EPISODE #3: (I swear I’ll never drink like that again)

Still married to the same guy....only he has a new job where he travels quite a bit. He’s gone for days and sometimes 2 or 3 weeks at a time. We were sort of unofficially using that time as a trial separation. My best girlfriend at the time had recently split from her live-in boyfriend, and so to help me with expenses, and to keep me company, she became my roommate.

Now, as I stated, I married very, very young. I was not even old enough to drink when I got married. So between that, and my brother’s life-altering and completely disabling accident the next year, I completely missed out on the whole teenage rebellion thing that most kids go through right at the end of and just out of high school. I saved my rebellion, hell-raising antics for the end of this marriage that was doomed from the start.

So one night room-y and I decided to throw back a few of our new favorite drink, a Vodka Collins or two (or three or 20) and then go bowling. Off to the bowling alley we went, where I became the rebel of the evening and had a few more drinks. We ran into my room-y’s new boyfriend, and the party started from there. I’ll just cut to the chase now and tell you that I got drunk. Plastered, snockered, S**T-faced, bombed, call it what you will....I was Drunk!

So there’s a group of us all hanging out, and various people fade in and fade out of the group over the course of the night. At one point while a bunch of all are all just shooting the breeze, some guy sticks his hand out to me, and says, “by the way, Hello, I’m [...blah, blah, blah....whatever his name was.” Trying to hold my act together and not appear as bombed as I was, I stick my hand back out to him and say, “Nice to meet you, my name is......mmmmmm....is.....my name is.......oh wait, I knew it a minute ago.” Believe it or not, I was so drunk, I DID NOT KNOW MY OWN NAME! My roommate and her boyfriend had wandered off to make out somewhere, and the particular individuals around at that point were all new to me. So I had no one to ask what my name was. CRAP! Well, so much for first impressions. The poor guy...well, to be honest, I was drunk, and reeling, so I can’t even tell you what his reaction was, or what he did or said after the humiliating revelation that I DON’T EVEN KNOW MY OWN NAME! I do remember taking off trying to find room-y so I could find out my name. And then I remember being in the restroom with her, and her trying to get me to get my act together.

Next thing I remember was leaving the ladies’ room and going back out into the bowling alley. Our little gang was at one end of the bowling alley. WAAAAAAAY over at the complete opposite end of the bowling alley I spotted a kid I had gone to high school with. I had been a senior when he was a freshman. We had been in some class together...I’m guessing it was a science class, because I was horrible at science all the way through high school, and it’s not a stretch to imagine that I was still trying to master Freshman Biology while a senior in high school. Now, I’m still around 21, 22 years old at the time this story took place, so I’m guessing this kid was now a senior, or maybe just had graduated the year before. But this one young man in particular was etched in my memory, and the more I think about it, the more I believe it must have been a science class we were in together, because the particular thing I remember about this fella was that he had three nipples! And I knew this because he shared that information with the class. He had a large, dark skin tag on his chest that looked exactly like a third nipple, and even showed it to us. I remembered that very distinctly.

So....here I was....stumbling out of the ladies room, after embarrassing myself by being so drunk I did not even know my own name, and a unique name it is to remember, right? I was so bleary I could barely see straight, I was tripping and fumbling around, I must have looked like the Exorcist and smelled like a brewery, and did not know who I was, who I was with, or how I got there. BUT! I aimed my bleary gaze all the way across the bowling alley and sure as shootin’, I recognized that third nipple guy, from yards and yards and yards away, and 3 or more years ago! And I made no hesitation to start hollering for him, from all the way across the bowling alley: “Hey! You! You there! You! Three nipple guy, I know you! You! Remember me? From class? You, there you, guy with 3 nipples! Remember me? Hi, how are you....how’ve you been? Still got those 3 nipples? Those nipples doing OK?” I mean, no one could shut me up. My friends were trying to hold me back and stop me from staggering over there and making even more of an ass out of myself. So I managed to hop up on the row of chairs nearby and began waving my arms around and continued my screaming for the guy with 3 nipples.

Good grief. Someone should have just clubbed me on the spot.

My room-y finally decided we’d better call it a night, so she dragged me out to my car. She flung me into the passenger’s seat and left me there, passed out, so she could go back in and say goodbye to our friends and make sure neither of us had left anything behind (like a warrant for my arrest, maybe, or an alcohol rehab admission form, possibly)? While she was gone, I decided she had left me there to rot in my own drunken rotten-ness while she went back inside for some more tonsil hockey with her boyfriend, so I decided to go after her. I got as far as getting the passenger door open, when I promptly fell out and hit the pavement, and fell fast asleep.

Thankfully, room-y did not take too long to return to my car, and found me. She had to go back in, though, to get her boyfriend to come out and help her get me picked up and loaded back into the car. We finally made it home where room-y managed to get my shoes off and dump me into my bed. She stayed up watching TV in the living room for a while. My husband, who had been at a concert that night in Jacksonville, came home around 2 or 3 in the morning. Room-y had fallen asleep watching TV, and upon hearing his car pull up and the door slam, woke up. She heard him come in and he came to chat with her a bit, assuming that I was in bed. What he did not assume was that noise, that high-pitched, ridiculous sounding, sing-songy noise he heard was his wife. Well, room-y did. And she did knew I was brewing up some trouble. She did everything but try to seduce my husband in order to keep him from going into our bedroom and finding me dead drunk. Which is exactly what he did. He came in to find me buck naked except for my socks, bra and underwear, and I was tip-toeing around the edge of our water bed, drunk and singing to myself. And what do you think happened when he asked me what the hell I was doing? I asked him, “Who the hell are you?” Yup, still pretty drunk...not sure at that point if I knew my own name, but my amnesia at that instant was real....alcohol induced, but real....I did not know who he was. My own husband, of 4 or 5 years at point, and I didn’t know his name. My own name, a unique one at that which had been the only name I had ever gone by for 22 years at that point....couldn't remember that either. But a ramdon, 3-nippled classmate, whom I barely knew from high school 4 years ago? Not a problem. Knew him like a brother.

P.S. I’ve never drank like that ever again.