Buffalo? Fuck.
No one voluntarily goes to Buffalo. I mean, as a general rule. It's the type of place you are born in and don't leave. It's the type of place you go for a meeting when your client buys some shitty company there and then you spend the whole time you're in town feeling like you have the hantavirus and the only possible antidote is getting the fuck out of Buffalo fifteen minutes ago. It's the type of place that's on the national news every once and a while because some guy flipped out and killed someone at Wendy's or it snowed a lot again or they annexed themselves to Canada or what the fuck ever. But you don't get in your car on a sunny Sunday afternoon and drive to fucking Buffalo. It isn't done.
Except, apparently, when it is.
So anyway, I was having half a pack of jerks come in from out of town. My friend Joe was flying back from Seattle where he lives with his probably illegal immigrant Mexican au pair wife (obviously). Joe was technically coming back east to pick up some classic car that his father had halfassedly restored and drive it out west for him, so that his dad would have it when he was on the west coast on business. Fair enough. The real reason he was back was to get black out drunk, ride roller coasters and go to a Buffalo Bills game. For whatever reason, Joe and I were the two kids who had grown up in some shitty little college town in Ohio who weren't Browns, Bengals or Steelers fans. I was a Dolphins fan and he was a Bills fan. This did not then and does not know make any sense, but guess what? Fuck you. So anyway, since Joe lives in Seattle this was a rare chance for him to see the Bills. My relative disdain for them not withstanding, I decided to be accommodating.
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Joe and I had been friends for 20 years, since we were kids. We met in elementary school and pretty much only cared about sports. Occasionally we cared about playing chess or some dumb thing. But mostly we cared about sports. And gambling. We liked to gamble. On whatever the fuck. We'd flip quarters. Bet on video games. Play gin rummy for $1 a point. Whatever. This mostly explains why, 20 years later, Joe plays poker for a living and I'm a corporate attorney. One job is definitely the scummier cousin of the other…I'm just not sure which is which.
Anyway, Joe and I met Pete in middle school. Pete was a weird kid. Liked to demonstrate the fact he could suck his own dick in the locker room. Dated ugly girls. Occasionally feigned bisexuality. Was then and still is a compulsive liar. At this point, I'm not sure whether he has any idea whether anything he says is actually true, or at the very least I don't think its what he thinks about in contemplation of speaking; he's thinking about the reaction whatever he says will evoke. In a certain sense, this is a perfectly evolved person. Concerned wholly with the future (i.e. reaction) and in no sense concerned with the past ( i.e. is the way I'm describing the way the world was "real?" Am I "telling the truth?"). I find the whole thing quite laudable. Not surprisingly, Pete's wife and any great number of his ex-girlfriends beg to differ. But I, for the time, digress.
So I get off of work Friday and the fucking Hardy Boys have their logistics all screwed up. I was putting them in town sometime in the early evening. Quite folly, that. Somehow, Joe flew into Cleveland, where I live, but then immediately had to drive down to Columbus to pick up Pete (even though Pete was driving) and then they had to go to some shit village somewhere in between the two to pick up this car, which was apparently a huge piece of fuck mechanically, even if it did have $6,000 worth of new upholstery. Fucking poors. Anyway, by midnight I was a little tipsy and a little sleepy and more than a little bit tired of waiting for these dick bags to get up here, so I told them to get a room somewhere and call me in the morning.
I got up the next morning bright eyed and bushy tailed and actually ran around and did a few errands. I got to go to the BMV, which was nice. Thankfully I was there for new plates because apparently the drivers license machine had been stolen in a break in the night before. Brilliant. Not that I'm surprised that a building guarded primarily by state traffic cops would be the subject of a break in, I just don't know who it is that's so brazen as to steal the machine that makes driver's licenses. I mean, I have as much trust in the general incompetence of cops as anyone, and have made a 20 year shtick out of taking advantage of it, but do you really think you're going to set up a long term criminal enterprise making fake drivers licenses in Cleveland, Ohio? I'm inclined to go with no. But whatever.
So around noon Joe calls me sounding likes he's been raped half to death by a polar bear. I got the distinct impression that, unless the goal was to puke all over a bunch of teenage scum in Sandusky (laudable no doubt, but for another time, perhaps) that roller coasters were out. Fine by me…would rather drink and watch football anyway. Trying to communicate this to Joe proved vexing. At least one out of every three words he was using were not English. At lease one in five was an inaudible grunt. Using a system of repeating everything I said 12 to 15 times and using no words with more than 2 syllables, I was able to convey that they should meet me at my place so we could go out for lunch, beer and college football.
So forever and a day later, these retards show up eating McDonalds. If you're ever wondering whether alcohol is poisonous, consider the fact that it makes you think eating McDonalds is a really good idea. I could pour Clorox on my tongue and McDonalds would still taste like shit. But when I'm loaded it taste like freshly shaven 18 year old trim. No idea why. Anyway, Joe and Pete fall out of Pete's shitty Lexus looking like a humongous pile of fuck. Oscillating between looking like they might die and flashing blank shit easting smiles. Still half drunk. We go up to my apartment so they can drop their stuff off. They needed to sit down. I thought I would query Pete about their evening.
"So, what did you asshats do last night? I thought you were just crashing at some dive motel by the airport? Why have you shown up looking more beat up than the labia of one of those chicks who tried to fuck 1,000 dudes in one day?
"Well, we drank a fifth of 187 proof moonshine." Oh. Obviously.
"You drank a fifth of 187 proof moonshine? At a shitty hotel near the Cleveland airport?"
"That's right." Hm. "Actually, it was funny...it destabilized the plastic compounds in the cups."
"It what?"
"We were drinking it with warm mountain dew."
"You mean the disgusting soft drink favored by people who have never gone to college and choose their toothpaste based on advertisements placed on race cars?"
"Clearly. Moonshine with Mountain Dew. We were drinking it out of those plastic Solo cups people have at keg parties...and by the end of the night the bottoms of the cups were all soft and decomposing."
"So you were consuming some sort of booze Pete made and, probably, some non-trivial portion of a decomposed plastic cup? With warm 'Mountain Dew? At a $59 a night hotel near the airport?. Classy. No wonder you both feel delicious."
"That's right." "You should have stayed up and awaited our arrival." "Of course, then we wouldn't have gotten donuts."
"I suppose its true...I don't have any donuts. I have some bagels. I take it the hotel had a continental breakfast."
"Yeah. It didn't start until six but, being loaded we wanted to go down at about 4:30. We sat in the room waiting for it to be 6 for about an hour and a half."
"And then you went down at 6?"
"No, when it was finally 6, we talked about how awesome it was that it was finally six for about 45 minutes."
"That makes sense."
"We thought so. So we went down at 6:45. Joe had told the Pakistani guy who owned the place that he was going to eat 35 donuts. I think the guy believed him. But after like 9 donuts Joe bitched out."
"He bitched out because he only ate 9 shitty hotel donuts after a night of drinking moonshine and molded plastic?"
"Right. Well, because he had said he would eat 35."
"I see."
"And then we tried to crash, but Joe was talking gibberish. Something about the handle not working"
"Hm."
"Yeah. Then he yelled at the maid some and pounded on the walls a little bit. I think we got a few hours sleep in there somewhere before they threw us out."
"Well that's good. To punish you faggots for taking so fucking long last night and for showing up here today incoherent and even uglier than usual, we're doing shoots of Bookers and headed in to the bars."
"Tough. Tough but fair."
So we took a quick bourbon shot and hit the road. Went downtown to a sports bar . One of those places that has 200 different beers or whatever and if you drink them all in a given year you get a trophy, or a t-shirt or some cute chick pees in your mouth or whatever. Pete had started this thing at a branch down in Columbus and was like half done...we agreed to help out by drinking whatever random shit was left on the list. I only mention this because our waiter, who was generally a swell guy...especially as the day went on and we came to be the biggest asshole table in history, per usual, had a bad fine dining habit of telling you everything was "an excellent choice" Harmless enough, I suppose when there is an actually choice involved but where we were clearly just picking beers based on the number next to them it was unclear how all of our choices were so "excellent."
"We'll take beers, 34, 37, 38, 41, and 42."
"Excellent selections"
WTF?
So 3 or 4 beers in I decide to have a smoke. There is some vaguely (but not really) cute blond chick outside smoking. I make eye contact but don't really say anything. We both go back inside. She goes to a table by herself. I go back to the jerk table. They're talking about some chicks who came in looking like hookers. We LOVE chicks who come into places dressed like hookers. I vow to check them out on my way to the men's room. The smoking girl is still by herself. We theorize that she is waiting for some dude because what kind of broad goes to a sports bar by themselves on a Saturday afternoon?
As it turns out, the answer is some crazy bitch from Canada. Half an hour later with her still by herself we ask her to join us. She comes over...we ply her with beer. I make an active effort to chase her off by making sure that at least half my jokes are about human trafficking or date rape. "To be fair, the bitch had it coming." She laughs. No effect. OK.
Even though she's been sitting down for all of 45 minutes, Pete decides its not at all premature to ask her to come to Buffalo with us. "Hey, want to get in a car with three dudes you've never met and go to some shitty city that shouldn't exist to watch a football game. Its one of those things that only SOUNDS like it will end with your parents crying to Matt Lauer on Dateline." But she says she'll think about it and she seems to mean it. Issues? I think that's probably fair.
She's from Canada I guess. Some suburb of some city I've never heard of on the other side of Lake Erie. "Alymer" Seems like the kind of place people are probably from. Apparently her and some of her friends had planned to come down to Cleveland for the weekend (people do that?) but then they bailed on her. Ever the rebel, she decided to drive down by herself. She was staying in a hotel a few blocks away. Hilarious. Unlimited downside.
Anyway, there is some framed beer poster above the cigarette machine that has something to do with Ontario. She points it out to us. "I'm from Ontario." Ducky. To me and most Americans there are only two parts to Canada...the parts in Canada (Canada) and the parts in the United State (Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Montana, etc.). She was from the Canadian part.
Another several beers each later Joe and I are discussing why people should never get married or why playing poker for a living is one of those things that only sounds cool or some other such thing when we notice that Pete and the chick, we'll call her Jessica, have disappeared together. Well Joe and I assume Pete has merely beaten us to the free blow job dispenser and rue that none to little. As it turns out, Pete and Jess are stealing the Ontario beer sign. Or trying.
I guess they took the fucking thing down off the wall (it was like a framed and hung poster) in the middle of the busy bar and then Jess snuck it into the women's room. She went in a stall and took the frame apart while Pete stood guard. Unfortunately after 10 minutes of removing staples and the like she figure out it was stuck with adhesive to a piece of mat, which meant it wasn't going to be able to be rolled up...which I guess was the only real plan for getting it out of there. Mission aborted. For reasons I still don't fully understand she doesn't want to just leave the thing in the stall with the door open so she crawls under the divider into an adjacent stall and leaves through that door, leaving the busted up picture in the locked stall. This will, not surprisingly, not be the last time this weekend someone crawls under a bathroom stall. More on that later.
So we drink a thousand more beers and discuss driving to Buffalo that night (which I veto). Its 6ish and we decide we are going to go out in Cleveland until 10 or 11 and then going to get a good night's rest before leaving for Buffalo at like 6 the next morning. This is a terrible plan for obvious reasons. No one drunk has ever left a bar at 10 or 11 unless they were being dragged out by a horny chick or an asshole cop. But we were strong in our conviction that this would work out. People usually are.
At this point it has become clear that a) this chick, who is going about a buck fifteen soaking wet, can drink belt for belt with three big 30 year-old male booze hounds (impressive in an uncommonly scary kind of way) b) this chick is pissed at her boyfriend who she has only been with for 2 months but whom she already lives with; always good times c) this chick is totally going to Buffalo. Oy vey. Also clear at this point is that Pete and I, for reasons wholly unknown to either of us, are willing to reckless hit on this chick for no particularly good reason. Hand on shoulder, around waist, whispering in ear, the whole "I'm sure a girl who likes like you isn't used to playing for drinks," blah blah blah. It was so flagrant and utterly pointless as to be almost impossibly amusing. It is also clear that Joe is inexplicably interested in cock blocking for cock blocking's sake. "You realize both these guys are full of shit right?" "You know they both love their wives, right?" Not cool "brah." Anyway, always good to know someone is looking out for my marriage, even if it isn't me.
We walk 10 or 12 blocks over to what passes for the cooler part of town in Cleveland, but are really out too early for there to be much of anything going on. We go to some half assed "lounge" type place where not much of anyone is lounging or even around. The Indians are in the process of getting blown out in game 6 of the World Series, a collapse that will come full circle on Sunday night. I'm in the process of getting too drunk to talk or think, so I figure I'll start chugging red bull and vodka. I'm sure there is a problem that can't be solved in this manner, but I've yet to encounter it.
I think at some point in this shit show we start trying to pick up these skanks dressed up as sluts. Or maybe they were sluts dressed up as whores. Or whatever they were. They looked dumber than shit and born to fuck. They might have been more impressed if we could stand up right or speak but I doubt it. Maybe Pete should have sucked his own dick. Hard to say. It seems we moved on soon after that. I guess.
