You Deserve a Drink: Boozy Misadventures and Tales of Debauchery (10 page)

As you can see, Maureen did an epic job in contouring my cheekbones, which was totally my idea. I asked her if she could shade in some striking angles to take away the chubbiness of my cheeks. I didn’t want to get my proofs back and see myself looking like a chipmunk. Although, if I
were a chipmunk, I would definitely be dating Alvin, the hottest of all chipmunks. Alvin is such a bad boy. He’s always getting into trouble and can sing like crazy. However, if Alvin and I were to ever start dating, I would have to give him a total makeover. The dude wears long shirts and no pants. What’s up with that?! Alvin, you look like you’re going through a mental breakdown and have resorted to wearing only nightgowns. Not a good look. At least Simon has brains and Theodore found a chubby chaser. Get it together, Alvin!

I had a little bit of a tiff with Maureen while we were picking out wardrobe. I asked if it would be possible to stuff my bra and she “didn’t think that was appropriate.” You know what’s not appropriate, Maureen? Chain-smoking a pack of Kools and not washing your hands before slapping bronzer on a 10-year-old.

At least I got to wear my favorite color. Metallic blue. They had this sweet jacket, which I can only imagine was 100% real leather, and they even gave me matching earrings! As you know, Diary, I don’t have my ears pierced (I’m no slut), but luckily, these were clip-ons. They looked rad but I felt like I had two boat anchors attached to my ears. I imagined taking off the earrings and my lobes being totally stretched out. Just dangling on my shoulders like those women in Mom’s “National Geographic” magazines. But sometimes you need to sacrifice for beauty, you know?

Once my cheeks were bronzed like a pair of baby shoes, it was showtime. Look, I always knew I was going to give great facial expressions, but I’ll be honest, Diary. It was tougher than I thought. I was so happy to be in front of the camera, but I couldn’t fully smile. I wasn’t going to show the gap in my teeth! As soon as I turn 14, I’m going to get it fixed. . . .

All in all, the Glamour Shot experience was a success. Now I just gotta figure out how to find the addresses for
agents. If only there were some way to look up information easily. Like typing it into a computer or something. But, no! Computers are just for Number Munchers and catching dysentery on the Oregon Trail.

Well, gotta go, Diary.

Peeeeeace!

Xo

Mamrie

As you can see, the picture turned out amazing. I could no doubt have been cast on
Kids Incorporated
from this head shot alone. But seeing how big a diva one hour in the hair-and-makeup chair turned me into, I am glad I wasn’t allowed to be a kid actor. By the time I’d hit twelve I wouldn’t have let anyone look me directly in the eye. I would’ve made my assistant spray my favorite perfume (Exclamation!) in every room or hallway before I entered, not to mention making sure the Dunkaroos in my dressing room were only icing,
no
cookies.

So thanks, Mom. You made the right move on that one, which helped me grow up to be a grounded and full individual. It wouldn’t be until years later that my ego would be pumped up fuller than Annie’s water bed.

T
his Quickshot is about birthday parties. Trading in a birthday party for that sick Glamour Shot was totally worth it. And this is coming from someone who
lives
for birthday parties. There are some people in this world who get embarrassed when their friends inform the waiters at a restaurant that it’s their birthday. Screw that! I tell them it’s my birthday when it’s not. If there’s an opportunity to wear a novelty sombrero while eating
free
flan, you’d better believe “today is
mi cumpleaños
.”

Here is a list of my favorite b-day bashes through the ages.

Discovery Zone

Fuck Chuck E. Cheese’s. Back in the ’90s there was an amazing chain called Discovery Zone. Unlike the Chuckster, it had less of a focus on video games and more of a focus on a huge indoor jungle gym. I’m talking massive ball pits, slides, tunnels, all the top names. The kind of place that had shoe cubbies and the whole building reeked of children’s feet. Even though I was too old to be hanging out in a place where most of the clientele picked their noses, I was
obsessed
with it. Other girls my age probably preferred hanging out at the mall, seeing what the latest fashions were at Gap Kids, but
not me. If DZ were still around today and I could get a fake ID saying I’m under twelve years old, this book wouldn’t exist, because there aren’t electrical outlets for my laptop in the ball pits.

Every time my mom was going to Winston,
*
I would beg her to let me go to DZ while she ran her errands. Technically, I don’t think you are supposed to drop off your kids, but like I said, I was of the older echelon of kids there (plus the staffers probably pitied me—let’s be real).

Check it out, Dame DZ is back. She’s gonna crack a hip one of these days.

I don’t understand. Is this a brilliant ploy to get babysitting jobs?

Based on the way she just knocked that four-year-old over to get to the rope ladder, I don’t think so.

When my eleventh birthday rolled around, I knew what I wanted: my ten closest girlfriends and five guy friends to all go to Discovery Zone with me. And, by God, my folks agreed. I don’t blame them. After all, DZ was way less scandalous than the skating rink (my second choice). At the skating rink, there were way more dark corners. Plus they had designated songs for couples skates. Call me a prude,
*
but a bunch of fifth-graders holding hands while skating to Boyz II Men’s “I’ll Make Love to You” had to be a disturbing sight for parents.

The party was a
blast
. We climbed the ropes, crawled through the tunnels, and zip-lined into the ball pit. Which, I will say, is pretty brave of me, considering one time I jumped into a ball pit at McDonald’s only to realize some kid had vomited right beside my landing spot. Have you ever tried gracefully getting out of a ball pit without the balls moving? It does not work. Those vomit balls avalanched on me, and my Happy Meal was not so happy anymore.

As thrilling as the obstacle course was, the real fun happened in
the bounce castle area. This was the part of the obstacle course most tucked away from all the
immature
eight-year-olds. It was also farthest from the chaperones’ watchful eyes. It was there, among the primary-color tubes of air, that I suggested a game after a failed attempt at “Spin the Hat” (we were resourceful).

“I know a game we can play. I remember hearing that older kids would play it back when I lived in New Jersey.” I had their attention. “It’s called Sleeping Beauty. All the girls lay down in a circle with their eyes closed. The boys walk around and plant a kiss on each girl. If you are kissed and can feel like it’s your Prince Charming, you open your eyes and scream out, ‘Sleeping Beauty!’”

Here’s why this game was brilliant:

A. Because even at eleven, I was figuring out ways to make finding love a competition, years before
The Bachelor
. There was no strategy. You could only “win” if you felt enough of a spark from that pop kiss to claim victory.

B. I made that shit up on the spot. This was no game I’d heard of in New Jersey. This was something I came up with in that bounce castle, ’cause let’s face it, birthday girl wanted to get smooched!

I lay there on the bounce castle with my eyes closed. I was completely still with my arms folded across my chest, but on the inside I was freaking out.

Please don’t be Jeff; let it be Eddie. Please don’t be Jeff; let it be Eddie.

After the third or so kiss (three seconds long, closed mouth, basically an extended peck), I decided,
Screw it! I am going to open my eyes on the next boy.
I felt the face come closer to me. My eyes were closed so tight you would think I was watching
The Exorcist
. A perfect, sweet kiss was planted on my Dr Pepper Lip Smackered lips. Just as I was about to open my eyes and yell, “Sleeping Beauty!” I heard Leslie scream it first!

I instinctively shot Leslie my strongest evil eye. Trust me, if looks could kill, she would’ve turned to a pile of ash. The rage behind my superthick glasses cooled, however, once I noticed who her Prince Charming was.

It was Jeff! Boom! In ya face, Leslie. I had been secretly harboring a grudge against Leslie since she and Eddie had couples-skated to “Bump N’ Grind” at her birthday party. But being the bigger person (literally; Leslie was seventy-five pounds soaking wet), I still invited her to my party.

Looking at Leslie with Jeff, I couldn’t help but feel jealous. Sure, she had just risked injury by kissing those braces, but she won Sleeping Beauty! That envy lasted all of twenty seconds when I noticed that the prince I was going to open my eyes to was . . . Eddie. My big crush. Later that day Eddie would ask me to be his girlfriend while we played Skee-Ball. I played it cool and said, “Only if I hit the one hundred hole on this next ball.” I hit it. I ruled at Skee-Ball then, and I do now. We lasted two blissful weeks, complete with holding hands that day and waving to each other in the lunchroom a total of seven times before calling it quits.

Once we were all DZed out, the boys went home and all the girls came back to my place for a slumber party. We sugar-rushed off so many M&M’s that you would’ve thought they were cocaine flavored, and then we made up dance routines to En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind.” It wasn’t until our sugar crash, when all of us girls piled onto a big pallet on the floor to give each other temporary tattoos, that I heard the news. Apparently it wasn’t just any old pop kiss that had made Leslie wake from her sleeping spell. Jeff had slipped her the tongue. Looks like there were
lots
of things discovered that day at the Discovery Zone.

Studio 54

If you want your birthday to be a fun and memorable one, instill a liquor-only rule. If you want your birthday to be so fun and memorable that everyone blacks out and can barely remember it, instill a liquor-only rule.

This was the only regulation for my twenty-first birthday party. “No beer, no wine, only liquor, all the time.”
*
I know what you are thinking. Twenty-first birthday? Lemme guess, you probably put on some dumb tiara and proceeded to take twenty-one shots along a bar crawl until you threw up in the streets. Ummmm, do you even know me at all? Of
course
I did that.

But I grand-marshaled that puke parade the night I was
turning
twenty-one. The birthday shindig was the next day.

It all started with a ridiculous green jumpsuit. For some reason, while I was walking through Nordstrom (I was feeling fancy that day), a lime green halter-top jumpsuit caught my eye. Probably because it was greener than a shaved kiwi. If I had accidentally rolled up on a green screen, I would’ve been a floating head and arms. I knew I had to have it. I looked at the price tag. Seventy-five bucks?! Well, that wasn’t going to happen.

At the time, I was working at a bar called Woody’s, which served cheap beer and cheap wings. In fact, I worked there the majority of my college days. I won’t lie, it can be tough as a female to work at a place that is also a slang term for a boner. College guys aren’t exactly the classiest folks after eight pints of Newcastle. Anyway! I worked hard at Woody’s. My budgeting process for buying things would always end up being broken down into how many chicken-wing bones I would have to clean up to make that amount. At around a dollar tip per dozen wings, that jumper was looking like nine hundred bones. But I didn’t care. When a mother goes
into an orphanage and sees the baby she knows is hers, she doesn’t say, “What are the legal costs of this adoption?” She’ll pay whatever it takes. And I felt the same way about this glorious getup.

Once I officially had the lime green halter-top jumpsuit in my life, the next issue to solve was where the hell I was gonna wear this thing. And so I used my old rule of thumb for ridiculous clothing purchases: If it doesn’t work in everyday life, make it work by throwing a theme party! I knew immediately that the theme for my twenty-first was going to be Studio 54.
*

Studio 54 is not only the inspiration for a terrible movie starring Ryan Phillippe and Neve Campbell; it was the name of a legendary club in New York during the ’70s and ’80s. It was disco! It was celebrities! It was eventually shut down because of tax evasion!

But for one fateful night in September 2004, I wanted to reopen the infamous hot spot in my shitty rental house. I told all my friends they had to dress in disco-era clothing. It can be tough to get good ol’ boys whose idea of dressy clothes is their least stained basketball shorts to don polyester shirts and high-waisted pants. But after a little coercing (and me physically dragging them to Goodwill), everyone was game!

My roommates helped and we decorated our house with cheesy decorations from Party City. We stocked the bar with all the cheap liquor we could afford and filled the fridge with two hundred Jell-O shots. To really put the classy cherry on top, I filled a huge bowl with condoms, individual lube packets, and mints. Hey! I was single and it was my birthday. I wasn’t taking any chances.

(Quick advice: If you are going to throw a party with lube packets as party favors, swiftly dispose of any that didn’t get taken by
guests. I would recommend doing this the following morning, or at least before you drunkenly eat french fries in the dark. Astroglide is no substitute for ketchup.)

I’m just assuming I didn’t make any hors d’oeuvres for this party and that is why I’m biting a condom. Whore d’oeuvres, anyone?

Everyone got rip-roaring plastered within the first hour, and I couldn’t have been happier. As things tend to do, the rest of the night got a little blurry. Thank God we had all those disposable cameras lying around so we could piece together the evening. Twila Falstaff made several trips to the CVS photo counter the following week.

A few things were obvious in the light of day: My roommates each had their crushes in bed with them, my friend Stacey ended up on my couch with a UNC basketball player, and I have
no
idea how he got word of the party. And this twenty-one-year-old birthday girl was the only party guest who didn’t get laid.

Ping-Pong Tourney

I am a fiercely competitive person, which might seem surprising considering I don’t give a shit about sports. I do, however, give a major shit about
tiny
sports. If it is a miniature version of a preexisting sport, I turn into a maniac. Seriously. I could be in a sports bar during the last game of the World Cup, and I’d ask the bartender to change it to
Ellen
. But if there’s a foosball table in said sports bar? It’s
on
.

But my true tiny calling is Ping-Pong. I think I love the idea that I can get super competitive while not really having to move my body all that much. The lack of movement, however, doesn’t stop me from letting out backbreaking groans and wearing tennis skirts.

In New York, down in the West Village, there’s an amazing bar called Fat Cat that has at least twenty Ping-Pong tables and always some random a cappella gospel and doo-wop group singing in the corner. The crowd there is great: guys trying to teach their dates how to put backspin on a serve, along with no-nonsense players who never talk and wear wrist sweatbands unironically. It was the perfect spot for my Table Tennis Tourney Birthday!