EPT____________________________________________________________
I’m a Danish high school student, and as such, I drink. A lot. Not due to alcoholism or social problems, but because it’s fun. Wandering around with a nice buzz in your head, friends around you and people having fun is awesome to say the least. The only problem is the lack of reason you seem to experience once you get past a certain number of alcoholic units: bad shit starts to happen. Usually that’s not a problem for me: I’ve done some silly stuff, stripping in bars, starting moshpits on dancefloors just to mention a few, but things rarely escalate to the point where we get in trouble. We have fun, we laugh and people are usually cool with it, because we’re the youngsters of Denmark, and we remind them of the fun they had when they were our age.
However, at times you say something, do something, that you just shouldn’t. It has happened to me, but mostly it was people I barely knew, or didn’t really mean anything to me, so I’d apologize and move along: she’d/he’d think I was an idiot and I wouldn’t care. However, last night I said something, to someone I like and have known for years. I don’t recall exactly what it was (another negative sideeffect to alcohol: amnesia) but I know it was bad. There are some things you don’t say. Some places are unchartered territory, places you don’t go, and any decent human being will have a blank spot on their map, they haven’t gone to. Sometimes, however, you fumble your way in there, do some terrible shit, and now don’t know the way back to point zero. Last night included a trip to an unmarked spot on my map.
I guess it would be somewhat fitting to tell, briefly, exactly what went down prior to this curious incident of an idiotic teenager, so here goes. I pregamed at a girls house, who’d turned 19 the day before, so it was sort of a birthday party. Being that I am about as creative as a rock, I’d gotten her a book: a present which screams, ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re into, but everyone can read, so I gathered…’. Anyway, the night progressed, the pile of empty beer cans began to grow less rapidly, as people where getting drunk, and people where to starting to play with the thought of tumbling downtown. So we ordered a couple of taxis, got driven downtown, and continued the party.
We went barhopping now, tumbling around, ‘till we found a place where there was a good crowd, music and people our age. It was around 3 in the morning now, but people where ready to party, which hopefully meant, that we wouldn’t end up being 3 guys just sitting at a beer doing shots at 6 in the morning, wondering where the rest of the gang went. Back to last night, we ordered some drinks, crashed at a table and checked out the crowd. I spotted a good friend of mine, a guy I’ve known for 8 years, and would trust with my life, so I went over to say hello. This guy knows half of the people my age around town, so he introduced me to yet another group of friends, of whom I’d only met a few.
I sat down, a got to talking with this guy, who was very friendly – he bought me a beer – and someone who I shared a few interests with. Quickly the conversation turned to the estrogen-containing organisms of this planet and which of them where most aesthetically pleasing. He nodded in the direction of the party I came with, and asked if I knew the girl in the red dress. I did, it was the host of the party, who was, in fact, looking very, very good. He asked if I could introduce him, I said I needed to think about, and tried to escape it by going to the bathroom. This guy was quick though; he followed me and in the doorway leading to the bathroom, we discussed aforementioned girl a bit more. He was very keen on getting to meet her, but I wasn’t sure it was a good idea: introducing a complete stranger to a good friend, without having any gist of an idea about whether she’d be interested, seemed kinda flawed, even to my alcohol-infected brain. So I decided I needed to shrug him off.
So the incident occurred. I needed him off my back, and being that I lacked the balls to just say no, I decided to sacrifice 2½ years of friendship in order to lose a guy I’d known for 30 minutes. Talk about idiocy. So I began to list the less fortunate things about her: I didn’t really know any, so I made most of them up. After going on for a minute or so, my rambling seemed to have the wished effect, and we talked about something else. A split second after our switch of topic the girl in the red dress stepped up behind me, and said something along the lines of this: ‘I guess I wasn’t supposed to hear that’, send me a you’re-dead-smile and walked past me.
Dane Cook talks about women being mental terrorists, about how they can instantly make you feel rotten from within and make you lose all self-esteem. I can testify to that. I can’t recall ever feeling so bad in my entire life. I wasn’t able to move or form a coherent sentence, I just stood there, chained to the floor, beer in hand and with a guy by my side, who didn’t know what to do. Eventually, after 30 seconds of dead silence, apart from the music thundering 30 ft away, he muttered: ‘That was less fortunate, to put in mildly’. I nodded, and told him I was going outside to sip some fresh air.
Outside, I crashed on a bench a fell into deep thought: was there any way out of this? How could I be so stupid? How does she feel right now? What exactly did I say? Stuff like that was going around. Needless to say, I didn’t really know the answer to any of them. November in Denmark is rather cold, and I was only wearing a t-shirt, so at some point I was forced inside. I got in, sat down at the table, where my friends had ordered a tray of mixed shots and was going at it. They offered me one, I said no, which is rare from my side. My friends spotted this and asked why, and I briefly told them the story. They could see that I was in some deep shit, but told me not to let it ruin my night, which was already too late. They argued I should go apologize on Monday (I’ve already done so: send her an e-mail, apologizing and asking to see her at school tomorrow) and not think about it now, which, of course, was impossible.
Not long after I gathered my things, and headed home. A friend of mine went with me, and eventually he convinced me to have a final beer with him. All the bars were closed – it was 6 in the morning by now – so our plans where quickly shattered. I told him I was heading home, he said goodbye, and I began to tumble home. I walked around 10 ft before I was stopped by the girl from before, who told me that I’d been a long time since one of her friend had hurt her as bad as I had. I couldn’t gather the balls to say sorry or even look at her, I just mumbled a quiet ‘yea’, and headed home.
I tumbled into my house at 6.20 or so, and had decided upon sending her an e-mail, containing no explanation, just an apology and a wish to see her tomorrow at school, so I could explain what happened in a sober state. After that I went to bed.
I’m sitting here now, to ashamed to turn on my phone, log on MSN or check my e-mail of fear for what’s in there. I got no balls whatsoever, and mostly I just feel like sinking in a deep hole. I have absolutely no idea what to tell tomorrow, apart from the truth and an apology, and I feel like I’ve ruined the best year of high school. Man, I’m feeling shitty, I guess, is the point I’m trying to get across.
