The Night at the Upstage
November 4, 2004
Now that I broke the ice (or ise, in our terms) on driving Rich to drink, I can now tell a real drinking story. Just about everyone out there has had a night like this one. It is one of those nights where you just feel like drinking until you are blind. Drinking and having a grand ol' time. This is the story of just one of those nights.
Rich and I had just finished a time period where we thought it would be nice to be self-employed and took a chance at selling our Uncle Cyr's doughnuts in the wee-hours of the morning for profit. Our uncle was nice enough and furnished the doughnuts at cost or less (if memory serves, it was free at times). All we needed was to get the product out to the public to sell�easy enough. We chose "Park -n- Rides" around the greater Pittsburgh Area to vend these tasty morsels to citizens in suits and carrying briefcases. Well needless to say, it was a complete bust! It seems that these health-conscience "Yuppies" were all on diets and refused our services every day, but we worked extremely hard at getting this idea started. In fact, we both had other jobs and got about 3 hours of sleep during the "ground floor operation". After a week or two, we ate more than we sold, we were very sleepy, and we knew it was time to close the doors to our business and file for Chapter 11.
After all the hard work involved in this mission, we were exhausted and needed to blow-off some steam. Rich lived in Oakland at the time and I stayed with him for the night of exuberance. With little money left from our venture, we were stuck with what we had in the liquor cabinet instead of going out and squandering it on lavish $3 pitchers of beer. We cleared the dust and found a large carafe of vodka. The first part of the evening we lifted two shot glasses filled with the poison every 15 minutes or so and toasted our failure. We did this until the bottle was emptied. Once our bellies overflowed with alcohol instead of food, we staggered to the heart of Oakland for some entertainment, all the while we giggled like little school girls. Lucky for us it was nighttime and we were not recognized as the public drunks we were. We arrived at the bottom steps of the Upstage and that is where the fun began.
We climbed the steps to the top floor of the Pittsburgh hot-spot and proceeded to "dance the night away". There was no need for limbering up; we just got right to the dance floor. Before we knew it, Rich and I were the center of this drunken universe. We started conga lines, directed the musical chants and whistles, and tripped the light fantastic with everyone in the place. Everyone followed our lead. For one night, we became the "Tony Manero" and the "Double J." of the Upstage (minus the nice suits and platform shoes). We were the kings for the night, but we didn't seem to care that the spotlight shined on us�we were too drunk to notice and too busy having fun. The only thing that stopped us was the lights that blinded us at 2 AM.
On the way back to the apartment and after we got a bite to eat at the "O" (the Original Hot Dog - home of the best french-fries ever), we wreaked a little havoc as we passed by old girlfriends' houses and shouted at the windows. We ducked into bushes when we saw headlights after we acquired yard-ornaments from the grounds of groomed estates. Eventually, we wobbled home safely and without our wrists obscured by handcuffs. I don't know what time is was when we finally unlocked the door and fell inside, but the next morning, afternoon actually, I am pretty sure we woke up fully clothed and in close proximity to an opened door with keys still inserted in the knob.
This night was just one of those nights where we just shook our heads in disbelief that it actually happened to us like an out of body experience. That is exactly what we did every time we reminisced about "the night at the Upstage", as we so fondly recalled it. One of Rich's, and I think mine, best qualities as drinkers is that we are "happy drunks" and man were we happy that night. It was a great farewell celebration for an end of an era as entrepreneurs. |
