I karaoked tonight. Watched the fireworks at midnight on TV. Sang some songs (I'm so delighted to be rid of the cold...). And got invited to a party taking place after close (which was at 1:30).
I was standing near the karaoke DJ (I'll call him "KJ" for "karaoke jockey") when the invite occurred, and he and I agreed to check it out together. He had to do some cleaning up, so I made my way out of the establishment and waited outside, on the sidewalk.
Outside, on the sidewalk, was a crowd of people. Waiting for cabs, talking, fighting (in one case) and shooting off fireworks.
Yeah. Fireworks. It was kinda funny when the first few roman candles went off. Even the bottle rockets were funny. At first.
I (naturally) bumped into some people I knew, out there on the sidewalk. One guy was a regular singer, and friends with the DJ, so he agreed to tag along with us to the party (we'll call him "Mark", although that's not his name). Mark was pretty drunk.
There was another guy (a certain poet, who at least one potential reader of this blog might remember from her visits to the karaoke place) who was trying to (concurrently) mooch a ride home and convince people to come to hear him play on Tuesday night. Or maybe hear his friend play. I wasn't listening very closely.
Fortunately, this guy did not join our merry band for the evening.
There was another guy I recognized... a regular singer who seems pretty nice. We'll call him Brad, although that is not his name, because Brad was pretty entertaining.
Brad was drunk. Not like just a little drunk. Pretty hammered. His voice was raspy, and he was staggering. He looked like a million bucks.
But Brad said that his girlfriend was having a party, and that we were invited. About the time this second invitation (because the original party invite had nothing to do with Brad nor his gf), the fireworks took a turn for the worse.
I don't know if the bottle rockets were defective or if the guy shooting them was retarded, but they stopped going straight over the street, and started going in random directions. I saw one literally go about 3 feet in the air and turn back so it flew backwards, into the crowd behind the bottle rocket shooter.
Fortunately it missed one dude's face by about 3 feet. Well, it would have been more fortunate if it had missed by more... although less funny to experience and less interesting to blog about.
So we were ready to roll. KJ, who was as sober as I was. Mark, who was pretty toasted, and Brad, who was in pretty bad shape. It was sort of a Wizard of Oz thing. I (of course) was Dorothy. (Didn't she have the most fabulous shoes?)
I have been around drunk people quite a bit the last 7 months or so, but I haven't been in a position where I've had to babysit anyone. I see them, I laugh at them, and then I go my own way. But tonight, both Brad and (to a lesser extent) Mark needed some assistance.
This wasn't totally clear at first. Brad was leading us to the alleged party, and he was talking to various people who were out and about, but he wasn't being obnoxious to them. (Yes, I said "alleged party".)
The part was supposed to be two blocks one way and one block another way, but that turned out not to be the case. We walked a few blocks and there was some sort of fern tree planted alongside the sidewalk, and Brad and Mark each grabbed big frond-like branches from them, and Brad thought it was funny to use them like nunchuks. It even was kind of funny.
But. Yeah.
See, Brad was in a state where he thought he should be buddy-buddy with everyone. He was whipping these leaf-branch things around, and he ran up towards a group of guys on the next street corner, looking for fun.
Two of the guys were long-haired and looked like emaciated rock fans. Or Dungeons and Dragons players. Anyways, they were sharing a smoke, and there was a third guy there, too.
Brad decided to unleash his drunking fun on this third guy. He lashed the dude across the back, and the guy played along, grabbing one of the two weapons and lashing Brad back.
Somehow, of course, it escalated. They started kind of wrestling, and Brad fell over, and the other guy landed on top of him. KJ, Mark and I were all laughing. But then something odd happened.
Evidently, Brad's underwear were hanging out a bit. I'm not exactly Jack Lelane, but Brad's not in the best shape, either, and with his intoxication level I don't think he was checking his underwear as he was sprawled out on the sidewalk.
For whatever reason, the random guy decided to grab the underwear. I didn't see the actual grab nor the pull; I looked back and saw the guy with Brad's underwear elastic in hand, raised in victory. He flung the elastic to the ground and backed away, savoring the moment. The rest of us laughed. (It was later claimed that the elastic was an intact loop; I can't verify this, and I seriously doubt the structural integrity was significant enough to have the elastic tear from the fabric and be lifted (like some sort of stretchy hula-hoop) over Brad's head... but it's possible.)
Brad, of course, wasn't laughing. He was kinda wriggling on the ground. The two long-haired guys kinda bent over him, and one said, "Dude. You need a smoke."
And Brad took a toke. Rather a long hit (although it's not like I have a ton of experience with witnessing this sort of thing).
After Brad got to his feet, he wanted to go back to lashing the man who'd just given him a super-wedgy (although Brad claimed that no wedging too place... just the elastic ripping). At this point, I started to intervene, because the other guy was kinda getting annoyed. KJ and I started to implore Brad to back off.
But Brad wanted to "hug it out". And the other guy wanted none of it. So I offered to give Brad a hug as some sort of proxy (Brad knows me only slightly better than the random stranger, remember). And as he did so, the random guy ran over and jumped playfully (I think it was playfully; I had my back turned) onto us, and then scampered off. I think that he made a homophobic remark, too, because Brad was acting all offended at the slur.
After about 5 minutes of physically manhandling Brad, we were able to get him off that corner and back on track to the party.
A few blocks later, we arrived. I think. It's still a bit confusing. It was an apartment complex with a lawn... kind of like a quad from college, a bit. Or a half quad. Anyways, he walked up the apartment building's sidewalk towards the building, and talked to two people who was conversing there. We didn't know what was going on, but after about 20 seconds the two people made a bee-line for the building and closed the door behind them. Brad proceeded, of course, to pound on the door for about a minute.
I still have no idea what was going on.
As it turned out, Brad's girlfriend wasn't answering her phone. Whether she was asleep (it was about 2:15 at this point) or not is unclear. But Brad was reluctant to leave... eventually the four of us started back towards the karaoke place, which was on the way to the party KJ and I had originally been invited to.
Along the way, Brad showed probably a dozen people his ripped underwear, asking each of them in turn "Who does that?" He also kept staggering into the road, and almost got hit about 3 times. He also needed us to wait while he vomited. Then he apologized for slowing us down. Then he got pissed when KJ said he was slowing us down.
He was a handful.
When we got to the road of the place where the party was, one of Brad's 104 cell phone calls eventually was returned. We took a left down an alley, and Brad motioned us to go the other direction. I don't know what became of Brad, but he wasn't in the bushes on that block, at least, after we left the party.
The party was, at least, an actual gathering of people. Of course, the people who were gathered all knew each other. I knew two of their names, but KJ didn't know any names and Mark wasn't invited nor had he ever seen any of them before.
It was at an apartment. There were some snacks. There was a board game being played. It was sort of awkward. Not in a see-one-stranger-rip-an-acquaintance's-underwear type of way. But strange.
So we stayed for a few. Then left.
I'd parked in a lot that wouldn't take my credit card, but I avoided getting a ticket. I got a number from a cute chick. I didn't lose an eye from a stray bottle rocket.
2007 started off pretty well.
