In the immortal lyric of Rodgers and Hammerstein “I'm just a girl who cain't say no.” I've struggled with this affirmative affliction like mime struggling to order a soy skim triple latte from Starbucks, I just can't seem to get the message across. So when people ask things of me, anything, and sometimes things I really don't want to do I find me mouth possessed by a demon of yes. And I don't come from a place of yes in a Bethenny Frankel positive outlook on life kind of way, I'm just a pushover. I'm also a sucker for new experiences, even unpleasant ones, if there's even an inkling of a chance I'll get a good story out of it. Hell, I'd settle for a mildly amusing blog entry (see: 80% of my posts).
So when the opportunity to bartend for an unknown event at an undisclosed location on the south side for an unaccounted for sum of money to be determined at a later date and or never, what ever came cheaper, I of course jumped at it the opportunity like it was a sale at Marc Jacobs.
I came to find the event was a Mexican birthday party for 250 people in a high school auditorium. Now when it comes to gays Latin men usually fall into two categories– closeted family oriented alpha gays with nice arms and unmistakably flaming power bottoms. And lets face it people I'm gayer than a quinceanera party dress and just as likely to be groped by an older man after too many shots of tequila. I've found in my time that most people will forgive any volume of gayness as long as you're doing one of these three things:
- Selling clothes
- Cutting hair
- Serving drinks
I figured as long as I was making the anejo flow nobody would care that I'm fruitier than a holiday cake.
Then there's the little problem of language, not only do I not even speak enough Spanish to know what I'm ordering in a Mexican restaurant but I've got dark skin and a mustache so most people just assume I'm Latino which is only helpful when trying to appear ethnically diverse for scholarship applications. It's not uncommon that people just come up to me and start speaking in Spanish. This event was no exception, only it didn't really matter I'm pretty sure that tequila is the same. If someone came up to me and said something I didn't understand I just handed them a tequila and Squirt and sent them on their way. Most didn't seem to care what I made as long as it had tequila in it. I did develop a whole new disdain for mariachi music. In small doses its festive, albeit a little difficult to dance to. But for 6 hours straight blaring into a high school auditorium at brain melting volume, it's just excruciating. There is a certain absence of discernible melody and song structure that makes it seem like every song will just go on forever.
And it did go on. Even the host underestimated just how much Tequila 250 mexicans can drink. Let me break it down for you, a fifth of alcohol contains roughly 17 drinks, if you only pour an ounce and a half of alcohol in every drink. However, if guests are ordering doubles, tequila on the rocks, or double sized shots expect to get about 12 drinks out of every bottle. Meaning you will need about 15 bottles of tequila for a party of 250 if about 75 of the guests are underage and if, and this is the BIG if, every of-age guest only has one tequila drink. Over six hours plan for every guest to have five drinks, maybe only four will be tequila and the last a cerveza. Still that's 60 bottles of tequila. At cost that much tequila will run you about $2400, and that's not pesos my friend.
We started with three bottles of tequila. I looked over at the host and shook my head. I told him he would have a mass riot on his hand if he didn't buy at least another two 1750mL bottles, or jugs as they would be referred to at that point.
From Mexican endeavors to Caribbean ones I received about a hundred text messages from my mother regarding our upcoming vacation via boat to Belize. And despite my propensity for cruising sailors as they port in Chicago, cruising with them as they deport from Galveston Texas is a whole other thing. I hate boats. I hate everything about them. They attract tacky people, tropical shirts, and children who urinate in pools and other inappropriate places. I don't even like things that live in the sea: whales, mermaids, sharks, cephalopods, Kevin Costner. Although I do applaud my mother for picking a cruise destination doesn't stand a remote chance of ever encountering an iceberg I wholly intended to pass this family vacation up.
“What do you mean you don't want to go?” My mother was alarmed, like she had just presented me with my lottery winnings and I declined.
“I'm busy, I have a term paper due.”
“You graduated three years ago.”
“So you can imagine my rush to finish it.”
“Boats are fun, you can wear your tuxedo and drink martinis.”
“I can do that at the Lyric Opera, but continue.”
“You can snorkel in exotic reefs.”
“I don't care so much for that. I don't know maybe if I had a boyfriend this would be tolerable but being single and in a cabin with my sister for a week doesn't appeal to me.”
“A lot of rich older Jewish men go on cruises. Maybe you can meet one of them at a showing of Fiddler on the Roof in the theater.”
Silence. My mother knew my kryptonite: well-to-do older jewish men, and she knew I was powerless to resist. Plus I've always wanted to sing the opening number from Anything Goes on an actual ship deck.
“Okay, but I want a balcony suite.”
“You'll have to share it with your sister.”
“Okay but I want fresh cut tea roses in my suite every morning.”
“Where are they going to get flowers in the middle of the ocean?”
“Fine, I'll settle for Veuve Clicquot and some chex mix.”
“Make it Freixenet and you've got yourself a deal.”
And so it was decided. My mother tempted me with bubbly and potential hubby. All that was left was to find a way to fit my entire closet into one piece of luggage. After weeks of outfit pulls and major edits a la Rachel Zoe I had managed to curate a weeks worth of nautical themed outfits. There was just one thing left to take care of, I thought looking down at my perfectly packed suitcase. Gucci. Who would watch Gucci? Which of my extensive list of twitter friends would be available to watch Gucci? Who should I tweet? There was Karl Lagerfeld, but we're hardly speaking since I passed up Chanel as a potential cat name. Anderson Cooper was trustworthy but Gucci hates liberal media. Jennifer Hudson? Too loud. Kristen Chenoweth? Too high pitch. No, clearly none of my Twitter friends were going to do.
As I poured over my iPhone for contacts I noticed that Gucci had hopped into my open luggage. That's cute I thought, and the perfect picture for a post about how I need a catsit–wait, nope he's definitely just mistaken my open luggage for a litter box. Luckily the zip lining is waterproof and I'm like a swat team when it comes to cat pee clean up now. For his digression Gucci was promptly shampooed and locked in the bathroom with dry food and water for an hour to think about what he'd done.
And because a bladder blooper wasn't enough trauma for one night I opened my laptop to see if Oprah responded to my e-mail about Gucci crashing in her guest room and instead saw that I had an e-mail from Princess Cruises informing me that the ship I was going to board in three days had an outbreak of norovirus. I actually conveniently knew exactly what norovirus was because I happened to read about it in a sanitation catalogue sitting in the manager's office at work. Ordinarily food poisoning doesn't frighten me since I drink enough high proof alcohol to obliterate any bugs living in undercooked meat. But this particular gastrointestinal illness leads to uncontrollable and forceful projectile vomiting. Oh hell no. I'm wearing Viktor and Rolf and I'll be damned if I'm going to let some seasick hillbilly in a hawaiian shirt toss cookies on my couture. Suddenly this trip seemed more ill conceived than Bristol Palin's bastard child.
I knew what needed to be done.
I opened up a new message and typed:
Dear Andrew Lloyd Webber,
you clearly have a soft spot for cats…
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