New Things #171 & 172, an Instinct soiree, and some embarrassing moments

Okay, it’s mid-afternoon and my hangover from last night is finally (mostly) (almost) gone. I don’t drink very often, so when I do drink I tend to go a little bit overboard.

(That’s a lie—I don’t go overboard—jeez, “I tend to go a little bit overboard” makes me sound like I become Mel Gibson or something and that’s totally not the case—let’s just say that I don’t like to do anything half-heartedly and that goes for boozing it up too) (when I booze it up) (which is not that often) (which I already said) (but I feel the need to say it again so that my parents don’t think I’m a lush) (hi mom and dad, I’m not a lush) (but speaking of going overboard, how great is Overboard, the 80’s Goldie Hawn vehicle?)

(Best Movie About Amnesia Ever) (not that I’m changing the subject or anything) (because I’m not) (because Overboard is honestly in my list of Top 10 eighties movies) (the list would be rounded out, in no particular order, by: Tootsie, Irreconcilable Differences, Outrageous Fortune, Hello Again, Working Girl, All of Me, Broadcast News, Big, and E.T.) (I’m not counting any John Hughes movies because John Hughes sold his soul to the devil—in return for three perfect movies [Sixteen Candles, Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller], he would be forced to make dreck for the rest of his career—and we can just all agree to Recognize the Hughes triumvirate as Perfect, give them their own list, and free up some space for other great movies) (maybe I’m being a little harsh on Hughes—the first Home Alone movie is pretty good too, and dammit but I freaking love Some Kind of Wonderful, and hello he wrote National Lampoon’s Vacation, so I should forgive him for movies like Flubber, but the simple truth is that ever since Dutch his movies have gone down freaking hill)

Anyway, I got really drunk last night because I went to Instinct Magazine’s “Leading Men” Party (I was Jesse’s “plus one,” thank you Jesse) and the party was sponsored by Vodka (or, wait, I guess it was sponsored by Absolut, but I’m really bad at remembering product names) (sorry Wall Street, but product branding does NOT work on me) which meant that all of the booze was free. The party was also sponsored by underwear (more specifically, by 2(x)ist Underwear), which meant that there were all of these random men (or, four) standing around on tables in nothing but their underwear and I think there was supposed to be music pumping really loudly throughout the fete (do you like how I just used the word “fete?” I got tired of using the word “party,” so I opened up the thesaurus in my brain and thought “fete” would be appropriate) and I think that music was supposed to underscore the underwear models’ standing, but there was something wrong with the sound system, which meant there wasn’t any thumping pumping music, which meant that these (very attractive) underwear models were just standing there on these tables in their underwear and there was something extremely surreal about it. Like we were all rats in some sort of Dharma underwear experiment. Because no one seemed to know what to do about the models—if we were supposed to interact with them or ignore them or what—and then finally, to break the tension, (and I swear there was tension) (lots of tension), people started posing for photos with the underwear models, and I was no different. Check it out, New Thing #171: I posed for a photo with an underwear model:

Note the drink in my hand. I think that’s vodka #2. It’s important to keep track of the number of drinks I consumed last night because my level of drunkenness will come into play later in the evening when I do something embarrassing and slightly humiliating, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The most embarrassing moment of the night is still hours away at this point.

Actually, I think it was around drink #2 when a really embarrassing thing happened to Jesse (which we assumed, at the time, would be the most embarrassing moment of the evening, but Jesse and I both agree that the thing I did later in the evening clearly trumped Jesse’s embarrassing moment). Let me just paint the scene a little more clearly, first, before I get to Jesse’s embarrassing moment.

So, the underwear models (again, pictured above) are by the pool being all hot and stuff. (Except the above photo makes my favorite model look like his face is distorted, like he's a poster image for The Grudge 3, or something, and I'm sorry about that.) But we’ve already forgotten about the underwear models because there are literally millions of attractive people just bipping around, getting sloshed on free vodka (Absolut). When we were standing in line for our second drinks (so now I’m backtracking here) we met this woman named Allison who was like, “what’s this party for?” and we were like, “um, hello, it’s the Instinct Leading Men Party,” and she was like, “N’Synch’s here?” and we were like, “no, but close, it’s Instinct with an inct,” and then she was like, “oh the gay magazine,” except she didn’t really say that, that was just me inserting probably unnecessary exposition into my anecdote, and then we were like, “yeah, the gay magazine,” and then this helicopter landed on the roof of the hotel and we all joked that it was Tim Gunn from Project Runway arriving at the party (since he was this month’s Leading Man #1 coverboy) (but it wasn’t him in the helicopter) (Tim Gunn was a no-show), and then we finally asked our new friend Allison, “so if you didn’t know what this party was, how did you get in?” and then she basically gave us a crash course in How To Crash Parties at the W Hotel, and it’s really easy to do, so what I’m trying to get at here is that even though it almost seemed like every other person at the party was a gay reality television star, every other other person at the party might have been some crasher off the street, and I think it was mostly street crashers who were standing around us when—and yes, this is Jesse’s embarrassing moment that I’ve been building up to—Jesse and I were doing a “walk around” and Jesse forgot that there was a set of stairs leading away from the pool area and I looked away for one second and then when I looked back Jesse was GONE. And that’s when I looked down and saw that Jessehad fallen literally flat on his face on the ground (so Tara Reid of him) and then I rushed to help him up and, well, it all happened so quickly that I didn’t even realize that Jesse had thrown his entire drink in some poor woman’s face as he was falling ever so ungracefully to the ground—he told me about the woman with the drink in her face later, after we’d made our way to another part of the party and assessed the damage to Jesse’s body (one slightly bloody knee, one slightly embarrassed boy). But Jesse didn’t really have cause to be embarrassed because, miraculously, even though the party was packed, even though there were literally millions of people there, Jesse fell all over the ground at a really opportune moment because I think the only person who saw him do it (I didn’t even see him fall and I was walking with him) was the woman who got a drink in her face (and one could argue that she didn’t really see the fall either because her view was obstructed by aforementioned drink). Marcellas from Big Brother didn’t see him fall, that guy with the long hair who always wears a cap on his head from Janice Dickinson Modelling Agency didn’t see him fall, that one Survivor castoff (who I had no idea was gay, and who I still don’t know if he’s gay, but who I think maybe I had a little bit of eyesex with, and who I’m not going to out here) didn’t see him fall, and neither did Tim Gunn (who, given, wasn’t even there, but still, he WAS the man of the hour, being on the cover of the magazine and all), so I wanted to point out to Jesse that, on the plus side of things, TIM GUNN DID NOT SEE YOU FALL FLAT ON YOUR FACE AND ACCIDENTALLY THROW A DRINK AT A STRANGER.

Finally, the Instinct party ended, but we weren’t ready for our night to end, so we decided to go to The Abbey, so we could be boozy for a couple more hours. We got our gift bags (which included vibrating condom rings) (to check out the inventory of the rest of the bag, read Jesse’s blog post HERE) and then headed over to the Abbey so that I could have MY most embarrassing moment of the evening.

Okay, so: we go to the Abbey, we have a few more drinks, (drinks #4 and #5), and at this point we were really drunk, and that’s when I started to think about my old friend “T,” who I dated for a brief blip in 2001, and whose bed I’ve fallen back into a couple of times since, and who I know isn’t really right for me, but who I definitely like, (Jesse and I decided that he's definitely not my Mr. Big, but maybe he's my Aidan, and if you're a Sex and the City fan you know exactly what I mean) and, well, T lives a couple of blocks away from The Abbey, and so I sent him a text message. And I won’t beat around the bush here, it was basically a booty-text. A drunk booty-text. (New Thing #172: I drunk booty-texted an ex.) And here’s when The Most Embarrassing Moment of The Evening Happened. I feel my phone vibrating. I take it out of my pocket and see that it’s T, but I’ve missed the call, it’s already gone to voice-mail. I wait a minute and then my phone beeps: you have a message. Okay, cool. Let’s see if T’s coming over here, or if he’s asking me to go over to his place…

I check the message. It’s T. And this is what he says: “Hey Erik, you left me a text message about the Abbey. I don’t know who this is so maybe you got the wrong number. Thank you, bye.” And then he hangs up.

And I’m like, what? Seriously? You don’t know who this is?

In his defense, we don’t call each other very often—we only see each other a few times a year and when we are in touch with each other, it’s usually via email. So I could understand if he has a new cell phone and my number’s not in there. But still, I would imagine that he can’t know too many Eriks and when someone named Erik (I even signed my text “erik”) sends you a drunk booty-text, it can’t be THAT difficult to put two-and-two together and figure out who it is. Anyway, I called him back, and I was like, “T, it’s me." And then he was like, “Erik! I didn’t recognize your number!” And then we caught up for a few minutes and it turned out he wasn’t at his house by the Abbey, he was actually in Venice (California, not Italy) for the evening, and we made plans to maybe see each other sometime next week, and then I hung up the phone and felt like a fool because I DRUNK BOOTY-TEXTED AN EX AND HE THOUGHT IT WAS THE WRONG NUMBER. There’s something cosmically embarrassing about that.

Anyway, by that point in the evening I was exhausted and it was pretty clear I wasn’t going to get a chance to test out my new vibrating condom ring, (mom and dad, if you’re still reading this, I apologize for the mental image) and Jesse’s knee was beginning to bleed most profusely, so we left the bar and called it an evening. Embarrassments aside, Jesse and I had a really fun night. Thank god for friends because if either of us had been alone last night, I’m sure that Jesse’s falling-flat-on-his-face moment and my ex-not-knowing-who-I-am moment would have been moments that we obsessed over to the point of true embarrassment, but when you’re with a great friend then those mortifying moments become, well, like fucking battlewounds to wear proudly on your sleeve, you know?