Ah. Time for the “How I Quit Drinking” story.
A friend of mine- let’s call him James- had a party at his house. Unfortunately, the day before the party, James got the opportunity to DJ at a prom the next night. Being perpetually short of cash, James accepted the offer; but because it would be too short a notice to call off the party, he decided to have the party anyways. Therefore, an hour into the party James left and turned it (and the keys to the liquor cabinet) over to his semi-responsible friend, Kevin.
The wine flowed like water after that; specifically, the “wine-in-a-box” that someone had brought was broken out of the box, and many of us were passing around a mylar bag full of wine, and turning on the spigot directly over our mouths. This should be a pretty good indicator of exactly how sloshed many of us were (I realize it isn’t quite an epic drunkeness, but the epic nature of this story will come through later).
About midway through things, I had managed to secure a space on the couch next to Jane (not her real name; I’m trying to protect the innocent parties here (no pun intended) and keep my ass out of the lawsuit fryer), who was the object of lust for most of the people in my social group. I turned to her and said, “I’m going to do something really stupid, now.” And then I kissed her. She then replied, “You’re right, that was stupid.” (Side note- Jane was just as sloshed as I, and when I later told this story to her, she was horrified by what she had said and apologized profusely.) My pride and self-esteem, not normally at a very high level, plunged to rock bottom. I wandered off to be alone for a bit, and upon sobering up, drove home.
Given my problems with self-esteem, I decided that doing things that specifically made me feel stupid were not in my best interest. Therefore, I resolved not to drink again, as when drunk, I not only did stupid, silly things, but I also always remembered everything I had done while I was drunk. And at later points, when people asked me why I didn’t drink, I always said, “Because I did something really stupid at James’ party.”
Enter Karen Fuchs (again, not her real name, although her last name, like “Fuchs”, was a homonym for sex, which was appropriate). Karen was a member of our little social group, not that anyone liked her. But she was always the girlfriend of someone in the group, so she always ended up attended parties and events even though most of the group reacted to her with seething distaste. The reasons for this were many: she was rude, tactless, and arrogant (she had no problems making loud nasty comments about person A to person A’s SO or best friends, while at a party at person A’s house, just as an example). She also enjoyed sex a great deal. Now, I’d be the first to say that enjoying sex isn’t a crime. But when Karen got horny, she would fixate upon someone as the object of her desires. It didn’t matter if she was dating someone else. And it certainly didn’t matter if the object of her lust was dating someone else. Karen would hone in upon her target like a water buffalo with Patriot missle technology, running rampant over the feelings of everyone around her, and not taking ‘no’ for an answer until she had been practically beaten about the head with it. And upon being rejected, Karen would then take out her lust upon whomever seemed at all interested in her, regardless of personality, attractiveness, or personal hygiene (and again, regardless of whether she was in a relationship with someone else, or whether her new sex partner was in a relationship with someone else).
Karen came to James’ party with a friend of hers we still know only by his nickname- “Scum.” Karen was, at this point, fixating upon David, unworried by the fact that he was married to Mary (again, not real names). In fact, she had specifically dragged Scum to this party so that Scum could distract/seduce Mary while Karen went after David. Thankfully, she had told her plans to one of her roommates, who felt obliged to warn David and Mary about this. So Mary and David spent most of the party close together and showing affection in order to ward off Karen. Karen eventually gave up on David, and in order to release her tensions, pulled Scum into a bathroom and screwed him right then and there.
So, following the party, there were two stories going around.
1.) Karen, rejected by Dave, pulled someone into the bathroom and the two of them mated like rabbits.
2.) John is giving up drinking because he “did something really stupid” at James’ party.
Needless to say, most people put 2 and 2 together to get 5. And because I had never heard about Karen’s activities at James’ party, I had no idea what I had set myself up for. It wasn’t until James finally got up the courage to ask me what specific stupid thing I had done at his party that he found out I hadn’t had sex with Karen, and that I found out that everyone thought I had. Yeesh.
(Oh, and since then, I have started drinking again. But I’m a much more moderate drinker.)
JMCJ
This is not a sig.
