The Just One More Crowd

Last Friday, I woke up bleary-eyed and with an acute sense of panic. Looking over at my clock, I realized that I was indeed going to be late for work. These sort of occurrences produce in me the same distinct feeling students get for years after they have left school but still wake up in a blind terror convinced they have overslept for an exam. Rushing around trying to get myself together, the details of why I had overslept and now felt distinctly sick began to creep into my awareness...

I had broken the Golden Rule: I had gone out with Tanya the night before. Tanya, along with a few other of my friends and some close relatives, is part of the "Just One More" crowd and, frankly, I simply cannot hang with these mythical creatures anymore.

The "Just One More" crowd are the folks who can seemingly bend the willpower and resolve of most mere mortals and convince you, beyond all notions of common sense, that having just one more drink is in your best interest. I look upon these friends and family members of mine with a mixture of awe and decided envy. These are the folks that seem to be able to stay out until 2am drinking copious amounts of beer (or whatever the selected poison may be) and yet be able to wake up on time and appear perfectly functional in the office the next morning.

I am in awe of them because I can barely function with a hangover and, actually think? Hell no. I envy them because, quite honestly, I used to be one of them. But not anymore...most definitely not anymore.

Back in my mid-late twenties, I used to able to stay out all night with my friends at the bar or linger deep into the night at some one's house drinking copious amounts of beer or wine and then get up the next morning and go to work or school. I was not perfectly functional but I could cope and get through the day. Hell, not only could I get through the day, I was ready to start again the following evening!

My mother, observing this insane behavior from on-high, warned me: "Enjoy this now because once you hit your early to mid-thirties, you are not going to be able to do that any longer. Trust me."

Of course, I didn't remember these words when, around the age of 33, I started to discover that, indeed, the six or seven beers I could down without fear only a year before were now making me drunk.

And, worse yet, miserably hungover the next day.

At first I felt cheated by this whole arrangement as I came to the sport of drinking much later than most of my friends and colleagues. The first time I ever touched alcohol was when I was fifteen years old and my boyfriend at the time and I snuck into my grandmother's basement where my grandfather had a informal bar. I was forbidden to see this particular gentleman, of course, because my father had decided he was a "bad influence" on me....which made him all the more tempting.

So Bad Ass Boyfriend and I decided that the very best way to prove my father wrong was to drink an entire bottle of gin left over from some time around World War II, mixed with RC Cola.

Needless to say, I was so sick in the days that followed I was not tempted to touch alcohol (or RC Cola for that matter) again until my junior year of college, when a single wine cooler made my head spin.

This was all remedied when I turned 23 and decided to move to Eastern Europe for a year to teach English to Hungarian high school students with my boyfriend and best friend.

To say that the sun goes away in early October and does not make another appearance until mid-to late May is by no means an exaggeration. Also, we were located in far northeastern Hungary on the border with Ukraine and Romania in a former Soviet industrial city where about half of the population was unemployed.

So what does one do when one is living in a freezing cold climate where the sun goes away for seven months of the year and it is basically dark out all day and all night and you are surrounded by pissed-off unemployed people?

You got it: One gets shitfaced!! All the time.

At first we tried to avoid it...being all American puritanical and such.

"Look at how much these people drink!" I remember telling my boyfriend at the time. "Jesus, they stop for a shot on the way to work, have a few drinks during the lunch break in the damn teacher's room, and then go home and drink a bottle of wine or vodka a night! What a bunch of drunkards!" I observed, condescendingly.

But then we looked around and realized that there was nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, to do during the winter and early spring in this region. You either gathered with your friends at a bar and drank all night or you hosted parties where, well, you drank all night.

And oddly, despite my slow start, I gained my sea legs very quickly (Italian and Irish genetics, what can I say?) and, by the end of my fourteen month stint in Hungary, I was able to single-handily polish off a liter of wine and still function the next day.

And Hungary (as well as Russia, Romania, and most of Eastern Europe) is an entire of country of "just one more!" so it was hard to refuse.

Mind you, this is NOT something I am proud of but, nevertheless, it is fact.

My boyfriend, best friend and I all convinced each other that, upon moving back to the States, we'd chill out as drinking bottles of wine or cases of beer a night was certainly going to be frowned upon and might eventually lead to a more serious issue like alcoholism. So chill out we sort-of did and we reintegrated into an American society where it is acceptable to have a drink or two...but not seventeen.

That is, until I landed my first "real" job in Washington, DC...working with the military. Not just the American military, but everyone else's military as well as an analyst on military training programs. And, much like the Hungarians, men (and some women) in uniform pride themselves on their ability to drink like fish and still function. Mind you, I am not saying ALL military folks are like this but I would say it is more the norm than the exception.

So here I am, this little nervous chick trying to be taken seriously by both the big brass and foot soldiers alike and getting absolutely nowhere.... ...until I happened upon a skill that I had in common with them: I could drink a lot and still function.

Thus, my late twenties through my very early thirties were lived in much the same manner as Hungary and, although the frequency was less, the amount didn't change.

And then came Age 33 and the End of An Era.

I remember precisely when I discovered I had been demoted back to the world of mere mortal drinkers extremely well. It was my going away party prior to moving to Uganda and friends and I gathered at a local bar and partied late into the night. The next day, I prayed for death to come swiftly. Still, I didn't quite believe it and decided that, the next weekend, I would try it again...this time with a bottle of wine. The next morning, I again prayed for death but then thought better of it and called my mother.

"What the hell is wrong with me?" I begged her, "I only had, like, five glasses of wine last night and now I think I am going to DIE. WHAT IS THIS CONDITION???!!!"

"It's called a hangover and, as I might have mentioned to you some years ago, it is also called being in your mid-thirties now," she replied.

NOOOOO!!!!!

"It's not FAIR!" I shouted, "I didn't start drinking until much later than most people...they had five more years on me, at least!"

"Too bad," my mother said, "your days of partying and drinking all night are now officially over. Accept it and move on."

And, despite the fact that I tried a few more times to prove the theory wrong, I eventually came to accept that my beer balls were gone...forever.

Now, upon realizing this, most people make a lifestyle change. They begin hanging out with "responsible" and "moderate" drinkers who are well-behaved and are able to actually leave the bar after just one drink.

Me?

No, not so much.

I still loved my crazy drinking friends and had no desire to settle into a lifestyle that included conversations about babies and furniture (what I have determined the moderate drinking crowd seems entertained with).

So I kept hanging out with the "just one more" crowd until I realized that I might just have the least amount of willpower known to mankind.

I finally hung up my spurs and promised myself that the only time I would accept invitations to go out to bars was on weekends because there was no way in hell I could actually expect to perform my job and hang out with the "just one more" crowd during the week.

This wasn't too hard while living in Africa as most Ugandans don't drink and the ex-pats tend to gather on the weekends. But, returning to DC last year, they found me...the "just one more" crowd found me again. I have managed to avoid most compromising situations but, last week, my will was weak and my desire to have a good time strong.

As insurance, I took my new friend and colleague Holly with me. She also has grown up or worked with the military most of her life and was a professional drinker but she, at the age of 33, has also lost her beer balls.

She also knows our friend Tanya, who issued the invitation, and knows the danger well. We looked to each other for support.

"You know Tanya is very, very convincing," she told me. "You know when we get to that second or third beer and it is time to go she is going to find a way to convince us to stay...you KNOW that, right?"

"Yes, but she can't defeat two of us," I said. "We'll be strong for each other."

Yeah, right.

The last clear image I have of that evening was Tanya and Holly dancing to "Sweet Home Alabama" wrapped in the Libyan flag. And the only reason I have that image is because I was photographing the whole thing with my phone....apparently from the floor.

Luckily, DC and the surrounding environs has a fantastic Metro system so you can get drunk and not have to be tempted to drive home so I made it home without hurting anyone, at least not physically.

I think I remember telling some poor Ethiopian cab driver who took me from the Metro station to my home that I loved his country and that, even though I got food poisoning there, I didn't hold it against him.

I'm sure he was deeply relieved.

I would likely have forgotten about the whole thing and chalked it up to a really bad decision coupled with a nasty hangover the next day if it weren't for one factor that always haunts me when I drink: The Collateral Damage Effect.

You know, that feeling that begins to take root somewhere in your abdomen at about the time your hangover is setting in and whatever remaining amount of alcohol has finally left your system for good? That whole "sinking feeling" bit?

I got around to that at about 3pm when my boyfriend text messaged me at work and asked, "So how we feeling today, soldier?"

Uh-oh.

Of course, when confronted with a phone conversation or email that one does not remember having or sending, the best way to handle it is to act arrogant and try to convince the other person that you were completely in control of your functions.

"I'm fine," I wrote back, "just really busy today!" (Praying it would end)

"So you don't remember calling me at 3am to tell me how much you loved me and how I had good skin?" he wrote. (Whew...at least I was loving and not argumentative.)

"Of course! And I do love you and think you have great skin...now, back to work!" I sent. (Oh please let the torture end!!!)

"How about the part where you freaked out and told me that, as a part Arab, I am immune to the suffering of 'my people' in Libya?" he wrote. (Aw, shit...I knew it couldn't have been that easy.)

I decided to get it all over with up-front so I called. "I wasn't drunk!" I told him defiantly.

"No? Well you sure sounded pretty drunk...you don't normally rail against me for not supporting the principles of humanitarian intervention in the Arab world at three o'clock in the morning..." he observed. (FUCK!!!!)

"Yeah, well, I am sorry about that. Did I say anything else ridiculous?" I asked.

"Let's see...wanna hear the bit about child soldiers, the Mormons, the Pentagon budget, or the Mayan calendar?" he asked. (FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!!!!)

"No, not really," I whispered.

"It's OK, you are forgiven because I know that I put you through some interesting phone calls after dart night on Tuesdays but, really, Patti, I thought you had decided that going out with those friends of yours during the week was a bad idea..." he said.

"Yes, it is a bad idea but, but..." I stammered, chastised.

Both fortunately and unfortunately, Chas is also a member of the "Just One More" crowd. However, he is the mature version of the species and limits his entreaties of "just one more" to Friday and Saturday nights when no one has to go to work the next day.

Still, I often find myself sitting at the Moose Lodge in southern Jersey---after I have convinced him that we are only going for ONE DRINK---eating pickles and peanuts for dinner as Chas begs, "Just one more, I promise...we'll go after this one...I promise!"

But, as I said, he confines these requests to weekends, never school nights. In any case, Holly crept into my office later that day and asked, "Are there pictures? I seem to remember pictures..." I handed over my phone, and the evidence.

"Oh Dear God!! I was wondering where I got that Libyan flag from! Shit, I thought we were supposed to be strong for each other!" she said.

"Well, apparently I called Chas and spoke on such wide-ranging subjects as Arab pan-nationalism to the end of times at 3am," I admitted.

"Oh no! Well, I'd better check my email and phone," she said, running from the office.

This afternoon, around 5pm, Tanya called to invite me and Holly out for "Just One Drink I Promise!" And, resolutely, we both took rain checks.

Just one more, I am not anymore.