My 18th Birthday

Date of Ocurrence: October 23rd 2009
Location: Isla Vista/Manzanita Village Dorms
Date Written: December 14, 2009

Was your 18th birthday fun? Mine sure was, here is how it went…

At the time it was the fall quarter of my freshman year and we were about 4 or 5 weeks into the quarter. It was a Friday and I was by myself in my single on October 23rd. My real birthday was on October 25th, but since this was a Sunday I thought I would try and make this day the night I celebrated it. I texted a few people to see if anyone was going anywhere interesting.

A few people respond back. I begin to look for people who might be willing to pregame with me. The time is approximately 9pm.

I realize there is no one I can pregame with for a number of reasons:

1. I live in a single and my neighbors were either never seen or did not seem to drink at all (I thought shit like this would never become a problem at UCSB, go figure)
2. Since my dorm was more or less in its own corner my neighbors numbered maybe 3 or 4, and I only really saw one of them ever.
3. The other people in my floor or house (whatever you want to call it, my dorm was weird) I did not interact with them much at that point. Plus in my arrogance I thought that I could make a better night without these people.
4. Oh yeah and I had no friends

So did I give up? Of course not. I drank by myself like a good alcoholic and decided to meet up with the people who I had been texting earlier.

Now drinking games normally aren’t as entertaining by your lonesome, but I watched Nip/Tuck and took a shot of vodka every time something fucked up or disgusting happened. By the end of the episode I had taken 8 shots.

As I was about to head out I took two more shots for the road. This would prove to be one of the worst decisions of all time.

I begin stumbling out and try and find some people who I know to walk with. After a few seconds of searching I say “fuck it” and walk by myself.

At this point details are too inaccurate to be actually recordable, so here is what I know for sure. I know I made it to IV because I remember leaning on a parked car and realizing this was a bad idea because while it felt insanely comfortable, an officer of the law would not have approved so much and words like “public intoxication” and jail came to mind very quickly.

Since I had no wish to be associated with these words, I decided to abandon my quest and head back. Unfortunately this task somehow proved a bigger failure than my attempt to party.

There is a short wooden fence maybe two and half feet high that separates IV from the UCSB campus. Sober I would have been able to step over it, jump over it, hell I probably could have even frontflipped over it (I used to be a gymnast), but in the drunken fucked in half you should not have drank this much you dumbass state I was currently in, I fell over it and crashed face first into the curb on the side of the street in front of a crowd of no less than five CSO’s (Community Service Officers). Essentially these are cops without the power to arrest others. Had they been real cops my ass would’ve been in jail faster than OJ Simpson’s after his long car chase.

They asked for my ID and other information to probably occupy themselves while they laughed at me.

I told them where I lived and they walked me back to my room and gave me some advice about college and how I shouldn’t get this drunk and shit, advice which I promptly forgot as soon as the sound waves passed through my ears.

It was at this point that I probably would have liked to have passed out or died, but oh no God had different plans for me and I was up all night crying, and puking out my internal organs by myself in my single.

I woke up at 7:30am and my face was stiff for some reason. I touched my face to find that it hurt like a bitch. I look in the mirror to find that my face is covered in blood, and instead of one those cool scars across the face you might see Rambo or Indiana Jones sporting it looked as if a seagull took a shit on my face and it stuck.

I stare around at my room and see it is a mess with vomit covering my sheets, my floor, and my walls.

At this point I realize I also have one of the worst headaches of my life and my memory of last night began to recollect itself. I check my phone to see if anyone might have been worried about me, or wondered why I didn’t meet up with them.

Of course there are no messages in my inbox. Wait there was one… from my dad…. Telling me he was going to meet me early this morning for our birthday (We have our birthdays on the same day and were planning to celebrate them together on Saturday).

I stop for two seconds to take in the fact that I have no one at this school who gives a damn about me, and the only people who do give a damn (my parents) would kill me if they find out what I had done.

I guess this is part of growing up, and so ironically it’s a good thing I learned this on my 18th birthday.

Epilogue:
You are probably wondering how I dealt with the situation with my Dad. Immediately after the ending of the last story I threw my sheets in the washer, and scrubbed the shit out my floors and walls in my dorm. I cleaned up my scars the best I could, but they still looked horrific, so I told my Dad I fell off my bike and I guess he bought it.

If anyone is wondering how my actual birthday went (On Sunday October 25th) it was much better, because I spent all day studying for my physics midterm.