Sloppy Drunk

// The Sloptart

By Julie Matheny .
01.17.10 // Sloppy Drunk

There is probably no funnier scene than Saturday night at a drugstore in NYC.  Especially late at night. Most of the people you see fall under the realm of the expected.  Confused drunks, middle-aged men buying that last six pack. And of course, a bevy of sketchy looking people that didn’t quite look like they were going to hurt you, but they weren’t not going to hurt you, either.

But sometimes, if you’re lucky enough, you might catch a glimpse of a rare female species known as: The Sloptart.  One night, I was just that lucky. And this is how it went down.

“Excuse me….EXCUSE me, sir. Yes. Hi. Can…(hiccup) I mean…do you know how to get to the 6 from here?”  An obnoxiously overdressed twenty-something in designer-everything spills three packs of Cheetos, a Snickers bar and a Diet Coke on the counter in front of him.

YES, I think. Thank you God for this gift.

The man at the counter stares blankly.  Her mascara is clumped and one strap of her bra is showing.
I wait patiently, relishing the arrival of the precise moment she would realize that she is not only not near the most popular train in Manhattan, but that she is in an entirely different borough altogether.

“You better click your heels, honey.  You’re a long way from home.”  A middle-aged man in a Mets cap elbows his buddy and they laugh.  She rolls her eyes and clutches her two thousand dollar bag in tighter, all of a sudden suspiciously aware of the stares she is getting from a cross-section of the notoriously unforgiving state’s population.

“Who the fuck are you? No…seriously…mow my lawn,” she manages, one heel turning to the side, almost taking herself down.

I shoot the man a conspiratorial grin, applauding his Wizard of Oz reference. Baseball loyalties forgiven, we are on the same page.  Both of us hate This Girl.  Which is precisely why, like the director of an improv troupe delights at an unexpectedly funny scene his actors unfold before him, I am enjoying every minute of her presence.

Come on, you miserable human. You can do better than this.  I want to smell the desperation.  Preferably in the form of vomit in the hair.  Oh please, I think.  Please give me vomit in the hair.

She opens up her purse, credit cards spilling everywhere, and in a delayed reaction bends down, displaying a rather disheveled yet unfortunately upchuck-free mess of hair.  “I’ll fix that in post,” I reconcile, already halfway done mind-writing the SNL digital short I was about to turn this into.  I’d call it “Late night at the Duane Reade.”  Kristen Wiig would star.  And I would be one step closer to my lifelong dream of becoming Tina Fey.

Amidst my daydreaming, I realize she isn’t doing anything funny anymore.  Maybe she needs motivation.  Okay, fine, you Hot Mess. You want motivation? Here it is:

Just hours ago, the night held endless possibilities for you.  You had stepped out of your Murray Hill apartment wearing a cropped, brightly colored silk top, designer jeans and a black cape.  Various publications displayed in the waiting room of your OBGYN had reminded you that this was a fresh “night” look, and so you wore it, thinking it the perfect outfit in which to meet your PH (Potential Husband).

Unable to cross a whole two city blocks without BBM’ing your friend (the very one, I might add, you were going to meet at Joshua Tree’s 80′s night), you take out your Crackberry only to be preempted.

“OMG so many hot bankers! I miss you already come now!”

Yessss, you think, making sure your tresses still hold your “Bump It” hair-lifter hostage.  Cue Fergie, because tonight certainly IS going to be a good night.

You arrive at the bar and join the flock.  And somewhere in between your first and seventh Skinny Girl Martini, you would plan out the rest of the night in your head.

He, too, would have graduated from a small liberal arts college in the Northeast. Preferably three years before you, but being a flexible human being, two years would suffice.  His name would have to be hot, though.  Maybe Brad.

Having come straight from work in a Vineyard Vines tie, Mr. Wonderful would stare at you from across the room over a draft beer, interrupting the charming conversation he was having with his friends about how fucked up they all were last night to come over and buy you a low-cal libation. You play the name game, finding surprisingly many mutual acquaintances, most living, inexplicably, within a five block radius of the overpriced apartment you share with your two best friends.

You’d stare at each other all night, and then he’d take you home, extolling your beauty, but admitting that he liked you too much to go “all the way.”  Both of you would express considerable dismay at your self-imposed and utterly ridiculous “Rules of Disengagement”, and he would cuddle you close.  You would talk for hours about everything.  Naturally, you’d lament  the trials and tribulations of living in a big, scary city; he’d open up about how law school was his father’s dream, not his.

You would talk about your love of horses, and he, too, would confess an affinity for outdoor sport, reminiscing about his carefree summers on the Cape, where he had learned to sail.
“I’ll have to get you out there some day,” he would smile through the darkness.
“You’ll have to teach me,” you’d say, mentally scanning your closet for a navy and white striped crew neck top, little gold anchor earrings, and a pair of espadrilles you had stolen from your “Big” during a girls weekend. “Legs are the new boobs” you’d remind yourself, throwing in a pair of white hot pants to complete the deal. A little more PG making out, and then sleep.  The kind that tickles your pleasure sensor with dreams of your June wedding at the Plaza.

But of course, this did not happen.

Her night had hit a patch of ice, and somewhere between the bar and the bedroom she ended up in Brooklyn.
Maybe she hadn’t shown her skinny arm in the photos she had insisted on taking with him.  Perhaps he flirted with her best friend, while she sat glaring at them, gaining a gaggle of textual support from friends for her triumph over “that two-faced whore.”  Or, more than likely, that once-hopeful, dependable guy friend of hers finally got tired of “platonic cuddling” and had thus declined the opportunity to play midnight hero once more, which resulted in her accidentally taken the wrong train.

Either way, her prognosis was not good.  With her loot in hand, I watched her stumble out to the curb and sit down, knowing that all she had left to look forward to was some Easy Mac and a tivo’d Gossip Girl.  And as I stood there, trying to think of something hilarious to say to Mr. Baseball about her, I saw it through the window.

The book.
Pride & Prejudice, peaking out of her half-opened purse.  The one book that unites nearly every female, from stupid to brilliant, from sane to crazy, from natural to bottled blonde.

That was the catalyst.  A moment of transcendence in which I felt a sense of belonging.
I can’t explain it.  The “funny” I found in the situation just simply diminished;  Looking at her again, I didn’t feel so full of contempt.  Maybe it took the familiarity of the cover to color me compassionate – a reminder that we are all shuffling around this place together. Maybe it was the oppressive amount of negative space that surrounded her alone on that curb.  Or maybe it was the pathetic way she sat slumped there, one hand half-hailing a taxi, the other feebly texting what I could only imagine were nonsensical girl-abbreviations that all translated to the same message: Help.

On second thought, SNL wouldn’t be the right place for this story at all.

Here I was, using this girl for my own entertainment, judging this person I had never met, by ten minutes of behavior.  Who am I to judge someone – anyone? What makes me so much better than her?

That night I realized that we all get to choose how we view the rest of the world.  We can either pay attention to our differences, use other people’s failings and weaknesses to define our successes and strengths, to make ourselves feel better about our lives; or we can find a way to connect by realizing that deep down the best of us can all be hopeless, drunk romantics, making bad decisions on a Saturday night a long, long way from home.  And while we don’t get to choose a lot of what happens to ourselves, we do get to choose how we see everyone else.

That night, I chose not to laugh.  Not then, not later that night, nor even now, as I write this.
Because you should never kick a gal in expensive heels when she’s down.
She’s got a lot farther to fall.

View Comments / Jan 17.10 / Sloppy Drunk / by Julie Matheny

// I was drunk and she was sloppy. (It’s not as exciting as it sounds, sorry.)

By Ben Cheney .
01.17.10 // Sloppy Drunk

I went to brunch today in Greenwich Village at a nice little place with great artwork and fantastic fare.  It was crowded beyond belief, but not bad crowded.  It was like a pirate-ship-with-too-much-booty crowded.

Anyway, their main draw is five dollar all-you-can-drink mimosas and champagne.  Needless to say, I indulged myself.  The waiter brought pitcher after pitcher after pitcher of the bubbly anaranjado goodness, making sure my glass was always over full.  It was like one of those God awful IHOP ads where the guy’s pancake magically regrows its missing slice.

Whatever.  We leave after about two hours and 15 mimosas later.  I’m a little off kilter, but I make it home safe and without embarrassment.  I climb the stairs to the third floor of my apartment building and open the door.  I’m greeted by my two dogs.  Penny greets me with sloppy kisses on my cheek.  Charlotte greets me with a whole lotta urine on my crotch.  She peed.  She peed a lot.  She peed a lot on me.  I was drunk and she was sloppy.  It’s kind of like transference, I guess.

View Comments / Jan 17.10 / Sloppy Drunk / by Ben Cheney

// Sloppy drunk

By EricaPressly .
01.17.10 // Sloppy Drunk

View Comments / Jan 17.10 / Sloppy Drunk / by EricaPressly

// Alike

By Tristan Smith .
01.16.10 // Sloppy Drunk

It’s like that time you took your shirt off to throw up in it.
It’s like that time you went home with that girl and then wrote down your number on a piece of paper because she asked and then while she was sleeping you woke up and stole the paper and snuck out.
It’s like that time you told that guy and girl that the guy was too ugly for her.
It’s like that time you sang in the street.
It’s like that time you almost got in a fight in the falafel shop.
It’s like that time you lost consciousness under an oak tree in the middle of a crowd of thousands while Jay-Z boomed his bass down on you and the sun boomed its rays down on you.
And it’s like that time you had a good time. And that other time and that other time and that other time.

It’s like that. But better.

View Comments / Jan 16.10 / Sloppy Drunk / by Tristan Smith

// From every pore.

By Jordan Childs .
01.15.10 // Sloppy Drunk

ddd

View Comments / Jan 15.10 / Sloppy Drunk / by Jordan Childs

// We all know a me

By Charles Hodges .
01.14.10 // Sloppy Drunk

Sloppy drunk.  I’ve been there.  A lot.  You’ve probably been there.  A lot.  It’s not pretty.  It’s barely fun.  It rarely brings you anything good.  When you wake up the next day you do one of two things: 1) act like you weren’t that drunk and then go to brunch and drink more alcohol, thus postponing what will inevitably become an apocalyptic hangover that will require three hours of HBO, Chinese food and human touch (could be a platonic hug while tears fall in the kitchen) or 2) you wake up, look at your clock, realize you have a few hours of daylight left, realize you are wearing pants from last night, see the McDonald’s on the floor, see the McDonald’s barbecue sauce on your computer, feel your heart, feel the small ball that is a growing panic attack next to your heart, feel the bruise on your thigh, try to crane your neck to look at your bedside table, realize you lost your phone, wonder who you owe apologies.

I’m not going to sit here and try to figure out why we do this.  My guess is as good as yours: boredom, peer pressure, heinous social alcoholism a.k.a. childhood guilt from unintentional murder of pet hamster.

But it does, however, yield some interesting things.  Allow myself to use myself as an example.  When I get sloppy drunk, I go one of two ways:

1) Category Five Hurricane (see image above)

No one likes this guy.  He screams at people, sings on tables, dances with mothers, uses tablecloths as capes, ruins surprise birthday parties, ruins birthday parties, ruins parties, picks up midgets and cradles them, microwaves metal utensils, haggles over the price of Christmas trees, screams, screams, screams into the night.

and then there is…

2) Slurring Thinks-He-Is-Wise Hermit

People don’t really like this guy, but he thinks he knows what’s best for you.  In my history of being Slurring Thinks-He-Is-Wise Hermit, I have doled out the following advice:

yyyou should be a veterinarian.

“Why? Because you love animals.  Why do you love animals? Because you love animals.  See.  That’s what I’m talking bout.”

You should read more.

“Because if you actually take time to read then you’ll be reading more, which means you will have rrrrrread more.  It’s just really important.  Can I have a cigarette?”

You should go vegan.

“I mean I don’t know, but it sounds like it might work for you.  You know like yoga or some shit.”

You should hang with your sibling more.

“Because I like your brother.  You should like him too.  You just don’t know him as well as I do. He’s sooo cool once you get to know him.”

You need to start eating breakfast.

“I know you don’t believe me, but I’m sssirrrius.  Like eggs and stuff like that.  It’s brain food.  It’s SAT shit, man.  It’s like being ready to take the SATs everyday of your life. That’s pretty awesome. You know what I’m talking about?”

Let’s call your parents.

“Hey, hey, hey, hey, it’s me.  No, Charles, calling from his phone.  We just wanted to make sure you were okay.  No, no, no, no, go back to sleep. I love you.”

You need to sell your car.

“I’m just telling you what I read.  If you sell it and invest that shit in google, in like three years, you’ll be able to get such a better car.  Like a fucking awesome car, dude.  Because of google. But don’t tell anyone I told you that.”

You should open your own bakery.

“Because that’s your passion. Not baking, but making people happy. And that’s a way tudu that. With pies and stuff.”

I want to go to the the moon.

“No, really.  I want to go to the moon.  And you should too.  Can I have a cigarette?”

You should move to Alaska.

“I mean, I don’t know you that well, but you’ve always been outdoorsy and shit.  It just seems like it would be such a good fit.  Get out of here and go to a place like that?  I’d do it if I could.  But I can’t.  I don’t know, maybe I wouldn’t.  But you should. Yeah, you definitely should.”

You really need to see No Country For Old Men.

“I can’t believe you haven’t seen it.  It’s sooo good.  Did you know they didn’t have a soundtrack?  No mmmussicc.  Just sssiilence.  I figured the whole thing out by myself.  Well I mean someone told me, but then I was like, I knew that!  So I pretty much figured it out by myself.”

View Comments / Jan 14.10 / Sloppy Drunk / by Charles Hodges

// Sloppy Drunk: An (Failed) Experiment

By Joey Camire .
01.13.10 // Sloppy Drunk

My goal for this post was to document the process of getting “Sloppy Drunk.”  It’s tough to say whether or not I actually accomplished that, seeing as there isn’t really a set standard.  Maybe I should have undertook that endeavor instead.  Regardless, the goal was to have one drink and then be asked a question to try to highlight the slow downfall.  Needless to say, this methodology broke down.  I’m actually traveling right now on business in LA, so I only had one friend to come out and go through the process with me, and by the end of the evening I was just drinking by myself and talking to the camera as if it were a interested third party.  I don’t know how entertaining this will actually be, but you can at least see me drunk at the end of the night.  Which is nice!

View Comments / Jan 13.10 / Sloppy Drunk / by Joey Camire

// In A Sloppy Drunk World…

By Alex Aloise .
01.12.10 // Sloppy Drunk

Vomiting would be an accepted greeting

Jeans would be sold pre-pissed-in

The Aristocrat aisle would be right next to the Skittles aisle

Conan would be on at 11:30 – no questions asked

Military uniforms would be replaced with Affliction t-shirts

Every interesting aspect would be sucked out of Reality TV

Your unemployed deadbeat uncle would be your grandmother’s favorite

IHOP’s stock would go through the roof

Visible tampon strings would be the rule, not the exception

You could pass out wherever you like, whenever

With everyone sleeping on the streets, the homeless are back on a level playing field

WWIII would be sparked by a simple “Whatchu lookin’ at bro?”

Everything would be written in Sharpie

COPS wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining, only sadly familiar

All the world’s languages would be slurred, foreign relations would crumble

No one would really care

Everyone would let their facial hair grow out – even your mom

Beer Shit breaks would come right after Social Studies in every classroom

Secretary of State Snookie

This guy would get laid every night

View Comments / Jan 12.10 / Sloppy Drunk / by Alex Aloise

// Wasted Weinstein

By Jake Dubs .
01.11.10 // Sloppy Drunk

The most drunk I’ve ever been was my first week of freshman year at the University of Delaware.

It was a Saturday night and everyone was in the dorms pre-gaming and watching an opening weekend college football game on TV.

This is how my night played out.

9:00 PM: Walk into the dorms with a concealed case of Beast Light and a handle of Popov bought at a liquor store five miles down the road over the Maryland border. (Being caught buying booze underage in Delaware was way worse than being caught in Maryland).

9:02 PM: I get the sudden urge to do a Power Hour with shots of Popov. I announce this to the room.

9:03 PM: My friends tell me I will die if I do that.

9:04 PM: I decide to do the Power Hour, except I’d take one shot every five minutes instead of every minute. I mentally pat myself on the back for my out-of-the-box innovation.

9:05-9:14 PM: I go back and forth in my mind over whether or not I’m actually going through with this. I am surrounded by people I hardly know. I need to make a good first impression. I rationalize this will be an epic accomplishment. I decide to go for it.

9:15 PM: Gametime. Shot #1 goes down. Hard. Sweet mother of Christ is that awful. A few dudes take it with me. They agree.

9:20 PM: Shot #2. Let’s do thisssssssss. That one’s pretty bad, too. One less guy takes it with me.

9:25 PM: Shot #3. Only two of us take it. I almost throw mine back up, but there is a girl in the room whom I wish to be intimate with someday. I manage to keep it down.

9:30 PM: Shot #4. I can officially no longer drive in this or any other state or territory in the U.S.

9:35 PM: Shot #5. Awful, but easier. I am now the only one left.

9:40 PM: Shot #6. Music is turned on. I start grooving. No one else does.

9:45 PM: Shot #7. I feel incredible.

9:50 PM: Shot #8. I love every single person in the room.

9:55 PM: Shot #9. I love every single person I’ve ever met.

10:00 PM: Shot #10. I hate everybody.

10:05 PM: Shot #11. I can’t feel anything.

10:10 PM: Shot #12. I start crying.

10:15 PM: Shot #13. I am completely blackout shit-housed fucking annihilated drunk.

10:16 PM: I stumble out of my room into the hallway. I bump into walls and doorways on my way to the bathroom. Two female R.A.’s from the floors above and below ours (the dorm floors alternated between boys and girls) appear out of nowhere. They corner me and ask if I’ve been drinking. I fall back against the wall and tell them of course not. They ask my name. “Jake Weinstein” I reply. “No it isn’t,” they say. I concede they might be right. They ask for my social security number. “11284x93d25682fg234d4zz923″ I say proudly. “Tell it to us again,” they say. “0983769343dgdf2345678910xxx700,” I say. “You’re fucked,” they say.

10:23 PM: I crash back into my room, fall onto the floor, climb into bed, piss myself, and pass out.

9:45 AM: The University Judicial System sends me an e-mail documenting the events of the night before based on the R.A.’s report. They’re not happy with me.

View Comments / Jan 11.10 / Sloppy Drunk / by Jake Dubs