Saint Patrick’s Day. One of the few days of the year when public and belligerent drunkenness is both accepted and embraced. Having moved to Boston only recently, I was overjoyed to be spending the holiday in the most Irish city in these United States. Despite the sunny day, it somehow slipped my mind that a city full of drunken fools might not be the warmest environment. Moreover, I should have realized that packing 75 of these collegiate dipsomaniacs into one room of Bean Town’s notoriously undersized apartments and including my not so inebriated self into the mix, couldn’t end so well for me…or for my shoes.
As I like to do on all holidays – excluding Martin Luther King Day and usually Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day – I made it a point of dressing up. Realizing that my wardrobe wasn’t adorned in green garments, I was forced to improvise. I made due all right, but sought to dress the outfit up a little more to add an oomph of party pizzazz. In order to accomplish such a task, I put on some stockings and my favorite heels (in which I had accepted my high school diploma). They always are a showstopper and were the perfect addition to my St. Patties party suit.
As the party progressed, the room filled up. Soon enough, there wasn’t anywhere to move and a fairly sober me was squished in between sweaty, sleazy, and plastered 18 to 20 somethings in a way that was far from desirable. Escaping the masses, I found a railing and a friend. I had reached the safety zone of the apparent laser tag maze…or so I thought. A high pitched crash brought reality to its clearest point though. Someone had dropped a beer mug on the floor, causing the unconsumed alcohol to splash all over my stockings and my patent leather shoes. I was trapped between greasy sardines and a puddle of broken glass and wasted beer. For the first time in my life, I wished I was Moses, able to use my iPhone to the part the waters and cross to the other side. Maybe my aspirations would have been granted had I had enough liquor in me to believe that I had assumed such biblical powers. Instead, I checked to make sure my feet weren’t bleeding and careful tiptoed as if playing a very meticulous game of hopscotch in between the shards of glass and eventually made it to the other side. Safety!
The door to the outside was visible. I had almost reached the land of milk and honey, where I assumed the air would be sweet – not sweaty. As I reached for the door – SPLASH! A hazy-eyed man with a cigarette behind each ear, wearing a beanie and glasses looked up from the floor at me with terror in his eyes. Expecting me to sympathize with his self-inflicted loss of beverage, he let out a grunt of disappointment. Looking down to see what the fuss was about, I felt his same feelings of woe, only mine were filled with anger. He had spilled his sticky brew all over my new stockings and graduation shoes. Had I not endured a similar incident moments ago, and had I not been trying to escape that very environment, and had my feet not immediately become freezing and sticky, I might have let it go. But since all of those experiences were a reality, I was furious. Not only that, but I recognized him as the kid from one of my classes that always showed up late and hung over, but managed to be the teachers favorite student. “You just dropped that on my feet,” I said with more frustration than I actually felt. After a slurred apology on his part, I continued to hassle him until his nervousness might have resulted in the regurgitation of his dining hall supper. Assuring him that it was fine (I didn’t want to ruin his night too) I let him go and refused his obligatory “I’m sorry” cigarettes. Proud of myself for the "beeronade" I had just made, I escaped the party feeling revitalized.
Finally arriving at the Promised Land, there was a deficit of dairy products and bee pollen, so the Moses in me was a little let down. But at least I had an acceptable amount of personal space and could actually see the people I conversed with. Making eye contact with an old friend, I walked over and introduced myself to his intoxicated buddies. Catching up with him, I was once again enjoying myself. But before I knew it, déjà vu hit me with all its might. A mixture of pressure and noise exploded beneath me, as one of my new acquaintances dropped his alcoholic disguise – a Nantucket Nectar bottle – on my feet. It shattered upon impact, this time, actually discoloring my beige shoes and scratching their patent leather surface with its glassy splinters. “Really?!” My burst of disbelief was, of course, misunderstood by the surrounding audience, as they had no knowledge of the previous torture I had endured. After flicking the glass off of my shoes and wiping the liquid off my legs, I gathered my bag and coat and, fed up with the Groundhog Day-esque evening. I trudged back to my building, wondering if I had gotten the holidays mixed up. Could it have actually been April Fools Day?
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