Drinking Story: New Year's Eve '03-'04

This New Year's was interesting, in that I was finally able to hang out with friends of legal age at bars. The '01-'02 New Year's, Aidan and I were dodging bouncers on South Street, and I was stuck on campus with the basketball team during the '02-'03 New Year's, and they were all underage. The '03-'04 New Year's Eve also started what has become a holiday tradition: drinking with Kurt and Dan.

Dan worked at the ABC (liquor) store that year, so he was in charge of the pre-party arrangements. We were going to use my house as our home base, because there were a bunch of bars and a club of sorts all within relative walking distance of my place. Kurt came by first, and naturally we started drinking. Dan came by with a bunch of airplane bottles of booze, so we also each did two shots before we left.

We hit up two of the bars by my place, which were both totally dead. We were walking to the next place when Kurt realized he lost his driver's license. So we had to walk all the way back to the parking lot, and start looking around. We found it pretty quickly, and then went to the clubbish spot, Lucky 32's. For some ungodly reason, Lucky's was treating New Year's Eve like a regular night, in that they were closing like it was a regular weekday. We were all incredulous. Biggest drinking night of the year, and this place can't be bothered to stay open.

Undaunted, we decided to make the 10-minute drive downtown to the other clubs. We got into one place just before midnight, and there were at least girls in this one. We got drinks, and went to work. I saw Kurt talking to a group of three girls, and then just walk away. Considering they were all at least reasonably attractive, I figured I'd see what the deal was. I went over, and started talking. I don't remember exactly how the conversation went, but I remember they said something about Kurt claiming to go to Duke (and not Guilford, like he really did), and so I just jumped right into the game, and said something about doing postgrad work (possibly law school) at Duke. Keep in mind, I was working some bullshit jub at the time. What really makes it funny was that these girls all went to Virginia Tech. That's not the funny part. What's funny is that when Kurt found out about this, according to the girls, he put his thumb down and walked away. I tried not to break out into hysterical laughter right there. I talked to the girls for a while, and was doing reasonably well for myself. Dan noticed, and walked over as I went to grab a drink. When I came back, Dan was there by himself. Given that Dan wasn't set up with an easy fastball like I was (the girls asked me if I went to Duke like Kurt said he did), he didn't know the bullshit Kurt had gotten us into. The girls asked Dan where he went to school, and he said Guilford. When asked how he knew us, he said that we all went to school together. So much for those girls.

The rest of the night can be pretty much summed up as the three of us all having varying degrees of success meeting girls. Kurt met up with some chick he used to go to High Point U. at the club, and they spent a good while dancing. I vaguely remember that. I got some girl's number. I think she had a kid, maybe two. That one didn't get much further than that.

Leaving the bar was an absolute nightmare. Kurt apparently left before both of us. He got in touch with Katy, his girlfriend of sorts, who came and picked him up. We still aren't sure why Kurt didn't come back with me and Dan, since he had to make it back to my house that night anyway. Dan left the bar a couple minutes before I did, and when I tried to call the number he gave me, it wound up being his apartment number, as opposed to his cell phone number, so that obviously was no help finding him outside the bar. I tried calling Kurt, and found out that he had taken Katy the complete wrong way to my house, and was in fact taking her by our old apartment on the other side of town. Apparently, some of Kurt's "directions" were "Fuck it, just go straight" and "Let me out here, I'll walk the rest of the way". I have no idea how he or Katy found my house that night.

I had a relative moment of clarity at this point, and decided to walk to where Dan had parked his car. I figured this way I'd at least run into him, or figure out if it was time to call a cab at that point. Dan's car was still in the lot, so I headed back to the bar, where I ran into Dan standing outside. We went back to his apartment to pick up booze, and then went to this girl's apartment so Dan could smoke weed. I think Kurt called me at like 3 in the morning to let me know he'd made it back to my house. In case you can't tell, a lot of that night is REALLY hazy for me.

I think Kurt had to work at like 8 the next morning. Sucked to be him.