If you’ve ever had any fun drinking before, then you should’ve also experienced what is, in my opinion, the only thing that can save you from a hangover that doesn’t involve taking a borderline suicidal amount of ibuprofen and jerking of: the recap.
Last Friday night I blacked out pretty good. It happens to me very rarely anymore because after a freshman year of college riddled with extremely poor decisions and anxiety attacks the day after, I’ve tried to cut back a bit (a bit meaning I get aggressively drunk without losing complete control) in order to maintain some semblance of mental health stability. But every once in a while, I surpass my normal belligerent drunkenness and go for a night that will be almost non-existent to me — but absolutely hilarious to everyone that watches me take my pants off and butt floss with no regard for the fact that the girls that are there have met me just two times before.
Like I said, last Friday was one of those nights. After working from 7am-3:15pm, I played 18 holes of golf and immediately after went to a friends house to drink. That was at about 9:30. After about 11:00 not much is clear in my head. I got taken advantage of in an impromptu poker game, was encouraged to beer bong after I should have been in bed, had people texting random contacts on my phone, and eventually ordered food. Then, darkness.
Flash forward to the next morning. I wake up with the need to take a piss that would fill a 64 ounce gatorade. I get halfway up the stairs and realize that I’m not at the same friends house that I last remember being at. That’s a later issue, though, because holy fuck I have to pee. I walk back downstairs after taking a 73 second piss, and shake my friend awake to ask why we’re at this house and not the one we were drinking at.
It’s at this point that I begin the beautiful process that is the day after drinking recap. I only get a bit of information because pretty soon we leave to go get our cars, but based on the information I gather from my friends and the 3 minute lecture we get from my boy’s dad when we pick up the cars, we got locked out of the house after going on a walk (despite being specifically told not to leave to go on a walk, but c’mon, walks are great) and had to Uber back to a different house at 4am so that we weren’t sleeping outside.
After recovering my shoes and shirt which somehow didn’t make it with me in the Uber, I go to work for 10 hours and throughout the 24 hours that follow I begin to piece back together what happened.
The cut on my face and my bruised shoulder came from me diving head first over a fence in hopes that the door on the inside would be unlocked. No such luck. The black marks all over my chest that I spotted in the shower are from me lying down on the concrete in just my underwear. I get sent a video of me peeing in a bush seemingly shortly after I was finished with my little rest in the middle of the street. My lungs hurt because I was screaming, “What’s Bob’s birthday?” in an attempt to open his garage.
Throughout the day I get responses to the apology texts I had to send to the — hold on let me count — 14 people I either texted or allowed someone else to text that night. I have a 60-second snapchat video that’s sitting on opened to a girl I probably had a shot with before I hit send, and now I just hope that she’s able to move past it. In all reality, though, I won’t hear from her any time soon.
Later that night, I sit in my basement laughing at the ridiculous things my friend remembers me saying as we rehash the night. This moment almost makes the many dumb things I did worth it.
