Hungover.

A reader, the Other Nance, sent me a note over the weekend, reporting on a visit to her daughter at college. My alma mater, actually, the fine and venerable Ohio University. They went uptown and had some festive drinks, including the Car Bomb. That is:

13-14 oz. Guinness stout
1 oz. Bailey’s Irish cream
1 oz. Jameson’s whiskey

Combine the Bailey’s and the Jameson’s, then drop it, boilermaker-style, into the Guinness. The very thought makes me cross-eyed with nausea. I guess the name comes from all that Irish stuff, a little nod to Sinn Fein. Ah, for the days of shamrocks and leprechauns. Too bad the Palestinians don’t have a long tradition of drinking; lord knows what we could dream up to name in their honor.

They also had some Blow Jobs — Kahlua, Bailey’s Irish creme, banana schnapps. I don’t even want to think about it.

Either college kids are getting too much allowance or…or… Kids these days! Sheesh! Why, in my day we rooted through desk drawers for nickels, then pooled them to buy a lousy pitcher of draft beer at the student union, by cracky. On the other hand, as I brush away the cobwebs in this particular stretch of Memory Lane, I recall that the last months of my senior year, a bar opened that featured one of those reclining barber chairs — patrons would lie down in it and have the stuff poured directly into their mouths. Not that I ever did anything of the sort; the bar was one of those frat-boy hangouts. I preferred the much cooler Swanky’s, the Union and the Frontier Room, which had a wonderful terrace. They made a nice steak sandwich at the Pub, which I preferred for a hangover treatment, along with a 6-ounce Coke in the curvy bottle. Oh, stop me now.

There was a point here: Every time I’ve had a Screaming Orgasm or Slippery Nipple or Sex on the Beach or Jizz Fizz or whatever they call those vile combinations of liqueurs, schnapps and Yukon Jack, I have lived to regret it. Mightily. No wonder they’re always bringing college kids into the E.R. with alcohol poisoning.

(Other Nance took the girls home in a cab. Wise mama.)

I’m on the wagon myself, after two nights of mild carousing. I paced myself and didn’t get overserved, but the alarm clock in my liver, the one that says I cannot sleep late after a night of more than four beers, awoke me at 5:30 a.m. Saturday and 6 a.m. today. This after not getting to bed until after midnight both nights. I got up and turned on the TV downstairs, and caught "Indochine" yesterday and "Casablanca" today, which struck me as perfect 6 a.m.-when-you-can-neither-sleep-nor-rise-from-a-prone-position selections. "Indochine" stars Catherine Deneuve, who possesses one of the most sculpturally beautiful faces in the western world but can’t seem to actually move it around in search of an expression, and this movie was made in 1992, before Botox. And yet, she can still act. Like all French actresses, with her it’s all about the wardrobe, and she had some fabu-freakin-tastic outfits. She wears the clothes, they don’t wear her. I found my attention wandering from the nascent Viet Cong to more important matters, like, why don’t women wear gloves anymore? Where did they store all those hats? And who fixed all those finger waves, anyway?

You can see the weekend’s festivities have taken it out of ol’ Nance. Both Friday night (when we bought for the table at our local newspaper bar) and Saturday night (when Emma and her husband Mike hosted a nice party for us) were quite fun. It always pays to stay at a party until the bitter end, to see the fun things that happen at that magical hour. What will it be? An orgy, a fight, a heart-to-heart talk with a person you barely know or a screening of "The Endless Summer" with the sound off, accompanied by the vinyl soundtrack recording on the stereo? Guess which one we did. It’s amusing to see that Mike, a native Ohioan like me, shares my fascination with surfing. Talk about beating your head against the wall, Buckeye-style.

All right then, this is it for now. But Unemployment Girl will be back tomorrow, a little fresher and better-rested. No more toasting. And no Car Bombs!

Posted at 1:29 pm in Uncategorized |
 

Comments are closed.