The Company Of Unlimited Sangria December 14, 2007

There will be a party tonight featuring plenty of tapas and unlimited sangria to the background of forced laughter, awkward conversation and silent urges pulsing in my fingertips to pull any fire alarms I see to end the occasion early.
 
Even in the company of unlimited sangria.
  
Drinking - heavy and plentiful drinking - was a thing my 18 years of locked up angst adapted to quickly and efficiently once I arrived at college. The stream of long nights blurred with dancing and seducing, phone number exchanges and searches for misplaced cell phones, 24-hour Burger King runs and 10:00 a.m. discussion sections for my Modern Germany class dressed in my outfit from the night before provided distractions of allure and a rush of constant movement that never faded for me.
 
Graduation from college didn’t change the quantities consumed, only the settings. Rather than plastic red cups of keg beer at Phi Delt’s off-campus apartment, it was now a bottle of red in my apartment while sitting on my couch and secretly crushing on Santino. Walks of shame past Hillel and the engineering buildings turned into 6:30 a.m. cab rides and a quick stop at McDonald’s for hash browns before arriving at the office. A break-up with a college boyfriend just days after graduation only pushed me to move harder, move faster during those months as a newly inducted player of the real world. I just needed to move.
 
Then came the news of the upcoming office holiday party. My first. I considered my options - newly guaranteed employment, top-shelf open bar, and my own personal patterns of non-stop double-fisting even around unlimited alcohol - and became nervous. Moderation and I have never been words synonymous. 
 
Tales regaled by a roommate of her co-worker who arrived at work the day after theirs only to be handed a box of his things by security and a message that he had been terminated for his gin & tonic-influenced words and wandering hands only frightened me further. Instant sympathetic recognition and thoughts of Fuck! Could that be me?? as responses to this story made me understand that extreme measures had to be taken to prevent me from being this man when my own office party happened in a few days.
 
So, on the night before this office holiday party two years ago from present, I called my friend Brendan to inform him that the goal for the night would be to get me so drunk that the mere sight of alcohol would discourage me from consumption the next evening among my coworkers. A goal that began as a joke and very, very quickly became reality. Sake martinis at Japonais, liters of wine at the (then) newly-opened Quartino, gimlets - gimlets! - with the escargot and cheeseburgers at late-night spot Bijan’s Bistro, and I was tanked. And to encourage matters, my now boyfriend who was only a boy I had just met a few weeks earlier when Brendan had dragged me to his apartment party had joined us by this point. Who welcomed the challenge to get me so drunk that the mere sight of alcohol would discourage me from consumption the next evening among my coworkers. Which soon led to wild giggling over the waitress’ indignation at our order of “ESSS-CAR-GITS” and drunken French blabbing of how our serveuse de coquetels needed a sens de l’humour and forced Brendan to find us too caustic to humor any longer and leave.
 
Leave us - me and this boy who caused butterflies and sparks but a boy I had just met a few weeks earlier - to end up in his bed. Leave me to slur that my mouth was too dry for kissing and leave him to run to the kitchen to bring me a 24-ounce glass mug of water that I could barely lift to my mouth. Leave us to have sex for the first time. And leave me to text my coworker at 4:30 in the morning something involving many misspellings, exclamation points and pleas to bring me suitable work attire the next morning for me to wear.
 
She found me cowering behind a pillar in the lobby of our office building the next morning and burst into laughter at the sight of me, hungover and hair messily pulled into a ponytail held by a miniature red and white scarf that I had stolen from the snowman soap dispenser I had found in his bathroom (Ed. note: I learned many months later that the snowman soap dispenser had been sent in a care package from his mother). She threw into my hands a Bloomingdale’s Medium Brown Bag stuffed with clothing and told me that I had better replace my jeans right away. Because our office? Is a very professional setting where I may be able to pass off a hungover face and a messy ponytail held in place by a miniature scarf stolen from a snowman soap dispenser but jeans? Jeans were completely unacceptable.
 
I scoured through the shopping bag and considered my options. Faced with the decision between a pair of brown pants that ended right above my ankles and a black skirt that ended right above my knees - a pair of pants that ended below the ankles and a skirt that ended below the knees of my co-worker who at 5′2″ is 5 inches shorter than me - I erred on the side of slutiness rather than unfashionable, and chose the skirt.
 
And for the rest of the day, I sat in an unlit office with my head unable to move beyond a 45 degree angle from my neck. I grimaced at comments of my festive appearance. And silently cried on the inside when 65-year-old Susie asked me where she could get hairties that looked like little scarves for her granddaughters.
 
But I made it to the office holiday party that evening that began at 6:00 p.m. And while coworkers ordered glasses of white and sipped on scotch, I drank my water and averted my eyes away from the bar. And when the younger attorneys and staff decided to move the party to Suite Lounge on Wells and told me I was not allowed to go home that early, I went along. And shot the Lemon Drops. And drank the Carrot Cake Martinis. And sipped the Chambord + Sparkling Waters. And realized that my body had become so accustomed to alcohol running through it’s internals that it no longer presented any discernible effect. My coworkers talked brutal about other coworkers, danced on table tops, screamed profanities at cab drivers, and I watched bewildered, shocked that I had felt worried about my possible behavior.
 
It prepared me. And reinforced the life lesson that one should always get drunk when the opportunity is available. So when the night before last year’s office holiday party came, I spent it indoors, away from Sake Martinis and Gimlets, and went to bed early, like an athlete preparing for his big game the next day. But the party was no festive occasion because an older attorney at our firm, the father of the managing partner, had passed away the night before. And while the party was still held, it was no time to chug down the endless drinks I had prepared my body for. Naturally.
 
One more year has passed from that day and the night of another holiday party is now upon me. And yesterday evening - the night before tonight’s holiday party - I went to dinner with the same boy I spent the night before my office holiday party two years ago, the boy who is now (finally!) my boyfriend. We enjoyed their delicious focaccia with taleggio cheese, truffle oil (Ed. note: I would bathe in truffle oil for the rest of my life if I could somehow afford this to happen) and herbs to start. The New Zealand snapper with shaved fennel, pomegranate, celery leaves and coriander followed soon after and was consumed in minutes, prepared to perfection. The meal also saw a bottle of Portugeuse Bruto Rosado. We made jokes that the bottle was for me and we should get a glass of something for him. But by the end of the night, my boyfriend had drank more of the bottle than me. And after our bill was paid, we ran over to Sepia for a nightcap to celebrate the anniversary (Ed. note: My boyfriend and I like to celebrate atypical anniversaries. We’re kind of forced to because of the very odd way we came together. We agree to look at it as humorous). Avec had been perfect as always, and Sepia was wonderful. But my happiest moment of the night was when we ended up in the same bed we had ended up in two years ago. And instead of feeling disgustingly drunk, I felt calm, content, and giddy.
 
And of course there was sex. Sex that I could remember today.
 
So this evening poses as my third chance. Dressed in my own work attire and not a bit hungover, it’s one more opportunity to indulge my insatiable thirst for alcohol on the company dime. And perhaps it’s a product of age or feeling less like I’m desperately running from my demons and more like I’ve gained some control over a life and behavior I once thought of as uncontrollable, but it’s a thirst I’ve seen become less insatiable over the past two years.
 
However, it’s still a party with coworkers, where the setting will be of forced laughter, awkward conversation and silent urges pulsing in my fingertips to pull any fire alarms I see to end the occasion early. And because drinking oneself obscenely drunk is still not technically illegal - unlike pulling a fire alarm when there is no fire - you can damn well bet that much of that unlimited sangria will be ending up in my stomach.