If you haven’t considered what type of drunk you are lately, it might be time. I’ve spent a wee bit of time lately around the intoxicated, not sure why, but it’s almost like I’m tipsy magnet. I’ve had the opportunity/misfortune to be on the more sober side of these interactions, and I’m convinced that people have no idea just how it is that they’re coming across. Now, before you get all up in my wino grill, I am sure that there are those of you who know me in the real world DC who are thinking “Kris. You are hell on earth when you’ve been drinking, a sweaty whirling mess of slander and mayo and French fries.” Well I may be. But what are you? And why are you watching me drink in my bath tub?
For some, being drunk is simply an extension of our current attitudes and actions, in essence, just us exaggerated. For others, I think it brings out parts of people I’m quite sure neither they nor their priests knew existed. Like that woman I saw cuddling a bottle of tequila while dialing her mom from Cancun to squee that she’d won the wet tee shirt contest. Such types roam among us, holding down impressive day jobs and raising relatively impressive families. Take J, for example. During her days I’m guessing most people would call her sweet and loving and outgoing. An upstanding member of society with at least one professional group membership listed on her resume. Give J a little bit of the sauce, however, and she becomes something of a Hasselhoff, a creature not popular in the Americas. She’s angry, and she’ll reduce you to sand with a mean word or hog tie you and leave you for dead under your kitchen sink. But not before branding you with a heated wire wisk. While making you wear your mother’s panties.
See also my friend L, a reserved, poised, and lovely woman. She seems to have a relatively normal aspirations, holds down a day job, has great teeth. She also seems to have a healthy sex drive for a woman our age, as far as I can tell from the position I assume far, far away from the thought of her kissing or touching a man. Well when L gets drunk, she starts talking about sex a lot. Like a lot. Like more than those guys on that MTV show who are addicted to porn, particularly the unemployed one who lived with his grandmother and spent her SSI checks get tatts of girls with big breasts. And when L starts talking sex, she also makes jokes about it, ones which aren’t particularly funny, ones your druncle might make at a bris, leaving me to shake my head and dream about puppies and Georgia cotton and anything and all things pure.
My impression of my own tipsy state is that I’m all kinds of lovey and touchy and also . . . so ridiculously sensitive. I have the impression that I’m lovey in the good way, the hugging and the “yurrr mah bestest friennnd,” not the rubbing inappropriately on the man asking for quarters at 7-11. I think that part is all fine and good, if I’m honest. People like love, after all, even if it involves a 35-year-old woman squeezing your child’s cheeks at a Nats game. The sensitive part? Not so much. It can take several forms, but often it takes the form of crying, given that someone has said something even remotely negative in my presence. I believe the record shows that through tears I cried, “WHAT KIND OF PERSON WOULD SAY THAT TO A PERSON?!?!” at some point in June. Thanks Pinot Grigio. I’m also that girl, the one overheard at happy hours asking if I’m still your best friend and if you still love me and if you would be willing to have my 14 babies. BECAUSE I AM A WOMAN WITH SO MUCH LOVE TO GIVE! BECAUSE MAYBE IT IS MY PURPOSE TO BEAR HUMAN FRUIT FROM MY LADY PARTS! BUHUHUHUHUH.
Am available for parties. Until 11, that is, when I’m likely asleep. This wino does not close a party. Unless it’s her own, and she’s kicking you out of the house, brie and the remainder of your six-pack in hand. That part I’ll do sober.
23 Comments
There is no quicker way to find out how annoying your normally hilarious friends are than being their designated driver.
I only drink to make other people interesting.
I”m a happy, LOUD drunk. I’m pretty much myself, just amplified. Also, I think I’m HILARIOUS when I’m drunk. I’m not sure if that is true.
I think I need to come to DC and get drunk and have you tell me! Sound like a plan?
I tend to be very loud and very silly and occasionally a bit of an asshole to people around me, although I’ll love all over a friend if I’m in a good mood when I start.
Oh. And I have a tendency to lose clothing. Like…all of it.
I hate the violent drunks. Seriously, if you can’t have a beer and a good time at a football game, why go?
I promise not to embarrass you tonight (or wish that you hadn’t consented to hang out with me). :)
I think my drunk personality has evolved over the years, which is a very good thing. I don’t know that my friends would let me take a single sip of beer if by the end of the night they thought I was going to end up running through the quad screaming about my latest English Lit assignment or how much I LOVE SO-AND-SO FROM MY DORM.
Today I’m a giggly drunk. And sometimes a less-than-coordinated drunk.
I’m a more relaxed person, more bubbly and less shy. I enjoy profound conversations with other people that I usually wouldn’t have. But I also kick it sensitive. I hate that part.
I don’t even have a comment worthy of it. I wish you would blog hourly.
I’m a care-free drunk, easily persuaded into capers, not so easily offended. The only exception to the taking of offense seems to be whiskey, in the case of which having imbibed I become a staunch defender of honor, my own and that of others; chivalry isn’t dead, it just stinks of bourbon.
The downside to being a care-free and flippant lush is that it makes one prone to saying such things as are likely to make someone lash out with things like “WHAT KIND OF A PERSON ARE YOU?!” Perhaps you’re familiar.
Cheers!
I’m a clumsy drunk with mild speech aphasia. The two are interrelated in many, many ways.
I recently had an unfortunate episode in which I actually got sick from drinking, something I have done a total of 3 times since graduating college *mumble, mumble* years ago. And apparently, I’m a polite drunk, or so I’m told. Exceedingly polite, as in “Thank you ever so much for checking on me, but I am actually just fine. I will stay exactly where I am on the bathroom floor; please don’t worry about me. Enjoy your party.” I guess there are worse things.
The “Hold my beer and watch this!” kind of drunk. All power tools and motor vehicles should be kept away from me. Far away.
Always keep the brie.
When I drink Tequila, I’m very friendly and probably pretty annoying because I want to be everyone’s friend, and I tend to not realize HOW drunk I am.
But if I drink anything else, I get rather testy, and turn into something of a bitch.
I love this post! I have definitely gone through a myriad of drunk types and thankfully I have evolved. That said, no matter what decade, I almost always talk too much when I’m drunk.
I get too intent on detail, I will either ramble on and on about your fine attributes (in your particular case — in general I’m being sarcastic about something) or be completely dumb-struck at the awareness of all of them at once. Yep, either waxing poetic with andabout the “sweaty whirling mess of slander” or fixating on the “sweaty”. Hard to tell, it’d probably depend on your sttitude. And right when you’re falling asleep, I’ve lost the capacity to fall asleep.
See what I mean? Blah, blah, blahblah, blah…
If I were at all reserved or poised I’d be so worried that my name starts with L. You know how it is.
Sometimes I worry that I’m only funny when I am less than sober.
Mostly, though, this made me wish for my own druncle. And a bris to take him to.
For some unknown reason, I feel compelled to share all my business with anyone unfortunate enough to be in earshot. I am certain, while in this state, that everyone is completely enthralled by even the most minute of details regarding my life.
My poor friends!
I so do not like the person I’ve become lately when drunk. Was going to write about this. Mean, Kris. Like, biting (not literally…yet) and snappy in places where I’d usually just frown.
:(
I’m more of a buzzed gal than a drunk gal, the result of being one part cheap, two parts control freak. Anyway, I just reconnected with a gal from high school and she got silly drunk. How do I know? Because halfway down the block, she started hugging me and saying how happy she was that we were friends again.
Good times.
Lately I’m just a TIRED drunk. No more dancing on tables or singing loud karaoke or hugging strangers. Unless they look like pillows. I just get so freaking sleepy now, no fun at all.
I’m a mellow drunk, sweet and like my usual quiet self. But then also, me the usually quiet person starts confessing all my secrets… and maybe everyone else’s: like Elaine did on Seinfeld when she had had one two many. The jar pops open.
Happy two have your company: I find too many people around ME passing judgement- but they just don’t know the fun they’re missing!