Wasted
Another post from nzmusic.com that I thought I'd drop into my blog proper (nzmusic.com being something of my 'secondary' blog, as it is -- problem is, you can't edit, so the terrible typos and spelling mistakes I make there are frozen for all eternity). Anyway, the context behind this one was that one of the more rambunctious nzmusic characters -- SychoGrandpa -- was complaining about the lack of dirty drunken rock'n'roll stories on the site, so I took it upon myself to start a new thread, on, yes, your best getting wasted story. And, at this point, mine's still the best...

When I was living in chch, I was the weekend rubbish-boy at the Arts Centre. It basically meant getting up at 5.30ish on a saturday and sunday morning, heading over the road (I lived across the carpark from the Centre), getting the bins out, strategically putting them around the various paths and lawns around the complex, sweeping here and there, and then keeping an eye on the place during the course of the day to make sure the bins didn't overflow, that any major spillage got dealt to ... that sort of thing.

Anyway, I was pretty much on my own doing that job, but there was a crew of lads who put together the market stalls each morning, and we'd usually meet up for a coffee and a pinwheel at the bakehouse after setting up, and then head down to the botanic gardens for a smoke and a hackey/frisbee session. Today was no different: as per usual, totally high by 8am.

A wee top up before the lunch-time saw me through the early afternoon rubbish-rush, after which I decided it was such a nice day that a couple (or three) beers at the Dux might set me in good stead for packdown at 5ish (for which another wee smoke was required to help dull the pain of sweeping yet more sticky brown rice up from around the food stalls).

The market stall crew announced it was drinks at my place to celebrate someone's birthday, so we trundled back there and cracked into the beers. Elephant beer, it transpired. And more smoke. And then more beer, and a couple of tequila shots to keep things going.

The lads headed off about 7ish to go and do their things, and I should have actually taken the opportunity to put some food into my system, but I was well into socialising mode by that point, so I walked over to my friends' house where there was a small party going on. Drinking games! And more smoke! And the drinking games were being played using Ngauhere Gold -- a super-strong (and nasty) lager that came in flagons from the nearby Harrington's Brewery. I was handed one (1.5 litres), and, perhaps because my brain was already slightly dulled by the previous events of the day, was far and away the big loser in whatever game it was that we were playing at the time (Boggle, I recall), and ended up drinking the whole thing in about half and hour. After that it was gin and tonics to cleanse the palate.

And then the 'special' cake came out. Yum. Food. Being the only solids that had passed my lips that day, I partook in more than my fair share.

And then we hit town: Mainstreet -- our regular bar, to be exact, where I was actually starting to feel the effects of the day, and slipped myself up onto one of the establishment's tall leaden bar-stools and quietly ordered a water.

Fucking hell, I thought, I am fucking wasted. I started chatting to the girlfriend about, well, god knows what at this point, and I clearly recall myself watching her lips and concentrating on the sound coming out of them so, as, to not, uh, forget, ummm... and then this wash of red swept up from my feet, enveloped my head, and then I'm in the land of blissful narcotic dreams, soaring over the landscape with a smile on my face and not a care in the world. Then, of course, someone's slapping me awake and people are shouting my name and I'm all 'I'm ok, I'm ok, just a wee faint, bloody hell,' but when I open my eyes, everyone's gone all pixilated -- they've transformed into moving blocks of colour like some on-the-fly photoshop effect has been grafted onto my eyeball, and the girlfriend is looking at me with immense concern, and looking about as pale as I probably was. Someone got me a strong cup of very sugary tea, which was much appreciated, but, wouldn't you know it, I could feel the red wash swelling up from my feet again, and, I'd actually like to think this was quite stylish, I handed my tea to the girlfriend before saying 'I'm going again', and passed out for a second time.

All this was taking place on the floor of Mainstreet, by the way. When I'd passed out the first time, I'd apparently slumped forward onto the table banging my head, spilling drinks and dislodging my glasses, and then jerked backwards, which had the effect of smashing the back of my head against the solid iron framework of the stool, before finally falling sideways(about a 3 foot drop -- they were high seats) into the wall (banging the side of my head) and then, finally, the floor (more head damage).

Awakening from my second pass-out, there were various rescue attempts in progress. Warm things were being thrown on top of me, more sugary drinks were emerging, and, then, finally, the ambulance arrived to haul me off to A&E. At this point, I developed some weird giggly obsession with naming things (I think I must have wanted to reassure people that, despite the head knocks, and the pixilated vision, that I hadn't burnt out a major mental fuse). 'You're an ambulance officer!' I proclaimed, and 'this is an ambulance!' 'There's some cars!' 'This is Colombo Street!' ... and so on, all the way to the hospital, where they plonked me on a trolley in a hallway somewhere, advised me to just keep still, and I got to listen to the inner workings of a hospital on a saturday night with my now hyper-sensitive ears relaying every distant grimace, groan or scream with hi-fidelity directly my to brain. Of course, by the time a doctor got around to seeing me, and combined with the sobering shock of having actually been dragged off to hospital, I'd pretty much straightened out to a 'normal' drunken state. He sent me home with a 'don't overdo in the future' warning, and I got a good two hours sleep before having to get up and go to work to put the bins out.

Really should have skipped the gin and tonics, in hindsight...
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