Saturday: Part IV--The Voyage Home
[Author's Note: Finally, months after it was first begun, is the conclusion to the great journey that is the Ultimate Weekend at Notre Dame. This tome serves as a reminder that life is truly about the journey, not the destination. Enjoy. --JPL]
6:30 pm: Knocking….and muffled noises. Crack open one eye for a peek—who in the hell is interrupting my victory nap?!? More knocking and a bellowing voice, “Wake up boys!” Oh, Tony’s dad, here to take the family to dinner. Slowly crawl from the couch to the door, trying desperately not to anger the alcohol gods that would like nothing more than to split my head open with a catastrophic early evening hangover. D’oh! Too late. Put on a solid game face and open the door, “Hi folks!” Then retreat to the safety of the basement, resume the nap and possibly sneak in a much needed shower.
8:15 pm: Evidently there was much entertainment to be had while sleeping. Kevin’s older brother and fellow alum decided to kick start an early evening at the Donkey, but ended up babysitting Tony’s little brother and friend (who are all of 13), receiving explicit instructions to keep the young ones away from the remnants of a keg on the porch. Worst…idea….ever. Tony returns from Francesco’s with a somewhat agitated Kevin (who evidently received numerous barbs about eating out at “Francesca’s”—a former girlfriend), full of good food, refreshed and in a great mood, his brain giddy with thoughts about what the night holds in store for the roommates. The parents drop him and Kevin off, and they open the front door. Brian is in the living room, watching the late night SEC match-up on CBS. “Hey Bri---where’s John?” “Um,” Brian begins, with a giant sh*t-eating grin cracking on his face, “they, um, got tired.” Tony is puzzled momentarily, and then a horrible realization clobbers him up side his head, “Brian, what did you do?” Brian begins to laugh and throws back a Beam and Coke. “Check out the bathroom, dude.” Tony beelines to the bathroom, kicks on the light and finds his young bro and pal passed out on the tile floor. Evidently, babysitter Bri decided it would be funny to completely abdicate his responsibilities and let the young ones sneak the remainder of the keg into their bellies, puke all over the bathroom and pass out. Tony wakes them up, cleans them up, and send them outside to the custody of Tony’s parents, who take them back to the hotel none the wiser. Tony might hate Bri later if his parents find out, but right now the whole thing is pretty damn hilarious. Plus, Bri brought a few handles of liquor, so his sins are forgiven.
9:00 pm: Inspired by Brian’s chicanery, and fueled by a victory on the gridiron and lots and lots of water, all the roommates rally and prepare to move full-swing into the final party night of the weekend. The usual suspects from O’Neill Hall arrive toting a couple cases and a beer bong—standard party equipment for a Saturday night. The Bullshitting ensues, along with games of Cups, Asshole, High-Low, and darts. Soon, the absence of women is painfully obvious, and the usual “do we start calling girls” conversation begins amongst the roommates. The consensus is that the Donkey cannot handle another raging shindig, having not fully recovered from the chaos of Margaritaville. Just then, Joey gets a call on the Zack Morris cell phone—a London friend is having a Cups tournament at Lafayette Square. Perfect—we rule at Cups. Wrap up the highly competitive game of Asshole proceeding at the bar, fold up the homemade Cups table, take a shot of Captain Morgan Spiced Rum, grab a couple road beers for the walk to Lafayette, and herd the revelers out the front door. Better lock up, we’ve got a keg to protect, after all. Notice that the guys across the street at 609 are already hitting it hard, competing in two-man keg races. It’s gonna be a long night on St. Pete’s Street.
9:25 pm: Well, that didn’t last long. The Drunken Donkey was thoroughly thrashed in the first round of the Cups tournament by a bunch of chicks—not our finest moment. We shrug off the humiliation with a couple shots of Bacardi Limon and sugar. Now that we are out of contention, Lafayette holds no more interest for us. Tony remembers that some O’Neill guys are having a birthday party at Boat Club nearby. What better way to forget all about our Cups misery than to engage in limitless debauchery at the Boat.
9:50 pm: Our yellow-checkered chariot drops us at Boat Club—the last refuge for the underaged at Notre Dame. We flash our “Boat Club VIP” cards to the surly looking bouncer at the gate and step inside. The crowd is very familiar: a rather interesting mix of one time classmates, SMCers, girls from Kevin’s football team, Joey’s London buddies, ROTC people and a girl Spider met that afternoon. We grab a few penny pitchers, get sucked into a few impromptu Cups games going on in the basement, and then take our wares upstairs. A full-fledged dance party has busted out. Spider pulls the playing cards from his pocket, and we proceed to play some Drunken Donkey Asshole adjacent to the madness. After twenty minutes, Spider decides that the DJ is extremely lame. “F*ck this sh*t—watch this.” He walks to the DJ booth, talks to the emcee for a few seconds, and then returns to the table. Bo inquires, “What was that all about?” Spider hoists a shocker symbol with his right hand and yells “WEEEEEEEE!” At that moment, the music stops and the DJ announces over the mic, “And now, by special request, track number five from the Red CD!” Then, over the familiar opening beats of the song that “brings a tear to your eye,” the Drunken Donkey bursts out into thunderous applause. Bar patrons suddenly bust out en masse into a gyrating, somewhat ritualistic dance routine. Clearly, our work is done here—time to call a cab and move along to continue our dirty work.
10:30 pm: After retrieving the sacred Red CD, we head back outside, where we notice that snowflakes have begun to fall from the heavens above. The cab has been honking out front for about fifteen minutes. We grab anyone in arms-length and herd seven or eight into the minivan. Now it is decision time--do we make for the Backer, brave the lines at Corby’s, brave the townies at Finnegan’s, or just cut to the chase and get to Club 23 early? As the cab rumbles down Eddy, the debate is fierce. “Backer has LITs…and women.” “Yeah, but I can get free beers at Finnegans.” “We need Car Bombs at club.” In the end, Corby’s wins, but only because it was closest, and the night is young.
10:45 pm: After waiting in line in the frigid South Bend night air, we finally make the front door at Corby’s. Tony heads to the bar for a couple pitchers of “Whatever Light,” while the rest of the crew plunge headlong into the throng of partygoers on their way to a pool table. Spider puts down some quarters and starts to talk game with some chick we vaguely recognize—is that the same one that did the walk of shame this morning? After a few minutes, the table opens up and Spider and Bo commence an epic battle of bad pool. Tony arrives carrying three pitchers of beer and leading a line of newly-found female friends like the Pied Piper of Drunkeness. The pitchers last about 10 minutes. Joey starts complaining about the smoke, and just then an errant cue ball shot by Spider leaps from the table and cracks a rough-looking townie square in his back. No Kevin around to threaten counter-violence this time—time to bolt.
11:45 pm: Although we told Kevin to tell the cab driver to take us to the Backer, Kevin enacts a detour to Finnegan’s. How did we end up here? Oh well, might as well get some Baltimore Zoo’s for the group. They check our ID’s and take a snapshot of each one under a camera by the door—no doubt a law-enforcement imposed byproduct of accepting far too many of our underage fake IDs during Sophomore year. Finnegan’s has toned down since those halcyon days, the jocks and jock-sniffers having long since moved their incestuous activities to CJ’s, and we make our way to the neon-green lit bar in no time. We never quite knew what was in those Zoos, but they always go down smooth, and they always do the trick. The familiar beats of “Mo Money, Mo Problems” starts thumping over the speakers, but we have no time to dance to really bad 90’s pop tonight--we’ve got to get to Backer before the rest of the school. Quickly down our drinks and pop back into the crisp evening where our taxi awaited.
12:30 am: Ah the Backer—no other place that I’d rather be at this moment than thrust in between 300 of my closest friends inside of a hotbox of sweat, Long Island Ice Tea puddles, and N’Sync on the speakers. After waiting the requisite five minutes in line (like they are going to reject us and start adhering to fire code on this night), pay our 3 dollars and collect our sacred drink ticket. You see, Backer is the only bar in town that the Drunken Donkey don’t mind paying cover, because it essentially means a free LIT, which is guaranteed to ensure that you are drunk enough to meander onto the dance floor and boogie to such classics as “Tarzan Boy,” “Bye Bye Bye,” and the ever-sacrilegious, “Just Like A Prayer.” Fortune smiles on us tonight, as the group of sequent-clad girls behind us have clearly had enough, and hand us over their drink tickets. Christmas in September! Give the newly acquired drink tickets to Bo, who somehow always both waits patiently in line and ends of buying several more because he doesn’t want to wait again.
2:00 am: The bonus LITs have had their intended effect—the group is wasted to a man. Bon Jovi and Madonna were never as cool as they are now, but it’s really hot and everyone has managed to pair off successfully. Someone’s already tasted the bathroom floor, and there’s still some time left in the night. We locate the MIA roommates and make like a human battering ram towards the front door. After relieving ourselves between the rows of cars parked in front of Belmont Liquors and that soccer place, we decide that it is time to finally head towards home—with a slight detour to Club 23. Some of us make it into a cab—some just start walking. It all makes sense at this time at night, given our respective states of drunkenness.
2:15 am: The cab ride to Club was way too crowded, but nevertheless we arrive unscathed. Once inside, Kevin gets the Car Bombs, and we polish them off with aplomb. Bo narrowly avoids ralphing right there in front of the bar. The girls in the group want to dance on the ridiculously small and totally inappropriate dance floor (which is also dangerously adjacent to the dart boards), but the boys won’t have it. So we manage to placate them with a couple of twirls, and then high-tail it ever so briefly back to the bar to tell your favorite professor how much you liked his class while at the same time staring at the hot underclassman who brought him out. Then the boys break up: Kevin goes to the corner to chest-bump some O’Neill-ites we saw at Boat Club earlier tonight; Spider makes for the pool table, but ends up making out with a random chick in the girls’ bathroom; and Tony, Joey, Bo take two pitchers and head to the sketchy-as-Hell Club basement, of which we shall not speak here in this tome.
2:45 am: Last call. Who wants one more Car Bomb?
3:15 am: The Club owners finally corral the last of the drunken denizens and shuffle them out the front door. The Drunken Donkey are completely bombed, and stumble down the alley while grabbing the occasional fence post or tree to keep from falling over. Even though it is only a few blocks, we stop frequently along the way to water the bushes. The whole walk seems to take about 30 minutes, but finally the Donkey is in sight, and none too soon. Open the front door—Bri has long since gone, and the last vestiges of last night’s party is now creating a very smelly habitat for our drunken behavior. Probably some water is a good idea, as the room is now spinning and threatening to throw us out the window. Toss in a movie from Bo’s Crappy Movie Collection, probably Jurassic Park or maybe the Star Wars with Jar Jar Binks (the Pod Racing scene and the lightsaber battle at the end is the only thing worth watching), and flop ungracefully on the couches. But wait—it’s 3 am, and where did Bo go?
3:30 am: Turns out, at that very moment that the opening crawl from Phantom Menace was appearing on our TV screen, Bo was face down in the gravel alley behind the Donkey, fully convinced he’s lost his keys in the alley on the walk home. The rest of the roommates find him, he explains the dire situation, and soon a massive search is organized. As one could no doubt imagine, we made little in the way of progress, for not only was it dark, and the gravel messy, we were also intoxicated to the point of blindness. The entire alley is combed, but we and found nothing. Bo is understandably distraught, and we feel bad because it wasn’t just his wallet, but somehow his ring, keys and cell phone. Suddenly, a light goes on in the overwhelming darkness of somebody’s alcohol-shrunken brain. “Bo, did you check the pants on the floor in your room?” Eureka--all items are found.
3:45 am: The Drunken Donkey is silent, except for the sounds of one last roommate shuffling across the carpet in the living room to slide close the front door. One last click signifies that it is locked, and the greatest weekend of our lives is over...until next weekend.
Fin.
6:30 pm: Knocking….and muffled noises. Crack open one eye for a peek—who in the hell is interrupting my victory nap?!? More knocking and a bellowing voice, “Wake up boys!” Oh, Tony’s dad, here to take the family to dinner. Slowly crawl from the couch to the door, trying desperately not to anger the alcohol gods that would like nothing more than to split my head open with a catastrophic early evening hangover. D’oh! Too late. Put on a solid game face and open the door, “Hi folks!” Then retreat to the safety of the basement, resume the nap and possibly sneak in a much needed shower.
8:15 pm: Evidently there was much entertainment to be had while sleeping. Kevin’s older brother and fellow alum decided to kick start an early evening at the Donkey, but ended up babysitting Tony’s little brother and friend (who are all of 13), receiving explicit instructions to keep the young ones away from the remnants of a keg on the porch. Worst…idea….ever. Tony returns from Francesco’s with a somewhat agitated Kevin (who evidently received numerous barbs about eating out at “Francesca’s”—a former girlfriend), full of good food, refreshed and in a great mood, his brain giddy with thoughts about what the night holds in store for the roommates. The parents drop him and Kevin off, and they open the front door. Brian is in the living room, watching the late night SEC match-up on CBS. “Hey Bri---where’s John?” “Um,” Brian begins, with a giant sh*t-eating grin cracking on his face, “they, um, got tired.” Tony is puzzled momentarily, and then a horrible realization clobbers him up side his head, “Brian, what did you do?” Brian begins to laugh and throws back a Beam and Coke. “Check out the bathroom, dude.” Tony beelines to the bathroom, kicks on the light and finds his young bro and pal passed out on the tile floor. Evidently, babysitter Bri decided it would be funny to completely abdicate his responsibilities and let the young ones sneak the remainder of the keg into their bellies, puke all over the bathroom and pass out. Tony wakes them up, cleans them up, and send them outside to the custody of Tony’s parents, who take them back to the hotel none the wiser. Tony might hate Bri later if his parents find out, but right now the whole thing is pretty damn hilarious. Plus, Bri brought a few handles of liquor, so his sins are forgiven.
9:00 pm: Inspired by Brian’s chicanery, and fueled by a victory on the gridiron and lots and lots of water, all the roommates rally and prepare to move full-swing into the final party night of the weekend. The usual suspects from O’Neill Hall arrive toting a couple cases and a beer bong—standard party equipment for a Saturday night. The Bullshitting ensues, along with games of Cups, Asshole, High-Low, and darts. Soon, the absence of women is painfully obvious, and the usual “do we start calling girls” conversation begins amongst the roommates. The consensus is that the Donkey cannot handle another raging shindig, having not fully recovered from the chaos of Margaritaville. Just then, Joey gets a call on the Zack Morris cell phone—a London friend is having a Cups tournament at Lafayette Square. Perfect—we rule at Cups. Wrap up the highly competitive game of Asshole proceeding at the bar, fold up the homemade Cups table, take a shot of Captain Morgan Spiced Rum, grab a couple road beers for the walk to Lafayette, and herd the revelers out the front door. Better lock up, we’ve got a keg to protect, after all. Notice that the guys across the street at 609 are already hitting it hard, competing in two-man keg races. It’s gonna be a long night on St. Pete’s Street.
9:25 pm: Well, that didn’t last long. The Drunken Donkey was thoroughly thrashed in the first round of the Cups tournament by a bunch of chicks—not our finest moment. We shrug off the humiliation with a couple shots of Bacardi Limon and sugar. Now that we are out of contention, Lafayette holds no more interest for us. Tony remembers that some O’Neill guys are having a birthday party at Boat Club nearby. What better way to forget all about our Cups misery than to engage in limitless debauchery at the Boat.
9:50 pm: Our yellow-checkered chariot drops us at Boat Club—the last refuge for the underaged at Notre Dame. We flash our “Boat Club VIP” cards to the surly looking bouncer at the gate and step inside. The crowd is very familiar: a rather interesting mix of one time classmates, SMCers, girls from Kevin’s football team, Joey’s London buddies, ROTC people and a girl Spider met that afternoon. We grab a few penny pitchers, get sucked into a few impromptu Cups games going on in the basement, and then take our wares upstairs. A full-fledged dance party has busted out. Spider pulls the playing cards from his pocket, and we proceed to play some Drunken Donkey Asshole adjacent to the madness. After twenty minutes, Spider decides that the DJ is extremely lame. “F*ck this sh*t—watch this.” He walks to the DJ booth, talks to the emcee for a few seconds, and then returns to the table. Bo inquires, “What was that all about?” Spider hoists a shocker symbol with his right hand and yells “WEEEEEEEE!” At that moment, the music stops and the DJ announces over the mic, “And now, by special request, track number five from the Red CD!” Then, over the familiar opening beats of the song that “brings a tear to your eye,” the Drunken Donkey bursts out into thunderous applause. Bar patrons suddenly bust out en masse into a gyrating, somewhat ritualistic dance routine. Clearly, our work is done here—time to call a cab and move along to continue our dirty work.
10:30 pm: After retrieving the sacred Red CD, we head back outside, where we notice that snowflakes have begun to fall from the heavens above. The cab has been honking out front for about fifteen minutes. We grab anyone in arms-length and herd seven or eight into the minivan. Now it is decision time--do we make for the Backer, brave the lines at Corby’s, brave the townies at Finnegan’s, or just cut to the chase and get to Club 23 early? As the cab rumbles down Eddy, the debate is fierce. “Backer has LITs…and women.” “Yeah, but I can get free beers at Finnegans.” “We need Car Bombs at club.” In the end, Corby’s wins, but only because it was closest, and the night is young.
10:45 pm: After waiting in line in the frigid South Bend night air, we finally make the front door at Corby’s. Tony heads to the bar for a couple pitchers of “Whatever Light,” while the rest of the crew plunge headlong into the throng of partygoers on their way to a pool table. Spider puts down some quarters and starts to talk game with some chick we vaguely recognize—is that the same one that did the walk of shame this morning? After a few minutes, the table opens up and Spider and Bo commence an epic battle of bad pool. Tony arrives carrying three pitchers of beer and leading a line of newly-found female friends like the Pied Piper of Drunkeness. The pitchers last about 10 minutes. Joey starts complaining about the smoke, and just then an errant cue ball shot by Spider leaps from the table and cracks a rough-looking townie square in his back. No Kevin around to threaten counter-violence this time—time to bolt.
11:45 pm: Although we told Kevin to tell the cab driver to take us to the Backer, Kevin enacts a detour to Finnegan’s. How did we end up here? Oh well, might as well get some Baltimore Zoo’s for the group. They check our ID’s and take a snapshot of each one under a camera by the door—no doubt a law-enforcement imposed byproduct of accepting far too many of our underage fake IDs during Sophomore year. Finnegan’s has toned down since those halcyon days, the jocks and jock-sniffers having long since moved their incestuous activities to CJ’s, and we make our way to the neon-green lit bar in no time. We never quite knew what was in those Zoos, but they always go down smooth, and they always do the trick. The familiar beats of “Mo Money, Mo Problems” starts thumping over the speakers, but we have no time to dance to really bad 90’s pop tonight--we’ve got to get to Backer before the rest of the school. Quickly down our drinks and pop back into the crisp evening where our taxi awaited.
12:30 am: Ah the Backer—no other place that I’d rather be at this moment than thrust in between 300 of my closest friends inside of a hotbox of sweat, Long Island Ice Tea puddles, and N’Sync on the speakers. After waiting the requisite five minutes in line (like they are going to reject us and start adhering to fire code on this night), pay our 3 dollars and collect our sacred drink ticket. You see, Backer is the only bar in town that the Drunken Donkey don’t mind paying cover, because it essentially means a free LIT, which is guaranteed to ensure that you are drunk enough to meander onto the dance floor and boogie to such classics as “Tarzan Boy,” “Bye Bye Bye,” and the ever-sacrilegious, “Just Like A Prayer.” Fortune smiles on us tonight, as the group of sequent-clad girls behind us have clearly had enough, and hand us over their drink tickets. Christmas in September! Give the newly acquired drink tickets to Bo, who somehow always both waits patiently in line and ends of buying several more because he doesn’t want to wait again.
2:00 am: The bonus LITs have had their intended effect—the group is wasted to a man. Bon Jovi and Madonna were never as cool as they are now, but it’s really hot and everyone has managed to pair off successfully. Someone’s already tasted the bathroom floor, and there’s still some time left in the night. We locate the MIA roommates and make like a human battering ram towards the front door. After relieving ourselves between the rows of cars parked in front of Belmont Liquors and that soccer place, we decide that it is time to finally head towards home—with a slight detour to Club 23. Some of us make it into a cab—some just start walking. It all makes sense at this time at night, given our respective states of drunkenness.
2:15 am: The cab ride to Club was way too crowded, but nevertheless we arrive unscathed. Once inside, Kevin gets the Car Bombs, and we polish them off with aplomb. Bo narrowly avoids ralphing right there in front of the bar. The girls in the group want to dance on the ridiculously small and totally inappropriate dance floor (which is also dangerously adjacent to the dart boards), but the boys won’t have it. So we manage to placate them with a couple of twirls, and then high-tail it ever so briefly back to the bar to tell your favorite professor how much you liked his class while at the same time staring at the hot underclassman who brought him out. Then the boys break up: Kevin goes to the corner to chest-bump some O’Neill-ites we saw at Boat Club earlier tonight; Spider makes for the pool table, but ends up making out with a random chick in the girls’ bathroom; and Tony, Joey, Bo take two pitchers and head to the sketchy-as-Hell Club basement, of which we shall not speak here in this tome.
2:45 am: Last call. Who wants one more Car Bomb?
3:15 am: The Club owners finally corral the last of the drunken denizens and shuffle them out the front door. The Drunken Donkey are completely bombed, and stumble down the alley while grabbing the occasional fence post or tree to keep from falling over. Even though it is only a few blocks, we stop frequently along the way to water the bushes. The whole walk seems to take about 30 minutes, but finally the Donkey is in sight, and none too soon. Open the front door—Bri has long since gone, and the last vestiges of last night’s party is now creating a very smelly habitat for our drunken behavior. Probably some water is a good idea, as the room is now spinning and threatening to throw us out the window. Toss in a movie from Bo’s Crappy Movie Collection, probably Jurassic Park or maybe the Star Wars with Jar Jar Binks (the Pod Racing scene and the lightsaber battle at the end is the only thing worth watching), and flop ungracefully on the couches. But wait—it’s 3 am, and where did Bo go?
3:30 am: Turns out, at that very moment that the opening crawl from Phantom Menace was appearing on our TV screen, Bo was face down in the gravel alley behind the Donkey, fully convinced he’s lost his keys in the alley on the walk home. The rest of the roommates find him, he explains the dire situation, and soon a massive search is organized. As one could no doubt imagine, we made little in the way of progress, for not only was it dark, and the gravel messy, we were also intoxicated to the point of blindness. The entire alley is combed, but we and found nothing. Bo is understandably distraught, and we feel bad because it wasn’t just his wallet, but somehow his ring, keys and cell phone. Suddenly, a light goes on in the overwhelming darkness of somebody’s alcohol-shrunken brain. “Bo, did you check the pants on the floor in your room?” Eureka--all items are found.
3:45 am: The Drunken Donkey is silent, except for the sounds of one last roommate shuffling across the carpet in the living room to slide close the front door. One last click signifies that it is locked, and the greatest weekend of our lives is over...until next weekend.
Fin.
tale spun by Cherith Cutestory at 2:25 PM
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