Soundtrack: The Muppet Show Theme
[Yes, I'm skipping over the party for now, but I'm not sure how to write on that, while I can figure out how to write about the next day. So we're starting with that first, and I'll fill in the blanks later.]
The party died earlier than the previous two cocktail parties. By about 6am, even though there were still massive amounts of alcohol still remaining, the party had been whittled down by alcohol attrition to about a dozen. The jukebox would continue playing the free tunes programmed into it until about 9am, but the "party" moved into reception, carrying the buckets of alcohol and whatever moderately clean cups we could find. And by the time Snax opened at 8:30, we had been whittled in half, to seven of us. It was the hardcore alkies: me, Georgie, Jessie, Phil, Jocelyn, and Roomie Chris hitting on a Swedish girl whose name I learned and promptly forgot five times that night.
I stayed up until 10:00, but for pretty much the last two hours that morning I was AWOL in my own head. I remember watching things going on, and I occasionally participated in the conversation, but at 10:00, when I tried to remember the past couple of hours, I realized that I had no short term memory at all, and excused myself. Georgie harassed me for being a piker. I tried to be mildly indignant for being harassed when I was one of the last half dozen left (and Chris doesn't really count, since he was just trying to get into a Swede's pants),and opened my mouth to say so, but couldn't remember what I was irritated about.
So, the end of another cocktail party, right?
Well, kind of. When I woke up the next afternoon, around 4pm, Georgie was still going strong, and others were getting up and starting in as well. So, after a quick meal to pad my stomach, I was back at it. Reuben, Jessie, Georgie, and I set up camp in the middle of the dining room clustered around the surviving botltes. Every time someone we knew came into the room, we gave them the choice: triple sec, or tequila. If they refused those, they could possibly wrangle some of the gin, rum, or vodka, but we were mostly pushing triple sec or tequila for some ineffable reason. Newcomers were given a shotglass of their poison, and we all drank one in solidarity. Most people choose the triple sec--everyone but me seems to report having a "bad experience" with tequila and tend to avoid it. Of course, the fact that the tequila we were pouring was "Black Death" brand tequila with a skull and crossbones on it probably didn't instill any confidence either.
Most of us were still in our costumes. I hadn't even bothered to try to get the grey out of my hair, Georgie was still in her Swedish chef outfit even though the mustache had been lost somewhere around sunrise (she was also slurring so much that she could have been speaking Swedish for all we knew. Chris was cooking in his Count cape, while Martin was still Krishna blue, even though he'd lost the taped-on cookies to someone with a more indescriminate and perverse appetite than me (no matter how drunk I am, I'm not eating a cookie scotch-taped to someone's chest after he's been dancing for hours). Pretty much the only change from the previous night was that we were drinking straight alcohol now rather than punch, and the bruised eyes of the sleep-deprived.
Three hours of this ensued. Towards the end of the third hour, we were back to dancing on the tables (which was not a good idea, since the bottles of alcohol were on them, but there was amazingly little spillage); Georgie nearly took off my head with a jumping grab from short distance (a Georgie special). The dining room was filled with twenty people who were even more drunk than they'd been the night before. After three hours of this, the Sunday Dinner was served, padding our stomachs further. But it couldn't last forever; seeing the alcohol was about to run out, I mixed a Long Island iced tea in a pint glass with about three shots each of all the alcohol left (gin, tequila, rum, triple sec, and vodka). I'm none too clear on measurements with it; I just know that when I went to put in the coke, the pint glass was over half filled with spirits already.
The spirits ran out at 9pm. With nary a whimper, pretty much the entire hostel switched right over to paying for beer. When I finished my Long Island around 11pm and went to get a beer, there were only three left. The party continued anyway, and at some point around midnight, one of the tables was broken while Georgie and I were dancing on it to "Born Slippy," by Underworld.
Just a normal weekend at Prince's St.