“Braaaad! Braaad in apartment one! Wake uuup!” I’m not Brad, and I don’t live in apartment one, but I woke up anyway. I don’t really think I can be blamed for that. It was 3:30 a.m., and the shouting outside of my window was of that unique timbre - drunk hoarse belligerent girl - that instinctively arouses alert panic in anyone who’s ever dealt with a drunk, hoarse, belligerent girl.
“Braaaaad! Come onnnn! It’s Sarah! I’m locked out, I have to peeeee and I’m druuunk off my - ”
I don’t think I can blame Sarah for being belligerent, either: It was cold, and I believe she had to pee. Because I am a sympathetic and caring person, I stared at her out of my window for a half hour, during which she kept screaming. Sarah finally stopped, collapsing into the snow in what were either urine-induced convulsions or drunken snow angels. She wasn’t there in the morning, but her message remained: School’s begun again. The streets will soon be seething with drunks.
There are few things as pleasant in execution and as painful in remembrance as being drunk.
It begins, of course, with the warm discovery that you have social skills. The distance between the table in the corner and the main mass of people is measured in a couple of shots. A few more shots and you’re standing in the center of the room, lecturing an enrapt crowd. A keg stand on top of that and you’re sitting on a throne while every girl in the room subtly propositions you by, well, being in the room.
I draw a curtain of discretion over the rest of the night’s decline. All of you know it well.
If that were all there is to being inebriated, I wouldn’t have anything to write about today. But it’s not enough to stay in a bar. What use, after all, is being electric and charming if you don’t bless everyone in East Lansing with that wit and verve? What good is it being drunk if you can’t totter around the streets?
It is not my intent to describe the experience of being drunk. This is, after all, MSU, and I may as well presume to explain what snow looks like. Instead, Sarah and, indirectly, Brad have inspired me to try and classify the publicly drunk.
First, of course, you have the Amateurs: those annoying people who stumble around a room saying, “Man, I’m so wasted,” soon get their karmic comeuppance and end up vomiting on their shoes. If they’re lucky, you can spot them in the prevomit stage, while they’re sitting, unsteady, on whatever flat surface they can find - curb, road, pool table - inhaling deeply. They’re under the delusion that if they can gasp loudly enough, they can go back in time and not drink so much.
Then you have the Slick Guys. It’s almost a cosmic rule: If a group of girls go out for the evening, at some point they will pick up a drunk man who tenaciously follows them from bar to bar, flirting with every one of them simply because he can’t remember who’s who. How did he get to the bars in the first place? Is he a deserted member of a pack of boys? We don’t know; all we know is he erratically orbits this pack of females. His night will end when he goes to the bathroom and finds that his new best friends have disappeared. You can see him walking home. Alone.
As pathetic as the Slick Guy is, though, there is not a more sad sight on weekend streets than the Old Man. The Old Man is easily distinguished by his turtleneck, leather bomber jacket, gold chain, and impeccably brushed, thinning hair. He often has a budding second chin. If you see Old Man, do not approach him, or else you will be pinioned and harangued about what it meant to party in 1985. If you are trapped by Old Man, tell him you were only 4 years old in 1985. He will have a stroke and you will be able to escape.
If Slick Guy and Old Man are the hyenas of public drunkenness, the Giggly Girl Packs are the gazelles. In the bars, these groups of five to 10 girls are easily distinguished by their eternally full Long Island Iced Teas and their hesitant, sporadic dancing. Finally drunk and outside of the bars, they are best characterized by their rapid, tottering walk. They walk quickly for three reasons: first, because it’s cold outside and they’re wearing a bandanna tied around their middle, and finally, because Old Man and Slick Guy are thoroughly creeping them out. They totter because they’re drunk and wearing 4-inch heels.
In time, a Giggly Girl will become a Jaded Girl. My personal favorite, the Jaded Girls no longer fear the Old Man and Slick Guy, because they have learned to emasculate them with a glance and a word. There is no euphemism in the Jaded Girl; ask her to dance and she will snort with laughter. Ask her if she wants to make out and you stand a chance. The Jaded Girl can be noticed on the streets because she walks steadily and quickly.
The majority of the men on the night streets are neither Slick nor Old: they are Dumb. Like the Giggly Girls, they are in packs; unlike the Giggly Girls, the Dumb Guys meander through East Lansing, shouting and laughing. If you see Dumb Guys, they will most likely be laughing at you. Why? Because, three hours earlier, one of them said “poop.”
This list is by no means exhaustive. It doesn’t cover everyone, and most people you will see outside are amalgams of these groups. Sarah, for instance, would seem to be combination Jaded Girl and Dumb Guy.
In any case, I hope you will keep this column in mind the next time you find yourself drunk and wandering the streets of East Lansing. Keeping in mind how you appear to others is, most likely, not how you seem to yourself.
Rishi Kundi, a medical student, can be reached at kundiris@msu.edu.
