About
You are reading the life, times, and general musings of Jenna Tollerson. I am a web developer and consultant living in and around Athens, Georgia, USA. [read more]
I walked from Copper Creek and stood in front of my building (also, stood in front of the bar on the first floor of my building) and people watched while I finished my cigarette. Three men—all clearly old enough to be my father—stood off to my left. Two of them walked inside the bar after being asked by someone working the door to say off the sidewalk with open bottles. I don't know how the one who approached me managed to say outside with his bottle of Sam Adams, but there he was, arms stretched to either side, ready to envelope me. I put the hand that was holding my purse gently to his chest, halting whatever campaign he had decided upon. He looked very put out by this.
With my hand steady at his chest and his arms still out, I gave him a friendly “Hi.”
He stared at me for a moment. He was obviously very drunk already, especially considering it was only 10 PM. “Do you have a light?”
I noticed he was holding an unlit cigarette, so I pulled out my Zippo.
Looking at my Black in my other hand he asked, “What are you smoking?”
“Cloves.”
He took my cigarette from me and took a drag. When he handed it back, I asked if he still needed a light.
This is when he asked, and I am not making this up, “Can I touch you?”
I smiled. “No.”
I lit his cigarette for him, and his friends, still with the open bottles, came out onto the sidewalk looking for him. They were also very drunk and had somehow gotten the impression their friend was making a very successful conquest. I backed away in small steps as the man who had propositioned me insisted to his friends that they needed to go to “Chelsea's, I'm telling ya. Chelsea's.” (Chelsea's is one of Athens' local girlie bars. I think they offer “private lingerie modeling” or somesuch nonsense.) One of the friends made an off hand motion to me encouraging his friend, as if I was an acceptable strip club substitute, but I was on my way upstairs, and left those creeps in the dust.
However, it was less scary than amusing, and nothing could have dampened my mood. Free beer + time with Neil = loving life right now.
Start with two Irish Carbombs. Add two overpriced cigarettes and and two Smoked Porter brews from Copper Creek. Mix well until there is a pleasant, steady buzz. Laugh loud at the Brit and smoke another cigarette on the way home.
Arrive home before midnight. Change into pajamas, slam two huge glasses of water. Climb into bed at 12:03 am, excited about the long night of rest that lies ahead (a whole nine hours!). Fall asleep painlessly and instantly.
Your phone will ring at 12:57 am, waking you, but don't answer it. Instead, inspect the time, decide that it is one in the afternoon, that you overslept, and are now late for work. Begin formulating excuses for your boss.
30 seconds after the ring, the mind cloud lifts, it's one am again. Go back to sleep without trouble or incident.
At 3:45 am, wake up suddenly and completely, without cause, and stone sober to boot.
[It should be noted here that there are two main kinds of insomnia: the people who can't get to sleep and the people who can't stay asleep. I have always been one of the former. I am not too keen on becoming one of the latter.]
Lay in bed, still dead tired but now unable to sleep, for two hours. Get up and write, believing it will help. It won't. Get back in bed until 7:00, and then give up and get in the shower.
After getting all fresh and clean, go the kitchen to make breakfast. Knock a box full of pasta off it's shelf. When you go to pick it up in your groggy state, the box will be upside-down. The top will come completely undone, and you will have ruined dry pasta all over the floor.
Sit on the floor in your bathrobe, heave a big sigh, and clean it up.
After breakfast head to Starbucks to kill time before work. Listen to lavishly and obnoxiously arranged version of “O Holy Night”. Note that Christmas music before Thanksgiving is part of what is wrong with the world, and is certainly a sign of the rapture.
Move quickly (trying to outrun the music) out of the coffee shop. Mix well with one overpriced but delicious eggnog latte, charged to a credit card, and send to work for 6 ½ hours.
Serves no one. And everyone.
It's been a long day.
It is 10 til 8:00 on Friday morning. Dehydrated, head pounding, I stumble into the kitchen to get water. As I pour a glass, Emily, who is about to head off to work, looks at me with concern, tilts her head and asks, “How do you feel?”
The first word I utter this morning comes out as a choked, low sound as I squint at her.
“Drunk.”
...
Thursday night I was invited out by coworkers (mainly, Neil) for drinks at Copper Creek. I arrived a little after 8:00, with Abie and the Indian in tow, and ordered something they brew in-house at Copper Creek, an Abbey Ale. Abbey Ales are fruity, dark and deliciously deceptive: even though it is printed clearly on the sign touting house beers, one soon forgets that it contains 7.9% alcohol. By the time our party had moved out to the patio area, I had consumed three, plus the half of Abie's she had been unable to finish (“I'm just not a big beer drinker!” she had proclaimed).
Hilarity ensued.
I remember:
After I finished my fourth (and ½) Abbey Ale, at about 11:30 the group split, with Neil and Tyler off to the 40 Watt and myself and my crüe off to Tastyworld for Bain Mattox. Sam Deeds was there, as were my roommates Alli and Catie, my sister Sarah, and Heather and Rob (who are delightful, but officially belong to Abie I think).
The Indian buys me more beer. I protest that I don't need anymore. He pulls the “I'm not asking, I'm telling!” form of best friend manipulation. I cave. I have a lot more to drink, but am never so drunk that I fail to get served at the bar.
The Indian forces me to waltz with him during one number, and I step on his feet a lot as we bump into everyone around us. This did not make us popular, I think.
At the end of the show, I spend long amounts of time praising Bain and his bandmates on their most excellent performance, and then have the audacity to quiz him on my name. Very confidently he blurts out “Abie.” I smile and correct him. He feels bad, and then I feel bad for making him feel bad. I tell both Bain and Brian at separate times that they are the cute one in the band, both while they are standing right there. I monopolize their time.
It's amazing what some people will put up with when it comes to their fans.
After saying goodbyes I make it home, drink a couple glasses of water, and decide that I'll be okay for class and work at 9 am. Obviously, I was wrong.
...
dude (6:31:37 PM): you have a rough morning?
me (6:32:04 PM): yes. yes I did.
me (6:32:33 PM): still drunk this morning actually
dude (6:32:41 PM): lovely
dude (6:32:46 PM): yeah you were pretty plowed
me (6:33:40 PM): I wasn't that bad, was I?
dude (6:34:28 PM): hahahahaha
dude (6:35:04 PM): :) you were tolerable :)
me (6:35:14 PM): tolerable
me (6:35:29 PM): what every girl wants to hear, that she is tolerable :)
dude (6:35:34 PM): hahaha
me (6:36:28 PM): well I meant all that stuff about being glad to see you, even if I did say it 45 times
dude (6:36:56 PM): hahaha
dude (6:37:32 PM): i wonder
dude (6:37:51 PM): if we as humans have a drunk memory section in our brains
dude (6:38:08 PM): you know how sometimes when you're drunk you don't remember what happened
dude (6:38:25 PM): well what if you got drunk again and then made an effort to think about it again
dude (6:38:28 PM): would you remember?
me (6:38:33 PM): hmmmm
me (6:38:49 PM): I don't know
me (6:39:02 PM): I usually don't have memory problems when I'm drunk
So I lied, but I didn't know I was lying at the time, I swear.
Saturday I'm sitting on the couch, biding my time, trying to think of something to do, when I receive a text message on my cell phone from Abie:
“We are bringing the party to you!”
Shortly thereafter Abie and Emily (my roommates) showed up at the apartment with Greg (whom I had met before) and Danny (whom I had not met before). They all proceeded to get drunk and draw on each other and take pictures while wearing hats. I mostly did a few shots and observed the drawing, which involved covering every inch of everyones arms and legs in sharpie. They wanted to draw on me but I politely declined, meaning that I threatened anyone who tried to draw on me with a smack down. Quite effective, actually.
Emily spent some time on the phone trying to track down Blake, who works at one of the downtown bars and should have been getting off of work soon. “Let's just go find him!” I needed a walk just to get out of the house for a few minutes, so we head down there. We are all still wearing hats, me in my newsgirl and many people sporting fedoras. I briefly became the handler in this group and I cannot tell you how helpful pink, white, and black fedoras were in keeping a visual on everyone.
We are navigating through the crowd on Clayton with the help of a drunk-and-less-than-genteel Abie pushing her way through the crowd, yelling.
“Excuse me, pardon me, coming through, outta my way people!”
Danny, myself, Emily and Greg follow in her wake in that order. She pushes aside one dude, and I see him rock back on his heels and turn to his friend to grin and say, “I guess fat chicks get to do whatever they want.”
I was standing right there, trying to catch up with Abie. I looked him right in the eyes I said, quite loud and proud, “Fuck you!” He gave me a surprised look and I kept walking.
I get to the other side of the crowd where Abie and Danny are waiting and tell Abie about this jackass and my imperative to beat him down. Beat him down figuratively, of course.
Abie goes wild. “Who said that!? Who said that!? I wanna talk to that bastard!”
The bastard and his friend had, I suppose, been following in my wake and emerged from the crowd. But while the friend continued to walk in our direction, when the bastard saw me pointing, he walked past the parked cars and into the street just to avoid coming near us. He looked quite frightened. Abie started yelling at his friend, who looked at me and asked me to confirm for Abie, “I didn't say anything, did I?”
“Abie, abie!” I pointed out to the bastard walking on the street and she followed my gaze. “It was that motherfucker over there.”
That was when Abie started yelling loud enough for the entire city to turn and watch.
“Bitch, you wish you could have some of this! Fats chicks fucking rule! You wish you could have me! You're just jealous, bitch!”
She continued this way for 15 to 30 seconds, with the bastard (who had obviously learned his lesson) speedwalking away with all his might. His friend stood where we stopped him, laughing.
We found Blake at his bar and sat outside chatting it up with friends and strangers. We were sitting there making friends and having a good time when the hardass doorguy came and kicked us out because one member of our party “appeared too intoxicated”. Before you sympathize with us and get ready to cuss out the doorguy, I have to say, I concur, she indeed seem too intoxicated. So we moved back to the apartment with Blake in tow.
This is where it begins to get hazy, not for your narrator, because I remember all that went on, but the narrative has cause to break down some at this point. I can say that we went through a lot of liquor, and that I was up quite late. There was not much that was life-altering, but I did have a very good time.
I would love to do that again sometime.
Friday, my plan was to quietly eat my dinner, and wait around until someone else found me something to do. This is how I begin many Friday nights. Sooner than expected, the Indian rang up me up, inviting me to come hang with him at the rockstar's birthday, at an establishment offering two things: pizza, but more importantly, beer. Afterwards, I went home to change (or, as the Indian would put it, to “pimp out”), and on returning to what was left of the party, got roped into a scheme that involved sneaking alcohol into the dorms and making fun of 18 year olds for not being able to take shots. It reminded me of being 18, when the Indian and I were usually sneaking alcohol into the dorms and making fun of people for not being able to take shots. It was the same except I felt a lot older.
After the Indian spent some time recounting some stories of when I was less aware of my own tolerance (“So we're in Helen, and Jenna here proceeds to drink a whole huge bottle of—”) we headed back downtown, ending up at Half Moon Pub, practically underneathe my house. It was mostly uneventful, though tons of fun. We closed the place down, and headed out to the street. The Indian decided to do a good deed and escort one particularly drunk girl to her home and promised to be back at my place within the hour.
I headed upstairs, washed my face, took off my pimp clothes, and put on my pajamas. I conversed with my roommate Emily and her guests for a few minutes, and then sat down on the couch to watch a DVD while I waited for the Indian to turn back up. I had not been sitting on the couch for more than two minutes when my cell phone rang.
“Jenna, it's Gumby. We're in deep shit, we need your help.”
I won't go into the gory details, but Gumby needed me to take himself and M to the jail to bail out a friend. I called the Indian, told him I was going to have to leave him in town, because I had to go. “NO! Don't leave without me!” he commanded. “I'm running. I'll be right there.” He proceeded to run many, many blocks to get back to my apartment, and the four of us headed to my car and out to the jail. It was about 3:30 AM.
We won't talk about the passenger who almost got sick in my car, or how sloppy I looked having thrown on a wrinkled dress shirt over my pajamas, or the maneuver I pulled in the middle of Lexington Road to get us back to our turn. These are all things you will have to ask my passengers about.
I will say the Indian and I spent a better part of the next hour waiting in the parking lot while Gumby went and dealt with the justice system of ACC, coaxing our sickly drunk friend M into standing, walking around, and at one point we even convinced her to do jumping jacks. Jumping. Freaking. Jacks. Much later Gumby's father showed up, and Gumby dismissed us, asking us to take M home and thanking us for our help.
I nearly forgot the way to M's house (this was no so good, because she had completely passed out at that point) but relying on my gut, I got us there. When attempting to get her out of the car, she repeated told us to “fuck off” and that she “wasn't fucking moving”, but with much more pronounced sluriness. We spent a long time making her eat bread and drink water, and then got her into bed. It was just after 5:30 AM.
“Waffle House. We need some Waffle House.”
Starving and exhausted, the Indian and I gobble down way to much fat and salt at the Epps Bridge Road Waffle House, and I drive us home. Gumby calls to let us know that his friend is finally bailed out, and that he owes me 1 thousand, 1 million.
“Well, I'll keep that in mind, I'll hit you up.”
“Even if you need me to pose nude for a sketch, I would do that, just for you.”
“Um, thanks dude.”
I was supposed to go with my roommate Melissa the next day to a show in South Carolina, but before I finally went to sleep I totally wrote her a note punking out. After the night I had, I explained, I was totally not up to it. She was very understanding about the whole thing, but I feel terrible because I did something that is a huge sore spot with me (punking out at the last minute) to someone else.
I slept til 3:00 PM while the Indian watched almost every Disney movie we have in the house. Finally he forced me out of bed, and after running a few errands and sitting around the house awhile, we went to a movie—The Forgotten. I do not recommend it. Only the first half of it is any good, and once you see the end coming about halfway through, you spend a lot of time waiting for it to be over. It did have one small redeeming factor—the utter hotness of Dominic West as the rough but charming alcoholic.
Later, after dissecting the movie to bits, going home, eating some dinner, and dressing to the nines, the Indian and I joined Chris Brown, Neil, and their respective crües at All Good, and quickly moved to Copper Creek.
At Copper Creek we easily had one of the weirdest nights of drinking ever. I believe this was partially facilitated by the $1 shots being offered from midnight to 1 AM. It began simply enough, people at tables, socializing. I ran into Matty P, who has moved to Boone and was randomly in town visiting, in the same bar I was in. I kissed Chris Brown's girlfriend. Another woman tried to undress me. I got insanely jealous of a unnamed party, which got me down for awhile. An extended while. Then we all walked back to (Chris Brown's girlfriend) Lindsey's apartment.
The Indian, my official bodyguard, was taken in a bit by the wiles of one young woman, and that is basically how I came to be walking home by myself from Chris's girlfriend's house at 5:30 in the morning.
I'm not broken up about it. It's bound to happen every once in a while.
I'm climbing up the hill that is Lexington Road, sipping water, just a little drunk and heading to the Grill for some pre-bed breakfast. A random young man pulls into the drive ahead of me in a little red car, and actually attempts to speak to me.
“Hey girl, come'ere.”
As you can imagine, I was charmed.
“No!”
“Come'ere, just for a second.”
“No! Go home!”
Now, as we all know, I am prone to make light of even serious situations. While I was firing back with my pimptastic attitude, internally I could not make light of this. I didn't panic, but I could see that me on the street and this guy sitting 10 feet away in his car with not another soul in sight was not a definitely not a good thing. I started booking it into downtown proper, with him calling after me.
After I was well within sight (and earshot) of the city workers clearing sidewalks of evidence of post-game partying, I looked behind me. I wasn't being followed. I begin walking double time in the direction of the Grill, happy to avoid having been kidnapped, and there was the potential serial killer again, ahead sitting at the intersection next to Tastyworld, watching me. I walked past the headlights with my head held high, maintaining a holier-than-thou strut, which actually just came naturally in that situation. The bastard actually calls out to me again.
“Hey girl, come'ere.”
“No!”
“Just for a second, please?”
I don't even turn around as I declare over my shoulder, “You need to go home. It ain't happenin'.” I wave my hand dimissively and keep walking.
A little tip for any young men who may be wondering: cruising around for a date at 5:30 in the morning doesn't exactly exemplify outstanding character, so don't be offended when the ladies turn you down.
I made it to the Grill, unharmed and unafraid, ordered some food and chatted with Matt, who manages most of the night shifts. He looked tired, closing out the register for the shift, a long strip of register tape moving through his hand. They had obviously done a copious amount of business that night.
“Hey Matt, how're you?”
“I'm beat, how about yourself? Did you hafta work tonight?”
“Nope, I just got caught up in a lot of drama.”
“Oh man, that's the worst. Do I ever feel for you.”
You are reading the life, times, and general musings of Jenna Tollerson. I am a web developer and consultant living in and around Athens, Georgia, USA. [read more]
