Drinkin' Story #1
We’re all friends here, right? I feel like we are, and it is a genuine piece of sorrow that I can’t go to a bar with you guys. Play some darts, chew the fat, have some beers, and tell some stories. Ohhhh drinking stories. Chronicles of our greatest wins and funniest losses. That is bonding at its best. So, since I can’t go out with you guys, I’m going to start telling you some of my favorite drinking stories on occasion, and I encourage you to do the same in the comments section. Let’s have some fun with it.
I’ll open up by telling you one of my more embarrassing ones:
I have kind a weird thing that happens on occasion. When I’m just the right amount of drunk, and I mean perfectly on point, I sleepwalk. Usually it’s no big deal. I wake up on the couch instead of in the bed, I find random shit in my pockets, I move things around. It’s a very rare event, and it has never been more of a problem than a simple funny quirk about me.
Until the night when it wasn’t.
At the time, I worked in New Orleans, but lived in Houston, so I was in hotels a lot. On this night, I was at The W hotel in the Central Business district. Very pricey, very nice, very professional.
I went out after work with some friends, had several beers, and went back to my hotel. Wasn’t drunk, just buzzed. Checked my alarm, brushed my teeth, etc. If you’re a party person, you know those are things you don’t do when you pass out from drinking. Really want to drive home that this was not from me being hammered, because if it had been I don’t know how the following events would have gone down. Anyway, I went to bed, assuming I’d next wake up to my alarm.
I was very incorrect.
I opened my eyes and looked around in a state of confusion. It took me a minute to get my bearings, because this was definitely not where I’d gone to sleep. No, I’d entered dreamland in a fluffy bed, and exited it on the hallway floor. I was outside my room, lying on the hall carpet. It was weird, and scary, and disorienting, but I’ve had that sleep walking thing for a while so after a minute I figured out what happened. I pulled myself up to a standing position and immediately realized two things:
1. I was clearly locked out of my room.
2. I had on exactly zero clothes.
No idea why I was naked. I don’t sleep naked, no one was there with me to account for hanky panky, I have absolutely no more clue of why I was suddenly nude than I do why I walked into the hall in the first place. But I was. I was naked, still a little buzzed, and stuck in the hallway of a hotel where people would undoubtedly be walking through eventually.
To summarize my thoughts at the time: Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuuuuuuuuuck.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been stuck in a hallway, bare-assed, but it sharpens the holy shit out of your critical thinking skills. I had to get back in my room, and my options were breaking down the door or going to the lobby for a key. After bruising my shoulder it became clear that these were solid doors and not going down easily. So I mustered up my courage, thanked the gods I was still a little drunk, used a flier for a pizza place as coverage, and took the elevator to the lobby.
Thankfully, it was late and there was almost no one downstairs. The embarrassing part was going to be talking to the person at the front desk. I knew I would have to answer questions to prove who I was, and certainly explain the situation, all while trying my best to hide my junk. I darted through the lobby and walked up to the lone woman working the front desk. I gave a weak greeting and braced myself for the exclamation, recriminations, and questions.
“What room?”
Not a comment. Not a demand for what was going on. She was so fucking jaded from working in that town that a guy walking down without clothes was exactly as interesting an event as turning on the coffee maker. To this day I wonder about the shit that woman dealt with, day in and day out, to get her to such a point. I really cannot oversell how few fucks this woman gave.
Anyway, told her my room, got my key, went back up and went to bed.
That was the first time my buzzed sleep-walking got me into trouble, but not the last. That will have to wait for another time though.