Ghost of Christmas Past

The holidays always make me nostalgic for home. I’m originally from New York, and you just can’t beat the vibe in the streets, the crisp winter air and overall Christmas spirit that takes over the city. A few years ago, I was living in New York over the holidays and I was casually dating a girl there. I met her a few months earlier through a friend that used to babysit her. (Have no fear, she was of legal age).

We had gone on a few dates, but things were weird between us because I was only in New York for a few months, and she didn’t want to get too invested in a relationship with someone who was leaving. Nevertheless, I did my best to get her drunk in an effort to loosen this restriction. We went for dinner to a nice restaurant and shared some wine. We then went to a few bars on the upper east side and got tanked. We bullshitted a bunch of investment bankers (we lied and said I was a fairly famous director doing research for a new comedy I was working on. I said the movie was about investment bankers and I got a bunch of drunk kids to tell me the craziest stories they had about their bosses).

All in all, we were having a fun night, and I was feeling a vibe from her until some switch went off and she went from fun-drunk to nasty, alcoholic. She spilled her drink down my back and started yelling at people. I decided she needed to go home and I basically had to drag her out of the bar screaming before she got into a fight with someone. We jumped in a cab and I took her to her apartment. When the cab dropped us off, she started yelling at the driver to take me home right away, but I didn’t think she’d be able to get upstairs alone so I decided I would help her.

First, she got out of the car and started yelling a bunch of gibberish at me. I tried to convince her to go upstairs, but she thought it would be more fun to run away from me down the street. I gave in to her little game of cat and mouse, and followed suit. As we got down the street, she found a Christmas tree outside of someone’s apartment and decided to steal it. To be fair, she was no Hercules, as this was New York, and it was a pretty small tree, but she was ruining some kid’s Christmas all the same.

Tree in hand, she took off down the street and headed to the corner bodega. In her drunk state, she realized she wanted cookies, but rather than paying for them with money, she told the clerk that she would be paying with the Christmas tree, threw it at him and ran away laughing. I apologized and give him a $10 bill. It didn’t take me too long to catch up to her because when I left the store, she was already passed out in the middle of the street.

I continued to be a good guy, and tried to help her up and walk her to her building. She wanted none of it, and the second I grabbed her arm to lift her up, she started screaming “Don’t touch me! Help!” She caught her second wind and was now standing up on her own, but her purse was still in the street so I picked it up. She then started screaming again “Help! He’s stealing my purse!”

Woah…I was just trying to be a good guy, but here I was in the middle of New York City, with a drunk girl basically yelling at the top of her lungs that I was raping and robbing her – not cool. Eventually, I got her to her building doing everything short of putting a gag in her mouth. At this point I was still worried that she’s a single girl alone in NY and wanted to make sure she got into her apartment, so I tried to follow her into the building – She slammed the door on my leg. I got her up the elevator, she passed out in the hallway and wrapped herself up with a random jacket she found on the floor.

I went into her purse to get her keys and opened up her apartment. More screaming in the vein of “He’s breaking into my apartment.” Honestly, I had never felt more like a horrible person then I did at that moment, which was the craziest thing because I was actually going out of my way to help. She wouldn’t get up no matter how hard I tried to convince her... “you’re so close, just a few steps and you’ll be home,” so I grabbed her cell phone and tried to call her roommate to tell her I was leaving her in the hallway…No answer. Fuck. I can’t leave her in the hall can I? No, I can’t, so I started to drag her to the door – Now, I can only imagine that if there was a security camera anywhere, I actually did look like a rapist, dragging a girl into an apartment. She woke up mid-drag and stood up. She walked into her apartment, and just made it into the foyer when she immediately passed out on the floor again. “Good enough” I thought, as I locked the door and got the hell out of there.

The next morning she sent me a text that said “Thank you so much for last night. I had a great time.” -Are you fucking kidding me? I thought. I didn’t respond. I got a few more texts from her and she had no idea why I was mad and ignoring her. I replied saying that I had a horrible time, she treated me terribly and made me feel worse than I’ve ever felt before on a date, and it was not my idea of fun. Turns out, she didn’t remember anything past us bullshitting those investment bankers, so I decided I would go over to her house and tell the story to her and her friends. Her friends were amused, and she was horrified. I was about to tell her I thought she might have a drinking problem, but she didn’t want to hear it. A few weeks later I was back in LA, and got a package from her. It was a copy of the movie BLIND DATE with Bruce Willis and a note that said, “If you think our date was bad, watch this movie. It’ll make you feel better.” I didn't want to relive the experience, so I never watched it.


SO HOW WAS LAST NIGHT? Too much eggnog ruined Christmas