Infamous Birthday
written by Sarah Blodgett
This year I am turning 30. Yes, I am a woman in the entertainment business that will admit her real age. While I’m not happy about it, I have to accept that it’s a milestone Birthday. It has me looking back on another milestone birthday not so long ago.
It was December 7th, 2000, 59 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the only person more excited than me about my 21st birthday was my best friend Ricki. Ricki had turned 21 five months earlier but since I was really her only friend, she couldn’t celebrate until my birthday. We had been friends since junior high but we didn’t still have much in common and we were really just friends out of convenience at this point.
Ricki had met this guy a week earlier. I think. I’m still fuzzy on the details because she was always finding men somewhere, but I think they met at a gas station. “He’s kind of cute, he has a car, and he has a friend,” she told me. I was skeptical.
The night of my birthday Ricki came to the door and pulled me onto the front porch.
“I’m so sorry, but your guy’s not very cute, don’t be mad.”
Ricki gets in the back seat of the SUV parked in front of my house, so I slide in next to her. The guys turn around and say hi. They may have told me their names but I was too distracted. They were 40-something year old Arab men that barely spoke English. One was bald with a “Mr. Clean on acid look” and the other had a full head of hair that sat like a bouffant on his head and was wearing a Bill Cosby sweater. I should have ran back in the house but panic set in.
We went to the El Morocco, a nightclub in my hometown that isn’t open anymore, and for good reason. The club is split up into two rooms, a dance club and a bar. We went into the dance club and found a small table in the corner. We ordered drinks. I ordered a Pearl Harbor because my birthday was Pearl Harbor day and I thought it was a cute thing to do, and I needed some way to amuse myself. Bouffant was sitting next to me and he kept sitting closer and closer. I guess he was mine.
“Ricki, we need to go to the bathroom, NOW,” I said loudly.
We stepped into the crowded bathroom. “I’m leaving, I’m calling my parents to come pick me up,” I yelled. People were staring but I didn’t care.
“But we can’t ditch them. They paid for us to get in. We own them,” she said as if it was her moral duty.
“It was $5. I will give them $5.” I wanted to prove that I could not be so easily sold into white slavery.
“We can just go hang in the other room for a while to get a break from them,” she said trying to calm me down.
We sat at the other bar and ordered another round. Then Ricki decided we should do shots of Hennessy because she had heard it was something that people took shots of. We ordered 2 shots of Hennessy and got two snifter glasses with about 6 shots worth in each glass. We chugged them. We were drunk. We were also caught.
Bouffant and Mr. Clean had spotted us and were angry. “Get your coats. We’re taking you home.” They yelled at us the whole way home.
When we got to my house I jumped out of the car and ran in.
My parents came running to the door asking what was wrong. Trying to hide my intoxication I asked why they thought something would be wrong.
“Because,” my mom said, “you have only been gone an hour.”
“It was the worst night ever” I said plopping on the couch. My mother was spying out the window. “The guys where terrible, old, and creepy,” I said.
“Were they really that bad?” my mother asked.
“Yes,” I said firmly.
“Then why is Ricki making out with one of them on the front lawn.”
Apparently this day would live infamy.
Sarah Blodgett is a comedian from Boston.
Visit myspace.com/sarahcomedy.