The Huntington Beach Incident of ‘09

I’ve held off on telling this story, largely because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to embrace how stupid it is, or if I wanted to take it to the grave with me. In the spirit of good memoirs, I’ve decided to embrace the stupidity.

For a couple of weeks during the summer, some buddies and I got into an escalating series of “Who will blink first” style encounters. It started out small, like drinking drinking two beers at once, or going to some ridiculous place for a beer. As my friends 25th birthday approached, things started to get more serious. One Friday night we decided we needed to do a road trip not 12 hours later. After some text messaging people for suggestions we received the suggestion of “Huntington Beach California”. For lack of a better suggestion, we concluded “Why the fuck not?!”

We set off early the next morning with no hotel reservation, no directions, and our GPS pointed the “town center” of Huntington Beach California. Descending out of the mountains, we started cracking the windows when the temperature hit the 80’s and were full windows down, volume 10 by the time we got beach side.

We found a hotel room, and after pumping up the air mattress, we set to disinfecting our stomachs with half a bottle of Smirnoff vodka we found on sale at the super market across the street. We had dinner beach side at a nice Mexican restaurant (Fred’s Mexican Cafe) that was just bawdy enough to support our antics, and just classy enough I could wear a nice shirt and feel like a douche. The Mexican restaurant was at the top of one of the biggest flights of stairs I’ve seen west of the Mississippi, as apparently are many of the areas local watering holes.

After dinner, we hit the towns beach side bars. I was really impressed at the pedestrian friendly environment they’ve created. You could stumble from bar to bar pretty effortlessly. We found a nice upscale bar on a corner that featured some lovely fish tanks, and liberal libations. As we were leaving, I tripped over something trying to get out, in all likelihood is was my own feet, but I don’t know for sure because some blond girl interjected, as I was defending my sobriety, “You’re drunk. You don’t have to lie to kick it.”

I said, “I’m not drunk, and were you born that blond sweetheart?”

This Short.

It was going to be one of those nights. I heard her swearing at me as we were walking away, and while trying to be cool I managed to trip going up the sidewalk on the other side of the street. Perhaps she was embracing the old latin adage of “Veritas” in some strange way. As my ego was recovering from the “See you next fall”, I saw a beautiful blond walking towards us. She was wearing a tight shirt, and the shortest blue jean skirt I’ve ever seen in my life. She had a stride like a model…from my dreams. She practically walked in slow motion, one foot in front of the other, and her high heeled shoes gave the most indulgent “clunk” as she strode her way towards us. As I was starting to slowly inhale, so that I could smell what I’m sure was the very expensive perfume she was wearing, she turned and went into the bar right in front of us.

I watched, half in awe and half in that way a wolf looks at a rabbit: She was a goddess. She stood at the top of this very steep flight of steps, and I stood at the bottom. As we were waiting, she was chatting up the bouncer for what felt like longer than appropriate for such a hot girl, and my mind was starting to wander. I wonder what her underwear looks like, I thought. So, as she was giggling to the bouncer, I started problem solving. The inherent flaw in drunk problem solving is that one often fails to consider the repercussions of solutions. The most eloquent idea I could come up with was to bend down and look up her skirt. And so, I bent down on humble knee, in prayer to this goddess. I felt my chin scrunch a little bit as I nodded my head.

“Nice” I thought, to her zebra leopard print thong. It was about this point that I heard an unbelievable shrieking. It was so obnoxious that it took me a second to decode what was being said.

“DOUCHE BAG! DOUCHE BAG!” I heard repeated over and over in a speed and pitch that should not have been used together. Hmm, I thought, I hope this shrieking doesn’t have anything to do with me, as I lifted my head slowly I saw the end of a finger, attached to an arm, held by a girl, pointing at me, and yelling “DOUCHE BAG!”.

“What?” I asked, refusing to believe that the jig was up.
“You were totally looking up my friends skirt!”
“What? No, I just dropped something.”

I found out later that while I was managing to keep a straight face, the gaping jaws of my friends who could not believe what they were witnessing was completely betraying my ability to play this one off. The bouncer bore witness to this whole event with the stalwart manor that only someone who works at night could muster. As I went up the steps, I handed him my ID.
“You really think you’re going to get in here now?”
“Yeah.” I said without the slightest hint of pomp.
“You’re going to leave her alone right?”
“Yeah.” I parroted again.
“Alright. Go on in”. He said, handing my ID.
“You know it was totally worth it right?”
“Yeah, I’m sure it was.”