June 28th 5:55pm - Designated Drunk Driver

My friend's graduation party was as paramount as Bill Gates' philanthropy.
The party abounded with music, pool ping-pong, croquet, swimming, hot tubbing, and food and alcohol assortments as impressive as Cate Blanchett's acting.
After my mom had socially swallowed a few glasses of wine, my inebriated self ordained she was going to be in no condition to drive hours later. I stole her keys with cat burglar stealth.
That night, my mom hugged me good-bye and said she was going to drive home.
"No, Mom, you are in no condition to drive! I'm going to drive us home. I have much more practice driving under the influence."
"Kara, you've been drinking too!" she reminded me.
This was quite obvious, as I was holding a glass of Chardonnay in my hand during the conversation.
"Yes, but I am a much better drunk driver than you are Mom. I'm driving us home. You are not."
"You drive drunk? That's horrible. You should never drive drunk!" my mom was apparently under the impression that I was a sober seven year old.
"Mom! You're trying to drive drunk right now! I am the designated drunk driver."
"I am not drunk! I've only had a few glasses of wine. And nobody is a designated drunk driver! I'm calling your brother to come pick me up."
My brother arrived and my mom climbed into the passenger seat with Sandra Bullock's gracefulness. I stood at her window talking to them.
"Goodbye Honey," my mom said, "I'll see you at home."
"Ya, I think I'm just going to drive your car home later once I sober up," I imprudently suggested.
"You do not have my keys and I am not giving them to you!" she said.
"Yes I do have them!" I announced as proudly as if I had been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
At this, I flaunted them in front of her face like I used to do to my little sister when she desired the bright red crayon. My mom, with Star-Nosed Mole reflexes, snatched them from my hand.
"Not anymore!" she laughed as they drove away.
"Damnit!" I exclaimed, confused how easy it was for my mother to outsmart and out-reflex me.
A friend drove me home.

June 27th 11:12am - Casino Regurgitation

When my friends and I devour alcohol, I become drunk. My friends become bulimic.
The day after the roof ramble Yes Man and Drunky awoke and swayed to Sahara's Nascar Cafe.
Although my body paralleled that of a felled African Bush Elephant, I roused myself and joined them downstairs less than an hour later.
I discovered the two accompanied by 3-foot-tall Brew Towers, racing to determine who could consume theirs first. I conducted what I considered to be as cogent a decision as dessert after breakfast, lunch, and dinner: I ordered one as well. Though I didn't desire to play catch-up to participate in their race, I initiated consuming my fifteen-beer tower as they embarked on the final third of theirs. Alcohol catch-up is as detrimental a concept as Michael Jackson's eighty-seventh plastic surgery. Thus, as they chugged their final glasses of beer, I sipped on my fifth.
Drunky deluged the last of his beer in his glass and inhaled it, completing the beer tower race as victorious as Michael Phelps. Yes Man anchored his alcohol to the counter, glass half-full, and hurtled towards the bathroom like a possessed Lamborghini. I congratulated Drunky, who truly wasn't that intoxicated, while women's screams struck our ears.
"Somebody puked on the carpet!"
We glanced at each other and followed the shrieks. Fifteen feet from the bathroom entrance we located the contents of Yes Man's stomach trailing to the bathroom. We determined there wasn't much to be done now, shrugged, and returned to the bar stools.
The following morning we dragged ourselves like lepers to the pool to refresh before our impending nine-hour drive to Northern California. Drunky declared we needed to depart to make it home at a decent hour. We agreed, evacuated the pool with the swiftness of garden snails, and I detoured to the bathroom. I returned to discern Drunky and Yes Man headed back to the Nascar Cafe in a Man vs. Man vs. Food six-pound, two-foot-long burrito hour-long eating contest. As I was four pounds when born, my friends attempted to consume what could very well be an average-sized baby.
Yes Man does not like burritos but complied with the contest because he is a Yes Man.
Drunky loves burritos like he loves his 1968 Mustang, but doesn't cherish spicy food. The first third of the burrito he consumed was satiated with Jalapenos.
Neither achieved the hour-long six-pound burrito consumption.
Drunky and Yes Man devoted the last twelve minutes of our Vegas trip in Sahara's Nascar Cafe bathroom.
They each left Vegas with pink shirts saying, "Certified Weenie" in cursive across the front.

June 26th 11:13am - Vegas Roof Lechery

During the day, while consuming enough Tequila and Whiskey to fell a 110ft blue whale, we resolved a roof excursion was as essential as food. A fantastic front desk clerk had placed us on the top floor of the hotel - the twenty-seventh - despite our $22/night pre-determined rate. After inebriating ourselves in the room, we sprinted down the hallway with glasses of alcohol in hand and bound up the stairs to discover the roof access door locked.
MacGyver jimmied the fastened door open with a credit card, we strode over some obstacles, and were on the roof like Batman. We resided there a few minutes, bolstered the door open with a shovel, and stumbled our way down to the pool, ascertaining we would return that night.

Past 2am, after the Gas Station Girls vacated, a friend attending UNLV joined us. As previously ordained, we relocated to the roof, complete with Jose Cuervo and Maker's Mark.
Yes Man chronicled his campaign hours earlier in finding the Gas Station Girls in the casino. He had drifted downstairs with Maker's Mark in hand and conversed with John the Security Man concerning the whiskey. John divulged he had consumed Maker's Mark the night before. Yes Man revealed his Gas Station Girls quest and when he returned to the elevator flanked by girls, John nodded and smiled as if Yes Man had just won the presidency.
"I made friends with John the Security Man!" Yes Man announced with the pomp of a high school cheerleader and a sip of his Whiskey.
With the hours lapsing and the alcohol amplifying, Yes Man proclaimed he yearned to pitch something off the roof. He tossed the hotel room glass he was gulping from onto the concrete parking structure below. UNLV catapulted his glass. The Maker's Mark bottle buffeted the ground.
With the spring of sunrise, we walked through the door and down the only stairwell from the roof with bandit silence. Two security guards ascended as we descended. They gazed at us with prison-guard stoniness.
"Were you guys throwing glass bottles and glasses off the roof?" Fidel Castro asked.
"No... we were just up there for a moment looking at the view," we replied.
"What floor are you staying on?"
"Twenty-four," UNLV said.
"Ok... go back to your room," Security ordered.
"Yessir. Have a good night!" I responded.
We entered the elevator as silent as koalas and went to the twenty-fourth floor before going back to the twenty-seventh.
We exited the elevator to find the two security guards who had just questioned us in the hallway.
"Umm, goodnight," UNLV said as we walked to our room.
Once inside, Yes Man declared, "One of those security guards was my friend John! And he knew it was us because of the Maker's Mark bottle we threw. He saw me carrying that earlier! YES! I love making friends. He saved us!"

June 25th 5:04pm - Vegas=Disneyland + Alcohol

Voyaging to Las Vegas is like an adult Disneyland adventure... with alcohol. And strippers.
Watching the movie The Hangover (which I love more than my laptop) established that two friends and I would drive to Vegas once one of the friends got off work. We departed at 11:30pm.
We arrived around 7:30am, alcohol-ample. The three of us were heavy holding five handles of Whiskey and Tequila. I enjoy Whiskey and Tequila about as much as I delight in monkeys volleying their excrement at me. However, the alcohol was free. Regardless of the type of liquor, when gratis, I do what any true alcoholic does: coerce my throat and body to inhale it as if it were Rum infused with ambrosia - the drink of the Grecian gods.
One of the friends recently watched the movie Yes Man and determined he was a Yes Man. Vegas was a yes, alcohol was a yes, and bombarding his sheltered rural-Washington-reared cousin's 21st birthday Vegas celebration was a definitive yes.
The three of us assailed Yes Man's twenty-one-year-old cousin and his friends with alcohol hours before their flights.
We achieved what any accomplished drinker would: we clouted Cousin with Tequila. His brother and friends left for their flights while we kidnapped him for the remainder of our stay. I was so pleased with our kidnapping abilities I drunkenly deliberated the life benefits of a kidnapper. Fourteen seconds later the visualization of me mothering eighty-eight kidnapped children eradicated any serious consideration as a career kidnapper.
Driving from Cousin's hotel to our $22-per-room-per-night hotel - a bit further down the strip, it felt like driving from one side of the Sahara Desert to the other - we halted for gas. The men cleared the car while I stalled inside to sink into unconsciousness. They were apparently under the impression that a drunken twenty-three-year-old in a car in the desert was a good idea. They abandoned me there for forty minutes. When they returned like victorious warriors, they regaled me with visions of them hitting on two girls at the gas station.
After naked ass pictures, wandering the Strip, and free beer pong, we returned to our hotel at midnight so the gas station girls could come over. I lay on the floor, desiring a thirty-minute nap while awaiting their arrival. Cousin and Drunky lay in bed while Yes Man answered the door. I opened my eyes to perceive one of the girls standing over me, her eyes looking down on mine.
"Who are you?" she demanded with the authority of Stalin.
"I'm Kara. Who the hell are you?" I responded.
She didn't reply but evacuated the room three minutes later with Jewish rapidity without saying goodbye.

June 21st 3:52pm - Naked Friend and Sober Parent

The city of Santa Rosa, California is as hot as Megan Fox. The weather was in the nineties all weekend. Our wine tasting intentions metamorphosed like Star Jones' weight from winery-hopping to sitting poolside consuming eight bottles of assorted wines. Wine tasting equates drunk driving. 
By absorbing alcohol and sun at a friend's house, nobody had to be a designated drunk driver between wineries. 
At one point I lay by the pool on my stomach while a friend sprawled on top of me like a plastered passed-out elephant. People got pitched into the pool in their clothes. Someone blacked out at 5pm. Another urinated in the yard in front of the mother of the girl's house we were at. Somebody regurgitated in the bushes.
After hours of ingratiating ourselves with Chardonnays, Savignon Blancs, Merlots, and Zinfandels - ourselves offspring of wine country - night had snuck up on us like Mike Tyson. More friends amalgamated and by midnight we assembled around a fire pit, content as Mrs. Fields.
"I'm going in the pool!" Boozy announced and precipitated stripping.
Knowing his propensity for public naked pedantry, I intoxicatedly exclaimed, "Strip all the way!" as I made my mouth mirthful with vino. 
He summarily shed his shorts, spun, and scampered five steps toward the pool. One of the girls rapturously reposed on the concrete, gazing into the fire. She raised her eyes as Boozy bound by. 
"Agghhh!" she screeched like a howler monkey. 
"Why did a penis just attack me?" she squealed as he leapt into a dive over her and into the pool. 
Minutes later exposed Boozy exited the pool as the father of the house strolled onto the back porch. Someone flung a black inner tube towards him while the dad requested we come inside and keep it down, as it was a Sunday night and there were neighbors. Boozy stood, arms out, clad in only an inner tube as the sober man of the house returned inside shaking his head as if he had just witnessed his daughter in a gang bang.

June 19th 11:04am - Quotes

My friends amuse me as much as the wall amuses my cat. 
He ogles the wall like it's a female feline.

* "Last night I played with balls and ate nuts." 
"Does your ass hurt again?"

* So I stalked this guy's calendar that I have a crush on at work. Tomorrow night we're going to the bar his calendar tells him to be at!"
"So his calendar is telling us where to go too? I don't like when other people's calendars tell me where to go."

* "I came home this morning to a hunter safety class being taught in my garage. Kinda sad, but it's a totally normal day."

* "I like to wear cowboy hats, shoot guns and listen to country music."
"You just rarely hear anybody say that in L.A.! I should come home more often." 
"That's because L.A. is fake blonde hair, fake skin color, fake muscles, and fake people. Everyone wants to be an actor and everyone works as a waiter because they can't get acting jobs. Nor Cal has real people."

* "Kara, what happened last night? I don't have my car or car keys, my debit card, or one of my shoes."
"I think I have your car keys, but your car is across town. Your debit card is probably at one of the three bars we went to... and you texted me last night to say you found your shoe in the bathtub. Look there first!"

* "In my next life, I want to be a cat. Cats are so flexible they can lick their own balls."
"They also cough up hair-balls." 
"I wonder how often the hair-balls are from the hair on their balls."

* I don't have any money. So I'm selling the furniture in the house. Today I put my mom's bed up for sale on Craigslist." 

June 18th 4:21pm - Designated Drunk Driver

Yesterday a friend and I initiated our intoxication by inhaling 100-proof Captain Morgan Rum at 4pm while at the movie theater. 100-proof C Mo to me equates shoes to Fergie. I'm obsessed with it like I'm obsessed with small children. 
After the movie we enhanced our libation at a variety of bars and were eventually joined by a slew of friends. After midnight everyone dispersed. In retrospect, selling my car was a bit preemptive, like orgasming while exercising. 
My earlier drinking companion offered me a ride home. I accepted with the graciousness of Princess Diana. It wasn't until Drunkard deviated from his lane seventeen times and was swerving like a drunk giraffe that I comprehended how boozy he was. 
"Damn, I wish I knew how to drive stick shift because I am drunk but I feel I could drive staying in the lines," I told him, "You'll definitely have to teach me how to drive stick soon!"
We were on a relatively windy, relatively dangerous two-lane two-way road. He stopped his car.
"I'll teach you right now!" Drunkard said, a smile adorning his face reminiscent of the light atop a Christmas tree. He exited the car.
"What? What the hell are you doing? We're in the middle of the road! Get back in the goddamn car!" I shouted out the window. 
"What? No. You had a good idea! I'll teach you to drive right now!"
"Oh HELL no! Number 1: You're drunk. Number 2: I'm drunk. 3: We're in the middle of the road and a car could easily come along and hit us. 4: We're almost to my house. Let's just get there. 5: You can teach me tomorrow or something. 6: Get the fuck back in the car!"
Drunkard laughed and opened my door. "Come on! Get in the driver's seat! I'll teach you," he said, grinning and gripping my car door to stabilize himself so he wouldn't fall over. 
"You drunken fool! Get back in the car!"
"Come on, I'll teach you. It's not that hard," Drunkard informed me.
This exchange continued for another four minutes before I convinced him it was in fact a better idea that he drive the remainder. 
"You're such a good driver though! You're the best driver I know. You're so in control of the vehicle. You could be a racecar driver. Show me those skills!" were the deciding sentences.
"I am like a racecar driver!" Drunkard announced.
The next morning he remembered walking out of the bar but not the drive home. 

June 17th 2:11pm - Blacked-Out Dinner Perfection

Last night I constructed a dinner that was so perfect it rivaled Scarlett Johansson. Fillet mignon, garlic mashed potatoes, and a vegetable dish consummated the ensemble. I felt like a mother that had given birth to flavorsome food and I fancied it. When an uncle canceled his dinner plans with my mom and me, I deemed two male high school friends deserving of this dinner worthy of King Louis XIV. 
My anterior apprehension arrived when I received a text message from one of them saying, "On way," followed by another forty-eight minutes later declaring, "He's getting me as drunk as possible. We'll be there soon." My mom and I swallowed the succulent cuisine, leaving ourselves wistful for more. However, we refrained with the thought that two men were arriving shortly whose food consumption abilities challenged King Kong. 
Sitting in the kitchen, tranquilly sipping on glasses of Chardonnay, we detected my friends before we saw them. My mom and I gazed at each other, our faces mirroring as if we had just heard that Dog the Bounty Hunter was homosexual. 
"She's a fucking whore!" Wasted wailed.
"She's a fucking whore!" Drunkard repeated.
Drunkard stumbled into the kitchen, a grin garnishing his face. "Hello hello!" he jubilantly jawed, wrapping his arms around me in a hug. 
"You're a fucking whore!" Wasted screamed from the other room, followed by the sound of the front door dashing shut. I glanced out the front window to view my friend holding the phone in front of him like a rock star's microphone, yelling into it. I shrugged and my mom reheated the food. A female friend slipped into the kitchen and explained that she had seen Wasted and Drunkard careening downtown, screaming, felling small trees and smacking cars with them. When they disclosed they were driving to my house she had driven Drunkard's car instead. 
My mom set the plate of deliciousness in front of Drunkard. He garbled words, regaling us with reports of the alcohol they had absorbed. It was 7:45pm. Wasted reentered with a door blast and then a smash. I walked into the entryway to detect him, head in hands, saying quietly, "Who does something like that? Why did she have to be a slut? Who does something like that? What a slut." 
I installed myself next to him on the step and rubbed his back. Wasted went through the logical stages of despondent to enraged within three minutes. 
"What the hell?" he bellowed, standing up with the force of a mama bear and hammering his phone into the wood floor. It lay like a battered wife. He kicked it into the front door. 
"Okay," I soothed, "Come eat! We saved you some really good food."
I negotiated him into the kitchen and presented him with his plate of food. He seized the fillet mignon with his hands and gnawed on it as if he were a Tyrannosaurus Rex and it was a savory slight omnivore. Drunkard hadn't devoured one bite of his plate. Garlic mashed potatoes reign as one of his top three foods. I reminded him of the plate's existence. He expressed ecstasy at the potatoes and ate three bites before again forgetting. I presented Sober Driver with a glass of wine while Wasted again called the ex-girlfriend. The phone worked and I was as impressed with its indestructible attribute as I was with Susan Boyle's vocal cords. 
"Here, tell her she's a whore," Wasted requested and passed the phone to Drunkard.
"Of course I will," he obliged. "You're a whore!" "What, your friend? Well, he's a Spic!" "A whore and a Spic, a whore and a Spic!" he sang as if it was a rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
"You are such a good friend!" my mom said. "You are so loyal. Such a loyal friend," she continued as she exited the room. I found her in her bedroom fifteen minutes later and apologized. 
"It's okay. They're good boys. They're just very drunk. I'd stay out there, they certainly are entertaining... they are just using the word whore too much for me. So I'm going to hide in here," she said softly. 
It was 8:40pm.
Over the following three hours Drunkard invited over a friend, Wasted berated the ex before passing out on the entryway's wood floor and then the living room's carpeted floor, and I monopolized myself with wine. At midnight Wasted raised himself from the floor and disappeared. When I called, questioning his whereabouts, he informed me he was wandering down the middle of a very major, very dangerous street down the hill from the house. 
I vaulted to the car as if I was running in an Olympic race, and drove around the street trying to locate Wasted. On my fifth call he answered. He was in a taxi.
The next morning Drunkard, who had stayed the night, crept into my room fox-style, and awoke me at 6:35am asking what had happened the night before and why he woke up in my brother's bed. I received a call from Wasted at 8:23am wondering what had happened.
Neither remembered even being at my house. They recalled nothing. Wasted remembered being at the bar and then in a taxi. The hours at my house were as existent as Casper.
Drunkard sent me this text message that afternoon: "We've been talking. Last night makes perfect sense. One of the last drinks we remember was pounding a Mind Eraser."  

June 16th 4:21pm - Open House

I've had my real estate license for four years, but have used it about as much as I've used crocodile tongue in my cooking. 
Today I hosted an Open House to assist my mom, also a Real Estate Agent. One of the houses she has listed was on tour today and she requested I host... aka stand inside the house, greet those entering and answer any questions other agents might have about it. 
Throughout the four hours I was there, I accomplished as much work as a disabled cow. I consumed the food that occupied the kitchen table meant to entice more visitors. I life-updated other agents and people I didn't recognize but who somehow knew my identity. I fabricated an answer to the one question someone asked, what year the house was built. I fell asleep standing up leaning against a wall. 

June 15th 1:04pm - Mom in Allemagne

In 2006 my immediate family, supplemented with a cousin, launched through Germany for the World Cup with the rapidity of teenagers traveling on crack. 
My dad is of the opinion that the definition of vacation is "A stressful period of suspension of career work, or the act of vacating, when you awake with the sun, hoard money, move as often as possible, and yell as much as possible," while the definition of work encompasses rest and leisure. I fault my mom's freedom famine and sleep shortage for her brain acting as competent as Paris Hilton's vocabulary.
Oftentimes during the trip my brother and I speculated about Mom's intoxication possibilities. However, as this was repeatedly at 8:30am, I revert to the previous conjecture: fatigue. 
One morning we caught a train with as much energy as dogs with Lyme Disease. Our eyes barely open, our limbs lethargic, we resembled five zombies trailing behind indefatigable Dad, who irately rotated every thirty steps and screamed venom at us to hurry up and if we missed the imminent boat/train/plane, it would be our fault. 
"Was that Dad's voice yelling at us just now? Or did my brain just make that up?" I asked, eyes squinting against the early morning sun as I mentally encouraged my legs to continue forward, determined as Martin Luther King Jr.
"I don't know... I think I heard him too, but I can't be sure. I haven't seen him in seventeen blocks," my brother responded.
"I don't think I've seen him in twenty blocks. I just keep sporadically hearing his voice reverberating in my head. Maybe he'll catch the train and we can just meet him nowhere." 
We eventually secured our positions on the train only to realize that while we had train tickets, we hadn't separately booked seats, therefore we had nowhere to sit. The six of us stood, crowded like cows and yawning like cats as the train departed the station. My mom stabilized her water bottle in the crook of her arm, unscrewed the cap, and then dropped the cap on the train's floor. 
"Mom, don't bend over. Mom, if you bend over you're going to spill the water. Mom, hand me the water. Mom, if you bend over the water will spill," I modulated in monotone with as much energy as I could summon, which rivaled that of a semi-comatose hippo. Mom bent over to retrieve the cap and the open bottle gushed water onto the train's floor, soaking our feet and rolling in a puddle attacking suitcases like the plague every time the train turned a corner. 
"Mooomm. I told you not to bend over," I said with the complaining whine of a six-year-old. Mom giggled. "I feel like I'm drunk but I haven't had anything to drink this morning!" she exclaimed. 

The next morning at 6:26am as we waited for the elevator to descend Mom asked my brother for the seventeenth time, "How do you say six again? I need to know how to say six because there are six people for breakfast!"
He had procured a translation booklet and knew limited German words, like numbers, how to say his name, and small household pets.
"Sechs," he answered.
"Sex?" 
"Yes Mom, it is pronounced sex. Sex is six." 
My brother, sister, cousin, parents and I approached the host at the hotel's restaurant. A quasi-attractive chocolate-eyed man in his early twenties smiled at us in anticipation, broadcasting his hospitality skills. 
"Sex for breakfast please," my mom proudly proclaimed, surrounded by her husband and children.
"I'm sorry? What?" he asked, his face as perplexed as if my great-grandma had requested vagina cream.
I clenched my hand on my mom's shoulder and propelled her away like a leashed dog. 
I apologized to Chocolate Eyes on my mom's behalf.
"Mom, are you drunk?" my brother repeated for the twelfth time in the past five days.
"I don't think so..." she replied. 

June 13th 2:12pm - Would You be Opposed to Me Asking Your Number

Tonight two friends and I went to a restaurant, I exclusively to inhale pesto cheese bread sticks. Pesto cheese bread sticks are as special to me as my cousin. Given the choice between Castello di Amorosa's buttery Reserve Chardonnay and pesto cheese bread sticks... I don't know what I'd choose. I'd be torn between the choices like Holyfield's right ear after his fight with Mike Tyson. 
Our waitress was considerably cute, and my friend was considerably drunk. When he announced he wanted to ask for her number, we encouraged him to with the same fervor that he had shown in acquiring alcohol. He had been drinking by himself for two hours before we arrived. 

Me: "You should ask for her number. Definitely. She's cute and really friendly."
Drunky: "What if she says no? I guess it wouldn't matter. But I hope she says yes." 
Other: "Ya, I mean, how could she say no to such a good-looking tall blonde?"
Drunky: "I should just say, 'Hi, I'm Tall Blonde... can I please have your number?'" 
Drunky: "By the way, Kara, can we borrow your uncle's boat? I really want a boat." 
Me: "I really want a boat too! He's finally back from pursuing that Colombian woman in Miami... so we could probably borrow it soon. I'll obviously have to ask, but probably." 
Other: "If she says no when you ask for her number, you should mention you have a speedboat." 
Drunky: "Ya, like, 'No, I can't have your number? Would it make a difference if I had a speedboat?'" with upraised eyebrows and a subtle smile.

For the following fifteen minutes the three of us talked of the prevalent possibilities of picking up a girl with a speedboat comment. "I hope she says no just so I can mention my speedboat!" Drunky articulated with the enthusiasm of Dane Cook. Other virtually raced to the bathroom so he wouldn't miss the drunken digit inquiry. 
Five minutes after that found me standing by a mesh window conversing through it to a high school friend on the sidewalk. I returned to the table to find that I had missed The Question. I was as disappointed as when I was sixteen and my dad pretended to give me a car. The car was only a rental, but he procured a bow for the top and had my brother videotape my ecstasy, only to reveal twenty minutes later it wasn't mine.

Luckily, the boys relived the conversation for me.
Drunky: "Would you be opposed to giving me your phone number?"
Cute Waitress: "Well, I wouldn't, but my boyfriend would." 
Drunky: "Oh. Ok."
I waited for some seconds, expecting him to add another sentence. It never came. "You didn't mention you had a speedboat?" I screamed, throwing my hands on the table as if I was one number away from winning the lottery. Both of my friends recoiled in dismay, blustering they couldn't believe they forgot, they were just so disappointed that she had a boyfriend. To remedy the situation, we left her a note with a $2 Gift Certificate to an ice cream store I found in my purse. 
We realized later that underlining speedboat in the note could not have possibly been taken as a positive innuendo.

June 12th 10:11am - Massage=Sex

A few nights ago I leaned, elbows on bar, chin in hands, awaiting my Utopia, aka Long Island Ice Tea. I noted a man beaming across the bar with an expression parallel to a twenty-something male in a Carl's Jr. burger commercial, yearning for the newest addition to the heart attack menu. I squinted my eyes, attempting to assess if he was attractive. Though my eyesight is 20/400 in one eye and 20/FC in the other (I theorize FC stands for Fucked Completely, as in the eye exam I couldn't even read the one letter on the top line), my dated contacts assisted my eyes enough to ascertain I found him as sexually appealing as I did Sloth from The Goonies
I gleaned my glass from the bartender like it was my grandmother's wedding ring and joined my friends.
An hour later Beamer approached me. He placed his hand on my shoulder and softly asked in my ear, "Would you like a massage?" 
"Would you like to be kicked in the balls?" was my gracious reply, sans smile.
Massage is code for sex. Any girl who doesn't accept this is clearly in denial, like Lisa Rinna over her age.

June 11th 10:12pm - A's Game Lechery

Last night some friends and I attended an A's game. It was as amusing as sneaking in to a hotel pool/hot tub and skinny-dipping at two in the morning accompanied by beer and two Vacavillians staying at the hotel... like we did last weekend. 
Two friends and I received a text from another friend early in the day warning that the $2 tickets were selling rapidly and to buy online immediately. I did so. The other two did not. With processing fees, etc, my total was $7.50. The A's website additionally charged me $2.50 to print my own ticket. I didn't know this until I had already clicked on Print Your Own Ticket, the yellow box as inviting as the messiah opening a door and offering me a plateful of chocolate chip cookies. I paid $10 for what was initially a $2 ticket. Why the A's establishment piles its patrons with $2.50 for printing their own ticket tangles my brain like the concept of  penguins residing in Africa. You can retrieve your ticket at Will Call without the $2.50 charge. But if you want to spare the box office the trouble of procuring your ticket, you pay more than the cost of the original ticket. This makes about as much sense as Paris Hilton's fame.
I paid $10, the text instigator, $7.50 (she apparently has Da Vinci's reading skills while mine parallel a dung beetle), another paid $24 for a $13 ticket, and the fourth paid an acme amount of around $50. Four others didn't purchase tickets preceding stadium arrival. $24 trickled the most turmoil over her ticket purchase, as she was the mastermind that devised $2 game day, because if we brought our own alcohol, the entire affair would amount to $20 total, at most. 
Two others and I picked up Mastermind from Marin while driving to the game. Six more met us there. Three that didn't have tickets paid $10 each to a man while standing in the box office's line. 
We reminisced how we preferred A's games over Giants games because:
1: It is phenomenally easier to sneak in alcohol. 
2: If you get caught drinking alcohol you brought in, you don't get ejected from the game, because Oakland has real worries, like crackheads and coke dealers. 
We laughed about the time security evicted Mastermind from a Giants game because she was confused with another friend who was drinking. She snuck back in the game only to get thrown out again. We exited the game to find her handcuffed and surrounded by security guards. They told her she had a lifelong ban and was never allowed back. A friend who had met us at the game laughed and informed us she had been ejected from another Giants game she went to with him, and accrued another lifelong ban. "I have two bans on Giants games?" Mastermind asked. "I don't remember the second one at all!"

While drinking in the parking lot (as classy as bald Britney Spears), an A's appareled man approached, inquiring if anyone needed a ticket. One of our friends required it. The man succumbed it for free. Mastermind, moaning over her ticket cost, cried, "What the fuck!?" as A's Angel ambled away and our friend radiated like a baby suckling on a nipple over his free ticket. 
After three innings of inhaling Vodka, beer, and Jager in the parking lot, we infiltrated the entrance. Mastermind's ticket was rejected. She had mistakenly purchased and printed a ticket for the A's vs Giants game on June 24th. "What the fuck?!" she screamed again.
She detoured to the ticket booth to exchange her ticket while the rest of us entered the stadium and flocked to the delectable $1 hot dog lines. 
An hour later Mastermind reappeared. While removing her jacket the sleeve haphazardly caressed the top of a bald man's head who reposed in the row in front of her. Someone advised her to be careful. Instead of apologizing and reclining in her seat, Mastermind pretended to eat his head, lick his head, and massage it. She turned around and booty-danced, her ass towards his back of head. Baldy's friend rotated his own head and uttered, "Take it easy, take it easy now." 
Mastermind's explanation: "Oh, sorry, I didn't know you were watching." 

June 9th 2:12pm - The Hangover

The movie The Hangover is reminiscent of my most recent Vegas variation... minus the cop car cozen, the bathroom tiger, the baby, and the marriage. We lost our friend like I lost my dignity years ago in a bar when I drunkenly persisted in making out with an overweight thirty-year-old Mexican after he got a bloody nose and kept insisting to my friends, "I clean! I very clean!" 

Exiting the theater, I discerned that, like the movie, we had to piece the previous night together by following clues Sherlock-Holmes-style. We lost a friend in Hooters around 8pm. He reappeared at 4:30am limping on a dilated, damaged foot, having lost a cowboy hat, two hundred dollars, and a baseball cap. By hydrolyzing his Hippocampus, he vaguely recalled a stadium, a parking structure, the House of Blues and being awoken by security guards in both the stadium and parking structure. We surmised he left the hotel room and splurged the remainder of the night sleeping in sporadic locations around Vegas. Online research did not expose any stadiums connected to casinos. It did, however, link the House of Blues with Mandalay Bay. We called Mandalay Bay's lost and found. They had a sports complex and black cowboy hat found in the parking garage. We halted at the Hofbrauhaus (a destination we all scarcely revived as we had arrived at 5:30pm) in search of the baseball cap. We convened in the car in Hofbrauhaus' parking lot trying to envision its possible post when I answered a call from another friend who lived in Vegas. The baseball cap had been left in his truck the night before. 
"We went in your truck last night?" was my response.
We have yet to fully realize the cause of his foot or the loss of the two hundred dollars. When he did go to the hospital, the doctors were so shocked after two rounds of x-rays with no reflection of breakage or fracture that they made him return a third time. He credits his resilient bones with his milk obsession.

June 7th 10:41am - The White Horse

My friends and I behaved ourselves throughout our college tenure like Pippie Longstocking throughout her childhood. As we played soccer for USF, we really couldn't go public with our shenanigans until the second semester of our senior year, when we no longer had any soccer team responsibilities and our coach, aka Hitler, couldn't enforce punishment collectively on the team. He was as inspiring as cauliflower and didn't start me during a senior year game because I almost consumed chocolate the night before.


One of the first operations we executed occurred during a USF v Saint Mary's College D-1 basketball game. SMC's mascot is a white horse. Or something. It's actually a gael. I don't know what a gael is. However, somehow a white horse associates with SMC. 
I recompensed home to my apartment one day after work to discover a white horse head on the kitchen table like a chocolate covered strawberry among anchovies. My roommates had plotted a plan. 
Two hours and exorbitant alcohol absorption later, we were in our locker room, conveniently located beneath the basketball court. We fashioned the horse's body from white sheets, the tail from a white rope mop end, and decorated the sheets/horse's sides with the phrase, "Straight from the horse's mouth: Overrated." 
My two friends enveloped themselves in the sheets, one bending over, her face in the other's ass, who was standing, comprising the front half of the horse. During the game's half-time we exited the locker room and paraded around the upper level of the basketball stadium, a profusion of us trailing behind the horse laughing like we were witnessing the movie The Hangover. At one point, the paper-mache horse's head injected itself into Saint Mary's fans as if they were a hay trough. The horse's nose invaded a male fan's fanny as another male fan's foot barraged the horse's butt, striking it with enough stimulus to propel my friend forward. We reconvened in the locker room for continued libation and re-emerged to view the game in average apparel. 
Result: one bruised ass and scads of high spirits. 



June 5th 10:12am - Bike Karma

Over three years ago I loaned my then-boyfriend my bicycle. My parents had bought me the bike for my 18th birthday. At the time he borrowed it, the bike was in practically pristine condition, a black Giant brand, complete with upgraded seat, water bottle holder, and bike lock. I handed him the lock key with the bike, as confident as Jesus that he wouldn't harm it. I should have anticipated from experience that he wasn't Chuck Norris, but I had conveniently omitted from memory that he had once returned my car to me with one side mirror hanging, connected by one wire. 

A few days later he called, informing me that my 18th-birthday present bicycle had been stolen. 
"Someone cut off the lock?" I asked.
"Nooo... the lock is around the bike," he said, enlightening me that he still had the key. 
He was apparently under the impression that the garage our friend shared with two other apartments in San Francisco was as safe as a Swiss bank. San Francisco is a city where anything left on the sidewalk, even momentarily, is fair game for passers-by. My friends and I once obtained what appeared to be a new bed frame. We drove by and saw it leaning against a house. The fact that it was on the sidewalk, albeit leaning against a house, equated having a sign taped to it reading, available. I can only assume that someone cruising through felt the same SF rule pertained to unlocked bicycles posing in open garages like dogs at animal shelters.

My ex had left my bicycle in our friend's garage, unlocked. The garage door had been closed. He walked out of the apartment a few hours later to witness the door open and bike gone. 
For the past three years, my friends and I have harassed him. My friends have repeatedly gone on bike rides without me as he walked over to our apartment. They would locate him and then trail him on their bikes, discussing my lamentable bike-less state. He did send me a check for $300 one time to use in replacing my lost bicycle from years before. I tore it into three pieces and placed it in the trash. Cashing the check would have been an easy out for him, like my mother reasoning with me, "You have to do it because I'm the mommy and I said so." Additionally, I didn't want his money. I just wanted a bike.

While I was in South America, he emailed me asking what size bike I was. He might as well have asked me what the llama population per mile is in Lima versus Santiago. 
My life was previously unaware that bikes had sizes. I told him I didn't know, but was certain he could determine it himself. The next email from him I encountered educated me that he had bought a new bike. For himself. 
He told me this morning that he had ridden his bicycle to the California Academy of Sciences and had exited some time later to find it stolen. Brigades of bikes surrounded it, but his was the only one stolen. 

June 4th 1:02pm - Military Merriment Round 2

The following day, I met with a doctor. This was as delightful as the time my gynecologist called me, illuminating my results were abnormal and I had to return to the office. Two weeks later I received another call: nothing was wrong with me. 
Doc conducted a questionnaire, composing questions concerning family, drugs, alcohol, traffic violations, prior police involvement, etc etc. 
I had previously been carefully and abundantly debriefed by various persons in the recruiting process. Earlier debriefings had comprised conversations such as:
"Have you ever in your life smoked marijuana or any other illegal drug?" 
"Umm, not that much. I've smoked a bit with my friends, but usually only a handful of times a year." 
"I'm going to ask you again. Have you ever in your life smoked marijuana?"
"Ya, like I said, but only like fifteen times in my entire life." 
"I'm going to ask you again. Have you ever in your life smoked marijuana?" 
"No Sir. Never smoked anything, Sir." 
"Are you sure? Not even once or twice when you were intoxicated with your friends?"
"No Sir. Nothing." 
"Next question. Do you have any outstanding traffic violations or have you ever received any traffic tickets, including such minor offenses as parking tickets?"
"Oh, God yes. I think I've received three speeding tickets, two moving violations, and like thirty parking tickets. I really don't know though, because I've been pulled over so many times, it's possible I have received more than five actual tickets."
"Do you have any outstanding tickets? Anything that has yet to be taken care of?" 
"No. The most recent thing was I had a warrant out for my arrest in March because I didn't know I had to pay $10 for a side mirror fix-it ticket. But I had already sold my car. It's a long story." 
"But nothing you have yet to take care of?" 
"No Sir." 
"So. Do you have any outstanding traffic violations or have you ever received any traffic tickets, including such minor offenses as parking tickets?"
"No?"
"Good. Next question..." 

Thus, when Doc questioned me, I had prepared denial answers to all. Nobody in my family was in jail or lived outside of the USA, I had never drank in excess, never smoked anything in my life, never felt sad, never received bad grades in school, never been in trouble with the law/ law enforcement officials in any capacity, and absolutely never had received any sort of ticket as concerns my car. I do not own a car. I do have one tattoo. 
Doc's next question: "Where do you get your eyelashes from?"
"Umm, my mom." 
"Oh, so she helps you apply them?"
"Noo. My eyelashes are real. I was talking about genetics. DNA. I get them from my mom. My dad's eyelashes aren't that long." 
"Very nice." 
"Um. What?"

June 2nd 4:51pm - Military Merriment Round 1

Visiting a military processing center for testing is about as enjoyable as teaching twenty-eight kindergartners in a recovery district in New Orleans.
I stood/sat in lines for fifty minutes for an eye exam, seventy-eight minutes for a hearing test, sixty-one minutes for a doctor's debrief, and forty-five minutes to extract a blood sample. Apparently my veins are as easy to find as my toddler self. When I was one and a half, my mom walked into the living room to find my dad asleep on the couch, and no Kara, his ward. After searching the house like monkeys foraging for bananas, they ascertained I must have wandered outside, so they contacted the police. Someone located me hours later, asleep under a pile of toys in the corner of the living room.

Those military center blood-drawing needle-wielding fiends needle-raped me twice with needles the size of horse tranquilizers before locating a vein on the third attempt. Even then, the needle pricked the edge of my vein without fully affixing. The nurse, aka Hellion, shouldered it into my upper forearm with the tenderness of Lucifer. She ground it into my vulnerable skin and bayonetted it around the inside of my arm to persuade the blood to withdraw more briskly.
The other incumbents varied from the ages of seventeen to twenty-five. While awaiting the depth-perception test, I met a seventeen-year-old, graduating in four days from high school. I asked him his name, and he replied, "I will be a Navy SEAL." 
"Ok..." was my penetrating response. "But what's your name?"
"I am a Navy SEAL."
What felt like nineteen hours later, a Petty Officer drove myself (as the only female, I procured shotgun rights) and four males in the back-seat of a Toyota Corolla to the hotel. He missed the correct freeway turnoff and we crusaded in circles. Within five minutes, future SEAL sniveled, "My legs are dying. One's asleep. I don't think the other is going to be able to move for a few days. I won't be able to take the physical tomorrow. My knees are going to shatter."
"Ok Navy SEAL, I'm sure we'll be there soon," I answered, looking sideways at the driver.
"No, I'm serious. My goddamn knees are breaking."
One of the other back-seat passengers wisely noted, "You want to be a Navy SEAL and you can't even take a little discomfort in the back-seat of a car for five minutes?"
SEAL growled like my dog does upon sensing a raccoon. "I choose to be a SEAL and whatever pain that comes with. I do not choose to break bones in a car because we're lost."
My teeth painfully masticated together as I forced my face to not replicate the hilarity my brain was undergoing. Petty Officer did laugh. SEAL glared with the abhorrence I exude when someone steals my food or alcohol.
"SEAL seems happy," I later mentioned to the Petty Officer.
"I think he has some mental issues," he replied. "Maybe I should suggest he go into the Army instead of the Navy."
"Maybe you should suggest he get cleared by a psychologist first. You know, just to make sure he doesn't go around eating baby fingers or something." 
"Or to ensure he doesn't obtain a gun. I feel like he'd be dangerous with a gun," the Petty Officer continued.
SEAL later informed me that his high school graduation present from his parents was a tattoo. The tattoo was to cover his entire arm (sleeve-status). It was to be a lizard wrapped around a heart. It was complete with a sword piercing the heart and on the heart, the tattooed face of Kiss frontman Gene Simmons. 
When I asked him the significance of the tattoo, he responded, "Cause it's fucking cool," accompanied by a scowl that would make my cat Punk's hair stand on end. Punk just might fall over after being blitzed by such a glower. SEAL was apparently under the impression that he was cool.

June 1st 11:49pm- Dad Down

Years ago my sister achieved every twelve-year-olds dream: she obtained an Indo Board, aka Balance Board. The Indo Board was to better her balancing skills for skateboarding like an imaginary surfboard refines surfing skills. She skateboarded almost as often as Paris Hilton has communicated an intelligent comment to the media. My sister's Indo elation equated that of Michael Jackson's when dropped off at a playground during elementary school recess. 
A few nights after my sister's board acquisition, I investigated my balancing abilities only to realize I have none. This didn't come as too much of a shock, as I had previously discovered my clumsy propensity on countless occasions. A few months prior, I had crashed my bicycle into a truck. Just as I grasped the glee of wind acceleration with downward speed, I approached a wide turn. Instead of leaning slightly and turning, I collided with the truck parked directly in front of me and fell over like a fly having been buffeted by a fly swatter.
My dad has always had an elevated opinion of his athletic ability. A few years ago my college soccer team convened at my house for dinner after a game in the area. Upon viewing the small shrines my dad had posted around the game room of his football-playing self, my teammates deigned my father Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite. They still refer to him as Uncle Rico.
My dad cleared a small area in the living room and stepped on the Indo Board with the confidence of a professional snowboarder. He rotated back and forth, legs wobbling like Bambi when taking his first steps. And then he fell, blasting into the edge of the board and then the floor with the gracefulness of a mentally disabled triceratops. He moaned, much like I imagine said mentally disabled triceratops would moan, having been felled by a balancing board. He never attempted balance on the Indo Board again. My sister cultivated consummately. I have since ceased all balance tests. I blame my balance absence, like many of my life's deficiencies, on my harrowing hearing and vision. I accept that before the termination of my life, I might have the visual capability of Helen Keller. At least I can tell my future children that their acne has a purpose: I will be able to compose braille messages from their blemishes.