Bluegrass Nostalgia and the Shit Show

As you may know, I ventured down to Lexington this weekend for a friend's birthday celebration and the derby festivities. The result: a gorgeous disaster which included ample belly laughing, meeting my future ex-husband, gambling, triple-threat puking and hotties. The best weekend I've had in a while...I will take you through chronologically, as my brain cells are not functioning well enough yet to put together a thematic recollection in a way that would be comprehensible.

9:30-I arrive in Lexington while the girls are at a movie. I sit at the hotel bar and begins drinking bourbon (Knobb Creek, if you must know). Quickly realize how much better looking the boys are in Lexington vs. Cincinnati. Tall, hunky, well-bred, well-dressed...just yummy. They were everywhere. It made me so sad that I would eventually have to come back to Cincinnati where everyone looks the same and acts the same (unless you're not from Cincinnati). I meet a pilot named Bob from Texas who once flew Elaine Chao to Africa so she could condemn cruel child labor practices.

9:45-I receive a phone call from one of my best friends who had just taken the last law school final of her first year. She had been binge drinking since she finished said final, around 2 pm that day. Wasted, she called to inform me that she had lured her Irish cab driver (age: 55-60) into her apartment by sparking his interest in a Thai elephant painting that hangs above her sofa. After she convinced him to come into her humble abode and see the painting, she trailed him back out to his cab in her driveway, got in it again and made out with him. True story.

10 pm-Girls arrive at the hotel downtown. We are 12 in number. Cases of Korbel champizzle are consumed directly from the bottle, along with shots of vodka. Stupid photos are taken. Stories are told. Girls will be girls, until....

11:45-when we become rabble-rousing hussies who decide to go out to the bars. This is when the real shit show begins. Location: Cheapside Bar and Grille, Lexington, KY. At midnight, Meg would turn 21, at which point we would disgustingly flatter the following men for an unquantifiable number of shots and drinks:

-an Irish Middle School teacher (who's name I have forgotten, but it was something like "Flannery O'Rourke", you get the idea)
-Jimmy, a regular who made me take a tequila shot with him.
-Dan, a guy who bought us bourbons that we kinda forgot to talk to after that...
-Georgia boys, who I challenged to a high-kick contest, among other things...
-Chase, and two of his other friends whose names I don't remember from Knoxville, TN, who I met through...
-Paul from Miami, 65+, a retired Equestrian Veterinarian who grabbed me around the waist, whispered some naughty things in my ear, and from that point on introduced me to people as his "Future Ex-Wife". He had the thickest Brooklyn accent I have ever heard in my life. He was accompanied by his son, who was actually my age, saying some of the same things to me as his dad was saying, i.e. "You've gotta be a model," "I have never seen legs like these," and my ALL-TIME favorite line that I've ever heard from a horny drunk guy at a bar:

"There's only one way I could handle the curves on your body, and that's in my Porsche."

My response: "I don't know about that, it really depends on the model. These hips sink ships, baby."

There is nothing more gratifying to me than being given the opportunity to humor myself with outrageous responses. It was like he was setting himself up. His son did the same shit, too. They were a trip... At one point, this Un-fuckin-believable father-son duo both had their arms around me, spitting these horrible lines in my ears, completely aloof to the fact that I was hearing the same crap in the other ear, too. The only difference: about 35 years.

Meanwhile, my girlfriends were sitting talking to these guys, unaware of how drunk they were getting. By last call, everyone was trashed, especially the birthday princess. When we left the bar, she took a concrete-eatin' spill outside on the sidewalk, and couldn't even stumble 2 blocks back to the hotel. So...

2 AM-We wave a cab. Luckily, this super-awesome guy who went to undergrad with me, Jacob, was hanging out with us, and he was nice enough to pick Meg up off the ground, and put her into the back seat of this cab. We all pile in, and the cabby asks in a thick Brogue, "Is she gonna be alright?"

Holly says something to the effect of, "Yeah, but where are you from?"
"I'm Irish," he says.

I yell as loudly as possible from the back mish-mash, "YOU FUCKIN' MADE OUT WITH MY FRIEND EARLIER!!! YOU WENT TO SEE THE FUCKIN ELEPHANT PAINTING!!!!"

He lost it and absolutely cracked up - it was the same damn taxi cab driver that my pal made out with! What are the fuckin' odds?! He was dumbfounded that we knew about that - it was one of those really devastating, unbelievable, overwhelming small-world moments. I think about it now, and still just shake my head... Dude was old, like, grey old. *head still shaking...*

Once back at the hotel, Jacob carries Meg back into the hotel and puts her on the bed. The very moment her body touches the bed, she projectile voms everywhere - the bed, the walls, the carpet - I'm about 90% sure that I saw the figure of Virgin Mary in some of the vom...it was pretty elaborate. At this point, the unexpected happened.

As you may have read, I was a little apprehensive about hanging out with these undergrad youngsters. They are so conditioned for binge drinking, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to keep up and would end up in bed at like, 10:30. However, the very opposite happened!!!! I, in fact, did pretty fuckin' good - I drank nothing but hard liquor all night and didn't yack! I was indeed, the only girl who DIDNT puke! Holly sat indian style on the floor and vommed into an ice bucket, Cassie made it to the toilet and decided to sleep beside it, and Meg just yacked on pretty much anything around. They were all puking in the same room at the same time, and I felt like I was the conductor of the Yack Symphony as I stood facing them, cracking up. This was the shit show grand finale.

The next morning, everyone was spry and vivacious.... hehe that's funny. We discovered that our other girlfriends had gotten kicked out of the hotel at 3 AM and had driven back to Danville. Jesus what a night.

I started the next day with my buddy who made out with the Cabby. She still had shit drawn on her legs with marker. We had an awesome day! We smoked bud, and went to a head shop where I purchased awesome things:

-tiny plastic naked babies
-An Ayn Rand book on Capitalism
-The Chomsky-Foucault debate on human nature
-a book on classical architecture in Turkey
-an art history book with some great essays that span ancient Egypt-Middle Ages. Love it.

AND two new glass pipes! YES! We named them, and christened one of them. The Christened one has a little glass skunk on the top which has googlie eyes that stare at your when you hit it. Hilarious! It's name is the Weesel, because the little skunk so fondly reminds me of Maximus. The other one, which is still freshies, is named Sophistication. This way, the pipe I smoke from will determine and/or enhance my behaviors and actions at that time. Obviously, if I am going to smoke a bowl and write an art crit or read for my Roman Archaeology class, then I will only smoke bowls from Sophistication. If, however, I'm having friends over and we are anticipating a Bobby Mackey's night, we will abandon Sophistication and smoke only from the Weesel.

So, after we got this cool shit, we ate at Pazzo's: the best pizza and beer in the world. I miss that place so much! I couldn't drink at this point, anything but redbulls. Just to keep my head up on Saturday and make it to the race track, and eventually make it home, I drank 5 redbulls.

The track was fun and awesome, but the experience as a whole was quite Shakespearean with the Eight Belles tragedy. Poor little philly....