This goes back to my ensemble days at NYU. (Seems to be a recurring theme lately.) Our wild Bulgarian director (of "is is like the monkey on the spaceship" fame) threw himself a name day party. Name days are big in eastern Europe. Your Name Day is the day on which the saint you were named after was born. People celebrate these Name Days the same we celebrate birthdays here. You know,presents, drinking, party games like Pin the Tail on the Kid with Asthma because He Can't Run Very Far. Crap like that.
Now, our director was a notorious drinker. And when I say "notorious" I mean it in the full-caps NOTORIOUS, like the B.I.G. I've witnessed some true champions in action during my day, but this guy was right at the top of the list. So naturally, whenever we'd have any sort of formal cast party/bonding type night that he was involved with, lots and LOTS of alcohol were involved as well. (Hey, we were 20-21 year-old college kids. Throw free liquor at us and we were there. Come to think of it, if you throw free liquor at me right now I'd probably be there. But that's beside the point.) Seeing as this was his big Name Day party, I prepared myself for a wild night of Bulgarian-style hoopla and shenanigans.
I did not prepare myself well enough.
Six of us attended the Name Day party -- including this one particular ensemblemate of mine named Amanda. Now, I was completely pink-heart wearing, flower-giving, muskrat-in-love with Amanda. I REVERED her. Absolutely adored her. She was flabbergastingly beautiful in that west-coast Seattle grunge neo-punk-hippie sort of way, wearing long, flowy beat-up skirts waving her wildfire hair. She had a glint in her eyes that could light your cigarette from across Union Square park. Damn, she was somethin'. And she was there. At the party. With an entire bottle of vodka to herself.
Oh yes, I almost forgot the Vodka. Our director had brought with him seven bottles of Tarkhuna Vodka. Tarkhuna, as I learned that night, is a green Vodka made by monks in Siberia. (Think RASPUTIN.) Allegedly the green color comes from certain Siberian herbs which are blended into the vodka. The monks believe these herbs have certain hallucinogenic properties. (Once again, think RASPUTIN.) We had seven one-liter bottles of this stuff. One bottle of Tarkhuna for each of us.
Let me reiterate that. ONE LITER OF GREEN VIRGIN-MARY SEEIN' POWER-SEIZIN' CZAR-OVERTHROWIN' VOODOO JUICE FOR EACH OF US.
Now, we couldn't just sip the Vodka. Oh no. That is not the Russian way. Our director informed us that we were all going to do "Russian Shots". Here's how a Russian shot works. You fill a glass - a standard sized, 12 ounce-ish fl. oz Glass - halfway to two-thirds full of vodka. You hold glass in your left hand. In your right hand, you take a piece of thick bread and top it off with a large slice of cheese. Any kind of solid, fairly aromatic cheese will do. Once those are in place, you fill your lungs with as much air as your possible can, hold it for a second, then completely exhale every last bit of air inside them. Once the air is gone, you slam the half-glass of vodka down your throat, carefully avoiding tasting the stuff. After you've slammed the vodka, you immediately throw the bread and cheese up against your nose, where you inhale the cheese with all your might. (The scent from the cheese cuts the initial shock of ingesting 6-8 fluid ounces of vodka.) Once you've regained consciousness you rest for about thirty seconds and then repeat the process. After two or three of these, you're allowed to eat the bread and cheese. Now that you have a little bit of something in your stomach, you're ready to finish the bottle.
It didn't take us very long to finish our bottles. Infact, I think we did it in under an hour. Which, of course, meant only one thing: We need more vodka.
We acquired a few more bottles of vodka, finished those off, and hung around for a while. I don't remember exactly what went on, but I remember hearing things like "This is why I think you hate me", "You are unbelievable in that scene with Vershinin," and "Why the hell did you cast me in this role?" (You know, typical self-involved actor crap.) Accusations flew left and right. Everyone yelled and kissed and threw things in the air. Stuff was flying left and right. We couldn't make heads or tails of who we were, what we were doing, or whose leg was draped across whose neck. And when it was all over we left the party feeling tighter as a cast, closer as friends, and drunker as human beings. We all said our goodbyes, hugged each other a little too much, and set out on our respective merry ways.
Most of the party crew stumbled their way out the door and went home. Only I wasn't done yet. And thankfully for me, neither was Amanda. So we headed out to good ol' Shades of Green, where even your six-year-old sister could get her drink on at 3 AM. (And she could probably go home with an NYU student, too.)
My memories of this night start to get a little fuzzy at this point, but I remember Amanda and I grabbed a booth right behind the bar. (Very easy access to drinks) In my mind, this was it. This was my shot. Finally -- Me. Amanda. Alone together. I was feelin' good, damn good. Rasputin good. I ordered a gin and tonic. She ordered a cider. We played with candles and fire. And somewhere in between the drinking and the fireplay we began to speak.
I don't remember exactly how it started. I think we were talking about growing up on opposite sides of the country, the differences between life in small town Connecticut and adolescence spent in the mountains of Washington State. I was trying so desperately hard to keep my edge, grasping onto every sentence, any word to keep myself from reeling. Sure, I was drunk on alcohol, but I was even more drunk on Amanda. Her words, her voice, her mere presence. A flood was coming on, and I couldn't stop it. The dam was cracking with each and every sip I took and with each story she told. I tried like hell to hold it in place. I stuck my finger in the dyke and held it there with every last fiber of my being. But by the time we were on our second or third beverage at the bar I could hold it in no longer. The mother broke.
I forget exactly what I said. I started by telling her what a fantastic actress I thought she was -- which was true. The girl was good. And then it just went all downhill from there. I reminisced over this po-mo project we worked on out first day in class together. That devolved into some completely inane speech about how magic squirrels had brought us together and how that meant that the universe wanted us to be together and how perfect we were for each other blah blah blah drunky gush love blubber squirrely yak-yak.
At some point we left the bar. I was still gushing aplenty as we passed through Union SquarePark. Ah yes, Union Square Park. That was the place. It was perfect. Trees. Garbage. Magic squirrels.
I dropped down to one knee and proposed to her.
Technically she never said "no". I don't think she said yes, either. But I know she didn't say no.
Somehow I got up off the ground. That dropping to one knee bit did it for me. I was gone. Done. Stick a fork in me. Amanda lived just across the street, so I figured I could stay with it long enough to walk her across the street to her place and then take a cab home.
I don't exactly remember going home. What I do remember is this:
I remember being in a dimly lit (candlelight?) living room/ bedroom. I remember seeing the shadowed silhouette of a woman undressing. I remember uttering the words "Nice Breasts. I have to go."
I woke up the following afternoon safe and sound in my own bed. How and when I got there remains a mystery to this day.
