Stripper doughnuts
“I got super lit and got into a really messy argument with a guy I was seeing at the time. I stormed off and ended up sitting at the Old Town MAX station waiting for a train that wasn’t due for another 20 minutes, completely distraught. Seemingly out of nowhere, a pair of strippers holding a bucket of doughnuts came by and asked what was wrong. I told them, and they gave me doughnuts. It didn’t completely cheer me up but, it definitely helped.”
Mystery sandwich
“A friend and I were getting baked and watching movies when we decided to go get a sandwich. All I remember was standing at the side of the street, then standing in the store, then marveling at a sandwich in my hand and proclaiming, ‘HOW DO I HAVE A SANDWICH?’ Suddenly we were out dancing? Then I was asleep on the couch?”
Largely known
“My friends and I went to a party, and we were pretty much gone halfway through. The host of the party was a fairly well-known stripper in the area, largely because of his, uh, being largely known. He and I hit it off really well, and by really I mean we ended up totally nude and going at it on the couch in front of everyone. At some point, I recall him saying, ‘Rawr, I’m a vampire’ and biting me, at which point his friend loudly announced to me and my friends, ‘You guys need to put on some clothes and go home. Your friend just beat up a plant outside.’”
Pigeon army
“One time I got really drunk and realized that I could befriend pigeons by walking like one: hands in armpits, wing flaps, head bobbing and all. I started walking around a bunch of rando park pigeons and gained their confidence and infiltrated their ranks. Now anytime I go anywhere, I check out the local pigeon scene and find new recruits for my growing global army. The revolution is coming.”
Ginger ale catastrophe
“About eight years ago when I was a freshman in high school, my friends and I got too stoned. I had never had ginger ale before, something that baffled my friends. They decided to play a prank on me, something that would only work at a certain level of intoxication. They laid out three cans of ginger ale and told me that one was explosive, which I believed, and when I opened one up I proceeded to run outside into a tree out of fear. When I looked up, I saw my friends and was convinced that they were gods waking me up from a ginger ale-induced coma. I never smoked that much again.”
Trivia night
“The night started at Pizza Schmizza. A buddy and I stopped in to have a few mighty mugs and a slice. We drank our beers and brought up the fact that we’ve never done a trivia night. Well, as it so happened, there was a trivia night going on at a pub near his place on Hawthorne. We paid for our drinks and caught the 14 down to said pub.
In the speed of buzzed, we made it to the pub and ordered our next round, created a catchy trivia team name and sat down for trivia night. The theme that night was ‘Portland History,’ and being that I was an in-state transplant and my friend was from Washington, we were SOL. Also, unbeknownst to us, you passed your answer sheet to the closest table to you. So the rest of the patrons of the bar would know that we sucked at Portland-based trivia. Now, what do you do when you bomb at trivia and redeem yourself with the table that’s grading your answer sheet? Well, you order another round and start drawing penises on their answer sheet. Luckily, they were good sports and returned in kind.
We ended trivia dead last, paid for our beers and started heading out. Outside, in the parking lot of the pub, we heard, ‘Hey! Penis drawers!’ We looked toward the shouts and there were our trivia rivals motioning us to their car. They asked us if we wanted to go to the strip club. My friend and I gave the ‘why the fuck not’ look and jumped in the car.
In retrospect, it was a stupid move, but hey, it makes for an interesting story.
We were barreling down Hawthorne in the backseat of these strangers’ car, our trivia rivals, and I noticed that in the front passenger seat is a member of a band that I enjoy. The whole, ‘Hey, are you in… Yes, that’s me,’ exchange occurred, and I tried not to nerd out. Now at the speed of drunk, we made it to the strip club. From the time we entered the club to when we exited is a blur of drinks and acrobatic strippers. We kept getting handed beers, and we continued to drop dollars at the rack. By last call, the two of us were stumbling out of the club, the world a tilt-a-whirl. We checked with each other if we were both good to walk our way back home, as both of us lived in opposite directions. I held up a ‘give me a sec’ finger, bent over and vomited the night’s contents all over the sidewalk and partially on my friend’s shoes. We gave the most ‘bro-ish’ of hugs, and we stumbled our ways back home.”
Blunts and tree tats
“Fall term was going rough, so a friend and I decided to ditch studying and go to a nearby dispensary to get some weed. We were walking back to her apartment smoking a blunt, and both of us being light weights, it didn’t take much for us to get super high. My friend starting talking about tattoos and how she really wanted to get a little tree somewhere. And me, being the great influence I am, said, ‘Let’s go right now!’
We found a tattoo shop that only charged $60, so we went and, literally as we were sitting there talking to the dude, we were looking at stuff online trying to decide on what tree we wanted. I don’t know if the guy knew we were super high or not, but we walked out of there with new tattoos and a great story.”
How to drink at a museum
“The first time I ever left the United States, I ended up in Lisbon, Portugal. A stroll around the city on a balmy early spring day was bringing a bubbling sensation of euphoria to the surface of my soul. There were a lot of places to go and sights to see in the city, and one of the first places I intended to go was a naval museum. I stopped into a few shops to try to buy a map of the city.
Although I was not having a ton of luck with good maps, I was being offered booze in every store I stopped in. In between a few stores, some strange characters popped out of alleyways and roadside stalls to offer more illicit intoxicants. I swerved into a post office, or something much like a post office, to make sure I was on the right street and the clerk pulled a bottle of whiskey out from under the counter with a shot glass. This bottle, the clerk assured me, contained a special whiskey that was native to Portugal. The potion seller made a convincing case for the cheaply labeled glass bottle he had placed on the counter.
Ten dollars later I was walking down the street with a shot glass in my pocket and a bottle of cherry whiskey in my backpack. To my surprise, no one cares if you just walk around drinking in the middle of the day in Portugal. Just as likely, no one cares when an American is doing something stupid in a foreign country because it’s just par for the course.
When I arrived at the naval museum with a bottle of whiskey now seated in the drink pocket on the side of my backpack, I decided to play a game. Every time I saw a painting of a ship I would take a shot. The first room contained no paintings of ships, so I thought I was playing it safe. The second room, however, was filled with paintings of ships.
After about five shots in this room, I decided to revise my little game. If I saw any real pieces of ships then I would take a shot. Surely there couldn’t be too many relics of actual Portuguese naval ships. A room or two later and I was surrounded by authentic memorabilia recounting the storied and illustrious history of the Portuguese navy. The bottle was now about a third of the way gone. I was starting to feel a bit like I was at sea myself.
As I slowly ambled into the next room on unsteady legs, I substituted my rule once again. This time, if I saw any modern Portuguese navy ships or equipment I would take a shot. Everything up to this point had been old, old wooden ships. I should be safe, right? I tripped into a room filled with models, photographs, and descriptions of the most current pieces of equipment the Portuguese navy had to offer. The room spun from disbelief. It also probably spun from whiskey. I took a shot for maybe every other submarine I think.
I quit the game about halfway into the bottle and three sheets into the wind. By the time I went stumbling through the gift shop and cafe I was probably the drunkest I had ever been in a museum and definitely the drunkest person in that museum.
A very understandably upset tour guide showed me how to leave, and I meandered out of the Museum around one or two in the afternoon to try to continue the rest of my day now completely smashed and smelling like cherries.”
