I have a long history of drunken stupid things. There are more drunken stupid stories on this blog than I can link up in that sentence. I’m not exactly proud of it, but excessive drinking and stupid things have given me some good stories. This is one of them.

A friend of ours is the progeny of a successful Hollywood something or other. Her family lives in a huge mansion on top of a big hill overlooking the entire city of Los Angeles. It is such a massive estate that she could have parties with her parents at home and they wouldn’t even notice. For a while there, when she still lived at home, that’s exactly what she did.

At one such party, Male and I got pants-on-head drunk. A few hours before, trying to be a responsible drunk, Male asked me if I could drive home since he was, in fact, stupid drunk. Being only half-stupid drunk at the time, I said sure. Yet, because I was already half-stupid drunk, I went the rest of the way to stupid. Why waste half a stupid?

We cavorted. We swam in the hot tub and sat in the pool. We climbed hills and made out with random strangers on piles of firewood. We said WOOOOOO a lot. I spent some hours looking for a bathroom. I walked in on my friend’s parents.

“Allo, mystery and mishuss Hollywood. You have a lovely gnome. I’m looking for the ladies. Do you have a spare sherpa you could loan me? Have a night nice. WOOOOOO.”

Finally, as is its habit, the sun came around to the swank hills of Hollywood and shed a pallid light on the night terrors. There were people passed out everywhere. It looked like a virulent tornado had swept through, bestowing a fatal disease on the people and spreading plastic cups asunder. There was a plate in a tree and several at the bottom of the pool.

The sun scorched my eyeballs as it and Male tried to wake me up. I was half in the pool. Fortunately, my breathing parts were on dry land.

“We need to go now.” Male was saying. “Are you still alright to drive?”

“I’M UP!” I said with a splash as both of my fists slammed on the water and kept going. I wondered if I had peed myself… a lot. I dragged myself out of the pool like the first primordial ooze that would someday come full circle by evolving into me. Dripping and sagging, we walked the long way down to the bottom of Hollywood hill. Instinctively, I walked to the passenger side.

“You’re driving.” Oh crap.

I can drive stick. I’ve owned several manual cars, but Male had a stupid European sports car with the most impossible stick shift in the history of manual transmissions. It was a test of cognitive ability. Sober, I barely passed that test, but drunk and half awake, well, there was a lot of grinding and thumping.

Strangely, the fact that I was barely awake and in various states of intoxication seemed to work to my advantage in the battle between stick shift and me. I got us onto the freeway. Why don’t I ever have sunglasses when I need them?

We were halfway home and moving from one freeway to another. I slowed to merge, down-shifted and the whole thing went kablooey. I pulled the lurching, shuddering beast over to the side of the freeway and stopped.

“I think I killed the clutch.”

“Shit.”

“Your car hates me.”

“Maybe because you tried to kill it and succeeded.”

“Now what?”

“Now we call a tow truck.”

Arrangements were made for tow trucking. “They’ll be here in 15.”

“Now what?”

“We wait 15 minutes.”

I decided the best use of our time was to give Male a blowjob. I had just killed his car after all. It was the least I could do.

It was only after the tow truck pulled up, backed into position in front of us and two guys knocked on the car window that we noticed their presence. My head popped up like a prairie dog and immediately melted into my hands in shame.

These same guys gave us a ride to Male’s house. They didn’t say a thing, but they were smirking and trying not to laugh the whole time. I could only imagine the story that would be told back at the garage. They’re probably still telling that story. “This one time…”

From time to time, Male still complains about the time I killed his car because he’s a whinging bastard. He leaves the embarrassing ending off though.

Don’t drink and drive, kids.