Not my most shining moment. (But Mom, I promise I didn't let him in....no worries.) This time it was harder to convince myself that Jack was still being true to me. I made a half hearted vow to lay off the whiskey for a while until I learned how to behave. That was not entirely successful.
The crowning glory of my Jack Daniels saga starts with my friend......Sasha. Sasha and I are wine buddies. We like to go out to a local restaurant and commandeer a table for a few hours while we talk and drink a few glasses. Usually we are pretty good about having a few and then laying off before heading on our merry way home. Usually. This night does not fit that criteria however. About eleven o'clock or so, Sasha and I drained the last of our wine and asked for our checks. We had every intention of stopping and being good. Then a pair of men showed up at our table - men that had gone to school with Sasha and wanted to catch up.
Now, just as background, Sasha is much more my mother's age than mine - although you would never know it if I hadn't just told you. It makes no difference in our friendship, but it is relevant in this story because the two men we are chatting with graduated with her - making them in the same age bracket as my parents as well. And these two men have a very obvious wing man scenario going on from the moment they sit down. While Bachelor #1 tries to pick up Sasha, Bachelor #2 and I chat and I discover that he actually knows my best friend's dad. (One more icky connection that still haunts me) Guys being guys, they insist that Sasha and I need more wine....and Sasha and I are just happy enough to go along with it. A few glasses later and we all have a burning desire to go dancing.
Dancing. As in..Midland St. Pub dancing. Me and Sasha and the two Bachelors. Both, let me remind you, who are old enough to have played with my dad as kids. Of course, I can't drink wine at the Pub so Bachelor #2 is happy enough to provide me with as many Jack and Coke's as I can hold - and as soon as my hand is empty, it is refilled. Obviously, Bachelor #2 is no gem. I survive without serious mishap until last call - where we all decide it is way too early to go home, so we head for a local dive bar where Sasha bullies our way into the room and convinces the bartender to keep us knee deep in drinks for a little while. We continued to dance all around this dive bar and sing along loudly and obnoxiously to the juke box well after everyone else had left. At this point, I had lost most of my dignity, but the worst was still to come.
As we leave the bar, Bachelor #2 offers to drive me home. Keep in mind that I have a perfectly good ride home with Sasha - who actually has my stuff already in her car. I even go so far as to get in her car - just to hop out and join the Bachelors in their truck. Sasha assumes I know what I am doing and heads home. I deeply, deeply regret that I did not drive away with her in that car. Deeply. Deeply. Regret.
When I wake up the next morning, my memories from that point forward are a slide show movie. I just have flashes of memories. A string of picture moments in chronological order. Singing along with the radio at the top of my lungs in the back of the Bachelor truck. Insisting that I needed to use Bachelor #1's bathroom before I'd let Bachelor #2 drive me home. Kissing Bachelor #2 in my driveway- even though he is twenty years older than me and married and slimy...because he was smart enough to recognize that I was drunk enough to just want to be told that I was beautiful and amazing. Finally sending slimy Bachelor on his way, letting myself in, and deciding that my clothes were all of a sudden too restrictive so I walked around the house in my underwear from that point on, reveling in my freedom. Drunk dialing a few people that I shouldn't even have had in my contact list anymore. Waking up cold (from passing out in my underwear on the couch) and feeling like I had been beaten and juggled. And then all those slide show memories hit me like a Mach truck and I ran to the bathroom and was sick.
Now, I am going to say half of my hangover was simply because I was so grossed out and disgusted with myself that I couldn't get my stomach to stop rolling. But the other half was very definitely Jack. He had turned on me. Not only had he turned on me, but he had guided me into the wrinkly old hands of a slimy lecher. It was too much too bear. I had to let him go. Jack and I had gone from being in a fairly monogamous relationship to a fiery, spectacular breakup in the span of eight crazy hours.
Since then, I have only visited Jack once - on my first night out with Chet actually. However, Chet is fully capable of handling me on Jack and I was much smarter about my drinking timeline. And I am happy to report that when I woke up the next morning, there was a much happier ending....so now Jack and I have settled our differences. We can never go back to the way things were, our serious relationship is definitely still over, but we are going to be ok to be 'just friends'. It was nice to go out on a high note.
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