Drunk of the Week

When you wake up after a night of carousing, two questions should emerge from your clouded mind:

1) Where am I?

2) Who am I with?

After our visit to the Denver Tech Center's b>Purple Martini\b> (8000 East Belleview Avenue, Greenwood Village), I placed an urgent wake-up call to the Head of Drinking Regrets. I had to pull the phone away from my ear when he dropped his phone, yelled the requisite expletive and then tried to regain control. Masking my sympathy for his situation with hysterical laughter, I asked, "Where the hell are you?"

"Wait a minute," he replied. "Oh, [really bad word], I'm still in my car."

The ideal place to find yourself the morning after is in the bed of an extremely attractive person of the opposite sex, your head at the foot, both of your bodies in some state of undress. We at the Institute of Drinking Studies officially recommend that you avoid finding yourself in the following places: Denver CARES, spooning one of your friends (even if you are the big spoon) -- unless that friend is an extremely attractive person of the opposite sex who now will never be able to look you directly in the eye; a large bush in front of the chancellor's building at the University of Wisconsin on November 1, 1990, still in your Halloween costume; your bathtub in room-temperature water; or your car, outside the Purple Martini, a half hour from work.

We certainly did not expect that our night would end this way, because the now-closed Purple Martini in LoDo was one of our all-time least-favorite bars. But its sibling in the DTC is a different animal. The bar itself is wide open and much more suited to highly mobile drinkers such as ourselves. We are like Vikings when we drink. We prefer the slash-and-burn approach to bar conversations, bouncing from victim to victim, spreading love (or at least trying to) and usually flitting away just as quickly, trailed by dirty looks or even a roundhouse jab meant for our chops or kidneys. At the Purple Martini, we even employed the scorched-earth strategy, which instantly ended any chance the Head of Drinking Regrets may have had with a young lady I targeted for scorn because her brother was one of those guys who wears his baseball hat backward, probably to prevent the glaring fluorescent lights from sunburning the delicate skin on the back of his neck. It could have been a salvageable situation, but then the Head of Drinking Regrets laughed.

In a rare exception to the rule, there appeared to be more women than guys at the bar (or maybe we executed multiple touch-and-gos on the same women). The beneficial ratio was partly our doing, as we'd called every woman we've ever known to come join us. You usually expect to hit less than .250 with this method, but the planets were aligned that night to wreak havoc on the Head of Drinking Regrets' social life. At one point he was working no fewer than four prospects -- a situation somewhat eased because one of the girls was there with another guy in what she swore was "a long story but not a date." As for the rest of his potential harem, he had to rely on us to prevent a flanking maneuver. This is how you learn who your real friends are: They'll screen women without stealing them, will hold your hair back as you scream at the toilet after several alcoholic indiscretions, will sometimes even spend the night in your car with you.

Although we commend all efforts to not drink and drive, there are better ways to avoid it than passing out in a DTC parking lot. The best way is to find a patsy who won't drink but will still hang out with several drunken morons until the wee hours, then cart them home without killing them as they harass him incessantly on the drive. Taxis are an option, too, but can be expensive and unreliable. Still, this was how we made it home, despite a critical error in judgment: When you call a cab (or multiple cabs, as in this case), you should give a better address than "the white Land Cruiser outside the Purple Martini." And even if a dispatcher listens to you, make sure you stay awake until the cab shows up. Trust us: Waking up to the sun blasting through your windshield and a buddy laughing at you over the phone is no way to start a new day.

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