“I can’t remember the last time I went to a bar. I also can’t remember the last time I got drunk.”
Things I said Thursday evening: both of those statements. Things that are no longer true: both of those statements.
I have decided that maybe everyone else I know doesn’t want their business all over the internet so they will all need to have special code names, generally related to when I first met them. So one of the two friends I stayed with this weekend is a girl who shall henceforth be known as Arbor Mist.
She and I didn’t hang out all the time in college, but we always had ridiculous adventures when we did. She became one of my Coachella buddies and is an all-around awesome person. The first time that I ever really hung out with her was during freshman year when we ran into each other on our way to the liquor store. We then rode the campus bus back to our dorms and sat in the back of the bus drinking our two dollar bottles of Arbor Mist. This is when I knew that our friendship would last forever.
So Arbor Mist and I decided that we needed to go out on Thursday but couldn’t figure out where and oh my god it was so fucking cold outside. We wandered over to 51st State and got smashed while reminiscing about our adventures and mourned our impending doom adulthood.
I then found out that one of my favorite people in the history of ever happened to be in DC looking at law schools. We’ll call her Jersey Redneck because I know she would appreciate this nickname. She was probably the best thing about my internship last fall. Arbor Mist and I took a cab approximately -2 blocks to meet her at The Mighty Pint because it was cold and we were drunk and walking is not fun.
The crowd was relatively small but absolutely wonderful. I spent the next who-even-knows-how-long watching one drunk guy who could actually dance and a small group of other drunkards who most certainly could not dance but each one gave it his/her all and I fucking loved them for it.
After the bar closed we went to get some delicious crepes. We were followed in by a strange man who did not know his way home and decided to sit and eat with us and invite us to a party for blonde white girls who may or may not have graduated from GW. At his house that he could not currently locate. Once we finished eating, we fled to one of the free vans my school has to get drunk kids home safely. When I say “fled” I mean that I literally ran down the street because we gave them the wrong location.
This is how Pretend-I’m-Still-In-College weekend began. I knew it was going to be amazing.
Actually, technically, it began the night before when I landed, dropped off my stuff, and went straight to dress rehearsal for Rocky Horror Picture Show, alongside one of my former roommates, and co-director from last year’s production…which was also a harbinger for the excellence of my weekend.
The fact that I just had a difficult time remembering Friday suggests to me that it was really awesome. My hosts, Arbor Mist and Not Claire (so named for a reason that only she would find amusing), had a party. Dorm parties are obviously essential to any successful fake college weekend. I know that there were lots of jello shots. And that I had lots of struggles attempting to sit down in my costume because it (inexplicably) involved a corset. I think that this is probably all I need to remember about it.
This trip was planned around Rocky Horror, because that was the best part about my actual college experience. Then I found out that the whole universe was conspiring to make this the best collegiate facade ever. Attending protests and rallies is a standard part of life as a D.C. college student. Attending a rally/march hosted by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert? That is nothing short of magical. I couldn’t hear more than a total of eight sentences from the stage, so I had to watch it later. Of all the rallies I have attended, this one had by far the best signs. Oh and we also definitely participated in the wave a couple times. I remember not understanding why it was happening, but feeling that it need not be questioned.
While we were at Rocky Horror, I realized that I was watching the Virgin Games from the audience for the first time. Mostly I was trying not to think about how wildly uncomfortable it was to sit down in a corset. The show was phenomenal, although I wouldn’t consider my sobriety to be at it’s desired level (see: nonexistent).
Then we went on what was supposed to be a bar crawl but ended up just being a one-and-done because there was a table full of fun guys and things were looking good for me with a specific incredibly hot guy (Kentucky) at said table and my whole group (Vagina and her friends from study abroad) decided to take one for the team and stay put. Also we had a table, which we knew would be a precious find at any bar in the area that night. Unfortunately for me, Kentucky and I were both crashing on couches and didn’t exactly have any sort of available end-of-night game plan and since he was also just in town for the weekend, our three hours there yielded nothing. Fail.
The real fail here comes from my inability to find this kid on Facebook. I resent this more than I can begin to explain. Does his having a Facebook actually matter? No, not really. What would I do with that information, exactly — “Oh hey, I met you at a bar. We live in different states and I will never see you again. Good luck with your whole engineering thing. Have a nice life.”
The fact that I would do absolutely nothing with this information is not the point. The point is that I have come to believe that everyone I encounter should be readily available to me on Facebook. The fact that I can know lots of random details about your life but not find you on Facebook is inconsistent with my basic idea about the way our generation works. Most of all, I’m good at internet-related-things and I strongly dislike those skills being thwarted.
That wasn’t really a personal struggle until I got home, though. Sunday morning I got up way too early and grumbled about how I did this to myself by insisting that 10am brunch would be totally fine and not at all too early. I got a delicious bagel with my former adviser, spent more time with Arbor Mist and Not Claire, fro-yo with my baby brother, and then it was off to the airport where I could take a much needed nap in my exit row seat on a non-stop flight back to St. Louis.
And then it was over. I had homework to do for an online class, and I had to get to be up early for work the next morning. All of the epic win of Pretend-I’m-Still-In-College-Weekend came to an abrupt halt and reality bitch slapped me in the face, leaving me to mutter my disapproval to absolutely nobody because there would be zero sympathy for my suffering. As a general rule, I need to remember that all vacations must involve a transitional period back into real life, because going from AWESOME to GROWN-UP in .2 seconds is just awful. This is hardly the first time I have had this thought, and probably won’t be the last. I’m a slow learner, and I don’t want to waste valuable awesome time sitting on my ass at home recovering. That would be decidedly not awesome.
Then, of course, on Tuesday, America decided to punch me in the face, so that was rough. After all of this, I have renewed vigor for two essential personal causes: (1) graduate school applications -and- (2) finding worthwhile bars in the area. Nobody cares about the first thing, I’m sure. I’ll let you know how the second one goes…
