If you can’t tell already, I am a huge fan of alcohol. I don’t understand people who don’t drink-it just makes no sense to me. I can understand not wanting to get drunk. Some people just can’t appreciate what it’s like to lose control and have the sudden urge to sing Whitney Houston songs at a karaoke bar. Even I don’t do that. But people of legal drinking age who don’t drink just make me suspicious. And uncomfortable. This is why I don’t like to drink in front of my mom. It makes her uncomfortable when I drink and it makes me uncomfortable when she doesn’t drink. So we agree to disagree and I hide my bottle of Maker’s Mark under my bed.

I have control issues, so being out of control under the influence isn’t something I indulge in very often, but when I do, it’s in a big way and it usually ends with me falling asleep in my car in a certain parking garage of a certain Las Vegas hotel. For some reason, this is the only garage I feel comfortable passing out in, probably because I’ve done it there so much. Oh. And don’t judge because it’s Vegas. I live here. Like I said, when I get hammered, I go big. The second college party I went to was at this house in the woods and there was a long driveway leading up to the house. I don’t remember much, not because I was drunk but because I didn’t take mental photographs of anyone but water polo players.Other schools had football, we had water polo and for me that was like hitting the jackpot of gorgeous, slutty men. Fortunately I never “hit” that jackpot but it oh boy were they something nice to look at for four years.

Anyway, I remember this driveway leading up to this house because it was long and steep and I wasn’t sure how most of the intoxicated teenagers in that house were going to get down. On our hike up, a guy ran past us and three steps in ate it, rolled down the hill like the wheel of cheese in that race they have in Britain every year and stopped at the bottom with a thud that was followed by some dog-like whimpering. I’m 85% sure he broke his collarbone and didn’t realize it until the next morning. I looked at this fool and snorted to myself that I wasn’t ever going to make an ass out of myself in public like that. Two years later I was the girl in line at the only pizza place on Santa Monica Boulevard open past 2 AM cutting everyone in line because she had to “piss like a racehorse” because she overdid it on the vodka tonics.

There are so many stories I could segue into right now, but since it’s October, I’m going to stick to the Halloween theme and chronicle the events that led up to the third worst hangover I’ve ever had. Yes, there’s a first and second and I remember them very distinctly. If you’ve ever had a hangover so bad you had to pull over on the freeway and vomit into a Whole Foods bag, you know that there categories when it comes to hangovers. And yes, I did do that. Another time friends.

The Halloween of my senior year, my roommate Lily and I took up our friend Luke’s offer to go up to UC Santa Barbara to partake in their Halloween celebrations. Lily’s birthday is on Halloween so my first thought was “perfect 21st birthday party”. Party doesn’t do it justice. This was the Sodom and Gomorrah of Halloween parties. It was a three day-long (at minimum) event that had no invitation, no rules, the most creative costumes and if you were under the age of 28 living in the Santa Barbara area and were not going to at least one night of this potentially weeklong party, you probably had polio or some crippling disease that prevented you from leaving your residence. It puts every party you’ve ever been to, to shame. You never forget what little you remember from it.

Lily, Luke, Luke’s boyfriend Scott and I stayed with one of Luke’s friends, Doug, who graciously let us crash at his apartment along with eight other frat boys who all took advantage of Doug’s proximity to the party street. And by party street, I mean there was basically one designated street where everything was happening and there was an open door policy to friends and strangers alike. Every 20something living within a five mile radius probably had 10-15 temporary boarders living with them that weekend. It was that serious. I knew this night would not end well when we found ourselves chasing Jose Cuervo with Gatorade for lack of better chasers.

“Well,” I announced, holding the liter bottle of Jose I’d purchased from Costco over my head, “At least we won’t be dehydrated.” Shot. Lime. Gatorade. I haven’t consumed tequila since without having flashbacks. Or gagging. My makeshift costume was that of a desperate housewife which was me wearing an apron, a tiny Juicy Couture dress, gaudy jewelry and a pair of flip flops I ended up losing on the walk of shame home. Lily was Tom Cruise in Risky Business. Business shirt, no pants, tall socks, so awesome. Lily is the queen of no pants. No, I’m not saying she’s slutty. She has taught me the value of dresses and not having to button or zip jeans and let me tell you it is lifechanging. When I go to the buffet, I just wear my maternity dress- problem solved. If there was ever a Lucy to my Ethel, Lily is it.

After finishing the remaining half-liter of Jose, we stepped out into the Santa Barbara night to experience the event that is SB Halloween. Here’s where the disappointment comes: I don’t remember much. I remember walking to the street where the bulk of the parties were screaming ”Happy Halloween!” several times. I remember running up to a few people to take pictures with them and their amazing costumes (there is picture evidence I refuse to post on here…I flashed the peace sign in every single one of them). I remember losing one of my flip flops and marching on like a Rockette in the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. I remember seeing residents holding up signs with numbers on them, rating visitors’ costumes. By the time I got there, I had drank so much tequila I was shouting out numbers, giving people my own personal ratings. Everyone got a 10. I also remember being in someone’s apartment, falling backwards onto Lily and the murderous sound of someone’s guitar being crushed by my weight. Yes, I committed one of the several sins of intoxication and destroyed property. We got kicked out of that apartment. No mental picture. But mental audio of someone shouting at us to get the fuck out.

The real victim that night was Luke’s boyfriend Scott who played babysitter to me, Risky Business and Luke who was dressed up in a child sized Spiderman costume. The outfit was so short that the bottom of it came up to his shins. Scott (not his real name for obvious reasons) I am SORRY. You weren’t the DD but you were the designated walker and you made sure that none of the 185 cops lining the streets didn’t lock us up for underage drinking. I’m 100% sure their main concern was houses catching on fire and not underage drinking because none of them came after me after I chanted “COPS! COPS! COPS!” over and over and kept complimenting them on the authenticity of their costumes and real life cop cars.

The last thing I remember is crawling up the stairs to Doug’s apartment, half-crying and asking where Lily was. Lily was passed out on the stairs, Scott dragging her up like a sack of potatoes.

I woke up the next morning with just a rug burn on my elbow and thankfully not chlamydia. If that night was an after school special it would’ve been titled “These girls got lucky and didn’t get an STD.” I had lost both shoes and had apparently walked a mile back to the apartment barefoot. Lily looked like she was an extra for Dawn of the Dead. And that was that.

Third worst hangover. And it’s third because I actually had the stomach and energy to get up and go shopping that day. As we were leaving the apartment parking lot, we drove past a guy who looked like he’d attempted to be Gene Simmons for Halloween. Post-Santa Barbara Halloween experience, he looked like Gene Simmons who’d been in a barfight with disgruntled groupies. He was wearing skin tight jeans, domniatrix boots and a vest with no shirt underneath, displaying a disturbing amount of chest hair that he shouldn’t have felt pride about showing off. His makeup was running down his face and his hair looked like wild panthers had tried to mate in it. He trudged slowly towards his destination wherever that was-I’m not sure he knew either- with his head down, probably wondering why he woke up in a dumpster in the fetal position.

Shopping consisted of me sitting on a bench with my head between my legs trying to prevent myself from using foul language in front of families with small children.

If waking up with filthy feet from walking home barefoot Britney style wasn’t embarrassing enough we ran into some girls from our school. They were in SB. On a church retreat. Lifeslap.

“What are you ladies doing here?” one of them, Lisa asked. Her skin was bright and glowing and she had way too much energy for an early Saturday afternoon. If I hadn’t spent the evening falling into closets and breaking strangers’ guitars, my skin would probably be glowing too. As much as I regretted having to lie to one of the most genuinely nice people I’ve ever met, I had no other choice.

“Visiting friends,” I blurted, cheap tequila marking my words. “You know, just hanging out. Seeing the sights. Shopping.”

“How fun!” Lisa said. “Are you guys having fun?” I’m not sure if being violently hungover is what you’d coin as “fun”. Lily was re-enacting her Dawn of the Dead scene, eyes rolling back into her head as she slouched back on the bench. If one of us was going to be more likely to announce via projectile vomitting that we were hungover, it was going to be me, but she was running a close second.

“Oh lots,” I grinned. “So much fun we could’ve puked.”

“So much fun…” Lily added.

This made her laugh because this is a girl who is so nice she either can’t or won’t read between the lines. She’s a “see the best in others!” kind of person. With the exclamation point. She’s a firm believer in the use of excessive exclamation points. When I asked her what she was doing and the words church retreat were a part of her response I really thought I was going to piss my pants from laughing as soon as they walked away.

To think we were both in the same city on the same on the same evening enjoying two different kinds of retreats just tickled me. Booze retreat vs. church retreat. I think you know who the real winners were here. The group bounced away after announcing they were on their way to lunch or something that sounded ridiculous to me in my hungover state.

“Did that really just happen?” I asked Lily, burying my face in my backpack.

“Who goes to church on Friday night?” she asked. “On Halloween weekend?”

“Jews?” I mumbled

“We go to Christian school.”

“Well then I don’t know. But that was just spooky.”

No moral to that story. Except don’t overindulge on an alcohol that you like. Because you won’t want to drink it again after it makes a reappearance in your toilet the next morning along with whatever you’d eaten that day before drinking.