Bobcat Bacchanalia

Old friends are the best kind sometimes (as in you've known them a long time, not as in they're decrepit and smell like mothballs).

My friend Ashley is in town for a few days for all the goings on surrounding the Improv Olympics. Ashley and I went to college together at OU for two quarters until she transferred to another school. She was roommates with Heather and we all lived here. We had really good times in college, such as wearing Ashley's bra as a hat, screaming obscenities at hockey games and "decorating" the boys' floor with tampons colored in red marker.

I haven't seen Ashley in something like 8 years, so when I found out she was coming to town I was ecstatic and promised to pick her up at the airport. As a side note, let me just tell you how cool and native I felt going to pick up my friend at O'Hare all by myself without any help. It was so Chicago of me. I was almost as excited about picking someone up from the airport as I was about seeing my friend after nearly a decade.

Our plan was to check her in at her hotel, her shower and get dressed because she didn't want to be airplane fabulous all night, grab some dinner somewhere, and then meet up with a bunch of her friends for an improv show. This would have been all well and good if it hadn't taken us over an hour to find her hotel in Evanston. This is not my fault: when the directions say to travel 5 miles, I don't regularly assume that by "five" they mean twelve. We traversed the street twice before finally calling the hotel and demanding a list of landmarks to guide us to our destination (which Ashley dutifully checked off as we passed them and cheered loudly). So by the time Ashley was ready to go in her way awesome strapless dress and cutest shoes ever (I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt that reads "I taught your boyfriend that thing you like." which Ashley thought was awesome and tried to take a picture of, but it looks like she was just trying to take a picture of my boobs), we had to skip dinner because we were going to be late for the show. This was maybe not the best idea.

When we get to Wrigleyville and friggin' PARK, Ashley calls her friends from her improv troupe so we can met them for the show, and is told that we won't be attending the show after all since all the tickets are sold out. As an alternative plan, they've decided we should just drink tons of beer all night long (except for Ashley, who rocked it hard core with double shots of Malibu and coke), which was great for the two of us since we'd eaten nothing at all the entire day. Consequently I was drunk in 11 seconds.

Ashley's friends are awesome and funny and quick, and Dave pointed out to me that I should probably have expected that since they all do improv comedy, which was a very good point I thought. In short order we started telling some "this one time at college" stories, which in turn caused me to say "Hey, we should call Heather!"

"OH MY GOD WE SHOULD TOTALLY CALL HEATHER!!!!" I love Ashley because she says this like she thought it up and I didn't just say the exact same thing one second ago. And also because where Heather lives it's 1:30 in the morning on a Wednesday night. It took us a couple of tries to get it right however. The first call we completely screwed up so we had to try again. What follows is an e-mail I got from Heather this morning, which will describe this event much better than I could (because she was not drunk):

-A detailed account of Heather Moyer's activities between 1:20am and 1:50am on August 11-


Heather is sleeping. She hears the phone ring, but she never answers the phone while she's half-asleep because if it's really important, the person will call back right away.In the background, Heather hears an oddly distorted message, but can't make it out as the machine is too far away from the bedroom.


Suddenly, Heather's cell phone rings. Her stomach drops because that now means someone is dead or something is on fire. Amy grumbles about who the hell is calling us right now.


Heather gets up, staggers into the living room, steps on the cat, steps on the cat's sharp toy, and then turns the light on. The cell phone has stopped ringing, so Heather listens to the message on the machine.


The following is a transcript of that message on the home phone number's answering machine:
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(loud noise and garbled words), HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH, CRAP, SHIT, WHAT? HAHAHAHAHAH
aslgijwogijwerovijnoivjhioerjhvboijhweroibhoi!!!!!
*beep*
------------
Now Heather listens to the message on her cell phone's voicemail. The following is a transcript of that message:
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(very loud background noise)
Okay Heather. this is Ashley and Amber, for real. We're leaving you a message, we would like to apologize for whatever message is on your phone. HAHAHA!!!!!!!!!
And now we are clearly drunk, ahhahahahahahhahahahaha!!!!!!!
laishfolahifsadghiwiouvbhuiweb!!!!!!!!!!
Mindy is someone I know who Amber only met tonight and Mindy is using Amber's vibrator in her nether regions!!!!!
hahahhaahfgoaihgwoirhgouwerhgvaosifhoaihvoahvoh!!!!!!!!!
*beep*
------------
Heather's lovely wife rolls over to ask what's going on after hearing Heather say, "Those fuckers" while laughing.


For the next 20 minutes as Heather tries to go back to sleep, she will just start to doze off and then start giggling uncontrollably at what the hell just happened. The words "nether regions" keep making her crack up and Amy is
getting irritated that Heather keeps shaking the bed with her laughter.
FIN

I really only remember the rest of the night in snips, such as Ashley's dress falling down and Dave saying something about it being a Jesus dress because it rose again, and Sam managing to sing all of "Piece of Shit car" at kareoke without swearing, and drunk dialing the bartender because someone said the word "manhole" which is a now defunct bar he used to manage (bartender: What are you doing up? me: Dude, someone just said manhole so I called you! bartender: It's not there anymore. It's closed. me: I know! And Mindy just kissed Ashley's teeth! bartender: *click*), and trying to get my keys back from Mindy, who did indeed have my keychain vibrator in her nether regions.

It was a completely awesome night and I'm so glad I got to see her, and so sorry we made her walk about 5 miles up and down Clark Street in her fabulous but totally impractical shoes. And so disappointed that we waited 8 freaking years to do that.