I woke up on Saturday morning mostly covered in dried blood. Sure, waking up in a random hotel while manwiching some bird is nice, but making your white sheets redder than the aftermath of a proper Victorian wedding is always a mood killer. After leaking bodily fluids all night, you’d think that I’d try to cool it the next night, right? Shit, I tried, but Sunday I woke up, scratched my head and got nothing but more dried gore. Another set of ruined pillows down and one very painful shampooing later, the questions finally wiggled their way through the fog of 48 hours of full-force fade. Sure, the bodily damage was easily explained by being a solid tumbler and getting repeatedly kicked in the head, but shouldn’t losing blood from pounding beers be the real concern? Well, the simple answer is maybe.
Del Playa tumblers be damned, smashing your body while you’re smashed is far from a local phenomenon. To quote the World Health Organization, “Hundreds of thousands of deaths occur each year due to alcohol-related intentional and unintentional injuries, and alcohol is involved in up to 30 percent of adult hospital admissions, particularly those to emergency rooms.” Basically, people are getting fucked up all over the world.
To put in more local terms, the La Crosse Tribune – the paper for the city that produces both La Crosse and Milwaukee’s Beast beers – reports that six percent of their hospital visits are alcohol related. If that number seems low, I’ll say it is fair to assume that only a tenth of drunken injuries are hospital-worthy. Thus 60 percent of this beer-obsessed community is regularly physically hurt from getting schlitzkrieged.
But the fact that getting blaquephaded leads to getting black and blue shouldn’t be new knowledge to any of you. What really comes up – especially when you babes have to explain the bruises on your well-tanned stems to your parents – is whether or not getting wrecked during a solid night of raging is proof of your awesomeness or a solid case for rehab.
On one hand of this philosophical double-fisting bodily harm isn’t necessarily a solid goal, but it is proof that you got out and went for it. While drinking enough to enjoy destroying your lovely young body is masturbatory masochism, wearing a scraped knee or facial stitches to your early Monday morning section proves that you had one hell of a weekend. It’s kind of like “Fight Club,” but with less frustration and more falling down. In this (probably bleeding) vein, injuries aren’t desirable, but repping them as proof of your ability to get doo doo lagonzo in your free time is a true badge of honor.
Don’t just take my word for it though. Look around your next Monday lecture and it’s apparent who actually enjoys their time off. On your left will be a guy who is in the library on Saturday nights — probably wearing a cup to protect his balls from unsolicited geriatric attention — and on your right will be a pretty young lady with scraped knees. Who is actually smiling? Almost always it’s the latter.
On the flip side, some people view their inebriation as a means to an end. It’s fairly safe to say that showing up at work with a bunch of soused scars is only going to label you as a sloppy drunk. While the rest of the departmental vice presidents fondle each other’s egos by slamming down Blue Label and making mildly high-powered dinner reservations, your bloody and bruised drunk ass will only have cheap strip club JOM to beat off to. While this may be a worst case scenario, there is something to be said about taking the “family reunion” philosophy on your drinking excursions. I’ve bartended enough swank dinners to know that only the smartest drunks get hammered beyond belief while still managing to keep it under wraps. Simply put, the only way to handle awkward situations while still ending up fondling someone cute is to get spypermed. As someone smoothly blacked out once said, “Hide your buzz from prying eyes, but drink enough to spread some thighs.”
As I continue to bleed on the keyboard, I’m far from apologetic. I went on one hell of a bender and that’s all I can ask out of life. But at the same time, I mostly managed to be my own contraceptive, and this cock-blocking of self makes getting classily crunk more than appealing. Oh well, what the hell. Either way is rad as fuck. I just need a drink.
