I’ve been to quite a few excellent celebrations commemorating the twenty-first year of life of several close friends. During the beginning of my third year in college, I started thinking about what I wanted to do for my own 21st birthday and how to top all those other little shits and make it the BEST BIRTHDAY EVAAAR GOLD STAR! Several really half-baked ideas popped into my mind – get wasted and go to Chuck E. Cheese’s (sheer irony of celebrating the legalization of alcohol imbibement at an annoying, dirty chidren’s playground that serves really crappy food), get wasted at Dave & Buster’s (the slightly less stupid idea), going out for a nice dinner with a large group of close friends and then getting shitfaced at local bars (Plan A Priority Alpha or whatever the hell the military calls it) – the list goes on. I could go all day.
Something you may not know about me is that I love the radio program This American Life. Something you may also not know is why I interrupted this riveting, sweat-busting story with such an inane detail. Calm down, sir, keep your pants on, I’ll explain: the TAL show broadcast on 2/20/09 was called “Plan B.” It was about people whose lives didn’t exactly go the way they had planned it when they were younger and how they dealt with it or how, through perseverance and a little luck, they wound back on Plan A. I’m putting my thoughts down now regarding my 21st birthday because I just listened to it on podcast (I’m usually a couple weeks late, and don’t say “that’s what she said”) and felt that, though my story is nowhere near as grand or long-term as the broadcast ones, this one was befitting of a Plan B backroads blueprint. To make it more interesting, let’s switch up formats. WONDER TWINS POWERS ACTIVATE! FORM OF…SHITTY NOVELIST FEATURED ON OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB:
The alarm on my cell phone went off at precisely 8:30AM. The chorus of Dave Matthews Band’s “The Space Between” rang annoyingly next to my head. My worthless roommate was still passed out on his bed, undoubtedly having stayed up all night playing WoW or DotA or whatever stupid online game he beat off to. I got up, partially excited that I was starting a new project in lab, but mostly despondent that I was still stuck in this city that I so loathe. I looked out the window.
Los Angeles. For The City of Angels, it sure was pretty gloomy – the sky was once again tainted with the rust-red cummerbund that sorrowfully separated sky and earth. I told myself that I would only have to deal with a little over one more month of this bullshit, got dressed, and hopped in the shower. The cool water woke me, and at that moment, I let out a little muffled scream in the shower stall because, damn it, today was MY BIRTHDAY and nobody was going to stop me from having the time of my life. Nobody, except for the city of Los Angeles [grammar fail].
This was my route to work every day:
View Larger Map
It doesn’t look like the distance is that far from this zoom, but you can’t see all the goddamn hills to the west of campus that I had to painstakingly traverse in order to get to my lab. I remember it was particularly warm that day, especially considering the thick smog present.
I went to work as usual. There was nothing different about the lab – the folks were all the same, my project was pretty much the same stuff as last time but with more tedious protocols to follow, and nothing was out of the ordinary. I didn’t want to express that it was my birthday because I didn’t really want the fake attention they would have undoubtedly showered upon me. That was one of the aspects of the lab dynamic that I enjoyed but also loathed – they were friendly, but sometimes I questioned whether or not it was genuine (go figure, it’s LA).
I quietly worked away for a few hours, all the meanwhile thinking about what I actually wanted to do for my birthday. I had no friends in the immediate vicinity, I had some pocket money to spend – why not just go to a couple of the local bars and get piss drunk and stumble home by myself? That seemed like a good idea.
Then reality hit. I was going to spend one of my lifetime landmarks alone in an unfamiliar city with strangers I didn’t particularly like. I put down my P200, sat in my chair, and thought about if that’s what I really wanted. I decided against it and made a couple of calls.
Tint picked up immediately. He was in Irvine, his hometown, and somehow we convinced each other that he and KNak would drive up together to come celebrate my birthday in Westwood. I eagerly waited their arrival while mindlessly finishing up my last bit of cell culture preparations.
6:00PM showed on my clock, and The Call came in. I packed up, hurried downstairs, and met Tint and KNak, ready to party the night away like Duff Man had just burst through the door. The problem was that KNak was not yet 21. This was a big problem for the rest of us. We walked around Westwood Village, thinking of what we could possibly do that could include this little not-yet-21-year-old-bitch hunkering our epic plans.
We walked past California Pizza Kitchen on the corner of Broxton and Weyburn. Why not? It’s as good as any of the other overpriced chains around here.
We walked in, sat down, and immediately began perusing the beverages menu. Not a huge selection, but a Sam Adams will do.
“ID, sir?”
Tint: “CHECK HIS AGE.”
”Thank you, sir. Your order is coming right up.”
Tint: “…did he notice that it’s your birthday?”
Thus went my very first ID check. Lacking.
“I’m sorry, sir, we’re out of Sam Adams.”
”Uhh…guess I’ll go with a Budweiser then.”
KNak and Tint: “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU. WE’RE BUYING YOU A DRINK. WHY WOULD YOU DOWNGRADE TO A PUSSY BEER LIKE THAT.”
Me: “SHUT UP, it’s not my fault! I’ll make up for it later.”
We ate and drank and ate some more. Just as we were about ready to leave, I made a note to the other two that I was rather unsatisfied with the amount of alcohol thus consumed. Once again, we sat around The War Table and decided what to drink.
Me: “I’ll get a Long Island Iced Tea. That should make up for it.”
Sure enough, the evening was finally starting to spin around like stars. Just for kicks, I thought I’d finish top off the meal with something that really caught my eye earlier.
"Sir, I’ll have a Peach Breeze please.”
Tint and KNak: “I FUCKING HATE YOU WHY ARE YOU SUCH A VAG”
Me: “I WILL DRINK WHATEVER I WANNA DRINK FUCK YOU GUYS”
I finished off the Peach Breeze with relative ease (which I guess is a sure sign of a vag drink). We left the restaurant and thought about what to do next. One discussion led to another, and somehow we made it over to Ralph’s on Le Conte where I purchased my very first bottle of alcohol from a grocery. We somehow landed on Malibu and a carton of orange juice.
Derrick called somebody. “Hello? Are you home? …Oh, you’re busy? Like, really busy? …Yeah, I’m here celebrating a friend’s birthday. Can we come over to play Rock Band?”
And thus went the remainder of the evening: in a dorm room of someone I did not know at all playing on a broken Rock Band set and shooting Malibu and OJ every few minutes. Not how I had expected the day to go, but a funny alternative nonetheless.
Happy 21st, buddy. One hell of a Plan B.
END OF “PLAN B,” A SHITTY NOVEL BY GORDO
Recent polls suggest that Americans are getting too lazy to actually read and instead prefer quick, visual summaries or sound bites (Time Magazine certainly has changed their format to fit this growing demographic). Therefore, I have decided to include the following summary to best express how my 21st birthday went.
PLUS
EQUALS
KNAK
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment