June 28th 8:05am - Wedding=Blind & Bladdered Drunk

Baby Bear has a negro afro. Miss K has glorious goddess hair. They're perfect for each other. For weeks during sophomore year, Baby Bear psyched himself up to ask out the hottest girl he'd ever seen. On September 10th, he went to bed igniting ambition and amassing courage. Baby Bear burgeoned determination and blue whale balls. Nothing could dissuade him from asking out Miss K the following day. Not even a national tragedy. Their anniversary is September 11, 2001.

Over their two-and-a-half year engagement, my high school friends and I staged stripper coups and impromptu bachelor parties. While in New Zealand, I received their wedding invitation. I debated between flying across the world for the nuptials, or to Australia for one tenth of the price and twice as long. The bride pledged to show me wedding photos and tell me stories. I bought my plane ticket that night.
I arrived in Santa Rosa, CA the day of the wedding after seventeen hours in the air, two layovers, and a two-hour bus ride. It was noon. The wedding started at two-thirty. I commandeered a six-pack of beer and sat my five-dollar ass down on the couch in front of the US/Ghana world cup game. I showered at half-time. I viewed the second half of the game in my towel, binge drinking like I was at a saloon. When overtime ensued, so did my mom's observations that I resembled a street walker and I needed to hurry up. I required make-up, clothes, and shoes. The wedding started in five minutes and I was a fifteen minute drive away.
I walked into the chapel thirty minutes late. In sandals. All other females strutted height. Most were adorned in stilettos and stripper heels. When sober, I fall over in heels. When drinking, heels morph me into a stumbling Quasimodo.
Heels are death traps and torture devices. To augment my sandals, I wore a dress I bought in India. Thank god I have tiny tittyboppers, because if they were anything more than nipples, they would have danced out of my dress. My eye makeup looked like a five-year-old's coloring book. When my mom dropped me off, she said, "You should probably look in the mirr... you know what, don't. You're late. You look gorgeous, hunny. Have a great time." She handed me her lipstick.
I witnessed the last fifteen minutes of the ceremony as an intoxicated loner in the las
t pew behind a row of twelve of my male high school friends. I molested the backs of their heads until they
acknowledged my presence.
The wedding party absconded to take wedding photos. The bar wasn't open and we were expected to socialize with the great-grandparents. We had drinking options. Lemonade or punch. The punch wasn't spiked. The high school crew relocated to the parking lot. We didn't have our first Bacardi Breezers last week. We tailgated with beer and champagne. No glasses. Two of the adults rolling through the parking lot thought we were gods. They were jealous and took photos for us. The other five gawked at us like we were doing beer bongs and
screaming, "Suck Dick!"
Four years ago, my friend Nickle's mom witnessed us in her kitchen in the climax of our beer bong operation. It was Thanksgiving. Dozens of elderly and younger disorderly relatives radiated from the living room to the dining room to the outside pool. The beer bong was named Dick. Her daughter ordered her to suck Dick.
The wedding bar opened its alcoholic appendages to us an hour and a half before dinner. It closed at nine at night. At the time, it distressed me that the bar wasn't open earlier and later. I was also perplexed that the intoxicants were limited to beer and wine. The next morning, I realized this was intelligent and wise.
Kat, the high school friend who inspired me to be an au pair without any previous experience with children, was visiting from Berlin. We went drink for drink with wine.
A normal round comprised one of us retrieving glasses from the bar, returning to inhale the wine as rapidly as an Asian conversation, and demanding equal glass drainage. The standard reply upon the wine glass gorge was, "Bitch!"
By the time the wedding party returned from face time with the photographer, I could sense my normally superior pronunciation powers slipping. However, I have a reputation as a girl that can drink. I defend my reputation by shit talking to other females who have guzzled less volume than I. They are usually my best friends.
I remember the toasts. This is when I should have stopped drinking.
I don't remember the cigars. I blame the fermented tobacco and Chardonnay smoothie for the rotgut in my blood and the deficiency in my brain.
One of the last things I remember was watching the bride and groom christen the dance floor with their first dance as husband and wife. This was directly after dinner.
Photos divulge me in conversation with strangers, my arms around their shoulders. As my mouth is as open as a prostitute's legs in the majority of the pictures, I assume I was talking. I don't know if I was speaking words. I assume I was servicing these unknowns as handrail support.
Nickle and I danced. In photos, my lips are pursed in drunk-failing-to-be-sexy Kara face. Nickle displays the delicious smile of the mindlessly intoxicated. We held hands.
I attained brief consciousness during a conga line. For those of you who don't know, the conga line originated as a Cuban carnival march. Cuba's skills stroke more than just cigars.
The next morning, I awoke at a friend's house in bed with a couple. I was fully clothed. Apparently, hours after I passed out, they fought with T-Rex concerning who got to share the bed with me. The couple won because the female flashed T-Rex.
Through my friends stories, my hippocampus uncurled the night's events as sluggishly as an eighty-year-old with amnesia.
The bride's mother found me passed out in the bathroom. At nine-thirty. Eventually I determined that I wasn't wrapped around a toilet seat and lying spread-eagle on the ground. I was sprawled on the couches inside the women's restroom. I assumed I was that girl at the wedding. However, another girl takes the honors. Her name was Crazy Eyes. She was escorted out. The bride's father drove her home. Crazy Eyes was officially sacked because of her underage status. She was unofficially ousted because she was having dry sex on the dance floor with one of the groomsmen. Their dancing flustered the ancients and the sobers. The same groomsman attempted to dance on one of the tables. This was a bad idea. On stage, groomsmen and friends erected the bride and groom to their shoulders. We weren't supposed to be on the stage.
Another groomsman deejayed. He had previously compiled the iPod playlist but isolated himself in what he referred to as the deejay booth to unnecessarily adjust the volume. He stationed himself behind a table.
After the bar shut down, the seniors rolled out, and the venue closed, most of our friends transferred the booze orgy to the afterparty. Someone stole a keg from the bar and awarded it to the charity cases at the afterparty that required it most: my friends. Nickle's brain recovered it's processing powers as all wedding guests bulldozed into cars and bounced to the afterparty. The groom's mom drove her, with the bride and groom in the car. She postponed the consummation of their marriage.
Hours later, Nickle, under drunken duress, forced two of our friends to give her a ride home. She stood on the front porch for twenty minutes trying to get in. The key was in her hand, but she couldn't get it in the lock. She called them, and their return comprised a drive-by, because Nickle got the key in the lock as they arrived.
Note to self: when you fly across the world for a wedding, train your liver to college standards.

June 24th 12:45pm - June 2010 Quote of the Month

Me: "Hunny, you probably shouldn't play with your doodle in front of people."
Three-year-old: "You have a doodle?"
Me: "No, no, we've been over this. Boys have doodles, girls don't."
Three-year-old: "Mummy has a doodle."
Me: "No, your Mummy doesn't have a doodle. Your daddy does."
Three-year-old: "She does has one. Mummy's doodle is growing. I saw it."

Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Three-year-old while on the toilet

June 22nd 11:30pm - Sixtieth Wedding Anniversary & Thrusting

The dad I work for is a Master of Knowledge. At sixteen, he was admitted to the University of Otago for medicine. He knows geography, astrology, tide patterns, and the history of the world. He pianos Beethoven, Stravinsky, Balakirev, and Liszt's grand etudes. He fabricates piano compositions in his dreams. He probably beef strokes to Albert Einstein's photograph. He makes a living by handing out eyesight like Santa Claus. And in his spare time, he authors books on tectonic plate movement. I don't know what a photon is.
However, people hear me when I speak. His everyday speech comprises whispers and shmumbles similar to mine when I'm blazing liquor and smashing beer.
When my vagina had just been grabbed by the three-year-old, who then asked if I had a penis, my brain processed as much as a dirty hooker who sold her grandmother for heroin. The dad murmured something about vows and sixty years. He interpreted my eye contact as a contract to attend the great-grandparent's sixtieth wedding anniversary the following weekend.
Six days and an hour and fifteen minute flight later, five kids, myself, and the parents arrived in Christchurch for the mom's grandparents' sixtieth wedding anniversary. One hundred and fifty people dung splattered together in a reception hall on a farm outside of Christchurch. White roses and sparkling lights were as prominent as titties at strip clubs. The great-grandparents clearly went for a low eco-impact/treehugger approach towards alcohol. There were fifteen bottles of wine, two jugs of Bourbon, and two of Scotch. For one hundred and fifty people. Thirty of which were children under the age of twelve, but still.
The five- and seven-year-old girls debuted ivory princess gowns with satin sashes. Classical music languidly pulsed in our ears, punctuated by conversation and child screams.
Fifteen bottles of wine. Four glasses per bottle. Over one hundred drinking adults. I don't do math, but I was positive the stats required I helicopter around the corner bar like an alcoholic if I wanted to get boozed.
An hour passed before I saw another guest repeat at the bar I raided at fifteen minute intervals. My duties increased to premature ejaculation speed: get a glass of chardonnay, hug a child, drink glass. Get a glass of chardonnay, kiss a child, drink glass.
With dinner served, conversation shriveled as lamb absorbed red wine sauce. Garlic mashed potatoes and Waldorf salad politely settled in sober mouths. Dessert distributed, and within five minutes the kids cantered through walkers and dodged canes around the dining room. Then the Bach CD hit a roadblock of little girl fingers. The seven-year-old I look after clambered on the stage in her princess dress and yelled something to the audience that only the four tables nearest to her comprehended. Lady Gaga's "Just Dance," ejaculated into the ears of the ancients and the coffin dodgers. The five- and seven-year-olds twirled and tumbled in the routine the seven-year-old, we found out later, had choreographed as a surprise.
In Auckland, when the mom and I devour a glass or two of wine at dinner, Juice TV (New Zealand's version of MTV) goes on and the prancing breaks out. The kids dance on tables and counters brandishing spoons as microphones. Apparently we've done it a few too many times. When the little cherubs thrust their hips, the eighty-somethings glanced around the room. They looked as nervous as if the girls were dancing in garter belts, g-strings, and bustiers. When the girls grabbed their crotches, the eighty-five-year-old great-grandfather choked on a bite of chocolate cake. The music continued, the girls kept dancing, and the mom I work for dashed to the table and performed the Heimlich Maneuver on her grandfather. She's a physio. I thought physios treated people with physical disabilities. Apparently they know the Heimlich as well.

June 20th, 2010 11:05pm - I am Mom

I've worked with five children for five months. The kids swing between demons and holiness. As a result, my brain and bladder have cracked and dipped into the nuthouse. Men have more control over boners than I do my bodily functions.
I mixed a cup of flour and twice as much sugar in a cookie dough bowl when a golden shower sprinkled into my underwear. No warning. As I struggled to the bathroom with a urine stream twirling out of my vagina, the phone rang.
I was in the bathroom for four rings before racing to answer the chiming reverberations ambushing my earlobes. Two months ago, I mentioned to the parents that I'll need a hearing aid before I'm twenty-seven. They turned up the phone's ring volume to maximum. Every time the phone rings, it sounds like a fire alarm in an assisted living facility.
The mom had been at her eldest son's rugby game. She'd driven herself to the hospital and was now on the phone with me sobbing about chest pain. I reassured her that I'd take care of everything, and to call if she needed me. When I picked the girls up from school with the two younger kids in the car, they asked where their mom was. I replied that she was at the doctor.
"Mummy's going to die, Mummy's going to die," the seven-year-old howled.
"Mummy's going to die? Mummy's going to die," the other three children squalled.
After reassurances over the tear monsoon in the back seat that she wasn't going to die, the five-year-old's manipulative instinct kicked in.
"Yay, nobody's going to yell at us," she said. "Can I have a lolly when we get home?"
The seven- and three-year-olds, and the eight-month-old continued screaming tears.
We painted pictures and did homework. The nine-year-old's math skills have surpassed my own, but I helped with English. The three-year-old tripped over an eraser on the floor and cried like he had fallen off monkey bars onto his skull.
I paused, considered holding him, and stalked out of the kitchen to put on a movie in the other room. Movies equate distraction. I don't know what parents did before movies rocked into this world. They must have known more jokes.
Turning on a movie in that house requires pressing more virtual buttons than launching a space shuttle. Everything is touch screen. There are plasma televisions, recorders with multi-drive playback, white HDMI cables, and phase-changing recording layers. There is not a DVD player with DVD's. As I cursed the voice-activated touch-screen remote control because I couldn't get the television to turn on, I heard screaming. The dad screaming. From what he yelled, the dad must have come home from work and walked in as the three-year-old pissed on the couch. I ran back into the room to the seven- and nine-year-olds skipping, pointing, and laughing at the three-year-old, who was staggering and screaming, tears galloping down his cheeks. He had urinated on the couch and when his dad entered and started yelling, he then reeled onto the floor and lurched across the room, splattering a trail of piss. The five-year-old shrieked that the urine was on cushions and pillows and the rug and floor. The dad yelled. The baby cried. I stripped off the three-year-old's underwear and pants. He sprinted to the bathroom where he sat bawling on the toilet for five minutes before I gave him a gummy bear.
Thirty-five minutes later, I moved around the table at a steady jog, spooning food on plates and throwing milk in glasses. As I loped by with a spoon for the five-year-old and a glass for the seven-year-old, the three-year-old grabbed my vagina.
"Kara, do you have a doodle?" he asked.
At this moment, the dad mumbled something about a wedding vow renewal and sixty years. I knew he was talking to me, because he looked at me. I smiled, nodded, said something like, "That sounds fantastic," and ran to the refrigerator for napkins. It wasn't until after I'd opened the fridge door that I realized napkins were not being chilled.
The dad left to go to a meeting, and as I extricated ice cream from my hair, the mom's very pregnant friend arrived to help bathe the kids and put them to bed. The friend gave birth the next morning.

June 11th 10:12pm - Northland and Karaoke

New Zealand has three official languages: Maori and
English. New Zealand Sign Language became the third
official language in the country in 2006.
0.7% of New Zealand's adult population report disability
attributed to deafness. Less than five percent of New
Zealand's population speak Maori fluently. I speak
English and dog body language.
New Zealand's cities and streets have Maori names.
I now know two aspects of Maori.
Number one: anything beginning with wh- enunciates
as "f." A Canadian girl who had been in New Zealand
for a week taught me. At the time, I had been in New
Zealand almost five months.
Number two: ekeeke
in Maori means
copulation. This may
be because that was
the closest rendition
to an orgasm possible.
On our road trip,
Willy and I viewed
the Waipoua Kauri
forest and Tane
Mahuta, New
Zealand's largest
Kauri tree. It's a
fatass of a tree.
It could eat King Kong.
Walking into a gift shop, I told Willy I needed to get
my brother a birthday present. He didn't hold up a merino
wool sweater, a paua shell-inlay wooden bowl, or an ostrich
leather wallet. He erected a shot glass of a sheep
impregnating a kiwi bird. I smiled, rotated and sprinted
from the store to the car to retrieve my wallet.
My sandals splatted through puddles and whored
themselves to mud holes. My orange tube top dress
crapped to below my breasts. Rain grenaded my head.
As I charged back to the shop, one hand gripped my
jacket over my tits, and the other clutched my wallet.
I slowed as I stepped into the entryway, but my sandals,
purchased nine years before, had as much traction as semen.
My right foot flung itself forward. My left foot flung itself
forward. My body was airborne while my arms hurled around,
wanting to grab something. I landed on my back. My boobs
have never bounced in twenty-four years of life. They jiggled
when my jacket opened, flashing the cashier, three people in
the store, and the shot glass of the sheep doing the kiwi. I
lay on the tile floor with my boobies out. Willy didn't offer me
a hand up. He used both of his hands to applaud.
That night, while swigging beer, my muscles, bones, and
nipples recovered in Paihia's Pipi Patch Lodge's hot tub.
The next day, I informed Willy that we had to do one thing
before continuing north. We had to visit Cellini's Gelateria
on Williams Road. I ordered a double-scoop of white
chocolate raspberry. The server had such big knockers it
appeared she boobed the gelato out of the container. I
salivated as the waffle cone converged toward the
countertop and into my hand. Raspberry rolled through
vanilla and barrelled into white chocolate. My tongue
coupled with cream. I had to sit down.
I handed Cleavage my New Zealand card. She ran it twice
and returned the bank card.
"Declined."
I offered my
American debit
card. The foreign
transaction fee
would be as much
as the gelato.
"Declined."
Willy paid for the
gelato I considered
as beautiful as
laughter, and I went to the bank.
Balance: $238
Available balance: $2.32
I wasn't sure how it was possible to spend over two hundred
and thirty dollars looking at kauri trees, but I had the ninety
dollars Willy owed me for renting the car.
The following day, Nissan got stuck in the sand at Ninety
Mile Beach, the wind abused us at Cape Reinga, and
Whangarei - pronounced, "Fong-ar-ray," rejected our
efforts at procuring a hostel to sleep.
Willy drove us back to Auckland, where he slept on my couch.
The following day, he demonstrated his hockey master skills
at put put by wielding the mini golf stick as a hockey weapon.
The family I au pair
for returned and the
kids beat us until
we agreed to eat
dinner with them.
The three-year-old,
overly stimulated by
yet another older
male presence in
the house, giggled
from side to side,
wobbling like a
bobblehead. He rocked one way, and, in wiggling the other,
he summersaulted off the bench, his forehead cracking
against the wood. If he ever asks if he got dropped on his
head as a little turnip, his parents can reply that he
tumbled himself off the bench and onto his dome.
Willy and I consumed the remainder of our beer in the pool
house I live in. This comprised six beers each. Normally, I
massacre drinking games and annihilate males who suffer
from delusions that they can outdrink me. Such man
hallucinations often persist with penile size.
After four beers, I wanted tacos. After five beers, I could see
better with one eye closed. After six beers, we both wanted
karaoke.
I had two dollars and thirty-two cents in my New Zealand
bank account, and in my American account, negative six
hundred dollars. Willy had enough money to buy one beer
at a bar. I had enough money to purchase one banana.
As we had no money, riding bikes to the karaoke bar seemed
rational. We tripped to the garage and placed helmets on our
heads. The garage door was closed and raindrops violated the
garage roof.
"How are we going to get the bikes outside and around the
house?" I asked, my voice grinning.
"Fly," Willy responded.
"You know, we should wear the helmets out even if we don't
ride bikes," Willy suggested after three minutes.
"Protection," I agreed.
For seven minutes, we tip-toed with helmets on our heads.
Then I received an answer to the text message I had sent the
mom asking if it was okay to take the bikes. She said no.
We sang karaoke to youtube songs the rest of the night.

June 8th 11:22pm -A Hobbit and an Angry Indian Man

While traveling in Queenstown, New Zealand a few months ago, I met a Californian hockey player as I sat on the front porch of Bungi Backpackers hostel. I was staring at a hammock, mentally threatening to castrate the couple fondling each other if they didn't bounce within twelve seconds. Hockey diverted my attention enough to introduce me to his friend Willy, another California hockey jedi. They were studying abroad in Hamilton for the semester, and currently traveling with two guys from the East Coast. Hockey and Willy referred to them as Coasties. After talking to Californians for five minutes, I didn't want to talk to a Kiwi or a Coastie for a month.
That night, Willy and I went out. Hockey didn't have enough money to buy booze or a hostel dorm bed. He fell asleep in the car at nine at night. Their road trip had comprised camping, showering in lakes, and sleeping in cars. Willy spent money like a balla for one night so he could sleep in Bungi Hostel's dorm. He texted me a week later. On the drive back to Hamilton, one of the Coasties t-boned the car the four of them had purchased together. Their one epic New Zealand purchase.
Willy, Hockey, and I had planned on road tripping to Cape Reinga, the northernmost point of New Zealand. Hockey's food and accommodation were paid for for the semester, and he had less cash than a bum. He couldn't come on the trip. Willy texted me the day before his bus from Hamilton to Auckland, confirming that I could rent a car. I filled out the rental paperwork and handed over my debit card with the same speculation I feel towards lighting fireworks near pubic hair. Something could go wrong. Renting a car required a one thousand dollar deposit. I didn't have the thousand. I had been lobbing money around on insignificant things, like hospital visits and tooth reconstruction. The payment processed. I felt like I must have stolen money, until I checked my online statement an hour later and my account reflected a six hundred dollar deficit.
I retrieved Willy at eleven at night from the bus station in our rented Nissan. His bus had been delayed three hours, but once on, at least he watched a documentary on donkeys. We rambled back to my house where I chuzzled a bottle of wine. Willy sipped three beers. We wanted karaoke. I located an Auckland karaoke bar online. We were orgasmic about singing and debated possible duets throughout the fifteen minute cab ride. Seven Drunken Nights beat out Aladdin and Jasmine's A Whole New World. We rocked up to the karaoke bar with smiles and bliss. The door was locked and the bar closed.
After walking a block, Willy attacked my arm.
"It's a hobbit!" he secret messaged me by screaming in my ear.
I looked where he motioned. It was a hobbit. A drunk hobbit. He wore brown loose pants to his calves, a white long-sleeved shirt, and brown vest. His toe hair could assault mice. He drunkenly swayed back and forth on a bench. Garbage can stench dripped from his pores. Willy asked Hobbit if he could take a picture.
"You sit next to me," Hobbit slurred to me.
"No, thank you, but can we please take a picture?" I replied.
Hobbit bellowed, "No." He shrieked. He howled. My ears almost exploded. As did Hobbit's eyes. Willy and I backed away from the rabid hobbit and continued to Boogie Wonderland.
At Boogie Wonderland, Grandpa's balding head and bushman beard enhanced his dancing. It was fantastic. He boogied to every song for the three hours we were there. When the music paused, Grandpa continuously discharged limbs and belly-dance shimmied. He had more energy than a toddler.
Willy and I danced to We Are Family, That's the Way I Like It, and Ring My Bell before Willy pointed to the obese raging dragon of an Indian man sitting alone at a table.
"I'll buy you a shot of whatever you want if you give him a lap dance. He's miserable. Look at that face. He looks like he accidentally chopped off his daughter's finger," he offered.
I was more sexy when I was fourteen. My boobs and butt still haven't hit puberty. At least a decade ago, I was thinner. Thus, I was surprised when I swung on his lap a few times and he sat as still as if he had Lou Gehrig Disease. When I bootyquaked once, he whispered in my ear, "I wet cum." I screamed and flailed from his genitals.
Willy and I sang. We danced. Other countries don't dance like Americans. The last time I danced with a Kiwi, I wasn't aware that we were still dancing. People walked in between us, other couples danced feet away from each other and still obstructed him from my view. Dancing with Kiwis is like dancing with Where's Waldo.
As Willy and I left Boogie Wonderland, India smiled and said, "Thank you."
A random man approached and announced, "Your dancing is giving everyone boners."
Willy replied, "The more boners the better."
We molested Auckland's sky tower that night.

June 7th 11:07pm - Half a Tooth Part 2

The morning after the chair kicked my ass, annihilated my face, and took half of my front tooth captive, I laughed at myself in the mirror for five minutes. It appeared that a raging demon had busted my face.
I don't have boobs or a butt that necessitate individual names. Some refer to breasts as Pinky and Perky. Asses can be Badonkadonk or Bumper Rumper. My tits and arse resemble those of a twelve-year-old drag queen. However, my face is passably feminine. I hadn't seen Rob Awesome, MK Ultra, or Polly in six months. During our attempt at a reunion dinner, I visited the hospital. For my face. I had half a tooth and ensuing depression from intoxication aftermath.
Thus, when I awoke the next morning, I did what any self-respecting female would: I continued drinking. My swollen lip, inability to move my mouth, and my half a tooth conflicted with my ambitions to rapidly intoxicate myself. However, through perseverance and persistence, I achieved my goal. In between goon (boxed wine) and beer around eleven in the morning, I inquired if the hospital supplied me with antiseptic cream or drugs. Jack retrieved the goods from her purse: a one-inch tube of eye ointment. I have never heard of eye ointment applied on skin in place of much-needed Vicodin taken orally, but I was too bombed to question the hospital's decisions. This was before I grasped that medicine's finest had internally stitched my face with non-dissolvable sutures.
Jack equipped us with McDonald's breakfast, Rob Awesome supplied accommodation, food, and booze, and MK Ultra and Polly concocted a three-course dinner comprised of succulent lamb, garlic mashed potatoes, steamed baby carrots, asparagus, caramelized onions, zucchini, and yellow squash, all saturated in baby lamb gravy and tasting like it came from Cafe Bizou in LA. The others bequeathed food and well-being, and I contributed amusement every time anyone glanced at my face.
Polly and MK Ultra trailed dinner and Pinot Noir with Hello to the Queen: a crumbled cookie, vanilla ice cream, nut splattered, fudge painted dessert delicacy from India. We ate it in the hot tub. By nighttime, I had been beering my face for eight hours. The five of us massacred our purchased booze supply by imbibing cases of beer, boxes and bottles of wine, and rum down our tracheas. We then completed the only logical measure: marched through Rob Awesome's dad's alcohol supply. We slugged Kahlua, swilled Chartreuse, and swigged Chambord. We mixed alcohol like alcoholics on a shit-faced mission. This ethanol cocktail spawned cockeyed logic: the five of us skinny-dipped in a seven-seater hot tub. Our legs touched.

June 1st 9:30am - Half a Tooth

My friends are generally collected and competent. They teach little children, head their own construction companies, are investment bankers, Army officers, or in graduate school. One of my best friends plays for the Irish national team. She might be in the next Olympics. I babysit. My friends' careers flourish. And they control their alcohol consumption.
I arrived in Nelson mentally unbalanced and dribbling from Jack Daniel's the night before. My friend Jack exuded efficiency. I had text messages from Rob Awesome with an address and instructions on finding the house key. Rob Awesome, Polly, and MK Ultra would arrive in Nelson a few hours after me and Jack.
At the airport, Jack and I approached a shuttle. The seventy-year-old driver slept spread-eagle across the front row of back seats.
"Um, maybe we should find another shuttle?" I asked Jack and stepped away from the van. The old man shot up with a loony bin smile scrabbling across his face and his white hair upright and attacking the ceiling.
"Are you Mr. and Mrs. Wong?" he demanded.
"Ummm?"
"I'm supposed to give Mr. and Mrs. Wong a ride from the airport. I can take you guys too, we just need to wait for the Wongs."
I superwoman-scanned the parking lot. I didn't see any other shuttles.
"Will we have to wait long? When are they supposed to get here?" I asked.
"Twenty minutes ago, but the plane was delayed. They should be here any minute," Mr. Harry Sach continued.
Forty minutes later, Mr. and Mrs. Wong arrived. During the forty minute pause, our driver rolled in stories about the airport, Nelson, shuttle-driving, and his seventy-year-old life. When he was younger, he wanted to breed fish. Jack and I glanced at our brochures every three minutes while intermittently responding to our driver with laughs and smiles. One of my smiles stretched into sleep.
Mr. Harry Sach peeled out of the parking lot after placing the Wongs' luggage in the utility trailer. All shuttles in New Zealand have trailers. It's normal.
Mr. Sach acted as not only driver, but also tour guide. He drove, speaking of how Nelson has it's own flag and is the sunniest place in New Zealand, as well as detailing volcanoes and houses.
"The population of dreadlocks has spread as fast as AIDS," he continued.
I choked on my water.
When the Wongs exited the car, our driver slash tour guide asked if we could stop by his house to retrieve his wife. Jack wondered what the wife of such a barmy old man would be like. The wife must be a talker. Or a drinker. Jack spoke this to me with her eyes. The wife appeared just like any old woman: old woman shoes, knee-high socks fallen down, long skirt, button-down long-sleeved shirt, glasses. During the ten-minute drive, she didn't enunciate one word.
An hour and a half after approaching Mr. Harry Sach, we arrived at the address Rob Awesome had texted me. We knocked and rang the doorbell, receiving no answer.
Instructions on my phone for locating the key: "On the side of the house, there's a green shed. The key's hanging up on the left-hand side. Should be around some tools for embalming bodies."
Thinking it might be a shed, I shoved in and fractured a wooden door leading to a garage on one side of the house. Another garage was on the other side. Garages straddled the house but I didn't see any shed. Jack and I must have injected laughing gas in our ears, because we were in hysterics, rooting around a stranger's house.
Rain roosted on our shoulders, hands, and in our eyes. We stumbled around the unknown house's yard delirious as if we'd consumed high doses of Ritalin.
"Whose house is this?" Jack asked as I opened the side yard gate.
"I don't know. Rob Awesome lives in Wellington," I replied.
There was a green shed in the side yard. There was a key. I opened the house's front door. We entered screaming, "Hello? Hello?" so whoever owned the house would know we had arrived. A male voice ricocheted off the walls. We had woken him up. It was Rob Awesome's cousin, and the house belonged to Rob Awesome's parents. They were vacationing in some place like Kygyrzstan.
Jack and I walked downtown in the rain to get dinner and a beer. When we got back to the house, Cousin told us Mr. Harry Sach had returned to drop off some brochures. We had purposefully left them in the shuttle. Before I had time to pee, Jack and I were drinking whiskey with Rob Awesome, Polly, and MK Ultra. Whiskey and I are not friends. I would rather sit next to a baby camel on a plane.
However, whiskey was the only alcohol offered. Naturally, I had to compete with the males' consumption levels. It was fantastic. They skulled whiskey on the rocks, drink after drink after drink. I kept up. But, while they were still sitting sober, my words toppled and sentences became baby speak. I remember agreeing upon eating Indian food for my second dinner that night to honor our meeting grounds: Jaisalmer, India. And then I remember regaining consciousness in a hospital, walking into the waiting room with a nurse. We got to the house again at 11pm, and I put myself to bed.
The next morning, Jack described how Rob Awesome had left the BYO Indian restaurant to do an alcohol run. I sprinted after him. I didn't see the table and chairs directly in front of me. I tripped over a chair and face-planted into the sidewalk. Instead of instinctually protecting my face with my hands when my nose and lips dove into concrete, my hands remained at my sides. They protected my hips.
My nose swelled to a golf ball, my chin and upper lip oozed blood. The hospital sutured my upper lip and above the lip. Half of my right front tooth abandoned me. The stitches were supposed to dissolve. They never did. The parents I work for cut half of them out a month later. Some are still in my face.
When I called the mom and told her what happened, she relayed the accident to the children I watch. The three-year-old cried for five minutes repeatedly shrieking, "Kara died, Kara died."
When I told the guy I was dating that I got attacked by a golf club, he believed me.
"Well, did you guys at least have some good Indian food?" I asked MK Ultra the next day.
"No, Rob Awesome canceled the order when the waiters approached us saying that our friend was rolling around in blood on the concrete outside."
"Ah, damn chairs!" I responded.