Last week, I started a pretty strict diet.  Every day, save for the night I had steak with my dad, I ate the same thing: bowl of cereal for breakfast, bowl of cereal for lunch, chicken sausage and yogurt for dinner.  That’s it.  Well, and some vitamins and two liters of water per day.  Compare this to what I usually eat, which would be something like:

Breakfast: On a good day, a donut or bagel; on a bad day, half a baby

Lunch: On a good day, a salad – but even that’s filled with croutons, bacon bits and chick peas and slathered with Russian dressing.  A bad day would be something with meat, cheese, bread and either mayo or honey mustard.  And the other half of the baby. 

Dinner: Good day – two words: Burger King.  Bad day – one word: Baconator (which, by the way, is something that commands respect). 

So needless to say, it’s quite a shock to the body, going from 3500 calories per day to less than 1400.  Throw in daily visits to the gym – and not the easy kind, where I’m lounging around smoking cigarettes in the locker room, taking it all in – and it’s a small wonder that my body just doesn’t fail sometime in mid-week.  Maybe it will eventually.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed.  That it doesn’t happen, I mean. 

However, the diet doesn’t apply to drinking and restrictions are generally loosened on the weekends.  By that I mean I can drink as much as I want, and instead of getting two slices of pizza and a chicken roll late night, I’ll get one slice of pizza and a chicken roll late night.  That, I can handle. 

On Friday night, I had planned to have friends in town visiting me, a married couple from Philly, Jimmy and Danielle, but they decided to come up on Saturday morning instead.  I looked at this at the perfect opportunity to relax in my apartment, have a few drinks, and get things done.  Because that’s what I do: take care of business.  And drink.  And really, very little else.

I fixed myself a standard vodka red bull to start the night, which went down smooth.  Then I had a vodka cran for inspiration, to get things going, and for my kidneys.  Then I switched to the beer and soon it was a full-blown one man party.  It was about 10pm now and just as I was feeling an itch to get out (remember, the bars are open until 4am in NYC), the texts started coming and going.  I had some buddies on the Upper East, in Gramercy and in the East Village, and my buddy Pat had some friends visiting town from Chicago.  Ultimately, I decided to meet up with these guys in the West Village.

I was feeling pretty good and loose at this point, but it wasn’t until I arrived at the bar, the truly terrible Automatic Slims, that things started to slip.  I beat Pat and the guys there, so as I stood awkwardly at the crowded bar by myself, I ordered a Bud and a shot of Jameson.  For the record, I have never in my life ordered this combo.  I don’t drink Jameson.  I actually quite dislike it.  But I remember doing my guest bartending gig over Thanksgiving and watching two patrons – one a guy my age, the other an older guy – order a shot of Jameson with each beer and I thought it was pretty badass.  So set me up. 

Though the bar was douchy, the bartender, bless his heart, poured me a "shot" of Jameson in a glass the size of a fist with a shot that was easily 6oz, a solid two mouthfuls.  I like bourbon, but I prefer it on ice, and if I drink it warm, it’s usually in a Manhattan and usually being sipped.  Drinking a room temperature giant shot of whiskey pulled straight off the speedrack was something that I wasn’t particularly ready for.  I threw back the shot and the warm whiskey – which I did have to swallow in two gulps – nearly sent me into paroxysms of vomiting right there at the bar.  For a decent three minutes, I stood at the bar, trying to act casual but choking back puke, wiping my watery eyes, and rapidly taking repeated sips of my beer to get over that dreaded "something is rising from my belly into my throat and soon it’s going to cause a big scene" feeling. 

But Pat did eventually show up, along with some other friends.  And we drank.  More than a little.  And quietly, secretly, I was getting very, very drunk.  I often don’t really show my drunkenness.  I can’t tell you why this is, but I’m not the fall-down-type drunk; my only inclinations when bombed are to a) make out; b) eat; c) stand there quietly; and d) all of the above.  I’m much louder and boisterous on the journey to Intoxication than when I finally arrive; once I finally get there, I like to relax. 

But this night was different than most because I had thought that I didn’t really drink that much.  I mean, I drank a lot, but it wasn’t like I was doing jagerbombs all night or having some sort of pint drinking competition.  In short order, I was really f’ing bombed.  I’m not a doctor, but I think one has a higher tolerance with a fuller stomach.  Like I said, I’m used to eating a ton of food on Friday (and every day of the week, for that matter) before getting drunk on Friday night.  Instead, I had almost starved myself this week, so it was like every drink counted as two.  And before I realized any of this, I was already totally in the bag.  Whoops.    

We stayed out until the bars closed, and after last call I remember grabbing two slices of pizza with the guys (and paying Pat $200 he’d been hounding me for all night, money that I lost on a bet to him).  I remember going home, eating, and going to bed.  That’s about it.  Not much brain activity for ol’ Uncle Jason after about 2am.    

The next morning, my alarm woke me up – I had set it for 11am to welcome Jimmy and Danielle, who I learned had not left Philly yet – with a tremendously bad hangover.  Before I even left bed, I sent my obligatory "Wow" text message to the guys I was out with the previous night and set about determining when and whether I’d be able to get out of bed.  Wallowing in my hangover was tempting, but I soon had to get up to pee (and also take some much needed aspirin).  When I walked out of my bedroom, I saw it.

The door to my apartment was open. 

I’m not talking “open” as in “slightly ajar” or “unlocked,” but rather wide the fuck open, three or so feet of open space between the door jamb and where the door hung at a sixty degree angle inward inside my apartment.

As I said, I was dangerously hungover, so my wits weren’t quite as sharp as they normally are, though I could see there was no sign of forced entry.  I looked into my living room to assess the situation and saw that it looked very much like it had when I left it the previous night.  I took stock: my laptop was sitting in plain sight on the coffee table, my guitars were still hanging in my office room, my big screen plasma – which is maybe two feet from the apartment door – was still there.  So it didn’t appear that I was robbed.  I then went into the bathroom and checked my heinie and I hadn’t been R’ed.  Whew. 

But still, this…this was bad.  A few weeks ago, I passed out sitting on my bathroom floor with my shower running, which was not quite among the highlights of my life.  But passing out with my apartment door open is, in my opinion, much worse.  I’m actually a pretty bad mother fucker (in case I haven’t mentioned this before), so I wasn’t concerned with being physically harmed.  The door to my building is always closed and locked so no outsiders could have entered the building, and the only people that live in my building besides me is a girl my age who lives next door, a 80 year old Italian woman who lives with her 50 year old son upstairs, and about 1200 Chinese people in the other five apartments whose average weight is about 104 pounds (and that’s the men).    

However, I was stone drunk and passed out and my 42’ plasma TV was two feet away from my open apartment door for over five hours.  My laptop, which not only contains my life but about fifteen hours of porn scattered over 300 clips, was in plain view.  A few grand in instruments hung in a room, whose door was also open, eight feet from the open apartment door.  All of this could have been removed from my apartment in seconds and without a sound.  On top of that – this is going to sound terribly racist, probably because it is – my friends and I have a joke that anything left in the large landing outside my apartment door is immediately confiscated by (I presume) my Chinese neighbors and either used as is, fixed, or turned into devices for cooking fish, frogs, and vegetables that don’t look like normal vegetables but like things grown on strange planets and/or taken from coral reefs.  For example, my fridge broke, so I moved it to the landing.  The next day, it was gone.  Same with my couch (although that wasn’t broken; I had just gotten new furniture).  My old neighbor put broken speakers on this landing, and they were gone almost immediately.  I’m pretty sure I could put a crate filled with empty shampoo bottles and popsicle sticks on that landing, and it would be used to cook up this mother fucker in under three hours. 

But by the grace of God, and maybe because I’m the asshole and they’re actually good people, I was not robbed of my possessions by Chinese neighbors.  I had gotten very drunk, passed out with my door wide open and nothing had happened to me, my stuff or my butt.  Whew.    

Of course, I did not remember leaving the door open, but wondered how it could happen.  I wasn’t so drunk that I passed out with my shoes on and my contacts in; I came home and ate pizza and took my aspirin and got ready for bed, all activities that would have me walking past my apartment door.  Not only that, I had picked up laundry that day after work and somehow managed to put sheets on my bed when I came home drunk.  That’s right, I essentially made my bed while bombed but somehow forgot to close the door to my apartment, which, I must stress, is maybe sixteen inches from my bedroom door.  For this, I have no explanation.

(Also, who am I?  I’m almost 29 and I’m passing out with my door open?  This would be ok in college, but not at my age – every time I’ve told this story, I haven’t gotten any “Dude, that’s awesome!” comments, but rather, “Man, that’s not right.”  Jesus.)

But I do have blame: the lack of food in my belly.  Had I been properly caloried, I would not have gotten so drunk and not have left my apartment door open (not to mention wouldn’t have had as bad a hangover).  So therefore, in the interest of my health and personal safety, I must amend my diet: I need to consume at least 3000 calories on any day I go drinking.  Losing weight is important, but ensuring that my stuff isn’t robbed in my drunken slumber is much, much more important.  Bikini season be damned.