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It's true. I'd always loved sex and never had a problem with casual relationships, but I didn't start drinking, really drinking, until after college. Before then, I could take it or leave it. I didn't like the calories, the awkwardness of navigating the bar scene with a fake ID, the expense. When I was twenty-two, I briefly thought I had found something with coke, but I didn't like the way it made me hyper-aware, made sex so pointed and almost clinically concentrated. I hated the long, slow coming down, especially after sex, when all I wanted to do was be alone.
When I graduated college, it became normal to go two or three weeks without having a night off, to call my cubemate to cover for me when I woke up in a mysterious apartment, hung over with yesterday's clothes askew on the floor. It was exciting, hazy, and made me feel like I had been catapulted into a bohemian-girl lifestyle I'd always wanted. But while my friends eventually stopped drunken exploits in favor of boyfriends and career moves, or on the advice of their therapists, I was still getting drunk and hooking up.
I know it's stupid. After more than a few close calls, I know that I'm more than flirting with danger, which I've tried to mitigate by only getting that drunk with people I sort of know — friends of friends or people I meet at parties or people who are already my Facebook friends.
Which, of course, brings up its own set of problems — like the time I slept with the photographer of my brother's wedding the night of the rehearsal dinner and then couldn't look at him — or the camera — during the actual wedding. But unlike most people, I love drunken hookups — the predictable move from hazy to blackout, followed by the lightning-quick recollection of moments from the night before, capped off with a sticky-brained hangover that makes me feel like I've done something gross and illicit and dangerous and, however perversely, enlivening.
Unlike most people, I love drunken hookups. |
In my daytime life, I'm typical — ambitious, even. I have a job and a to-do list of volunteering obligations and yoga classes and to go out means that I'm actually taking a night off from all of it. And that's partially why when I go out, I feel I should go all out. I feel like I deserve it. I feel like I work hard all the time and am always trying to impress people and maybe I want you to see me in my worst state as soon as possible so we can just get it over with and move on. I think maybe, deep down, I want to find a man who'll love me even if he's seen me pee on myself.
It hasn't happened yet.
Which is why I've been trying to drink less and date more. In fact, the last drunk hookup I had before you was last summer, with a guy I met at a friend of a friend's birthday party. I remember waking up to his alarm, taking in the unfamiliar room, the weak sunlight through the window, and just feeling exhausted. I'd been beginning to get the sense that these were my last moments to have wild, drunken nights out before it became truly sad, before I'd reach the no-man's land between the just-legal girls with hipbones rising above the waistband of their jeans ordering lemon-drop shots in groups at the bar, and the sad, scattered women who sit and drink vodka gimlets with far too much determination, the ones who don't even try to pretend they're waiting for a friend. After all, there are only so many times I can play out the same scenario without it seeming a cliché, an endless loop of bad judgment. Still, I tried to make the morning seem more of a romantic comedy than existential crisis.
"I bet you don't even know my name," I said, trying to be cool and flirtatious as I struggled awake. In truth, I was just hoping he'd give me his name.
"Annabelle!" he exclaimed.
"Yup," I smiled. It's not. It's a name that only comes out after a few cocktails — or, in this case, four mojitos, two beers and three shots. But Annabelle nights are usually fun. I tend to act imperious, self-possessed, fearless about what I want. Now that I had the context, bits and pieces of the night come back to me: I remembered a cab and making out and his hand crawling up my thigh.
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