Story 45: Holy Hangover

My friend Ira got married a few years ago.  His wife implored us before his bachelor party, “Just don’t let anything bad happen to him.”  It’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy that if someone says that, you know, something like the film Hangover is bound to happen. As a matter of fact, it did.

Things started out okay, We had dinner at an awesome restaurant called Sammy’s Romanian.  A place located on the Lower East Side that had been around for more than fifty years. They are known for a singing waiter,  huge platters of meat, chicken fat instead of butter, vodka in blocks of ice, and home made ruggalach. My kind of place.

As it turned out, our bachelor party was well situated because there was a bachelorette party at the next table.  We got along swimmingly. As the night went on Ira got more and more intoxicated, but we decided to push on to our next step the proverbial strip club. We actually didn’t stay there that long, because after an hour, I looked for Ira and apparently he had disappeared. One of our friends told us that he had gone outside for some air, but when  we looked Ira wasn’t there either.

“Where could he be?” I asked.

“He probably just went home.” My friend Dave replied.

“Without telling anyone?” I answered in building anxiety.

No one knew what to do, so we just headed back to our respective homes. This was before people had cell phones. The next morning started off terribly however because I went into the kitchen and saw five flashing messages.  The night before there weren’t any messages.

“Oh no.” I said quietly.

I started to play back the messages, “Eric this is Dave have you seen Ira?”  I listened to all the messages. They were all similar.  Messages from Dave or Ira’s fiancee. After listening to more and more frantic messages, I picked up the phone and immediately dialed my friend Dave.

“What happened?” I asked my friend.

“He’s okay,” Dave replied sleepily. “Do you want to hear the whole story?”

“Of course.” I said.

“Apparently Ira left the bar by himself and started walking back to his apartment. However, instead of walking uptown, he started walking downtown in his drunken state.”

“Oh no.” I said.

“Wait,” My friend said. “It gets worse.”

“Ira was smart enough to figure out that he wasn’t getting anywhere so he hailed a cab and correctly gave the cabbie the right address on the Upper East Side, but when the car pulled up at the apartment, Ira threw up all over the back of the cab.”

“Who’s going to clean this up?” yelled the Sikh taxi driver.

“Sorry dude, not me, I’m too messed up.” Ira replied, and with that he gave the cabbie the fare and tip and stumbled out.

“Wow.” I laughed.

“Then,” My friend continued,  “He went to the front of the building and sat down in front of it like a guy from the bowery. The doorman named Sly  came over and started talking to him.”

“Hey Ira, you need help getting up to your apartment?”

“I’m alright.” Ira replied.

And with that Ira wobbled over to the elevator and pressed the floor to his apartment.

“But,” My friend continued, “When Ira got to his door, he tried to his open the lock but the lock wouldn’t open, so he closed his eyes to rest for a moment. The next day a jogger got up early for some exercise and sees a very well dressed man lying on his back like a cockroach in front of apartment 21K. The problem was that Ira lived in 22K. He got close, but didn’t make it to right floor.  His wife had called everyone frantically looking for him. from 1 to 6 am.  No one knew where he was.  Finally another doorman came up and got Ira to the right apartment. His wife was so relieved that he was okay, that she didn’t scream at him, at least not right away.” 

     Dave hung up the phone indicating that it had been a long night. I stared at the phone for a few moments, and blew a sigh of relief.  Later I called my friend to see how he was doing, and he indicated that beside a hangover he was fine. I agreed, and  fortunately, as Shakespeare said, “All's well that ends well.”

Life Lesson 45:  Tsun Tzu once wrote in his famous tome, The Art of War, “To keep  your friends close, but your enemies closer.”, but when it comes to sharing alcohol, friends and family should be kept even closer, because you always want to end up on top of things, not on your back and one floor short.