You Deserve a Drink: Boozy Misadventures and Tales of Debauchery (24 page)

As the canoe made its way toward the dock, the pads started falling off the stick one by one.

“Oh my god. They’re coming off!” I shrieked to the counselor paddling behind me. Another one dropped off, almost landing in the canoe before I kicked it out.

“Hold it over the water!” she
yelled
whispered. “It’ll be fine.”

We paddled on with a trail of flaming pads in our wake. They’d look beautiful for a second, ablaze on the water, then quickly burn out, a trail of crispy black maxi pads nestled among the lily pads. By the time we reached the middle of the lake, with the whole camp watching from the dock, I was left with nothing but a smoking branch. The campers stood in horror as they finished the last round of the camp song. Fellow counselors stood with hands over their wide-open mouths, trying not to laugh. I continued proudly holding this “torch” in front of the canoe, just like in the picture.

The sky was fiery pink. Floating candles surrounded us, and the only noise you could hear was from the crickets and the bullfrogs. I took a moment to lock the image in my memory, then extinguished the bare stick in the lake. There was no sizzle sound,
just the unsatisfying feeling of a big stick being dipped in a lake. It was like leaning in to blow out your birthday candles and someone does it right before you.
*
I looked up to see a dock of people shaking their heads as I gave an “oops” shrug. We paddled in as the entire camp slow-clapped at my pathetic display.

Lady of the Lake had been a tradition for eighty-five years. Almost nine decades of women carrying the torch, and I’d fucked it up. Well, maybe not fucked it up, but I definitely put my own spin on it. The image might not have gone in the next summer’s pamphlet, but I guarantee it was one of the more memorable ones since 1919. What can I say? I guess I’m bad luck for traditions.

But there is something that I am good luck for! Brian and Hayley have been happily married eight years, and now they have a daughter. What I’m saying is if you want your relationship to last, make sure that I see you have sex for the first time. Maybe even scream, “Ride ’em, cowboy!” at me to be extra safe.

2 oz vanilla-infused tequila

1 oz orange liqueur

3 oz orange juice

1 tbsp unsweetened pumpkin puree

For the rim, make a mix of equal parts cinnamon and sugar. If you can find vanilla sugar, amazeballs. If not, throw a vanilla bean into a bag of this stuff for a few hours.

To infuse the tequila, take a regular-size bottle of tequila (trust me, you’ll want the whole thing infused; this shit is tasty). Take 2 fresh vanilla beans and slice them lengthwise down the middle. Throw them into the bottle and let them infuse for 3 to 5 days, giving it a little shake each day. When it’s to your liking, fish out them vanilla beans or a week later you’re going to be drinking Bath & Body Works Vanilla Tequila Body Spray.

Combine all your ingredients into a shaker full of ice. Shake like your life depends on it. Strain into a glass full of ice that is already rimmed with your cinna-sugar. While the ingredients might make you raise an eyebrow, after one of these puppies the only thing you’ll be raising is your hand when you say, “Pardon me, bitch, may I have another?”

I
love Mexico. Love, love,
lurve
it. I love the food. I love the drinks—Corona and tequila are 87 percent of my bloodstream. (The other 13 percent is a combination of blood, sweat, and pizza-
flavored Combos.) But it’s not just the partying aspects of Mexico that I love. Sure, if there is a piñata at a party, you’d better grab your two-year-old and get the fuck out of the way because I am going to temporarily lose my mind, and yes, I have been known to throw on a pink taffeta dress and sneak into a quinceañera at the park. But I also highly enjoy the culture.

The first time I ever went to Mexico was in fourth grade. My mom took me, my brother and sister, and my cousin Josh to Cancún. Twenty-four hours and a bad fruit salad later, the bro, sis, and cuz all had a case of what they call Montezuma’s revenge. I, however, was free to have a fleeting moment of being an only child. We went to Mayan ruins, we snorkeled, my mom ushered me quickly past Señor Frog’s. This was the jumping-off point for my love of all things Mexican.

One thing I’m super obsessed with is Mexican wrestling.
*
The wrestlers, or
luchadores
, wear crazy masks when they fight. To Americanize it for you, it’s Jack Black’s potbellied alter ego in the movie
Nacho Libre
. These guys create over-the-top characters who do insane, high-flying moves. They are super famous in Mexico, all while never revealing their true identities. As someone who wants everyone on earth to know my rubber face, I am fascinated by this anonymity. I even started my own
lucha libre
mask collection and break them out at any excuse. Is it cold outside? Better wear a
lucha
mask. Going on a first date and want to make sure the guy likes me for my personality and not just my looks? It’s mask time. It works in most scenarios.

There’s one time in my masked memories that I was especially happy to not show my face. It was my friend’s thirtieth birthday
party, which happened to fall on Halloween. She is British and super posh—like, as a child she probably referred to Victoria Beckham of the Spice Girls as the poor-level posh. Her even more posh parents were coming in from England to celebrate their daughter’s milestone. Since her birthday was on Halloween, I asked if people would be dressing up. “Oh, totally, totally,” she said. “It will be a dress-up party.”

Cut to me decked out in full
lucha libre
wear. Hologram tights, leopard leotard. I even tied a shower curtain around my neck as a cape. But when I high-kicked into her Brooklyn loft, I saw where the gap between British and American slang came into play. People dressed up, all right. Her dad was practically in a tux. And I was
definitely
the only one dressed up in Halloween gear.

This pic was taken after about the fifth Brit asked me what superhero I was.

But the Mexican tradition I love even more than
lucha libre
is Día de los Muertos. Or for you gringos, Day of the Dead.

If you aren’t familiar with this holiday, let me quickly break it
down for you. Day of the Dead is a three-day celebration throughout Mexico when family and friends honor the deceased with altars, parades, and flowers. You probably have seen Day of the Dead stuff before, be it intricate skeleton face paint on a hipster, or a detailed tattoo of a skull wearing a flower crown (on a hipster’s calf). I love how it celebrates the dead and makes something like a skeleton seem not scary. Because I won’t pussyfoot around it—I am a total pussy.
*

I have tons of Day of the Dead figurines and paraphernalia, but I’d never actually been to Mexico to see it in person until 2008. Maegan and I decided to take the plunge. We scoured the Internet for the cheapest Mexico deal and finally found one for six hundred dollars. It included airfare, transportation to and from the airport, and four nights at an all-inclusive resort. Now, I know what you’re thinking.
Six hundred bucks?! Let me guess, they are going to get down there and be sold into white slavery.
Not true! Turns out that sometimes when you travel abroad, the only thing you need to worry about is the other Americans.

After a fuck-ton of drinks on the plane, we arrived in Cozumel. Maegan was scared of flying, and y’all know about my fears, so we handled it as we do: by taking down enough vodka to pickle a miniature pony. By the time we touched down in Cozumel, our tray tables were a wasteland of airplane bottles. It looked like leprechaun spring break.

The thirty-minute car ride from the airport to the resort set the perfect tone for the trip. We were crammed into a minivan cab with three sixtysomething retiree couples who passed around a bottle of Drambuie, and everyone (yours truly included) took pulls straight from the bottle. At the time, I figured it was all good
because these were seniors. They weren’t exactly slutting around and spreading the herp. This, of course, was before knowing that because of medical advancements like Viagra, the STD rates in senior communities are astronomical.

(Also, if you have never drunk Drambuie before, I don’t recommend it. Drambuie is one of those liquors that taste so bad, you think they must be good for you. Like, it tastes so bad that there is no way it doesn’t also clean your blood or replenish your bone marrow to make the terrible medicinal taste worth it.)

When we got to the resort, we were surprised to see it was gorgeous. Half of it was under construction (hence the extremely cheap rate), and after some boozy pleas, the concierge upgraded us to a nicer room—one with a waterslide from your patio down to the pool, landing you at the swim-up bar. It was like a McDonald’s playground for drunks.

The next few days were a total veg fest. Mornings started with us taking our slide down to the pool bar for coffee and Baileys. Afternoons were spent snorkeling and sunbathing. Nights consisted of long dinners and drinks at the resort’s bar. And we definitely took advantage of that free room service, by having orders of french fries and beer delivered to our room every night. An American nightcap!

Even though we were having a great time, it was pretty isolating. We would see older couples around, but no one really interacted with each other. We would get showered and go to the resort’s bar at night, but it was just us sitting there by ourselves. Just two gals drinking alone as the four men who worked it stood and watched. There was one bartender in particular who would get shy and giggle every time Maegan spoke to him. This was the level of action we were getting—one dude kind of giggling toward us.

But that all changed on the third night. We were sitting on our patio, betting on who would spill the least while going down the slide holding a plate of fries (turns out we tied, each spilling the entire plate), when we heard it. The sounds of youth! We looked
over to the bar and saw not one, but
two
couples drinking and laughing. We quickly got on our socializing game faces and made our way over.

And we were pleasantly surprised. They were great! The two guys were best friends, the two gals were best friends, and every year they would take a double-date vacay. They seemed a little Republican for my normal taste, with the guys sporting buzz cuts and boat shoes. But we weren’t in America, so I left politics at the door and enjoyed the company.

The next few hours we drank our faces off, played pool, and had some laughs. The bar started closing up around ten p.m., but as the resident young and attractive people at this resort, we wanted the party to keep going. So we invited our new friends up to our room to order (more) french fries and twelve draft Dos Equis.

It didn’t take more than a few more brews for us all to agree we should go down the waterslide. Our new friends headed out before us as Maegan and I seized the moment of solitude to dominate those fries. As we stepped out onto the patio, we looked over to see our new friends coupled up. One pair was making out against the pool wall. I looked for the other two, and they were on the slide. Well, the guy was lying on the slide, being straddled by the one who was definitely not his wife but who definitely
was
topless.

That’s when it hit me: HOLY FUCK. THEY’RE SWINGERS.

For some reason, I always imagined swingers to be overweight and in their fifties and sixties. They’d all be hanging out in someone’s gross living room, paired up and going at it on shag carpeting, and saying things like:

Hey, Gerald, once you’re done going down on my wife, I’ve got to show you my new nine iron.

Linda, how many times do I have to tell you to put your pants on if you are going to taste the fondue? Nobody wants your pubes in the Gouda.

OR:

Ruth, be a dear and turn the TV to
NCIS
while you jerk off Terrance.

But these were the younger generation, the up-and-comers. We stared at them in disbelief for what felt like an eternity, and then the topless wife spoke up. “We were so excited to see y’all at the bar tonight. John kept going on and on about that hot lesbian couple he’d seen around.”

Hot lesbian couple? Did they think we were a hot lesbian couple? I got why they would think that we were hot. I had seen a reflective surface, after all—but lesbian? The events of the past few days montaged through my mind. Maegan and me cheersing our champagne as a waiter took a picture. Constantly ordering room service, like we couldn’t be bothered to put our clothes on. We swam with
dolphins
, for Chrissakes. This was the most romantic vacation I’d ever been on!

Before I could laugh and clear things up, Maegan took charge. “We came on this trip because we’ve been having some relationship issues lately.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Titties McGee said as someone else’s husband played with her belly ring.

“Yeah,” Maegan continued as I looked like a deer in headlights. “Actually, do you mind if the two of us have a word in private?” Maegan grabbed my hand and we retreated back to our room.

As soon as she closed the sliding glass doors, we screamed with no volume. The rest of the night we sat quietly, trying to listen to what was happening outside while inhaling french fries. Occasionally we would yell out a line or two as if we were arguing. “No, it’s
your
turn to refill the humidifier!” or “I’m tired of always wearing the strap-on!”

Luckily, they were so distracted playing Pick a Husband that they forgot all about us. After taking down the twelve room service beers, we entered a carb coma and both passed out.

The next day came with a massive hangover, the kind where
your body feels like it is vibrating. You crave coffee but you’re nervous that the caffeine will push you over the edge and you’ll end up crying on the bathroom floor. We started to make our way to the patio to slide down for some hair of the dog but stopped when we realized we didn’t know what kind of HBO
Real Sex
stuff had happened on our precious, precious slide the night before. So our last full day in Mexico was instead spent inside, watching a
Sex and the City
marathon in Spanish. The bad news was I felt like a piece of shit for wasting my last day of vacation, but the good news is I can now say
Kegels
in Spanish.