Stupid Things I Have Done #455
I have not yet reached the half-century mark in my age, but sometimes I think about the absolutely dumb stuff I did in my 20s and think, “Well, why wait until some sage age to tell folks stories about complete dumb shit I did?” I mean, I look back at these brief anecdotes of a life weird-lived and marvel at who in the hell that girl was. Admittedly, she drank like a fish and had no sense of anything, but I think she had fun? Or at least had a story to tell at the next bar. Either way, you can be assured I was very hungover after whatever dumb shit I did.
In particular, there was a time I found myself at a weird afterhours biker bar outside Decatur, GA.
I was hanging out with some “bikers” at the time. And by “bikers,” I mean white-collar job guys who bought actually really legit Harleys but didn’t don the biker drag. Every Thursday night was Bike Night. They would convene at The Vortex, a bar best known for its giant glowing fiberglass skull at the entrance, and then bar-hop until close to midnight. (Man, I was casually fine with riding on the backs of Harleys with intoxicated dudes back then.) It was through these guys that I met Janey, one of the few women who had their own Harley; she and I struck up something like a weird friendship.
Janey was maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet with a mouth like a sailor and an authentic New Jersey attitude to match. She could handle her beast of a bike despite not even clocking in at five-two. Her vibe was very much the Cool Girl vibe: I don’t give a shit about girly stuff so I just wanna be one of the guys, okay? That had been my armour since high school–Cool Girl, Not Like Those Other Girls–so I was glad to have gotten on her good side. For a run of Thursday nights, she would drink with me at the Vortex before heading out with the guys. Sometimes I got to tag along on these bar hops, but more often I didn’t get to go. It depended on where I was at in my on-off again relationship but either way, I cramped the guy’s style and ended up drinking alone for the rest of the night. That changed the night she invited me to hop on the back of her bike.
We hit the usual gamut of bars; I was thrilled that one of the Cool Girls had chosen me to hang out with her. And like me, she did not know when to stop drinking which made her even more fun. Because most of these biker guys had day jobs, they usually called it a night around midnight. But not me and Janey.
Atlanta bars serve until 2 am, and 2 am crept up on us pretty fast. I was nowhere near done wanting to drink–I had lost track of beers by this time–and neither was she, so when she said she knew of an afterhours place in Decatur…I was in. So this is where it gets hazy for me. That late night is a flash of classic rock, the stink of cigarettes, and blue neon beer lights. The “bar” was a wood-paneled room not unlike a rec room basement: there was a shitty rickety bar counter, overstuffed chairs that looked like they had been pulled from the dumpster, but the beer was super cheap.
I am dangerously drunk and if I have not blacked out, I am on my way.
Whatever god looks after fools got us back to her place sometime around 4 am. Her townhouse is strangely antiseptic, decorated in creams and grays. Because this is not the first time nor the last where I will find myself in an outer suburb with no way to get home under my own steam, I resign myself to crashing on her couch. Our drunken chatter has led us to the brilliant idea that we should move into together, despite being in no way suited to do that. We make inebriated promises to look into it because we were clearly meant to be Roommates. Oh, we have also made plans to go see a movie in the afternoon the next day.
I wish I could tell you that the hangover was the worst of my life, but there have been so many bad ones. This was just another day. And telling this story now, I honestly am not entirely sure how I got home. I think Janey owned a car too so I suspect she drove me, both of us silent and aching. I guzzle water, feed my cats, crash, and then the phone rings because we are still going to the movies together. Oh god I don’t want to go, I think as I haul myself over to the movie theater to watch How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. I notice we are both suspiciously, embarrassingly silent. We are not meant to be roommates.
There is no neat and tidy ending to this story. My off-on again relationship finally screams to a halt within a few months, and I go from being flirted with to being pitied in his circles. Janey keeps herself at arm’s length and I do the same. It has the air of a regretful one night stand: enthusiasm then embarrassment.
Alcohol definitely makes fast friends, but often not lasting ones. I will repeat this doomed scenario over and over again before I leave the city for good. I will delete phone numbers of people I never had any intention of calling, much less hang out with. I will avoid the bars where I met them for a period of time, but often I meet these people away from my home turf so this is no hardship. I will wonder why I do this to myself, why I feel like alcohol is the only way to make a friend, get a boyfriend.
I have got such a long way to go.