So, I’m about to celebrate an anniversary of sorts.  As of around 10 pm Pacific time on July 4 of 2009, I’ll have been a lush for 10 years.  You see, I didn’t start drinking until I was already on the older side of 22.  When I was in college, booze was readily available, but after seeing some of the things that people ended up doing while they were drunk, I never felt the need to have a beer, wine, shot, mixed drink, margarita, daiquiri, or anything else.

But that all changed on July 4th, 1999.  That evening was the crowning event in a thorny weekend that started as a couple of friends headed to LA to enjoy some fireworks and roller coasters.

Earlier in the year I had moved to LA to work in the film industry, and then moved back to AZ within a couple of months due to lack of work. I had a lease on the apartment out there that I didn’t feel like running out on, and I had some friends that were kind enough to sublet for a bit… so for the next year, I had an apartment that I could crash at anytime I wanted to in LA.

As the 4th of July holiday weekend approached, I talked to a couple of friends about going out to Six Flags. D’Artagnan was in, and so were a couple of girls, SunnyD and DoubleD both of which were 19 and went to high school together.  I had known DoubleD for about 4 years, as I had worked for her father and with her brothers for most of that time. 

So, the four of us piled into my car and we took off on Friday afternoon.  Less than three minutes passed, and the girls conversation turned to how high school was the greatest time of their lives, about how much they missed the freedom of being in there, and so on and so on.  Kill me with a spoon, or a knife.  Dart and I just turned up the music and tried to drown them out with Eminem.

One of the key provisions for any road trip is who’s gonna pay for gas.  Since I was driving my car, and we were staying for free at my place, DoubleD and SunnyD had volunteered to pay for gas.  However, on the drive out, when we stopped in the middle of the desert for gas, DoubleD says that the prices here are too high.  I briefly thought of driving until the tank was truly empty, but I just swallowed my words and paid for the gas.  On the way back out of the gas station, I happened to see an NFL Blitz arcade game, so I stopped and put in a couple of quarters and played the game for a bit.

I got back out to the car, and the girls were already complaining about what took so long.  I just ignored their yammering and resumed the drive to LA.  The next time I stopped for gas outside of Palm Springs, I made sure that Dart came in to “pay” for the gas, since I knew that this station also had a Blitz arcade game.  We played a game and then went back out to the car.  This time the girls had gotten out to go use the bathroom, so we waited for them.  This time I considered moving the car to make them freak-out and think we left them, but again I held back.  2 days until I would regret being so nice.

Once we got to LA, I was treated to non-stop questioning about anything and everything that we drove past, including why were we going the route that I was driving…  Why does it say “Universal City”… why are we driving through Hollywood… can we stop and go see Hollywood and Vine… ad nausea.  We finally got to my apartment, and since it was late, went to bed.

The next day, we went shopping… err, well… I drove the girls to the Glendale Galleria so that they could do some shopping.  They were excited by the idea, up until the point where we got there, and the realized that this was just a mall, about the same as every mall in America, with all the same stores in it that they were used to shopping at Arizona. This magically turned them from interesting in exploring the place to walking, talking piles of bile infused bitches.  Not so much fun for me, and I wouldn’t have been happy even if they were having a good time.

We left there and went back to my place so that we could change, go eat, and meet up with a friend of the girls that I had also known for a while, IndiaAcne.  She was also one of the girls that DoubleD and SunnyD had gone to high school with, but I figured, what the hell… it can’t get any worse.  This is not the only time that I was incorrect, but it would be one of the more memorable events of me being in said incorrectness. 

We drove down to IndiaAcne’s rented house in Santa Monica.  It wasn’t really her house as I was about to find out, but her boyfriend.  I had never met him before, but apparently he was a skater, and trying to do that professionally.  At least that’s what the girls said.  All I saw once Dart, Pacifier (Dart’s old roommate), SunnyD, DoubleD, and I got there was a lot of pot smoking by him, his friend (whom I’ll call LittleDush, but I really don’t remember his name), and IndiaAcne.  We stayed there for about 30 minutes or so, just long enough for me to really not like these guys and want to go do something else.  I started asking what the plan was, and they had decided that we would go to a club in Hollywood.  I didn’t ask much beyond that, as long as it was somewhere else, I didn’t care much.

We headed out to the club, me driving Dart, DoubleD, and Pacifier and the others in Skater’s car, as it seems that in the short time we were are the house, LittleDush set his eyes on getting SunnyD into bed and was already trying out his moves.  Now would probably be a good give a little back story on SunnyD.  She’s of Pacific Islander heritage, will eternally look underage, and this won’t be helped by her height, a whopping 4’10” (in heels)… so she’d pretty much make the perfect spinner, except she can get made as a wet cat when you mention her age or height… so she’s a spinner with a Napoleon complex (sounds perfect, right?)… a regular ball of joy.

Anyway, so we all get to the club and it’s a great fit for our group… it’s an 18 and over club, seeing as how all of the guys are over 21, and all of the girls at 19, there really weren’t that many clubs in LA that we could have all gone to.  Once we’re in. Dart and I kinda split off from the group and seek pretty much any other company that we can find.  Unfortunately, we keep running into the others, and there’s isn’t much else in the way of a selection.

As the night wins down, I look around to find the girls, and once I do I’m not really surprised.  From the looks of it, LittleDush and Skater had been buying drinks all night and giving them to the girls.  DoubleD is drunk, SunnyD is practically passed out in the club and IndiaAcne is orbiting around Skater, trying to keep him from looking at any other girl.  Skater comes over to me, pretty drunk, and has this to say:

Skater:  Hey, the girls are going to stay tonight over at my place.  That way they can spend some more time with IndiaAcne.

Of course, what I heard was a little different from what he said, but probably truer to his meaning:  Hey, the girls are coming back to my place, so that I can try and have a threesome with DoubleD, and LittleDush wants to drunkrape SunnyD… you ok with that?

And I responded to both of those, with the same answer.  

Marc:  Sure, whatever.

Cause I really didn’t care at this point.

They’ve pissed me off so much that I pretty much lost interest in trying t hang with them and, after all, the girls are old enough to make their own decisions, and they’ll learn to live with them eventually.  Not really my problem.  Until we hit the snag.

So, we head out of the club… actually I had to carry SunnyD out, and we start to split up at the cars.  At this point, I’m figuring that the girls will just pile into Skater’s ride, and Dart, Pacifier and I will head back to Burbank.  I had no desire just to drive to Santa Monica and then turn around to go back home.  However, DoubleD starts acting a little weird, and wants to ride with me back to Skater’s house… so we’re back into the original split formation for the drive back.

Once we get in the cars and start back, DoubleD starts talking about not wanting to spend the night at Skater’s and she doesn’t want SunnyD to either, as she doesn’t like or trust either Skater or LittleDush.  My thinking goes something like this:

Marc:  Ok, so tell IndiaAcne that you don’t want to stay there, and we’ll just go back to my place.

DoubleD:  No, I can’t do that.

Marc: Why not?

DoubleD: ‘Cause I just can’t.  You need to tell them that we’re going to go back to your place.  

Here’s my problem… both Skater and LittleDush are hot and bothered with the chance that they are going to get laid, and they are both piss drunk.  Fucking great.  As we drive to Skater’s, I start to try and figure out how this is going to go.  I’ve got a couple of advantages, in that I’m sober and have two other dudes with me… but again, the two fuckers who are likely to start a fight are horny and drunk, so my advantages might not be apparent to them.

We get to Skaters, and I tell DoubleD to let IndiaAcne know that she’s going to head back with me.  At this point, I need to get SunnyD out of the other car and into mine without anything major happening.  Well that goes sideways, the moment that I tell LitleDush that she’s coming with me.

LittleDush:  No man, she’s already passed out.  She’s going to stay here tonight.

Marc: No, I think she should come with us, back to my place, since that’s where we’re all staying.

LittleDush:  No man, she’s gonna stay here.

So this back and forth goes on for a bit, but eventually I succeed in getting LittleDush out of the car, leaving SunnyD behind.  This worked pretty well, since Dart and Pacifier were then able to pull her out the other side and get her into the back seat of my car.  It didn’t work so well for me, as now I had to deal with both Skater and LittleDush on my own… who were getting even more pissed as they realized that this was getting in the way of them getting some tail that night.

Marc: Look this is gonna happen either one of three ways:  You let us leave, We fight and see who can kick each others asses or I call the cops. Which one do you want to try first?

In the state that they were in, the fact that I posed a question to them caused the little hamsters in their brains to have to work a little overtime.  By the time that they figured out the answer, all of us were in the car and speeding away.  The lobbed a trashcan over my car, but that was about it.

We got back to my place, and both of the girls passed out, I thanked the guys for their help, and I crashed in my bed.

The next day was July 4, and the four of us were supposed to head out to Six Flags.  That potential fun spot got knocked off the table earlier in the week, when I had been insisting that DoubleD go on a roller coaster.  This caused fangs and caws to literally extend from her hands, as she insisted that in no way would she be going on a roller coaster.  So, the next best thing to Six Flags was Universal Studios. Which was just about as lame as hanging out with two attractive girls can be, at least until I got them to go on the Back to the Future ride, which almost made both of them hurl.  That was fun until they started whining, which sucked more than before.

Now is when the true fun starts.  One of the things that I love about LA is the sheer amount of greasy spoon dinners that abound. Its actually pretty hard to find a Denny’s or IHOP, as most people in their right mind would rather go to Cantor’s, Twain’s, Frank’s, or any of the many other choices.  One of my favorites at the time was a place called Pat’s Family Diner.  It’s still there as I recall, in Burbank, nestled in a strip mall off of Victory.  The food is decent, and the prices are good.  But none of this mattered once DoubleD got her salad, which apparently didn’t have the proper greens for her taste.  From that moment on, the bitching never stopped except for the fireworks, which we watched from a parking lot at Universal.  

Once the show was over, the bitching started again, fresh anew.  We were trying to decide what to do next.  There were several options on the table, but in reality there’s only so much you can do in LA at night with two underage girls.  To make matters even worse, the only thing that DoubleD wanted to do was to go drive around on Hollywood Blvd, where she purposed that her and SunnyD would sit in the back seat of my car and drink.  This idea for me was a non-starter.  The last thing that I was going to do was to drive around cruising on Hollywood blvd, where at the time cops used to just walk around on foot or horseback, with a couple of underage girls in the back seat drinking!  No fucking way!  I expressed this with the full vigor that was required in the situation, but this just lead to DoubleD starting to yell about how lame all of the other ideas were… and then she started to yell about how lame I was.

At this point, I reached my limit with her bitching and yelling, and told her to either stop yelling at me or get out of my apartment.  In reality, either one of them would accomplish the same thing, but she didn’t think too long about that.  She decides to call my bluff… or what she thought was a bluff.  DoubleD announced that her and SunnyD would leave then, to with I replied, “get the fuck out then.”

Once the door closed, they were gone as far as I cared.  Dart looked at me and asked:

Dart: “What do you want to do now?”

Marc: “Have a beer.”

Dart: “What?”

This came as quite a surprise to Dart, as I never drank.  Anything.  No beer, no wine, no shots, no anything.

Before we walked down to the 7-11, I decided that I should do one thing to cover myself.  I called DoubleD’s father, to make sure that he heard my side of the story first.  I explained what had happened, and what she did, and that she had left… to where, I didn’t know.  He understood the situation, and once that was done, Dart and I were off to find my first beer.

I selected a Killian’s Red, since I knew from my friends that all proper beers were dark in color, and that one in particular was more than decent. We got our selected drinks from the 7-11 on the corner, and then proceeded back to the apartment pool to sit and drink.  I think I made it through about 1/2 of it, before we then headed back to my apartment.  I said bye to Dart, put in a movie and tried to finish the rest.  I passed out from about 3/4 of a beer and woke up in the morning feeling nice and refreshed.

During the night, I had gotten about 10 calls on my pager, and there were three voice mails left.  I had not heard any noise from the pager, since I had been passed out.  Here’s what I missed:

voicemail #1:  Hi Marc, this is DoubleD.  We’re going to fly out tomorrow from the Burbank airport, but I don’t know if they’ll let us stay the night here.  Can you come pick us up?

voicemail #2:  Marc… they are kicking us out of the airport.  We don’t need to stay with you, but could you come and pick us up and take us to a hotel?

voicemail #3:  Marc.  Fucking piece of shit… call us back!

In the end, they walked across the street and stayed at a hotel next to the airport, and then left in the morning.  Due to the fact that they didn’t drive back with Dart and I, they never even payed for gas.  

Fucking Bitches.

So since then, I’ve been a pretty normal drinker, and I have DoubleD to thank for it.