An Early Summer Night's Mare

The Immer Sanctum
"The story of a woman on the morning of a war:
'Remind me, if you will, exactly what we're fighting for!'
Throw me to the wolves! There's order in the pack.
Throw me to the sky! I know I'm coming back."
-poet laureate of alternapunk, Anthony Kiedis of Red Hot Chili Peppers

Welcome to June 23rd! Want to know what makes this day special? Ideally, there shouldn't be anything outstanding or extraordinary about this day at all. Of course, as so often happens in life, things do not always work out as planned. I've had this date earmarked somewhere in the far corners of my mind for quite a while now. I knew it was important, and a date I would want to keep in mind. I kept confusing the date with the occassion it represents, though, and as usual I didn't bother to write anything down. A fatal error, as always (right, Aiea?). So eventually, it took up a home in my cranium as some fuzzy inkling about some day in the early summer where something of remote significance was going to occur. In other words, here's you: "Wow, June 23rd is getting pretty close, you must be excited." Here's me: "Huh? Oh yeah, the 23rd...oh, it'll be great, I'm holding my breath, gonna be awesome, I gotta go."

The importance of this date as it unfolds now looms very large in my mind. That is because it is June 23rd, and it is the 21st birthday of my roommate D-Locke. And it has been all day. Since 12 a.m. this morning. I know, because I have been awake for nearly all of it. And anyone who knows me, knows that I don't do well with that little sleep-- so there must have been something drastic going on for me to stay up all night. That is true, there were drastic goings-on which, for all intents and purposes had nothing to do with me. That's why this day shouldn't have been all that special. It wasn't my birthday. I wasn't the one experiencing a milestone. I wasn't the one who was expected to go out and get completely and utterly tanked beyond reason. Yet I somehow ended up feeling the need to make this day a big deal for me as well as the birthday boy, and predictably, I was the one who got jack-holed.

I'll try to keep the story short. D-Locke has been talking up his birthday literally for over a year, pissing and moaning about how its position during the summer made him not only the last of his friends to become legal, but also how no one would be around to celebrate it with him. He planned to make up for these setbacks by getting annihilated with a capital "ni." Trust me, it sounds right when you say it. He also put a lot of stock in me, who apparently is his best friend at Notre Dame (I made a friend here, who knew?) being right by his side as his summer housemate for all the festivities. I said "Sure, of course I'll be there. It's on a Thursday? No problem, I bet I'll only have to work at my internship four days a week. I can party all Thursday night and crash Friday, no worries. And I'll have plenty of money to spend on booze from that summer computer lab job you're getting me. It'll be great." Do you see how I was promising a bit too much there? Maybe, just a little? Well, when this week finally arrived, I realized that my summer situation had not panned out exactly as I was planning. For starters, my internship is most definitely five days a week, I have to go in at 7 every morning, and it is a half-hour drive from my house to the TV station. Therefore, any night but Friday and Saturday is simply not conducive to heavy drinking of any kind. I can screw up my camera work just fine without being hung over, I don't need any help. Secondly, D-Locke sorta dropped the ball on my computer lab job, and as a result I am currently in the middle of my first shift working there even though I've been in South Bend for almost 3 weeks. Needless to say, I am a bit hard up for cash, so even I could have had a lot to drink last night, I wouldn't have wanted to. You know, because I like to eat and put gas in my truck and stuff.

So I was not in the best place to go on a wild bender with my buddy last night. As such, I downgraded my position from shot-buying wingman to heroic designated driver and bodyguard. I just love it when the old ego kicks in, it makes such good decisions for me. And it was in full swing this morning. It started at 7:00 last night. As I have been for the last three days, I carted D-Locke and my other housemate Mark around in the truck for a while without being asked if I was willing to do so. My possession of a vehicle has made me the automatic choice for house chauffeur, which sucks on a variety of levels. So we all jammed in to the cab of my truck, went and had an okayish dinner, I got to pay for D-Locke because he only had a debit card (heard that one before), we jammed back in, I had to spend $40 to fill my gas tank, we jammed BACK in, and ended up at D-Locke's friend John's house where we would pre-game until the clock struck 12 and we could go to a bar. I was still okay at this point. "I won't drink much," I told myself, "I'll just have a couple beers at the bar, stay 'til 1 or so and then I can drive home and sleep for 5 hours before work. I can buy him shots tomorrow when I can stand to spend money again, it'll be fine." So we played everyone's favorite get-krunked-quick game, Beirut. Or, as it is called by those who do not respect its given name, beer pong. D-Locke loves beer pong. So I agreed to play a couple of games as his partner, under the condition that he would do all the drinking for our team. Let me explain this move. Everything I know about D-Locke tells me he is a heavy drinker with a big tolerance. Once he gets going, he is hard to stop, and he prides himself on getting drunk as much as possible. So I figured making him drink all the pong beer would be doing him a favor. Of course he'd want to be drunk before going to the bar, he'd be so much looser and having so much more fun that way. What I always forget, however, is that while he drinks a lot D-Locke only goes about five and a half feet and 150 pounds or so. The will may be strong, but his tank fills quickly. And though he is an experienced drunkard, he's never learned to stop himself when he's had enough. So I shouldn't have believed him when after a 2-1 series victory in our first round of beer pong he said, "I can't drink anymore before the bar." I had already done my part to get him drinking too much too early, and now I was trusting him to stop himself. "Oh, you'll be able to stop him from doing anything really stupid," the ego chimed in. "Let him have his fun, he'll be fine." So when my lovely Aiea called at 10:30, I was confident everything would be okay. By the time I got off with her at 11:45, the situation had changed considerably.

In that hour and fifteen minutes, many more guests arrived at John's house. One of them was a young lady whom D-Locke and I had met Monday night while playing basketball. A charming lass named Andrea, she had fallen hook, line and sinker for the Jake and D-Locke comedy team; her exact words were, "I don't know why, but I can't stop laughing. You guys are funny!" Translation: I want some of your penises. Thankfully, I'm off the market, and that left only D-Locke to be the apple of her eye at the party. During my time on the phone, she began full-on flirting, becoming D-Locke's new pong partner, taking hats off of his head and wearing them, touching him at every opportunity, you know--the classics. At first I was pleased; "Good for D-Locke!" I thought. And of course, all the while, he just kept drinking. He had become easily the most inebriated person at the party, and then the x-factor arrived: my new boss and D-Locke's other best friend Erin. Erin and I got to talking, mostly about D-Locke, and she kept making snide comments about how Andrea was fawning all over him. It wasn't bothering me nearly as much as it was her, but I played along because she's been really nice to me and I wanted to get over with my new employer. Then, as we were making the five minute walk to the bar where D-Locke would break his drinking age cherry, she turned to me and said, "Jake, please make sure he doesn't hook up with that girl tonight." Now, a rational mind would have stopped her right there and said, "Hey, his decisions are his decisions, Erin. If he wants to have a drunken one night stand on his 21st, more power to him. It may be a cliche, but it'll be his cliche to engage in. It's none of my business." But something in her voice told me that she was more than just a little concerned about D-Locke making a stupid mistake. She had a more personal interest in what he and Andrea got up to on this night. Plus she had been laying a groundwork by telling me all night how much D-Locke loves me and respects my opinion more than anyone else. So it was that the ego had its say again: "This Erin girl is really nice, and she did you a big favor getting you that job. And she's right, D-Locke does respect you, because you're a stand-up guy. You have to do the right thing here. Don't let D-Locke do something hurtful and stupid. Show Erin what a great person you are. Be strong, be a man, impose your will on him. Lay down the law like the noble badass you are. And hey, if worst comes to worst, you can just beat him down and drag him home. He's little, you can take him." Maybe it was the two beers I had, but at this point I was convinced this was a good idea. I had really only just met Erin, and she had convinced me to step in where I really didn't belong. But then I thought, "Sure, Erin is nice, but so is Andrea. Why should I intervene on Erin's behalf just because she has some problem with this girl? How do I even know Andrea wants D-Locke in the first place?"

When we got to the bar, the situation escalated. Andrea began buying D-Locke shots left and right. Erin did everything she could to convince me of Andrea's status as a skank-ho. And D-Locke, of course, just kept on drinking. I was already leaning her way when Erin really reeled me in. First she asked me "what I knew." That was all she said, so of course I requested that she clarify her question. In typical girly fashion, she soon had me begging to know what she was talking about even though she insisted she really shouldn't say. She of course also made me promise not to mention to D-Locke what she was about to tell me. Then she dropped the bombshell. She and D-Locke had sex twice in the past 6 weeks. And she was his first. I was shocked. Especially because I had jokingly asked her not 5 minutes previous whether she and D-Locke has ever slept together. I knew they were close, but D-Locke had always insisted that she was a platonic friend, too close for anything to ever happen between the two. She may have been lying for all I know, but this new development threw me for a loop nonetheless. Now I was sure I couldn't let D-Locke hook up with Andrea. I could see Erin had feelings for him deeper than she was letting on. Or at least, my ego told me I could see that. As a noble and virtuous friend it was my duty to prevent him from destroying their friendship (or possible romance) on what was inevitably going to be a one-time fling. All I could hope for was that it wouldn't come to that; that D-Locke would have the wisdom to let me drive him home and leave Andrea for a more sober time. He didn't come through. He was hammered like I've never seen him, and he wanted to go with Andrea back to John's place. The gallant crusader that lives inside every man spoke from within me. "D-Locke, let's not do that tonight. That's a bad idea." He tried to bargain with me, offered to give me his wallet as collateral so that I'd at least let him walk her back to John's. He promised he'd come right back to get his wallet. Of course, at this point he was becoming incoherent, so it was actually hard to tell what he was promising. And Erin was only riling him up. He went outside for some air, and she followed him out. 2 minutes later, she returned and told me, "He's pretty bad, you better get him home." So I began the long, slow walk, alternating between dragging D-Locke and preventing him from falling, back to my truck. Unfortunately, I took a wrong turn, allowing John and D-Locke's other friends to cat call at him and try to convince him to come back to the bar. Eventually we ended up back there because we were so turned around, and Erin called a friend to give us a ride back to the truck. While waiting, D-Locke attempted to run into traffic, almost fell on the pavement several times, screamed Andrea's name, began speaking in what could only be called tongues and even raised his arms and worshipped a telephone pole. All the while I had to grapple with him like he was a wrestling bear or something. I was starting to get angry.

So we get him back to the truck, and of course John and his other friends are waiting there. They try to convince me to let him stay there and crash, confident that D-Locke could make his own choice on where he wanted to go. This was ridiculous, I told them, because he couldn't even speak English at this point, much less make a healthy choice. In reality, I should have let them take him. They had experience on handling drunks, and were willing to look after him. Not to mention it was already 1:45 in the morning and I had to work at 7. But the ego chimed in and said, "No! Only you can save him, Jakeman. This is your fight, your responsibility, who are they to question you? Besides, that tramp Andrea might be inside just waiting to defile young D-Locke. Think of what that would do to him, how ashamed he would be. And what about Erin? She would be crushed if you let that happen. No, no, you must take the boy yourself." So after some fighting and further drunk wrangling, D-Locke allowed himself to be stowed in my truck. Which, I hadn't noticed, had 3 partially flat tires. I knew I hadn't filled them with air in a while, but this was ridiculous. Actually, I didn't discover the flats until I woke up later this morning. So at 1:50 all I could think was, "Here I am, with 3 beers in me, driving home a drunk who is a puke bomb waiting to go off at any moment, steering with one hand and holding him up with the other, and my steering column is shot to boot. This is really not good." We made it home without D-Locke puking in the truck, but now I had another shocking realization to make. I was all alone with him, and I had never taken care of a drunk by myself before. And he was really drunk. And fighting me at every turn; I got him into the bathroom so he could pee, and I tried to leave but every time I took my hand off his shoulder he stumbled and started pissing all over the place. Then I tried to get him to puke into the toilet, but he insisted he had to go to the bathroom. He was already in the bathroom, I told him. Didn't matter. He wanted to puke on the floor. He succeeded, as I was only able to catch some of his vomit in a bucket as he began to retch. Over the next harrowing hour, he puked twice more as I tried to keep up with his stumblings all over the room. He sounded like he wanted me to do something, but I couldn't get him to make any sense. I got him to choke down some water and pass out on his side on a couch in the living room. I put his pillow under his head, cleaned up the puke as best I could, and by 4:30 I was relatively sure he wasn't going to die, so I laid down on the futon across the room and fell asleep. At 6:00 my alarm went off and D-Locke was still breathing, so I said a little prayer and went off to the TV station. At last look, he had gotten up and passed out on a couch in the other room. I don't expect he'll be up and around anytime soon, but I got him through the night okay and that's all I care about. At 3 in the morning I had thought there was a reasonable chance he was in fact going to die as Erin had predicted several hours earlier. Chalk it up to inexperience caring for drunks and my ego again: "If I don't act fast, I'll lose him!" and all that.

The moral of the story is that it's fine to care about your friends' well-being. But in many cases there is only so much you can do to prevent them from hurting themselves. Ultimately what they do is their choice, and you shouldn't overextend yourself trying to shield them from harm. That and the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and the paint for the lane lines is made of pure ego. The desire for heroic glory led me to believe that I knew what was best for D-Locke and that I could take care of him all by myself. It also led me to try and impress someone who didn't need impressing and prove myself even though absolutely no one was paying attention to my conduct. All it got me was a crappy night, a crappy morning, and an aching desire not to go out again tonight. This day did turn out to be special, and one that I will likely never forget, but for all the wrong reasons. And I'd like for it to end without any more excitement. D-Locke might be mad that I'm not willing to drive him around again and that he'll have to get a ride with someone else. He might be mad that his "best friend" isn't going to celebrate his birthday. Then again, who knows, maybe he'll be so sick that he won't even want to go out again. And I have to admit, if that happens because I didn't do enough to prevent him getting hung over, I don't regret it. Then again, that might just be the ego talking.