The Hangover

Last year, when the movie The Hangover came out, I immediately fell in love with plot and even more so with the characters. While some folks found the movie to be amusing because it was seemingly so outrageous, I found a personal connection with it as for the most part, I could picture myself in these situations and I had a friend to fill each and every role.

This past Friday evening I made a last minute decision to visit some friends that are still in college. The way that the evening unfolded was complete debauchery, but a testament as to why The Hangover reads like my life.

The evening started out with the regular pre-game. A few drinks, a group of girls, lots of clothes swapping and the air filling with hairspray. As we finished up getting ready and had a good buzz going, we made our plan for the night. Because my college girlfriends had a party with the sorority to attend, we decided that I would go out with some other friends and then we would meet back up with one another at the bar when their party was over. Bella takes three shots back to back and the rest of us chugged our glasses of champagne and then headed out, only after telling Bella that she may not take the container of pretzels with her.

Now, fast forward two hours. Their party is over and we are meeting back up. At this point I had managed to take a couple of shots, and had several mixed drinks, so needless to say, I was feeling pretty good. I would guess that each of the other girls had ad a couple of shots and several bottles to the face the way that they were acting. I am still questioning if maybe they were drugged. Realizing that I needed to get on their level, I headed to the bar to open a tab and fill my body with that delicious substance I like to call Crown. As I reach the bar, I run into an old friend, Chase (who for four years I was head over heals for) and we begin to catch up. Several drinks and shots later, he and I are still chatting and I realize that none of my friends are to be found.

I decide it is best to investigate where they have gone, since I am supposed to be staying with two of them and would enjoy spending my drunken evening with them on top of that. I ask a couple of people if they have seen the girls. One guy tells me that he thinks they have all gone home already and everyone else has no clue. I text Sandy and she says that they are at the bar across the street. Chase and I head out of the bar to find Sandy and when we arrive she is nowhere to be found. Realizing that my friends are all MIA, I stick with Chase and figure that eventually we will all be back together.

Around 3am, my night ends with Chase dropping my off at Sandy and Bella's house - a ride which consisted of me riding in the backseat like he was a cab driver. I tiptoe in, seeing someone on the couch and both Bella and Sandy in bed. I get on the futon in Sandy's room and drift away to sleep. The next morning I wake up when I hear Sandy's phone receive a text. She looks down at me in confusion and says "Where is Kate?" as she speeds out of the room. I hear her asking again where Kate is and no one seems to know. Apparently, Kate had sent Sandy a text that said she just woke up and didn't know where she was. She wanted to know if Sandy was home so that she could come over.

At this point, everyone is awake and we begin to hash out the night. Lucky for us, Bella is a lightweight and came home early so that we had a witness to the whacky evening that unfolded. Bella said that Margo, who doesn't live here, had come home with a ginger that she introduced to Bella as Tim. Margo, very drunk, has a quick make out sesh with Tim before she has to go puke her brains out in the bathroom. Meanwhile, Tim has taken off his shirt and begins to drunkenly talk to Bella, who asks to see his ID in an attempt to make sure that he is who he says he is, not that anyone would know the difference. Then the half-naked Tim goes into the bathroom where Margo has emptied her stomach, flushes the toilet for her, and tells Margo that she is beautiful. We aren't sure when Margo realized that Tim was a total creeper, not to mention complete stranger, and that he needed to leave, but as a means of getting him out, Margo decided it would be best to go hide from him and tell him to go away. Eventually, Tim took the hint and went to Bella's door, knocking and saying "Ma'am, I need my shirt."

Not too long later, Sandy drunkenly stumbles home with her new friend Dale, along with our friends Lori and Terry. Dale and Sandy have a hardcore make out sesh while Bella has now fallen asleep on a bench in the kitchen and Margo is passed out in her panty hose and dress across the love seat on top of a giant box of Goldfish crackers. No one is really sure what went on for this short moment, but eventually they all went to bed, which is what I had come home to.

Apparently when both Sandy and Margo had woken up at some point in the night, they had taken a head count and figured out that someone was missing. Knowing my history or both late nights and shacking, they figured it was me and for some reason were not too concerned. When in the morning Sandy realized that I was on the futon and not Kate, she freaked out because Kate of all people would be the last one EVER to shack up. When Kate made it back the next day, she told us that she has stayed with Jeff, a guy that she had a fling with in the past. She didn't remember going home but she woke up in a guys clothes a couldn't find her panties. Classy.

All in all, the night had been a good one, or so we think. Granted we had lost Kate; granted Margo had brought home a complete stranger, and not even a cute one at that; granted that none of us remembered any of this; and granted that I discovered that either my friends think I can fend for myself or they don't care that I could have been kidnapped, we felt like the three best friends that anyone could have... or I guess the five best friends. I'm still not sure if I am happy or sad that we managed to leave out a few parts of The Hangover as we relived it ourselves. I'm sure a tiger and a baby would have been fun additions, but maybe a bit too dangerous for our irresponsible crew.