My behavior in Seattle was absolutely despicable.  A gross display of obesity, drunkenness, and insensitivity.

Naturally, it was one of the best weekends of my life.

Travel, problems
The reason for this trip was a reunion.  2002-2003 were arguably the best years of my life, as I slogged through some treacherous post-break up/quarter-life crisis waters with the help of a nasty vodka addiction, my roommates, Ben and Brian, and my buddies Jeremy and Brendan.  The five of us made quite a crew together, getting drunk, smoking cigarettes, womanizing, and circle jerking (which, coincidentally, are the same themes harkened to by Bruce Springsteen in the song “Glory Days”).

Fast forward to 2006: Brian and I no longer live together (I’m in Chilita, he’s in Brooklyn).  Jeremy is still in NYC, as is Brendan (well, Hoboken), although the latter is a shell of his former self due to his many adult responsibilities.  Ben moved back to his hometown of Seattle in 2005.

A few months ago, Jeremy was contemplating a move back to the Seattle area, where he is also from.  At that time, Brian, Brendan and I decided that we would fly to Seattle for a weekend to celebrate a reunion (and circle jerk).  We selected the first weekend of December for this trip.

Jeremy ultimately decided not to move back to Seattle.  Additionally, because he would be in Washington State only the week before for Thanksgiving, he backed out of the trip.  Understandable, since four cross-country flights in consecutive weekends is a little much.  Jeremy: out.

That left Brendan, Brian and I heading to Seattle to go visit Ben.  Two days before we were to finally book the tickets, Brendan backed out, saying he couldn’t take the one day off required for the trip (being a grown-up stinks, apparently).  Brendan: out.

Instead of four of us flying together, it was just Brian and I.  Knowing that Brian isn’t exactly, como se dice ”on top of shit”, I took special care to ensure that he would not only book the flight, but book the correct flight.  I booked my flight and made him an itinerary consisting of the same outgoing flight (because I was going to LA after Seattle, we wouldn’t fly back to NYC together).  I haven’t flown with anyone for a while, so I was looking forward to spending a six hour cross-country flight with a friend, for a change.  He booked it and we were ready to go.

On the day we were to leave, Thursday 11/30, Brian and I had this conversation:

Me: “Dude, if you can get to my office by 3, I’m taking a car out to the airport so you can ride with me for free.”
Brian: “Nah, I don’t think I’ll be able to get out that early, so I’ll go on my own.  What terminal is it again?”
Me: “I don’t know – whatever Delta is.”
Brian: [three seconds of silence] “What?  Delta?”
Me: “Yeah, I think it’s like Terminal 3 or something.”
Brian: “I’m not flying Delta.  I’m on American.”

Somehow, despite the fact that I emailed Brian the itinerary, meaning all he had to do was enter his credit card number (I even offered to buy the flight for him and have him pay me back), he booked the wrong flight.  I was scheduled to fly on Delta leaving JFK at 6:00pm.  He was scheduled to fly on American leaving JFK at 6:10pm. 

Ever the optimist, I tried to rearrange my flight, but it would have cost me $600.  Brian is a good man, but $100 an hour for his company is a little much.

So instead of spending six hours on a plane getting drunk with my buddy, making the other passengers uncomfortable by talking endlessly about about how many women we’ve slept with, including rating them on a 26 point scale that includes such criteria as “Comfort Level with Semen”,  “Willingness to be Captured on Cell Phone”, and “Heiney Play: Yea or Nay?”, I flew to Seattle alone, next to (arguably) the world’s largest Hasidic Jew, ten minutes in front of Brian.

Great start to the trip.

Seattle: Strong booze…
Brian and I had both been to Seattle before, so there was no need to do any touristy stuff.  Still, Ben took the day off on Friday and the three of us headed downtown and to the

Pike Place

market to walk around.  FINALLY, it turned 1:30pm and we gave ourselves the go ahead to start drinking.

We ran into the closest beer-serving establishment, a restauranty place called Von’s.  There, they bragged about serving the world’s strongest beer, a dark ale that clocks in at 8% alcohol.  The three of us decided to try one.

Five hours later, we were getting a ride home from Ben’s buddy Jason (Ben couldn’t drive, as he had thrown up twice already by that point, so Jason had to come downtown to get us and Ben’s car, something he was thrilled about).  When we got back to Ben’s place, we tried to pull it together as well as possible, since that night we were joining my friend Annie to celebrate her birthday.  Thus, the red bulls (and vodka) flowed like wine.  

(Which, for the record, also flowed in abundance both then and later.) 

…and beautiful women
There are some very beautiful women in Seattle.  I knew this already, having been to the city before, but I re-learned it when out there most recently, specifically when we were out for my friend Annie’s birthday.  I don’t recall which bar we were at, since at this point I was focused on talking without spitting on people, but it was a nice low-key unpretentious place.

Some of the beautiful women in Seattle are also doctors.  Maybe, hypothetically, you spend much of the evening talking to a beautiful doctor, having a good time, fantasizing about how your life is now set because you have finally found someone who can both provide you with drugs and sleep with you (well, give you drugs and sleep with you without you feeling ashamed and waking up on a couch in Queens the next morning).  But even though you are enjoying the conversation with the beautiful woman/doctor, you still have to pee, so you excuse yourself to take care of your burgeoning bladder.

And then maybe when you come back from the bathroom, you notice that your doctor-bride is now talking to your buddy Steve.  You think nothing of this, because even though by your own admission Steve is devastatingly handsome and quite successful, he has a very serious girlfriend.  So you let them talk and play it cool.

But what you underestimate is Steve’s ability to talk the balls off a bull.  You also underestimate the importance that women place on looks, and as times passes, as you try unsuccessfully to catch your doctor-bride’s eyes which are locked on Steve’s like tractor beams, you realize that your doctor-bride is falling in love with the fitter and handsomer but ultimately harmless Steve.  Perhaps you try again and again, at first subtly and then not so subtly, to win her attention back, but can not do so.  You have lost.

So maybe then you spend the rest of the evening getting so drunk that you pee the bed.

I peed the bed
At the end of the night, I was very drunk and tired and beaten because of a woman issue that I’d rather not get into.  I could either sleep on the air mattress on Ben’s living room floor, laying inches away from Brian on the couch and his wolverine-like breathing, or spend the night in the guest bedroom of Annie’s nice-smelling and clean house.  In the easiest decision I ever made, I went to Annie’s. 

Then at some point during the night, as I lay unconscious on the bed in her guest bedroom, I pissed all over myself.

I normally sleep in a boxers and t-shirt, so when I woke up at 10am completely naked, I knew something was amiss.  At first I thought that perhaps Annie had slipped into the bedroom and had her way with me, but I knew that was not the case; whenever I make love, the room often smells of watermelon and sulphur for days afterward, and this room did not smell like that at all.  It smelled more like piss. 

I sat up in bed and with bloodshot eyes saw my boxers and undershirt strewn in the middle of the floor. It was at this point that I knew what had happened.  Now it was just a matter of telling Annie, which I really, really didn’t want to do.

The good news was that it seems that the boxers and undershirt took the burnt of the storm and the bed was pretty dry, almost surprisingly so.  It’s possible – and the guys in Forensics are still working on this – that in the middle of the night I stood up and peed on myself, because the bed was just that dry.  But I didn’t think that would matter much to Annie.  What’s worse: “Um, I peed in your bed” or “Um, I stood up in your bedroom, pissed all over myself, stripped down, left my piss-covered boxers and undershirt on your floor, and then slept naked in your guest bedroom”?  Kind of a push.

Thank God and baby Jesus that I know Annie so well, that she has a sense of humor, that we’ve made out before, and that I have enough money to buy her a significant Christmas present, because she was understanding when I told her what happened.  Of course, prior to coming clean, I called Ben, told him what happened, and asked him to come and get me from Annie’s place before she woke up.  This plan was foiled when Annie walked out of her bedroom and caught me – balls-ass naked – standing in her living room looking for a piece of mail for her address to give to Ben (for whatever reason, I thought finding the mail would only take a second and so didn’t need to put on my jeans or shirt).  I probably would have told her what happened even if she didn’t catch me in all my glory shuffling through papers on her coffee table.  Although, I probably would have done it differently, like maybe approaching her in the kitchen and calmly explaining what I did, as opposed running into the bedroom and shouting it through the closed bedroom door over her shouts of “Oh my god, Jay!  What are you doing!  Why were you naked!  Oh my god, Jay!”

Let’s just move on.  It’s still way too soon to talk about this.

(I realize that this snippet just made me about 38% more unmarriable, so for the record, that’s the first time I peed the bed since December of 2003.  I am not a bed-wetter.  I had been drinking strong beer all day long, suffered a defeat in the woman department, and was in an unfamiliar place.  That’s the perfect storm right there.)

New bar tab record
I spent Saturday watching football back at Ben’s, being hungover/pissy, and getting made fun of, which I took in stride.  There is nothing to report about Saturday day expect eating an inordinate number of tortilla chips.  I would conservatively put the number of tortilla chips consumed around 220. 

Plans were a mess for Saturday night, but it appeared that we would be going out in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle.  Brian, Ben and the others took one cab into the area to scope out one bar, while Annie and I took another cab there and stopped at the Belltown Bistro, another restauranty place, one that I am apparently required to visit every time I go to Seattle.  Our plan was to wait there to hear back from the others.

Ben and Brian returned from the other bar and said it was like the opening scene from “Miami Vice.”  I have never seen “Miami Vice”, but I imagine I would not do well in a place that reminds one of that movie.  So we decided to have a few drinks at the Belltown Bistro and review our options.

Five hours later (again), after some friends had joined us and as the bar was closing, the bartender brought over my bar tab.  I had been buying some drinks for friends but didn’t think I was being ridiculous about it.  Worth nothing is that I had been drinking whiskey all night and was basically turning into a werewolf, but still, how much could the bar tab be?  This was Seattle, after all, not New York. 

Bartender: [handing me the check] “I like to ask – how much do you think you tab is?”
Me: [pondering]: “Um, I don’t know – maybe $120?”
Bartender: [shocked] “God, I’m sorry.”

The damage?  $274.  Two hundred seventy fucking four dollars.  My previous record was some time in May of 2003 and in the $260′s.  But that was in New York, where drinks are more expensive.  Spending $274 in Seattle is like spending $390 in NYC.  Just unbelievable.

This set off a series of strange events during which I tipped the bartender $46 (meaning the tab was $320 total), sent my friend Claire a series of unintelligible text messages (including a number of pleas for a genre of erotica I invented on the spot called “text sex”), and then almost got in a fight with a random black guy at the bar who that night Brian had met, befriended, and told to spray me with his cologne (which he did).  Just weird, weird shit.   

The wine drinking contest
But then it really got weird on Sunday.

Brian was leaving Seattle on Monday, whereas I was staying until Tuesday.  We should have been content to spend the day watching football and nursing our hangovers, but then Brian made a fatal error.  He mentioned something about a wine drinking contest.  I picked up the idea and ran with it and shortly we were at the local liquor store, buying eight bottles of wine (four for each of us, two red and two white).

The competition was not a contest per se.  Brian described it thusly: “It’s more of a presentation – look at us, look at the lives we lead, look how we enjoy luxury and the finer things in life, like this wine here.”

And really, we didn’t expect it to be too big of a deal.  Looking at it, four bottles of wine – especially if drinking all day – didn’t seem like that much booze.  Brian and I are nearly professional drinkers, so we didn’t think we’d have a problem with it.

Big mistake.

There is no way that I can accurately recollect or portray the events that took place that day.  Not only because I was very drunk – probably one of the top ten drinking performances of my life – but because things just got so fucking weird. 

To wit, Brian, who almost finished his third bottle, spent the night at a hotel near the Seattle airport.  His flight wasn’t leaving until 2pm the next day.  Yet at 8pm, bombed, he said, jokingly, “That’s it – I’m finished”, put on his jacket, gathered his things, and then left.  We thought he was kidding until he called us from a cab en route to the airport, and then again from his room at the SeaTac Airport Doubletree.  The next day he had no idea why he had done this, nor why he had ordered the 24 hour porn pass at the hotel (the latter is more explainable than the former, I think).

But at least he didn’t harm or involve others.  Previously, I used to think that my most dangerous accessory when drunk was my penis.  But it has now been surpassed by something much more devious (and also much, much larger): my cell phone. 

When I’m drunk, I like to text message and call people.  I have a very short attention span, so when I’m not talking to someone or the center of attention, I go to the phone.  Also, I’m your typical Irish Catholic drunk in that I get maudlin and sentimental when drinking and miss people when I’m not with them, so I like to check in and say hi.  This gets especially dangerous when I’m on vacation and in a time zone three hours earlier than most of my friends. 

On this particular night, I unleashed a torrent of communication the world has never seen before, which I am both alternatively embarrassed and proud of.  I don’t even want to get into it, but the crown jewel of the evening was when I spent almost an hour talking on the phone to an ex-girlfriend from six years ago WHO IS NOW MARRIED.

I want to stress: it’s not like I wanted to hook up with her.  That would have been a geographical impossibility (also, she’s MARRIED).  It’s not that I’m still in love with her, since she wasn’t that serious a girlfriend in the first place (I would say mildly serious).  It’s just that she responded to one of my gazillion text messages and after we messaged a bit I called her.  And from what I remember, we had a lovely conversation and she’s doing very well (and probably reading this right now).  But the point is, I don’t remember much.  Probably for the best.

(Author’s Note: Last night, my phone was not working.  I called Sprint to figure out why.  My phone bill was $391.  I don’t even know how this is possible, since I was talking on Sunday night, but that mother fucking phone was definitely shut off last night for several hours.)

In the end, Brian and I learned an important lesson: no one wins the wine drinking competition.  Which is why we can only have it once a year.

(For the record, I almost finished my fourth bottle, but passed out before I could bring it on home.  I haven’t had wine since.)

(Well, I haven’t had too much wine since.)

*****************

After Brian left, things wound down.  I spent most of Monday eating, reading the paper, and writing in the 14 Carrott Cafe, a little place near Ben where I ate breakfast every day (the special Lake Union Scramble was tremendous, as were the pancakes).  Then on Monday evening, Ben and I went to the Ram, a nice little sports bar where we had beers and burgers and I screamed like a lunatic while watching the Eagles beat Carolina (seriously, people looked at me like I had some mental deficiency – I thought Seattle had passionate fans?).  On Tuesday morning, I took a cab to the airport, where I spent seven hours because of a canceled flight, but let’s save that for later.

Seattle is a lovely city.  Great bars, good vibe, attractive women – and I have a lot of friends there.  I would almost move there, if it wasn’t so fucking far and the weather wasn’t so terrible.  But I certainly will be back.  And I can only hope that when I do return, Annie will have fitted her guest bed with plastic sheets (which will be her Christmas gift this year).

[For some pictures of the trip, please see Ben's website.]

[Next, Los Angeles recap.]

[Also, it’s good to be back.]