Do you guys know what pub golf is?
When my friend first sent me the e-mail explaining the event, I didn’t. I saw the word “golf” and closed the e-mail. I don’t really do “sports” (here y’all can embark on a debate about whether or not golf is a sport). But I agreed to go because that’s what my friends were doing that night and I’m a sheeplike follower; through manifold processes, ranging from information osmosis to the act of actually listening to my friends, I discovered that there was no real golf involved in pub golf. The only athletic skill you need is the ability to bring a pint glass to your lips and walk from one bar to another one a few yards down the block without killing yourself. Now I’m not promising I can do either of those things consistently, but my chances are pretty decent.
Okay, so, for those of you who don’t know, here’s my understanding on pub golf: there are 9 “holes” (I suppose you could do 18 holes if you’re really intent on getting your stomach pumped), with each hole being represented by a different bar. Each “hole” has three designated drinks—one pussy drink (ex/ a Tequila Sunrise) designated the “bogey,” one slightly more intense drink (ex/ rum) designated “par,” and one badass drink (ex/ a car bomb) designated a “birdie.” So I guess the ideal golfer goes to nine different bars and has a car bomb-esque drink at each one.
As soon as I read the scorecard, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do it. Some might call that a defeatist attitude, but I call it a survival instinct. I’m kind of small, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting me in the flesh.
I knew I’d never have a winning score, but my chances of making anything even approaching to par went from slim to none when I decided to start drinking at 3 p.m. on the afternoon of pub golf. This was not the smartest idea, but, in my defense, it was one of San Francisco’s rare warm and sunny days and my friend was having a BBQ (side note: I’ve realized that above a certain age, BBQ is code for binge drinking during the daytime in a socially sanctioned setting).
So by the time evening rolled around and it came time to head to pub golf, I was drunk. To give you an idea of my level of drunkenness by the time pub golf started: When I left the BBQ, I walked to Starbucks to meet a friend after she got off work—the fact that I walked there was a red flag in itself, because when I’m drunk, I decide that very long distances are not, in fact, very long, and I walk for hours and miles without really realizing it. During the walk, I drunk-dialed almost everyone in my phone (I won’t say on what date this occurred; just know that if I’ve drunk-dialed you recently, it was NOT on that day. I only called you that time, I swear. You’re really special to me). I also wore my sunglasses during the entire walk—and though, when I first started, the sky was still blue, the blazing summer sun just beginning its descent into the Pacific, by the time I got to my destination, it was really dark. Like, I couldn’t really see at all. It didn’t dawn on me to take off my sunglasses until I saw my reflection in the Starbucks window.
So I piled into a car with two friends to drive to the pub golf starting point. They were both dead sober. I sat in the back seat and stared at my face in the window and tried really hard not to burst out laughing, because I was vaguely aware that I was probably extremely annoying at that point. I don’t know what was so funny, but I do remember making eye contact with my reflection and thinking smugly about how HILARIOUS I am.
So we got to the apartment of the person hosting pub golf. I’d never met him before. He had really weird hair. I started telling people that I’d been drinking since three and didn’t think I’d be able to hold my own. People, in turn, began making comments about how, since I’d been drinking since three, I wouldn’t be able to hold my own. This offended me deeply. To get back at my naysayers, I took a shot of whiskey. That was probably a really good idea. Then I think I hit on two twins simultaneously. They were fraternal. One was a girl.
And then, it was time for pub golf to begin!
And…um…I don’t really have anything to say about that. Here is what I remember: I met a middle-aged man named Fletcher at one bar who hunted me down at the next bar to ask for my number. At one bar, my friend and I spent a lot of time dancing on the little stage and harassing the DJ; the DJ was a guy with a CD player in the corner. All I wanted to listen to was Chromeo, and I requested it approximately once every minute. All my friend wanted to listen to was Lady Gaga, and she requested it with equal frequency. I thought I lost my phone and, in a panic, dumped my entire purse on the floor. My phone was on the table next to me. I made dinner plans with a guy I didn’t know. The host of pub golf, with the weird hair, suddenly didn’t have the hair anymore. Apparently everyone else knew it was a wig. I was outraged to find out later in the night that my “teammates” had not been counting me as a member of their team the entire night, but had been pretending to keep track of my points to placate me. That was probably a good call on their part. Also, all of this happened in the Richmond, a remote and desolate neighborhood of San Francisco to which I never go, so I felt like I was in some faraway universe, and was strangely liberated to act (if this was possible) even drunker and more ridiculous than I really was.
So that was pub golf. I recommend it to anyone who hasn’t fulfilled their drunken idiot quota this month.
Also, I’d like to acknowledge that I realize that the title of this post is misleading because the majority of its content is not, actually, about pub golf, but about the events leading up to it, but, well, I guess you should consider the vacuous center of my narrative as giving more legitimacy to my declaration that pub golf got me really, really, retardedly wasted.
A final addendum: To any potential employers and/or moms that might have stumbled upon this post: this is entirely uncharacteristic of me. I woke up the next day and went to the library and read Proust for the entire afternoon, with breaks to nurse wounded puppies back to health and develop a business plan to launch a micro-finance company in Uganda.
-Kate
