Emma's birthday

DATE: Monday, August 8
PLACE: Ruby Tuesday, Krieger's
POISONS OF CHOICE: Two-for-one rum and cokes, 23-ounce draft beers
CAST OF CHARACTERS: Emma, Jason, Melinda, GTO, Hailey, Jen G, Jordan, Johnny


Emma got out of bed at 5:30 this afternoon. Her boyfriend Johnny's work day was already behind him at that point, as was her older sister Amanda's. Both were starting brand new jobs - Johnny as contracted computer programmer for IBM, Amanda as teacher to a classroom of 27 fifth graders.

"My retarded sister is an educator. That's what our public school system has come to," Emma laments, between sips of her double-rocks vodka tonic.

Amanda is not actually retarded, at least not on paper. Her voice just kind of makes her sound that way. But she tests quite well, I'm sure, and will make for an interesting fifth grade teacher, that's for sure.

"But it's fucked up - when she student-taught, the kids loved her. She still gets adoring emails addressed to 'Miss Amanda.'"

The conversation topic switches to a friend of Emma's who is an unlikely educator in her own right. Not to say she's not good in the classroom, but this young lady likes to talk about her dildo collection.

"Let's just hope she doesn't haul in the collection inside a big shiny toolbox for Show and Tell some random Friday," I say.

"Wait - dildo collection?!" asks my buddy Greg "GTO" Oakes. He's sitting across from me with his wife Hailey and apparently hadn't been paying attention to mine and Emma's conversation until it turned to tales of sex toys.

"Yeah, she's got like five of them, in varying sizes and thickness, color-coordinated," I reply. "And they all have names, mostly after sports figures."

"I'll call her some nights, try to get her out to the bars with us, and she goes, 'Oh no, not tonight. I've got a date with McGwire tonight.'"

"A dildo named McGwire, as in Mark McGwire?" asks Hailey, half-incredulous, half-morbidly amused.

"Yeah, it's like nine inches and bright red."

"And it gave her seventy orgasms in a single baseball season," I say.

"Shattering all existing records," chimes in my roommate Jason. We all laugh.

Jason is sitting at the next high-top table over, with his girlfriend Melinda. She's only staying for like a half-hour longer - Melinda has had sharp stomach pains since we all drove back from her parents' lake house in Kansas yesterday afternoon. Melinda is a doctor, and she still can't quite pin down what she's suffering from. But according to her self-diagnosis, she'll be fine.

Rounding out our group so far - Emma's boyfriend Johnny, still in shirt and tie and looking rather exhausted, and our friends Jen G and Jordan. They just ended a six-year relationship and are trying to Just Be Friends. So far, the "friendship" seems to consist of regular, lengthy trips out to the parking lot for serious one-on-one conversation. They're on their second parking lot summit right now, and their food's getting very, very cold.

--

We're celebrating Emma's twenty-sixth birthday - originally, plans were concocted between me, her, Jason and Melinda to spend the day across the river in Illinois. Go to the Raging Rivers water park all day, have dinner and drinks at Fast Eddie's and blow some money at the Alton Belle, a cramped casino that always makes me feel like I'm in somebody else's house.

But Emma swapped the plans at the last second, knowing she couldn't afford the venture or convince any of the rest of our friends to party a half-hour away, in a neighboring state. We entertain a pretty Maryland Heights-centric crowd, after all.

So now we're at the West Olive location of Ruby Tuesday, a restaurant/bar chain renowned for its comprehensive salad bar and two-for-one alcoholic beverages. I've got two Rum and Diet Cokes and a plate stacked with more than a dozen vegetables and a couple ladles of fat-free raspberry vinagrette.

Melinda stays just long enough for her and Jason to present Emma with their birthday gift to her. A home pedicure kit. Interesting thing about Emma - she's the type to pick her nose, fart loudly and openly and provide her friedns with detailed descriptions of her bowel movements, but she also loves pedicures, manicures, spa treatments and getting her hair done. She's a tomboy and Jewish princess in one wildly entertaining, plus-sized package.

Johnny gets up to leave shortly after Melinda. He has to be back up in the morning, an hour or so after the rest of us are scheduled to pass the fuck out. He kisses Emma goodbye and heads for the door.

"I don't know how he's gonna make it work," I tell Emma as he's leaving. "That dude likes to sleep more than I do. I can't stand getting out of bed in the AM hours."

"I hate it too, always have," Emma agrees. "When I was a kid, school started at 8:10. I used to get up at 8:22 everyday."

--

I drink eight rum and diets at Ruby Tuesday. For some reason, the two-for-one price structure always leads to a two-for-one rate of consumption with me.

We're headed to Krieger's, our usual Monday night destination. After that, Harrah's casino. As I noted in the birthday card I gave Emma, "I can't wait to celebrate this special occasion by doing the exact same goddamn thing we do every Monday night."

Right now, I'm riding shotgun in Justin's 2003 Ford Escape, with Emma in the rear passenger seat. She's explaining in great detail how she needs to find a new doctor to give her a Depo birth control shot. Less because of her astounding sex life with Johnny than because she's been on Depo for three years straight and hasn't had a single period. And never wants to have one again.

"It's like a race against the clock," Emma tells us. "If I don't find a doctor before the original shot wears off, I swear to God I'm gonna have a three-month period. I'd better not start bleeding."

"You don't even have tampons anymore, do you?" I ask.

"I don't think I even remember how," she says.

--

Over the next five hours, I sink into an increasingly steady blur.

Spend a couple hours at Krieger's, drinking 23-ounce Bud drafts while our group swells to more than two dozen.

Piss off a group of three girls by suggesting they move across the restaurant so we'll have more room.

Talk with a 16-year-old busboy who works with us (EMMA: He looks like a fairy. I don't mean fairy like "gay," I mean he looks like a mythological, flying fairy.) and is currently sitting at the bar with two equally underage friends, sipping water and counting down the minutes until their curfews take hold.

Remark to my friend Alison that her cleavage is on such prominent display tonight that there's no conceivable way I can look her in the eye.

Carry on both sides of a conversation with Alison's ample breasts.

Shatter a bar glass on accident.

Lose a bunch of money fast at the casino and demand we all leave.

Get a ride home from a different set of friends without telling anyone I came with that I'm leaving.

Prepare to nurse another wicked hangover whenever the fuck it is I decide to get up on Tuesday.

Happy fucking birthday, Emma. Here's hoping your feet are always clean and shiny and you never bleed from your vagina again.