It's 9am Friday morning and I'm nursing a saaaad hangover with a giant bottle of water and a greasy egg and cheese sandwich.

About once every year I go to that third stage of inebriation: beyond shitfaced drunk. There's the tipsy stage. There's a fine line between tipsy and drunk. Then there's drunk. And then there's a fine line between drunk and "it's morning, I've slept 8 hours and I'm still drunk." About 8am this morning I walked a crooked line to the bathroom, tripping over my coat and jacket splayed out on the floor, beseeching the Lord to quiet the jackhammer going to town in my head.

Ladies and gents, I was fine for about 4 hours. I was just tipsy, and then BAM, the next minute I can't walk to the bathroom by myself nor make out who exactly is holding my hand, guiding me toward the restrooms. I skipped the whole drunk stage and went straight to "oh my God, how embarassing, what a lush, that's pathetic" bombed.

I joined L, a new "friend" (I'm going to start putting that word in quotes because friends in this city exit your life as quickly as they entered it) who gathered a group of people at a very loud and testosterone-filled bar. Mostly bankers, so any attention I garnered was quickly diverted to other women. Bankers are a fickle crowd. They can't seem to make up their mind on which girl to give their attention to, so they give it to all of them, and as the clock gets frighteningly closer to 2am, they pick one and start grinding them. Anyway, drinks and shots kept getting handed to me, so I drank them. And drank them. And drank them. During this time I chatted with several very good looking men whose personalities were as fascinating as a box of Bic pens.

I did find one Israeli guy who was cute and interesting but he didn't take the bite. I wonder why that was. Could it have been my insistence that "I will not convert. I will NOT convert to Judaism. I know you boys need to marry a Jewish girl, but I am not gonna go there." despite never even being asked to go out on a date, let alone get married and convert. Or maybe it was because I had him stop the taxi so that I could get out and puke over the stone wall lining Central Park.

Whatever the case, I made a complete ass of myself. I couldn't walk without L holding my hand. I spent 15 minutes puking into and clogging up the non-functioning one-stall bathroom of the hummus place everyone took me to in the hopes of sobering me up. The damned thing wouldn't flush. And the hummus place is owned by L's boyfriend. Lovely. Reminds me of the time I had a HIGHLY unfortunate rendez-vous with a broken toilet at a restaurant in Bangkok. I walked out of one restaurant, and 10 minutes later rushed into another, imploring the owner to let me use his bathroom, then bounded into the ladies room instead of the mens room, despite the trash can that was placed in front of the bathroom door barring anyone from entering, and despite the sign on the door that I later realized was a very bad translation of "Do not use. Broken." As I went to flush the toilet and noticed that nothing was happening, it suddenly dawned on me why that trash bin was placed there. I closed the lid, walked out and noticed the sign on the door that I had completely overlooked just minutes before in my haste to purge whatever parasite had made its way into my digestive tract. I dashed out of the bathroom, bowing to the owner on my way out, giving him a remorseful "My apologies to your plumber" look. Bad bad bad karma. And I wonder why crap happens to me. No pun intended.

Wow, I seem to have no shame. I'll talk about my bowel dysfunctions to complete strangers. Sorry for the details.