i'm going to change the name of my partner in crime for this event because he has a life now. but if you know me, you know who it is.
charleston, south carolina 9:30pm - december, a long time ago. i'm at home, doing nothing. i'd been deathly ill & was on antibiotics. when my door comes flying open & my friend, max, pretty much falls thru it. he's wearing a suit, & he's so drunk i can barely understand him... something about a swedish meatball landed on his shoe at the party, so he took his shoe off & ate the meatball off of his shoe. max is an attorney. he was at a party with other attorneys trying to schmooze with them to get a job since he'd only recently moved to charleston & hadn't even taken the bar exam for that state yet. max & i are both from west virginia & had been friends for years. he'd had sex with all of my friends. and their sisters. and their sisters' friends. charisma is his middle name. i might be the only female that did not have sex with him. so max is drunk. too drunk to go drinking, so he wants me to take him drinking. ok, fine. i have on a t-shirt & jeans. i grab my flip flops, $3 & my ID so i can get into a bar. i'm not drinking. i have to finish my antibiotics. we walk outside & i say "we're taking your car" (his car was nicer than mine). he says "well, we have to find it" max tried to drive to my house, but somewhere along the route he was literally too drunk to drive it, so he abandoned it. not like "oh i better not drive because i'm drunk" but like "holy shit, this is just too hard" too drunk to drive. so we roam around & find it. he wants to go to his house & change out of his suit. fine. as we're driving away from his house, i'm asking him where he wants to go. now i think everyone knows how annoying drunk people are when you're sober. he was about 732 times more annoying than that. he's complaining that he's been to every bar in charleston (true) & that he wanted to go someplace he'd never been before. then he says "i want to go to mexico". people, mexico is over 1500 miles (2300 kms) from charleston, sc. its midnight, i have $3. he's wasted, but i'm sure he has a credit card. and he's pissing me off. so i turn the car around & i get on the freeway.
1st stop is within an hour. fill up the tank & get max more beer. if he sobers up, i'll never get him to mexico. thank god for his exxon gas card. by 5 am we're in atlanta georgia. he's still drinking but says his head hurts, so he ties a bungee cord around his head. by 8 am we're in alabama. at this point i explain we need to buy a map, this is as far as i can get us without one. we go into the truck stop. stock up on cheez-its & beer. we buy a toothbrush to share. we explain to beth, the cashier, that we're going to mexico. she tells us we'll never make it. i take a pen, i mark where we are on the map & notate that beth says we won't make it. i have her sign it. i also note our purchases. this becomes standard at every stop. i call my dentist, from a payphone (this is before cell phones were the norm), to cancel my appointment. a futile step toward responsibility. at some point we called my roommate because i needed him to find my car & get bring it home. he got mad & said i was going to have sex with max. this roommate was, at best, unstable & had a strange crush on me, so he was not happy with our plan. by noon (12 hours after leaving charleston) we are in new orleans, louisiana. we are half way to mexico. we have the clothes on our backs, 1 toothbrush, $20 cash between us (including my $3), and max's exxon card & visa card, that would not get us nearly as far as his credit cards today would. we get a room at a bed & breakfast in the french quarter on his credit card. we start walking around. we find a transvestite bar where we are greeted by a proper tranny who was missing a front tooth. but, alas they aren't open yet. i find another pay phone and call the restaurant i work at & explain i won't be at my shift, which starts in 15 minutes because i'm in new orleans. somebody yells "3 for 1 happy hour!!" i say let's go. max is convinced we'll ask for 1 drink, they'll give us 3, & charge us $12 (drinks were about $4 then). we order a kamikaze, they hand us 3 & charge us $4. oh shit. this is gonna get ugly fast. its a karaoke bar. i find myself sitting on a bar stool in the middle of the stage, wearing a sombrero while max sings me the song "aimee, what you wanna do?" by the pure prairie league. then he announces to the crowd that i'm amazing because we are going to mexico & i don't even have clean underwear. applause. i do believe max is still in possession of this video. 3 for 1 happy hour didn't go so well for me, and i ended up out on bourbon street throwing up (out of my nose). our waitress went in, grabbed max & said "hey! your girlfriend is outside throwing up!" he said "she's not my girlfriend." and continued dancing with the girls he found. at some point he picked me up off of the curb & took me for food. my memory of the story here is a little fuzzy, & i don't fully trust max's recollection either, but this is what he said happened. i walked into a pretty nice establishment (linen table cloths, proper stemware, 2 forks - and i'm in the same clothes for 36 hours, 700 miles, & puking on a curb), sat down at a table, used my arm to sweep everything off of the table, folded my arms onto the space i cleared, put my head down, & went to sleep. max sat down, ordered dinner, and ate it. the waiter says he should get me food. i'm gonna need it. so max gets me bread & soup. he picks me up when he's done & drags me back to the room. i find a cat & bring it back to the room with us. i am now chasing a cat around the room & eating soup with my hands. i crash into the massive 3 tiered dresser & break it. we pass out. in the morning max decides we have to fix the dresser because he can't get charged for it on his card. i take my $3 & go find glue. not an easy task in the french quarter. it's gorgeous, but it all looks the same. old buildings with wrought iron everywhere. so my raging hangover & i roam around where the houses, hotels, restaurants, and 7-11's all look identical until i find glue. we squirt elmers glue all over this thing, i play twister with the thing to hold it together while max showers. we trade, i shower. i come out of the shower, we look at each other & nod, he lets go, the whole thing, surprisingly, falls apart. he says, "we need tape" i use the rest of my $3 to buy tape. we wrap the whole dresser in scotch tape & lean it against the wall. its 9 am. we leave for mexico in quite a hurry & the car bottoms out leaving the parking structure. now the car starts making hideous noises, but we decide that's not going to interfere with our mission. i save a piece of the dresser. we see a Gap. they're having a sale. max buys us each 1 pair of new underwear. i think mine were $1.50.
we go to exxon to stock up on supplies. beer and more cheez-its. i will own up to the fact that we drove the rest of the way completely drunk. yes, i now know that's a horrible idea, but colorful decisions are rarely made without alcohol. so anyway, we're drunk by noon. somewhere in texas, max is calling the law firm that he potentially could have a job with. god. if they only knew. if they could only see him now. we get into nuevo laredo, mexico at 2 am, about 50 hours after leaving charleston. at the time, we didn't know you shouldn't vacation in border towns. we partied till about 4 am with some locals. the ladies really loved max, despite the fact that his idea of dancing had become literally flopping around on the floor like he was having a seizure. i had a large mexican man in a white cowboy hat trying to take me to KFC. we go look for a room. our 1st prospect was amazing. we walked thru this warzone/hallway of broken plaster, into a pepto bismol pink room where the walls were covered in mold, there was a stained mattress on the floor, a naked lightbulb dangling from the ceiling, & a broken shard of mirror propped up on the wall. it had "dead hooker" or "involuntary organ donor" written all over it. we eventually find a place that smells like bleach, so we take it.
the next day we relocate to another hotel, right on the main drag through town. a parade goes down the street. we have climbed out of our window & are on the roof, beers in hand, screaming & cheering for the parade. the whole parade is looking up at us. how the hell did we become the show? later that day, we are walking down the street at about 2pm. broad daylight. i get grabbed from behind & am being dragged down this dimly lit path between 2 tall buildings. i can't see who has me. they're behind me. it feels like everything is in slow motion. i see max react & start running toward me. he reaches out & grabs 2 handfuls of my t-shirt & starts pulling. they're playing tug-o-war with me. max wins & we run back to the street into daylight. no one even noticed, or maybe they didn't care or maybe it happens all the time. i was in shock. did i really almost just get kidnapped? maybe at that point we should've thought it was a good time to go, but we stayed another day. max does his xmas shopping here. i think his parents still have the santa clause pinata. we are down to our last $4, so max decides to have a contest. we each get $2, we go in opposite directions, & come back with the coolest thing we can find for $2. i come back with this beautiful, humongous glass vase. i still have it & i still love it. max comes back with this leather, detailed holster that goes on your belt, hangs down your leg, & ties around your leg... it's for holding a beer. so clearly he won.
we get in the car & start the drive back. max says to me "you can't tell your dad about this trip because he'll think i had sex with you." we drive to the border. mind you, this is day 5 of same clothes, sharing a toothbrush, & enough drinking to make charlie sheen look like he has good judgement. max is wearing some stupid leather hat he bought in mexico. we've been sleeping in out contacts for days so our eyes are off the chart of red. i'd been combing my hair with either my hands or a fork. we are in serious disrepair. we get to the border. we have west virginia plates on the car. both of us have south carolina identification. they don't like that. they don't like that we drove for 2 straight days to spend 2.5 days someplace. we look like hell. we probably smell like hell. they ask me what i do. i say "student". ok. they ask max what he does. "attorney". next statement from border patrol "pull your car over in that stall!!!" we have to get out of the car & they went through EVERYTHING. they took the tapes out of the cases. they unwrapped everything we bought. they put 2 drug sniffing dogs in the car. they separated us for in depth interviews that lasted over an hour. i think they were disappointed when they didn't find any drugs. they were sure we had them.
onward. following the same route on the map. i'd documented every stop, every detail, on that map, so when we get to alabama, i know exactly where the truck stop that beth works. i go in & ask if she's working. she's not. so i leave her a note. all it says is "we made it" & i folded the note up around some pesos. i wish i could've seen her face. we power through & get back to charleston in 1 piece. within a few days, we're back on the road, up to WV to spent xmas with our families. of course max tells my dad about our trip, but i didn't care. my dad knew i was smarter than to have sex with max.
max got the job with the attorney he called when we were drunk in texas. turned out to be a damn good job too.
i took the map & glued it onto cardboard, then glued the piece of the dresser, pesos, the toothbrush, & any little piece i kept of that trip, onto the map. max kept it for years, but it didn't last forever.
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