Last night I was out until 4am.  This is not a sentence that regularly crosses my lips, and on the rare occasions when it does, a new Harry Potter midnight release generally plays a part.  But nope, last night I was drinking jack and coke and rocking out to a punk band in Santa Barbara, without a Horcrux in sight.  And you know what?  I am no longer 25.  Just in case I had any doubts, I have been made acutely aware today that 25 was a full decade ago.  You know what else?  Crazy people sure do love me.  I must be wearing some kind of perfume: eau de crazy.  I'm not surprised anymore when random people will come up to me in the grocery store and start telling me all their crazy stories.  That happens regularly enough that I expect it now.  But I don't expect it to happen at a punk concert, when I'm half drunk.

So the fun starts off when we're waiting outside for the Velvet Rose to open.  Doors for Lagwagon open at 8, the poster says.  It's 8:30.  No open doors.  And I'm freezing my trendy butt off, getting crotchety and frustrated because in my day, when a poster said the doors would open at 8, the doors would open at 8, dammit.  And we'd walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways.

A homeless guy walks past the line of us, asking if anyone has a quarter.  When someone gives him a quarter, he then take a play out of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying  and tries to flip it for a profit.  Only he must have missed a few days of that lesson because his offer isn't at all favorable to himself.  He offers $2 to anyone for a cigarette.  It goes from, "does anybody have a quarter," to "i'll give anybody $2 for one cigarette." The 7-11 was selling packs for like $4, so if he could have saved up a bit more, he'd have been able to really be set, but I guess that's how the rich get richer and the poor get lung cancer.

Anyway, so the doors open at 9, and I immediately hit the bar.  It's been a long time since I've been drunk, what with trying to get preggo, and having a husband who goes to AA.  He's going to drive home, he's cool with me drinking, so jack and coke it is.  Only thing is, I forgot that I'm not 25 anymore.  There was a time when I could pound those things.  But my head started spinning on the first sip.  Well, I'm a cheap date, I think to myself, and follow my hubby up to the balcony, staggering along the way, marveling at how the disco balls are so shiny.

You know what one of my favorite things to do is?  Ok, before I say, you have to promise not to judge me. Because I don't get out much.  So humor me.

One of my favorite things in the world is peeing when I'm drunk.

You know why?

Because:

1)  You're generally in a club where there is loud music, and you go into the bathroom and it's nice and quiet, though you can still hear muffled club noise.

2)  You sit down on the seat and everything slows down for a second.  It was all spinny before, and now it's just like, "woah.  I'm in my own little cubicle, and it's all in slow motion."

3)  Generally it's warmer in the bathrooms.

4)  There's usually makeup in club bathrooms, and it's fun to play with makeup when you're drunk.

Ok, so I had my fun drunk-bathroom time, and I'm standing on the balcony watching the bands, when this crazy lady comes up and asks me if it's ok to smoke pot up on the balcony.  Then she says, "well, not legally, I mean, but do you think it's ok?"  I tell her that the security guards have been coming around every 10 minutes or so, so if she can do it quick, she's probably ok.  She says, "ok.  Do you have any?"  I didn't, much to her disappointment.

Then I turn around and some older guy wearing a Lagwagon shirt is going around asking everybody who they're there to see.  Everybody looks at him like he's nuts, because he's wearing a freaking Lagwagon shirt, but we humor him.  "Lagwagon," we say.  He goes on to the next person.  Then he circles back around and pokes me on the shoulder.  "I'll give you $20 for your chair."  There had been a bar stool behind me, which I wasn't using.  I was like, "you can just take it," because I feel weird selling stuff that's not mine.  "I don't take anything for free," he says, and pushes a $20 bill into my hand.

Damn, I just sold something that wasn't mine in the first place.  I wonder if this is how Mitt Romney feels when he leverages companies he doesn't own, and then sells them for a profit to pay his investors.  Man, I should be a hedge fund manager, I think.  I clearly have a knack for it.  Anyway, his $20 bought me another round of drinks, and I spent the next hour spacing out.

Then my Drunk Inner Nerd came out.

When I went to my Sr Prom, it happened to be timed to be the week before all the AP tests, right?  So I thought nothing of having a bunch of flashcards stashed in my beaded clutch to study during the down times, like waiting in line to get pictures taken, right?  Makes perfect sense to me.

So I'm always prepared with a book or flashcards or anything else that will make my Inner Nerd happy.  I leaned against the back wall, pulled up my kindle app, and read The Spectator, a British news and politics magazine.  Specifically, I read an article on Rupert Murdoch's new Sunday newspaper he just started; the Sunday Sun.  And I read about the LibDem/Tory coalition government falling apart.  In a club, with really loud punk music blaring.  You know how people say that when you get drunk you just become more like who you really are, because your inhibitions are down?  Well, I clearly am one hell of a nerd, then.

Oh, and then I started postulating on the social implications of a mosh pit; the primal urges that a mosh pit satisfied, and what type of person is drawn to a mosh pit in general.  I wasn't talking to anybody in particular.  I was just talking about it to whoever would listen.

Then, because I'm not 25 anymore, I start to pass out.  I nap right there, leaning on J's shoulder.  I'm going to start a new trend.  Napping in clubs.  You know how in New York there was that restaurant called Bed that served you dinner on a bed?  I'm going to start a new club: Nap.  For people over 30.  It will feature live music by bands popular when we were teenagers, and after every few songs, the mosh pit will be replaced by a big comfy bed with lots of pillows and comforters.  Girls will remove their uncomfortable shoes, and you will be able to buy pajamas if you want.  Everyone will curl up and cuddle with each other for 20 minutes while the bartenders clean up and restock the bar; and the band, seeing as how they are older too, will join in and we'll all nap together.  Then we'll get back up, the girls will have fun time in the bathroom while the boys buy us drinks, the mosh pit will resume, and everyone will play and dance and rock out for another 20 minutes.  We'll do this until approximately 1am, because no one should be up after 1am, unless they have insomnia.

Oh, and I'm so proud of myself because I avoided the greasy pizza they were serving to all the drunk people, though I pined and longed for it all night.  It looked so disgusting, the ex-frozen pizza swirling around under the heat lamp, the cheap cheese glooping up and dripping down the sides, the grease wanting to be shot directly into my veins to soak up the alcohol.  But I stayed strong, and just ate a Power Bar on the way home.  Yay for willpower, even in the face of total impairment.