Getting Pissed On

Most people, if they’re lucky, can make it through life and never get peed on…not once.
One night, a few years ago, I’m hanging out in the fairly upscale, moderately overpriced hotel bar of a popular Midtown hotel that will remain nameless. Over the years, I had perfected the art of underage drinking; which is to say, I knew the places that wouldn’t card you if you were willing to throw a little cash around; and by this time I had it down to a science. It also didn’t hurt that the first time I went there I ended up spending the entire night (in a totally non-gay way) with a famous Ralph Lauren model and became associated with him from then on whenever I went back to this bar (which is why I’m able to get away with some completely appalling things there, but those are stories for another day).
So at this point, I’d made myself known as a major “player” although no one who worked there was exactly sure what the hell I did. Was I an actor? The good looking friend of a famous model? Was I an agent? A model myself? That was for me to know and for the staff to ask not overly probative questions. I had become very good friends with several bouncers, bartenders (don’t ever date a girl who works at a bar you like spending time at, this should be fucking obvious, like not flipping a burger with your hand in a pan full of grease but I must like getting burned), and a few of the managers as well.
So a few friends and I are hanging out on some couches in a semi-private area drinking Manhattan’s or Grey Goose Gimlet’s (bottle service is for suckers) just enjoying the night and seeing if there are any girls worth talking to who aren’t going to try and charge me an hourly rate when we get to my apartment.
At some point, between frequent trips to the bathroom, I met a lovely young thing, let’s call her Mary, who was more than happy to have me buy her drinks while treating the bar, and her, like my own personal plaything. I’m lighting Dunhill’s before I get outside, making outlandish demands of the DJ, trying to convince Mary she saw me in Esquire, innocently picking fights then running to one of my bouncer friends at the first sign of trouble and downing Manhattan’s before our waitress has a chance to hand out all our drinks. After this has gone on for entirely too long, my little friend says she has to find her friend; at least I think she was her friend, it’s possible we just met this girl while standing near the bar. Even more likely – especially when you take into account the fact that Mary had seen me talking to the manager, cut the line several times and have the waitresses flirt with me by name most of the night – Mary came up to me to tell me there was a “friend of hers,” her words, not mine, that she was concerned about.
So I find this girl, who is sort of sitting, listless, on a couch or chair and decided maybe some water would do the trick. The problem was that, after I was able to rouse her out of her original stupor, and walked over to the bar, she could barely stand under her own power. Less troubling and slightly more amusing was that the whores occupying the stools seemed less than interested in giving up their seats. Preoccupied with thoughts of panty removal and other things concerning Mary, I’m not really paying attention when I turn around to the bar, leaving Girl X in the less than capable hands of Mary. Girl X does a limp armed, Looney Toon-style face plant right into the floor. Mary looks at me like a little girl who just lost her My Little Pony as I step over Girl X and seemingly make for the exit.
“Where are you going?!!?” Mary screams after me, as if it’s really my responsibility to take care of this piss drunk girl.
“To get Mitch.” I say. Mitch being one of the managers I had previously befriended just happened to be working that night.
Out in the lobby, I explain the situation to Mitch who looks at me and has the same reaction I would have had. “We can’t have some passed out bitch on the floor of our bar! Let’s get her out of here.”
Back into the bar Mitch and I go, greeted by Mary grinning like an idiot at the sight of me returning, and Girl X still face down exactly where I’d left her (don’t ever let anybody tell you New Yorkers aren’t nice), for all I know, dead. Mitch and I quickly assess the situation and then prop Girl X on her feet with one of us on either side of her. After discussing the best way to go about it, Mitch and I each drape one of her arms around our neck while hooking one arm under one of her legs, and proceed to carry her out in all of her alcohol poisoned glory.
We haven’t taken two steps when my right hand, which is wrapped under her thigh supporting her, begins to feel strangely warm. I say “strangely warm” because other than being inside a pocket, when in an air conditioned bar, surrounded by ice cold drinks, one’s hand should never…ever be warm. As we continue to walk, my hand gets a little warmer and almost instantaneously, Mitch and I look at each other…horrified.
“Is she…?” I manage?
“She is!” Mitch responds, incredulous. And I can tell part of him just wants to drop her on the floor and let her piss herself right there in the bar; but obviously, with a bar full of people, we can’t.
In a quandary, too far from the ladies room or the restaurant bathrooms, we carry her into the lobby and throw her into a wooden chair which has the look of being cut from a Baobab Tree. There she sits, refusing water or any other attempts from Mitch and I to offer her help or take her to a bathroom. Mary stands idly by, wringing her hands and shifting from foot to foot like a 15 year old whose prom date is 20 minutes late. After a few minutes, with the hotel still open and people still coming up the escalator seeing Mitch and I hovering around Girl X, Mitch decides enough is enough. Passed out or not, alcohol poisoned or not, breathing or not, Girl X’s stay at the hotel is over!
Mitch and I, with Mary as nothing more than a spectator at this point, carry Girl X over to a freight elevator where we take her down to the first floor, past the prep kitchen and out a side entrance where the doorman has a cab waiting for her.
“Okay,” Mitch says “Where’s she live?” We both turn to Mary, who has been so helpful up until this point.
“I don’t know.” Mary says.
“What do you mean you don’t know, I thought she was your friend?” Mitch asks.
“No, she was staying with other people, but I think they left.” Mary manages.
“Great,” says Mitch “just great.” Mitch and I look at each other. Obviously, with Mary in tow, taking Girl X home and dumping her in my shower (you thought I was going to say bed didn’t you. C’mon people, I’m not that bad a person) is out of the question.
All of a sudden, like a hungry Coyote watching a rabbit get its leg caught in a trap, this guy shows up who has obviously been watching this whole thing transpire and says,
“She’s a friend of mine, she’s staying with me.”
“Yeah?” Mitch says, “What’s her name?”
“Cristina.” The guy says, and at this point who gives a shit because it’s not like Mitch and I know her name and Mary probably doesn’t remember her own name so she’s about as much help as pedals on a motorcycle. Mitch gives me a look as if to say “his story checks out and I’m covered in piss, whatever” and Mitch, Mary and I went back into the hotel sending Girl X on her merry way.