Schadenfreude

"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like bananas"

-Groucho Marx

It astounds me how fast time flies. Why just yesterday I was a young rapscallion; full of piss and vinegar. Actually, mostly just piss, although I did eat a lot of pickles.

It was New Years 1999 and I was psyched: Yes, this was the first "grown-up" party I had ever had.

I remember the conversation with my mother, when I asked her if I could have the party in her somewhat swanky Central Park West digs.

"Mom, can I have some friends over on New Years"
"I don't know; is there going to be alcohol?"
"Yes"
"I don't think so."
"But mom, we're old enough!"
"I was in college before I ever went to parties with alcohol!"
"Mom, I'm in college"
"Oh..."

So with my air tight logic, I convinced mom to let us have some alcohol. Of course "some alcohol", by her standards was the one bottle of Champagne she left for us, to be divvied up among 6 people. Needless to say, my friends brought two bottles of Vodka and a bottle of Jack.

So I drew up a list of people to invite; had to make sure the boy/girl ratio was 1:1, which is the key for all good parties and most good scrabble games.

So starting my list was my overweight, extremely awkward Jewish friend. Who to pair him with? Oh right, the borderline retarded girl with a crippling overbite.

The jock frat boy? The brilliant bookish girl who was, coincidently, a huge whore.

Me? Well, I figured, now was the time for me and Girl to finally, as politicians say, "have an unfortunate sexual indiscretion; but I had nothing to do with her disappearance".

Now, if you read my last blog, Girl was most likely a broken depressive with a potential history of inappropriate sexual encounters. In other words, my perfect girl.

The night started well enough; my two male friends and I "cooked dinner", which, for a few 18 year olds, is defined as "undercooked spaghetti and overcooked chicken".

That's when we started pouring the booze. Keep in mind, a teenager has no actual concept of booze; it's more of an abstract idea; something to glug because you're not allowed to glug.

To that end, my drinking at dinner has changed over the years; at age 28, I will "carefully sip a glass of port", at age 18 I would "take 12-14 shots of whatever was put in front of me". I drank about 3/4ths of the bottle of Jack that evening.

So...

At some point, we all decided it was time to walk my dog George, who btw, was absolutely adorable.


I believe it was about 20 degrees in Central Park when I decided to remove my pants. I have pictures of this, but unfortunately they are laying in a closet in NYC somewhere. I can assure you it was hugely embarrassing.

Feeling absolutely wonderful, I lit up a Cuban cigar and did my best Castro impression. Did I realize then that over-consuming alcohol and over-consuming tobacco was not a good combination? Not so much.

Anyway, we got to my house; my nerd friend and the retard locked themselves in my bedroom and started having Lynchian intercourse on my childhood sofa.

The frat boy and the closet whore took the dining room and began to sit on each other's laps, which isn't as easy as it sounds.

That left me and the Girl in the living room.

She looked outstanding; if she was a president, she would have been called "Babe-rack O-boy-mmmm-aaah", which is a pretty terrible joke if you ask me.

She was soberer than the last time I was with her (no "you remind me of my brother" larfs).

It was time to finally be a man and make a move on this most certainly broken person who would have sex with anything that owned a penis.

We talked and laughed and laughed and talked. These things were easy for me because I had no idea what I was talking about or why I was laughing. I was drunk and potentially high on highly dubious illicit cigars.

Then she looked at me. I looked at her.

Awkward silence means sex.

I moved in to her lips.

Then I felt a rumbling in my stomach which only implied one thing; its contents needed to be emptied immediately...any which way that was possible.

My lip maneuver b-lined into a quaint forehead kiss. She looked at me quizzically as I excused myself.

I spent the next 45 minutes in the bathroom, aternating between lying desperately on the floor and vomiting uncontrollably.

When I came out, I could barely see straight; I walked into my bedroom, where I saw my fat friend and the retard doing the "reverse cowgirl", which made me have to run back to the bathroom and vomit for another 20 minutes.

When I came out again, I noticed the Jock, Whore and Girl all hanging out in the living room.

I blew my chance, I spent the next 48 hours lying in bed, watching VHS tapes of Newsradio, while my mom thought I had a "stomach flu". A "stomach flu" is college code for "I drank too much last night".

I never saw the Girl again, in fact I barely keep in touch with any of those people. But who really keeps in contact with anyone from high school anyway?

The whole point of high school is that you spend four years figuring out what kind of person you want to hang out with. Then you go to college and realize that you never actually liked hanging out with that type of person in the first place, and you only did so because you were stuck in the vacuous, mind-numbing prison known as a "parochial school".

Ten years later, you're 28 and you're writing a blog about it.

I wonder what sort of exciting things are waiting for me at 38? Dictating the contents of my belly button to my only friend, a computer known as "COMPANION BOT 200: YOUR POLYETHYLENE PAL"?

One can only hope: huzzah for rampant narcissism and the ever widening gap between real and online interaction!