Bar adventures – part 2

In my last column, I was discussing the sheer delight of waking up the morning after the bar and not being able to find your pants. This sensation is great, but what is even better is realizing that after the bar, you literally have nothing to do for a few weeks. No papers, no assigned reading, no job; absolutely nothing riding over your head until you have to start work. By the way, I highly recommend taking off at least 3-4 weeks before starting whatever job you have lined up after the bar (or seriously beginning your job search). And if you are worried about funds, just do what I did and apply for a 12 month, zero interest credit card. It’s free money and I’m pretty sure you never have to pay it back.

You should also start planning your post-bar trip now. While MaGerks may seem like a great place to go for three weeks; trust me, you need a plane ticket somewhere. Somewhere far away. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t go to MaGerks the night after the bar and run up an eighty dollar bar bill that you cannot remember. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t spend the whole next day drinking at MaGerks either, because you probably should. I’m just saying that after a few days of this, you’re going to want to travel some place very far away from your bar testing center and drink there.

Before the bar, I had planned to travel with my then girlfriend to visit one of her friends in Colorado Springs who just had a baby and then go to LA to visit my cousins. However, we wound up breaking up right before graduation. While this was disastrous for my personal life and emotional wellbeing, it turned out to be very beneficial towards my vacation planning options. Colorado and the new baby were crossed off the itinerary, and added was a trip down the California coast line with a law school friend.

The highlight of the trip was probably when we decided to violate our rental car contract by crossing the border and going to a small Mexican coastal town called Rosarito. Think Tijuana, but slightly classier. Our hotel was right on the beach, and I believe it cost about 70 dollars for the night. The beautiful thing about small Mexican coastal towns is that you can be sitting anywhere; at a bar, the beach, or a restaurant, and guys with big hats sneak up on you from behind, tilt your head back and pour tequila down your throat. Then they request $3.00. The fee was always the same.

Or, if you wish to be particularly cheap (as we did), you can just walk around the street and let the all-you-can-drink-specials come to you. We literally could not walk more than ten feet, without someone shouting about why we should come into their bar. The drink specials were all about the same ($10-$15 for unlimited tequila drinks) and every person swore up and down that although there were no girls in their bar yet, there would be soon.

We wound up in some place where I quickly befriended the bar tender by learning his name and tipping him $5. Apparently, this is all that is required in Mexico to make a friend for life. But the night didn’t really get fun until I was handing a bunch of free drinks to some girls and they asked us how long we were staying in Rosarito.

“We just moved here,” I said, for no particular reason.

“No Way!”

“Yeah, we wanted to do something crazy after college, so we grabbed our stuff, moved down here and figure we’ll find jobs and an apartment later. Tonight’s our first night.”

“That’s incredible. We come down here all the time and know all the bar owners. We’ll totally help you find jobs.”

So, the next thing we knew, we were meeting the owner of the bar, telling him that we wanted to be the guys in hats who poured tequila shots into people’s mouths. We swore we’d be back the next day to talk to him for real and were excited about our new careers.

Of course, while these adventures were going on, we had completely forgotten that we weren’t supposed to drink beverages with ice in them, nor eat the limes that came with our drinks, nor eat the vegetables that were found in our late night tacos. I managed to hold it together for the three hours that it took to cross the border back into the U.S. the next day (it took less than 2 minutes to get into Mexico), but eventually all hell broke loose. I’ll spare you all the details, but let’s just say that it was like peeing out of my ass. For three days. And it burned.

I think it was during the second day of my illness that things began to set in. I was lying on a grassy knoll in Santa Monica, unwashed and nauseous, desperately wanting to spend the rest of the day in a bathroom. However, my hostel wouldn’t let me into my room till 3pm and I had no place else until then. And then I remembered that just a few short days ago, I had taken the Maryland bar. And if things went well, I would soon be a lawyer. Not a pretend lawyer; but an actual, I-talk-to-clients-on-the-phone-and-actually-practice-law lawyer. The thought weighed heavily on me, and I felt as if that particular moment might have marked the end of my adolescence and the beginning of my adulthood. But this thought was immediately followed by an extremely urgent desire to find a public bathroom.