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One Night In Austin

I debated the idea of writing this story for such a long time now I’m surprised i’m even typing these words. It always seemed like one of those nights you had to be there in order to understand how insane and unbelievable the whole thing was, but after about 2 years of retelling the story to family and friends and watching them laugh themselves to tears I decided it had to happen. The final straw was this morning when someone involved with the trip said “It was of those things so ridiculous and retarded that you have to write it.” So here it goes.

Everything detailed here is totally and 100% true. Names have been changed in order to protect people from any liability or judgment.

By Joe Kassabian

It was 2011 and once again I was staring down the barrel of a deployment to Afghanistan. Not that I was depressed or despondent about the whole thing, I volunteered for it. I know for family and friends back home reading this that’s going to be a bit of a shocker, since I told them all I was ordered to go. I had been back less than a year from my last deployment and didn’t feel like explaining to them I’m fucking insane and wanted to go back already (sorry guys). Like any other group of soldiers getting ready to go back to war we all wanted to go out and party like the world was going to end, we decided on Monday that we were going to drive the 45 minutes from Fort Hood to Austin, Texas and get hotel rooms.

At first the group started small with “Brad” and his wife “Lisa”, “Aaron” and his wife “Susan” and myself. The trip immediately sounded awful to me. I was supposed to go bar hopping with some married couples on what was supposed to be a wild night out before deployment, I immediately called Aaron and told him I wasn’t going to make it out sometime around Wednesday I gave him some bullshit reason and he called me a bitch and hung up. I figured I dodged a bullet and moved on.

Slowly I came to the conclusion that there was literally nothing else going on that weekend, and I was going to spend my last weekend of true freedom sitting in my depressing barracks room and watching the History Channel (holy shit no wonder why i’m single). I called Aaron and told him I was back in, at this point the group had grown to include a random Army wife that was friends with Lisa who I’ll call “Tracy”, Brad’s good friend “Chad”, and another couple “Mark” and his girlfriend “Beca”. Suddenly this seemed like an even worse idea then it had in the beginning, but what the hell else was I going to do?

Friday rolled around and like every other 20-something year old man, I totally forgot to pack. I didn’t care and waiting outside for Aaron and his wife to pick me up. Aaron’s little Honda screamed up to me with him hanging out of the window and death metal blaring and he yelled at me to get in. His wife sped off as soon as I sat down, and it turns out we weren’t going straight to Austin.

“We’re going to Daiquiri Express! Pre-gaming on the way mother fucker!” Aaron screamed in my face, I’m about 100% sure he had been drinking aggressively since we got off work a few hours before. Daiquiri Express is this amazing little ghetto shack on the side of the highway that is staffed by recovering meth addicts (Probably) that serves giants cups of whatever mixture of daiquiri you want, they even serve gallons of the shit. A few months before the same group of people had set an all time record by ordering so much frozen booze that the manager wanted us to come inside to see if he weren’t fucking with them. After deciding our group of merry alcoholics was on the level he threw in a garbage bag of Jell-O shots for free.

Pic unrelated

Aaron climbed out of the sunroof and calmly talked to the woman who was working at the drive through window, as the place is to white trash to ever install a real drive-thru lane. He ordered two “Suicides” then asked what I wanted. I just got the same thing because apparently a drink named after killing yourself sounded amazing at the time. They came out in styrofoam cups that made the old McDonald’s super size cups look tiny. They smelled like rotten fruit and pure chemistry. Susan stomped on the gas and we were on our way to Austin.

Aaron and I drank the whole way while Susan’s job was to not kill us while going around 100 miles per hour and to stop her husband from accidentally falling out of the sunroof. By the time we pulled into the parking lot of the hotel to meet the others I was already buzzed and Aaron was hammered. Mark and Beca showed up first, with Chad, Brad, Lisa, and Tracy all showing up packed into the same beat up truck. Tracy looked like she got dressed out of a dumpster and was wearing a belt for a skirt, Chad was hilarious wearing a tiny black vest over a white button up shirt so I immediately started calling him Aladdin. Unfortunately for him so did everyone else.

We called a cab and rode it into Austin proper to a place called Sixth Street, a massive sprawl of nothing but bars and clubs that is totally closed off to traffic once the drinking hour starts (and unlike my father that hour is not 9am) letting drunk people safely stager back at forth. Since Aaron and I were already drinking we took off to our first destination, a shitty dive bar that was full of hipsters wearing scarfs. In order to show how manly we were we ordered a dozen shots and started attacking them like they wronged us. Finally the gallon of daiquiri wanted out and I had to go to the bathroom, I left Aaron and Susan at the bar while they were busy ordering enough bombs to make The Situation shed a tear of joy.

The bathroom wasn’t a real bathroom per say, instead of urinals it had a giant trough for us to piss in, but there was some asshole standing right in the middle of the thing and I refused to squeeze in-between him and the wall so I took a step back and waited. Finally he moved and I got to use the bathroom, but in a huge violation of all the heterosexual piss trough rules established by our founding fathers he struck up a conversation with me. He had a thick European accent.

“Hello buddy!” He slapped me on my shoulder causing me to spray piss on the wall. “I am looking for thee….how you say? Sluts!”

“You’re looking for sluts?” At this point I noticed his gaze went from my eyes to my junk, then back to my eyes. “Like girls?”

“Yes!” he clapped his hands like an amused kid, or a seal. Whatever.

“Alright dude, let’s go” I zipped up my pants and we thankfully left the tiny bathroom. I tapped Aaron on the shoulder and started to introduce him to the flaming Euro-Trash I met while I was holding onto my own dick. Aaron looked at me like I was stupid, so I turned around and noticed the dude was gone. Like some kind of socialist ninja the dude had vanished. I just sat back down and kept taking shots with Aaron.

I guess it was around this time Susan noticed we totally ditched everyone else and thought we should go find them. I don’t remember clearly but I’m pretty sure we both left without paying our tab, I at least know I didn’t. We found one hell of a problem while trolling for bars down Sixth Street: it was impossible to find one that would let Brad’s wife Lisa in since she was only 20 years old. Who would have ever foreseen this being a problem? Oh, everyone fucking ever right?

While walking in circles trying to find a bar that would let all of us in I saw the European guy again. Surrounded by Austin Police Officers happily petting one of their horses and wearing a bright white helmet that said ‘APD’ across the front. More cops were closing in fast on the scene and I walked away quickly, the last thing I wanted to see right then was a recreation of the Malice Green beating in Texas.

Tracy was shit faced drunk already, stumbling around and screaming like the idiot she was. Aladdin was trying to console her, by console I mean copping a feel on her half exposed tits. They seemed to be having fun. Aaron was pretty hammered from the uncounted shots he had already taken, and I was attempting to walk a straight line down the yellow traffic paint in the middle of the road and failing miserably. Finally Lisa found a bar called ‘Fuel’ that would let us in. At least I thought it was a bar.

We were greeted by awful, pounding, rap music. We were in a club. I fucking hate clubs. I noticed Aaron hated clubs more than I did because he started punching and kicking the walls. The bouncers were strangely okay with this and we walked up stairs to the bar. Flashing lights and assholes smoking Black and Milds greeted us as we shoved our way to the bartender. We posted up in the corner by the bathroom and started ordering shots. Brad decided that he would get to know the bartender and introduced himself. The bartender did the same, he said his name was ‘Midget’. It was then I noticed he was really a midget and was standing on a crate in order to serve us. I was drunker then I thought.

We kept ordering stronger and stronger drinks, it got to the point Midget made us pinky promise him that we weren’t going to throw up. Aaron was totally out of it and was buying random shots of Hennessy for a giant black guy who was standing next to him and kept saying “Here you go dog I know you’ll like it”. Lisa was standing on the bar and dancing while Aladdin and Tracy were dry humping on the bar. I was just focusing on not falling over.

Lisa came crashing to the ground knocking over a bar stool and shot right back up to her feet like nothing happened. Brad was now standing behind the bar having a heart-to-heart with our vertically challenged bartender, Aaron was apparently best friends with the giant black dude, things were spinning out of control quickly. Maybe it was just the room spinning. I most count of how many shot I had taken.

I decided the best way to get into the bathroom was by kicking a hole in the door and climbing through it. I pissed everywhere but the toilet and went back to the bar.

Brad had told Midget he wanted a drink that, and I quote “A drink that felt like Jesus was massaging my shoulders”. This was the turning point of the night. Cross this line, and there was no turning back. That line was a shot called ‘The Thunder Fuck’ (or Sir Thunder Fuck if you were to give it the respect it deserves). Again, Midget made us promise that we wouldn’t puke and passed them out.

I slammed the shot and immediately regretted promising that midget asshole anything. My stomach wanted nothing to do with that vile liquid I just forced down my throat. Brad and Aaron had the thousand yard stare of a Vietnam War vet. Susan and Lisa both sprinted to the bathroom. I ordered another because I hate myself.

I…I pissed myself

Midget kept feeding us shots that he was creating on the fly, and we were turning into a sideshow. Last call hit and so did a horrible, horrible realization: The tab. I just remembered that for some reason all of these goddamn shots were on me. Sobriety hit me like a ton of bricks when I thought about how massive this tab must be. I turned to Aaron and Brad and started talking about running for it. I might as well have been speaking Wookie because those assholes were still trying to order.

Midget handed me the bill, my hands were sweating and I’m 90% sure my bank account in far away Waterford, Michigan was cutting its metaphorical wrists. I looked down and the tab said exactly…$60.00? It had to have been missing a few zeros. I looked up at Midget and he winked at me and gave me his best two-finger pistol shot. “I like you guys, you brought a slut” and he pointed and Tracy. I hadn’t noticed she had been hitting on the tiny bartender the whole night. Whether she has a thing for midgets or what remains a mystery. I quickly paid the tab before he noticed she had herpes while loudly proclaiming that “I was going to give him a tip as big as my dick” (I don’t remember saying this, Brad filled me in the next day.) while Aaron laughed and suggested I give him something substantially bigger. Asshole.

As he navigated the stairs, which was pretty difficult at this point as my blood alcohol content had to be somewhere near Alice Cooper’s in the 1970s. I was made more difficult by the 250 pound black girl in a sparkly dress who went tumbling down the stairs taking out several people in the process. She hit the cold street face first, popped back up to her feet and screamed “It was faster that way anyway!” and ran off.

For some reason when we got outside Aladdin challenged by manhood. Not with a fight or anything, he was demanding I slap him in the face. I felt slightly uncomfortable doing this as he was so hammered his vest was now inside-out somehow. I laughed it off until Brad turned on his video camera, now I had no choice. I cocked my arm back like Justin Verlander and blasted him across the face so hard my shoulder was in pain. The pain center of his brain must have been taking a vacation from the gallons of booze pumped into his body because he just laughed it off. The video survives to this day.

We stumbled as a group down the street to attempt to find a cab, unfortunately just about everyone else on Sixth Street was doing the same thing. Aaron and I ducked behind a dumpster to take a piss at just the right time to see a group of gangsters beat the shit out of some hipster guy with an ironic handlebar mustache. We decided he had it coming to him and walked back to our group who had managed to force their way into a cab big enough for all of us. We all smashed into the back seat while Brad collapsed into the front seat. The driver was listening to some horrible Indian music that sounded like the slaughter of innocent newborns. He easily had the biggest turban I’ve ever seen.

We slowly started back to the hotel, we all started passing out in the back seat while Brad stuck his entire head out of the window and started puking all down the side of the cab. The cab driver start shouting at him in a language that none of us understood and jabbing him in the shoulder with his finger over and over again. No amount of poking could get Brad to stop his downpour of vomit. I’m pretty sure he hit a few people who were standing by the road.

Like this, but so much worse.

We finally got back to the hotel room and for some reason Susan and Beca stayed in the taxi and drove off again. Mark, Aaron, Aladdin, Tracy, and I hung out in the parking lot and drank beer Aladdin had bought before coming to the hotel. Mark and I decided it would be fun to have races around the hotel while barefoot and shirtless. Looking back I’m pretty sure the Thunder Fuck had something to do with this making any sense to us. This is my last clear memory.

The Aftermath

I woke up with one leg on my bed, the rest of my body on the rough unclean hotel carpet. My clothes were all gone, I had one sock on my left foot. My clothes were thrown all over the room like they exploded off my body. I also noticed I was now wearing Lisa’s sunglasses, big purple sparkly things that covered half of my face. I plodded around and put my clothes back on but couldn’t find my shoes. I picked up my cell phone and texted Brad.

“Do you know where my shoes are?”

He answered back “No, do you know where Aladdin is?” I think I reread that text a few times before leaving my room and going over to his. Brad was in his underwear with giant wayfarer, Ray Charles type sunglasses on and looked like someone had dug him out of a shallow grave. He walked me over to the bathroom where a pillow and blanket were in the bath tub and explained to me that was where Aladdin slept the night before, but when they woke up he was nowhere to be found.

We knocked on Mark and Beca’s door, Mark had a plastic ring on his finger and purple shit all over his face. He explained the night before that Beca and Susan had gone to Wal-Mart to get a ring, but decided they all sucked and settled for a ring pop. She then proposed to Mark with it in their hotel room he said yes and later drunkenly ate his engagement ring. They hadn’t seen Aladdin either, but my shoes were in their room for some reason. A win is a win right?

Finally Brad found Aladdin, two parking lots over sleeping in his truck, the floor was littered with McChickens and wrappers. He didn’t remember getting in his truck and driving anywhere, let alone getting food. All recovered enough to operate vehicles, said our goodbyes and left back towards Fort Hood. On the way Aaron pulled into a McDonalds in an attempt to nurse his hangover. We all trudged inside, keeping our sunglasses on as we wanted nothing to do with the horrible burning lights of the inside of that fast food hovel. Ordered the nastiest thing on the menu and shoveled into our faces, we left all of our trash on the table and left.

Brad later told me the story of what happened when Aladdin and him went to get something to eat. They went to a small dinner to get breakfast and the service sucked. Their waiter looked like Ponch from CHIPS and charged Aladdin for something that Brad ordered. Aladdin lost his mind and through a fit before leaving. Brad said for days afterwards Aladdin kept sending him photoshopped pictures of Ponch talking about how he charged him because it “Wasn’t a big deal”.

I charged you for his toast. It’s not a big deal right?

A few weeks later we were all packing our bags and getting on a plane to Afghanistan. This story happened almost two years ago and I finally made another trip to Austin with some friends and noticed that the city just wasn’t as fun as I remembered it. Maybe it was the fine mixture of drunk friends and a strange midget bartender who loved sluts. Whatever it was, it was the perfect storm of alcohol, friends, and hilarious times to create one of the best nights of my life with the best friends anyone could ever ask for.

This a story I will be telling for the rest of my life, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did living it.

Joe Kassabian is the Head Writer for SHSF and expert in door kicking. You can follow him on Twitter @jkass9966 or email him at [email protected] 




This post first appeared on Sledgehammer Swordfight!, please read the originial post: here

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One Night In Austin

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