Let us begin.

The Silver Fox calls me Thursday afternoon and informs me that he’ll be here in Chico in two hours. Pretty short notice, but I don’t care. The Silver Fox and I always have a wild time when he comes to visit. I hang up the phone and go buy beer.

The Silver Fox roars into the parking lot around six o’clock. He walks up the stairs and in the door, not saying a word, and hands me a beer while cracking open one of his own. It’s on.

“I need to get drunk. We’re getting drunk. Let’s get drunk, Tom!” he said to me, finishing his beer and crushing the can with his hands.

“I’m hungry. Should we eat?”

“Nah, then we won’t be able to drink as much.” I tell him.

“We’ll get drunk faster too.”

“Yeeeeeaaaahhhhhh!!!”

This is a typical conversation in my group of friends.

We pound beers in my apartment until 9 o’clock, then we decide that we’d better get going. The Silver Fox is still wearing his work clothes.

“Should I change dude?” he asks me.

“Nah fuck it. Let’s just go.”

The Silver Fox is wearing some beat up blue jeans, a dingy white thermal long sleeve shirt and some other blue shirt over the top of that, with his ratty black leather work boots. He decides he wants to polish them before we go, and I’m getting impatient. He tries to open the can of polish but it’s stuck. He’s cursing and struggling with it and finally it gets loose, and big black chunks of old shoe polish go all his shirt, my counter, and my floor. And we’re laughing like a couple of hyenas.

“You jackass!”

“You fucking jackass!”

One would think that it would be easier to take off your shoes first before polishing them, but not my buddy The Silver Fox. He’s standing up, bent over, swaying, and trying to polish the shoes on his feet. He keeps losing his balance and bumping into things. I’m sitting the corner, taking it all in. The Silver Fox couldn’t find the brush for the polish so he takes chunks of it with his fingers and tries to smear it all over his boots. Finally he gives up. His boots have big splotches of polish all over them. They look terrible. He missed spots everywhere.

“Ah fuck it, too much work! Let’s go! Come on!” he makes an onward! swoop with his arm as he says this, and we leave.

First we go to the Graduate. Then we go to the Bear. We watch two girls kiss for a bit. I decide I’m not drunk enough. It’s time for shots.

“Let’s do a shot! I’m not drunk enough yet, we need to get more drunk. This Coors Light isn’t doing it for me. I can’t drink this stuff fast enough to get drunk, can you? What do you want?” I ask him, slurring my words badly.

“Tequila.”

“Negative. Jager?”

“Captain Morgan! That’s what pirates drink!”

This is sound reasoning as far as I’m concerened. What’s good enough for pirates is good enough for me. So we get a round a shots, and then another, and a third. We finish off our pitcher of beer and stumble to Joe’s Bar.

Joe’s Bar is my bar. I’m there at least 3 times a week. I know all the bartenders, all the waitresses, and all the bouncers. And they know me. I tip $2 every round, even if the drink is only a buck. Many times I’ve slipped the bouncers a $20 to get me and my friends in the back door. When they see me coming the shake my hand and call me by my name, and I feel like the King of Town. When I walk up to the crowded bar, I get service before anyone else. Waitresses fight each other to serve me. Best of all it’s only a few blocks from my apartment, so I can get blackout drunk and stumble home.

The Silver Fox and I get there right before midnight, and there wasn’t a line yet, so we walked right in. The Silver Fox asks me why we haven’t been carded yet tonight, and makes a crack about us being 31 years old. I hate thinking about my age so I brush it off and go straight to the bar.

Bloody marys with extra beans and veggies. The Silver Fox procedes to knock his drink over. I apologize to the two guys next to us. The Silver Fox says he heard them talking shit, and now he wants to fight. Shit, I want to fight too. I don’t know why, but I’m angry and I want to fight too. Then I see a girl I that looks familiar.

“Dude! You see that girl with the black hair sitting at the bar? That’s Kevin Berkowitz’ old girlfriend!”

“No way! Let’s go say hi!”

So The Silver Fox and I start walking over to talk to this girl. As I’m taking a sip of my drink I notice that his fingernails are completely black. And his fingers. And his palms. The Silver Fox never washed his hands after fighting with the shoe polish. I laugh and bloody mary mix shoots out my nose. This prompts another round of “you jackass.”

I clean myself off and compose myself. The Silver Fox and I talk to this girl for like five minutes. I’m asking her about Kevin, and what she’s doing up in Chico, and how she likes graduate school and all that stuff. It’s so loud I can’t hear a word she’s saying. I’m really drunk by this time too. Finally she excuses herself.

The Silver Fox turns to me and says, “That girl was acting like she didn’t know you.”

Then something clicks in my head, and I realize that she wasn’t Kevin’s ex girlfriend. She looked familiar to me, because she was in one of my classes last year. I admit this to The Silver Fox, and I am a jackass for the 100th time of the night.

Now we switch to salty dogs. At this point we’re so stupid drunk that we really have no business whatsoever drinking any more. A salty dog is grapefruit juice with vodka, and salt around the rim. It’s my favorite cocktail. The bartender is a cute chick with red hair and a big behind that I flirt with every chance I get. She pours my drinks so FAT it’s ridiculous. Tall glasses of ice with vodka, and a splash of grapefruit. I don’t know how many we had. I lost count after 3.

Then, blackout.

I wake up at 11am. The Silver Fox is lying in bed next to me, and has stolen both my pillows. I’ve still got all my clothes on, including my shoes. Thank god I didn’t lose my shoes. Why isn’t The Silver Fox in his sleeping bag on the pads on the floor where he always sleeps? What the fuck happened last night?

The door is wide open, again. SIGH. I don’t know what it is about us, why we can’t close the god damn door? There are leaves all over the floor in my apartment, EVERYWHERE. There are about 20 pairs of wet socks on the floor. I just did laundry, so I don’t know where the hell all these dirty socks came from. Everything is wet. My clothes are soaking wet. My bed is wet and full of leaves. The Silver Fox took off all his wet clothes, he’s in his boxers. He managed to get his 3 pairs of jeans he brought with him wet. How this happened I don’t know, he only wore the one pair he was wearing when he walked in the door. Beer cans are everwhere. Chairs are knocked over, shit is everywhere, it’s a disaster.

“Dude. DUDE. What the fuck happened last night?”

I don’t know. We both blacked out. We can’t piece it together.

Then I hear a moan in the bathroom. It’s not The Silver Fox, he’s right here next to me. A girl comes walking out and simply says to us, “I have to go home.” She walks out the door and leaves, and we don’t say a word.

I start to survey the scene.

I walk in the bathroom and there is pizza in my shower.

There is puke all over the floor.

I find a full can of beer in my oven.

I open the silverware drawer and it’s full of water.

I find a pair of jeans that belongs to neither The Silver Fox or myself.

The Silver Fox’s sleeping bag is soaking wet. The floor is wet. Everything is wet. Jesus, why is everything wet?

Crime in Italy, what the fuck happened last night?

I can’t take this. I don’t remember anything after the salty dogs, and neither does The Silver Fox. My head is pounding. I feel like shit. I sit down at my desk with my head in my hands.

I do the only thing a man can do in this situation. I crack open a beer.

Now it’s Friday night and my apartment is more or less cleaned up. The Silver Fox went home hours ago. I’m still finding pieces of pizza, beer cans, and leaves here and there.

But at least I’ve got my shoes.