As I woke up shirtless but still in my boots on my friend’s futon, with her snoring open-mouthed into my ear like an asshole, several thoughts occurred to me as I looked around the room:
- Where am I?
- Where did my shirt go?
- My breath tastes like some small critter curled up and died in my mouth overnight. If this is the case, I must have swallowed the poor little bastard… does this mean I’m not a vegetarian anymore? If it does, then I could really use an egg McMuffin. If it does not, then dammit.
Oh, Seattle. What a bewitching, bizarre, and exciting city. A city where anything goes. Where you can find culinary delights that will surprise and intrigue your taste buds. Where espresso has been perfected to rival the finest European qualities. Where a night at a romantic and mysterious back-alley wine bar, with a view of the beautiful and absolutely unique Seattle skyline, is nothing short of breathtaking and flawless.
Unfortunately, we started our night at Azteca.
After the gut bomb that was my cheese enchilada, refried beans, mexican rice, and endless chips and salsa, my friends and I hit the town! Off to Capitol Hill!
But first, we made a pit stop at my friend’s house so we could fill our throw-away water bottles with profuse amounts of alcohol and take them on the bus. With the gift of foresight, we downed some activated charcoal pills to lessen our next-day hangovers, and then we were finally off to hit the town!
After a forty-five minute bus ride and a bottle of vodka-juice later, my tummy was not very happy with me. Apparently dousing a plate of beans, cheese, and hot sauce with excessive amounts of alcohol isn’t the best idea. I should have known this, since I just read the chapter in Chelsea Handler’s book A Horizontal Life in which she ate Mexican food on the weekend and ended up nearly shitting her panties at a cocktail party. Her lesson: never eat Mexican food on the weekend! And here I was, sitting on a rickety public transit bus on a Saturday night, with the bumps and grooves of the weather-worn Seattle streets churning my Azteca enchilada around like a cement mixer in an earthquake.
Speaking of Azteca: how offensive is that place? It’s borderline racist in its attempt to be all things stereotypically Mexican. There were more sequins in this establishment than have been lost in Cher’s bajingo, and even though it’s fricken Seattle there were no white waiters. However, there were no Mexican ones either, just Filipinos and dark Native Americans, or any other race that could pass as south-of-the-border if you put them in a sombrero and gave them a maraca.
On the plus side, ingesting such crappy Ameri-Mex helped us develop a new word to describe our gaseous states: sha-burping. This is when you burp so forcefully that you end up sharting yourself. It is almost always cheese-and-frijoles induced. Thank God none of us actually sha-burped that night, although admittedly sometimes I may have been close. Once again, my praise goes out to activated charcoal. Seriously folks, look into it.
The night got classier with each imbibition. The deal of the night at the bar we ended up at was a mason jar shot of Jim Beam and a Hamm’s. Whoever brews this disgusting beer deserves to drown in a well full of it. To express my disapproval, I had three of them, and bitched excessively about each one.
As our crowd dwindled, it ended up just being me and my friend whose futon I would be sleeping on. We wound up at Purr, Seattle’s closest thing to a West Hollywood gay bar that I’ve witnessed. It was fun and full of freaks, which is always entertaining. I was particularly captivated by a giant African American man wearing a Diana Ross-esque afro wig who was grinding to Rihanna’s We Found Love with a short white dude whose shirt was tucked into his underpants. I have never seen something so uncool look so. damn. cool.
Alas, after a raucous night, we finally fell asleep. And during that wonderful six hours of REM, a critter died in my face.
I love Seattle.
