Holy Cross has an annual tradition in which most of the senior class goes to Cape Cod for the week before graduation. It’s one more opportunity for everyone to get drunk, hookup, and make fools of themselves before moving on to the real world, just more scenic.
One of my college roommates had a house in Yarmouth that we could stay at for the duration of our stay. The house was your typical three bedroom, grey shingled ranch. The style is ubiquitous on the Cape. Just off the dining area and through a set of sliders was a large porch with a working grill. The grill is an absolute necessity when one is spending a week on the Cape of straight drinking. Everyone knows you can’t make it through a day and night of hard drinking without some food in your stomach. Empty stomach hard drinking is simply an excuse to go to the emergency room. And no one wants that.
The group of friends I made at Holy Cross liked to do things big. Blah, blah, blah freshman year we had a stripper attend our Christmas party and gave our RA a lap dance while he was on duty. NO BIG DEAL. As such we wanted to throw a big clambake at the house and invite a bunch of people.
We sent out a Facebook event invite to everyone we knew down the cape and instructed everyone to bring a six pack of their own that we put into a kiddie pool filled with ice. In addition we got a keg of natty light. We had plenty of alcohol but we had to make sure we didn’t disappoint on the clambake. While the guys set out to get everything ready for the cook out, Buddy and I headed over to George’s Fish Market is Harwichport to get all the seafood. Of course Buddy was there, it wouldn’t be a Holy Cross party without him.
We caught the owner in a good mood and he hooked us up with everything we needed for the clambake. We came a away with a ton of mussels, clams, oysters as well as a pot and burners to cook everything. This was just a short couple months before Buddy got into a fight with the owner and walked out never to return.
When Buddy and I returned to the house everything was in full swing so I immediately began cooking the clams and mussels. Steaming is the best process to cook these bivalves from the sea. I added a couple inches of beer to the pot and threw in the shell fish. I don’t know what I did wrong but it took a fucking long time to cook. However; it didn’t matter, everyone was getting drunk and having a good time.
Out of nowhere my friend from Arizona State challenged Buddy to a series of escalating bouts of dizzy. The whole episode could be summed up by the word: Dangerous. For those of you who live under a rock and are not aware of the glorious game of dizzy bat, it is a game in which you drink a full beer out a Wiffle ball bat then spin ten times and try to hit your empty can. Sounds easy, right? It’s not. Once you have a full beer in you and ten spins there is not telling where your body will end up. If you are playing outside, most likely in a heavily wooded, stone patio, or wooden staircase. The night before I fell in between a wooden staircase and a still lit fire pit. I’m still amazed no one ended up in the hospital and this was just the beginning their downfall.
After Buddy and Tim tired of abusing their bodies with dizzy bat, they turned their attention to straight tequila. The two posted up in the kitchen with a bottle of Cuervo. They began by taking shots themselves and then they invited randoms into their alcoholic ritual. Every time a new person entered the kitchen they would force that person to do shots with them. As you can imagine, that bottle of Cuervo was killed pretty quickly. Someone was sent out to the liquor store to get another. Within a half-hour that new bottle was gone. A girl then offered to go out and get another bottle, this time a handle. Only about a quarter of that went down. By that time roughly 3:30 PM Buddy and Tim were beyond black out.
Tim wandered into the bathroom to be alone and experience his black out with dignity. Buddy on the other hand began throwing up everywhere. Especially all over himself. It was at this point that Buddy’s girlfriend and my ex-girlfriend teamed up to clean him up. This was the first time that my ex-friend had ever met Buddy’s girlfriend. After knowing each other for only a few hours they were now bonding over stripping Buddy naked and throwing him into a shower. Shortly thereafter a lot of people headed out. We were all ridiculously tired and relaxed the rest of the night.
Buddy slept from about four in the afternoon until midnight when he woke me up to ask me if it was still 3:30 in the afternoon. A little shocked at how hard he blacked out, I simply said, “no” and went back to sleep.
Written by Buddy's brother.
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