Drunk of the Day: Well, That’s a New One

Color me wrong, but aren’t there easier, less painful ways to get drunk? But boy, his tongue has talent!

Drunk of the Day: Wink, Wink

This man wants to make the sexy. Ready?

Gut Instinct: Punch Drunk

My first taste of fisticuffs, much like my first Taco Bell–breath kiss, was a titanic disaster.

The way I recall, a string-bean wiseacre named Eric told a ponytailed classmate that I loved her.

“No way. You’re a liar,” I replied, an endlessly erudite 15-year-old. That blonde had me crushed out, but saying so breached the etiquette of juvenile infatuation—speak its name, it ceases to exist.

“You’re the liar, lover boy,” came his ripping riposte. “Want to fight?”

“In the park,” I said, testosterone running roughshod. “After school.” At the 3 p.m. bell, we biked to a playground crammed with creaky swings. Eric and I stepped onto a dirt patch and puffed up like poisonous fish. He was a 6-foot Goliath. I was, as now, a scrawny 5-foot-4 David.

“Hi-yaaaa!” I roared, charging with kamikaze-pilot abandon. I bowling-balled into his belly, and we tumbled to the dirt, wrestling and yanking hair. “Liar!” I bellowed, walloping his bony chest with all my hormonal might—and my thumb tucked inside my fist, a style guaranteed to snap digits like a toothpick.

Lightning bolts of pain blazed. Eric socked my stomach, sending air rushing out like a deflating balloon. I went fetal, gasping for breath and pride.

“Pussy,” Eric said. At that, my first and only fight was finished.

Since that breathtaking afternoon, I’ve shunned violence. For a man my size, braggadocio will only lead to my ass on a plate. But when I ingest the devil sauce, I grow 7 inches. I’m 50 pounds heavier. I’m as ferocious as Mike Tyson in his tiger-owning prime.

“You won’t fight anyone,” my girlfriend often reminds me.

“Why not?”

“Look at you.”

“These guns are killers,” I say. I flex my arms, as muscular as penned calves’ limbs.

“Sure, baby,” she says. “Just have another beer and go to bed.”

Ah, sweet emasculation. My girlfriend’s enfeebling words slice me to my normal size and short-circuit my rage. But subtract female oversight, and my drunken little-man anger becomes disaster fuel.

“Be safe,” my girlfriend warned me several weeks ago.

“What could go wrong?”

“You’re going to an all-you-can-drink event featuring 300 beers.”

“All in moderation,” I added.

“Do you even know that word’s definition?”

“Don’t wait up,” I said, hurrying to meet my comrade Aaron at the South Street Seaport’s New York Brewfest. The Seaport is charming on a sunny day. However, today the heavens were opened wide, reenacting Noah’s deadly flood. After several hours of sampling treats, such as Green Flash’s bitter, Belgian-style Le Freak to Southern Tier’s dessert-y Crème Brûlée Stout, we were soaked to our underwear.

“Everything is prune-y,” Aaron said. We cut our losses and sloshed toward the F train at East Broadway, conveniently located beside 169 Bar (169 East Broadway at Rutgers St., 212-473-8866).

“Nightcap?” I asked Aaron.

“One more couldn’t hurt, right?”

Wrong, we discover, inside the former Bloody Bucket. This was once a bottle-breaking boozitorium. Now, it’s wall-to-wall with clean-shaven gents and bubbly ladies sucking light beer—not my heaven. But there is a Pabst-and-whiskey deal. We ordered two and shuffled toward a ledge, where a Brillo-haired ogre rested his paws. I caught his eyes and shooed his hands away, like a pesky fly.

“Why didn’t you ask?” he queried, quite reasonably.

I stayed silent. Perhaps he’d think I was mute. Who accosts a mute?

“You show me respect,” he said, like a two-bit gangster.

I slugged my whiskey—courage, coming right up—and cradled the glass. My fight-scarred pal Steve long ago taught me the importance of easy-access weaponry.

Ogre stepped closer. I stood my ground. “Respect me,” he demanded, close enough for me to smell his hot and boozy breath. “What’s your problem?”

How do I explain my mule stubbornness, antipathy to authority or the suds sloshing around my stomach? His question had too many answers, so I provided none. I clenched my glass tighter. In the 15 years following the playground incident, I hadn’t learned to throw a punch. This fight would be like Switzerland attacking America with spoons and feather pillows.

“Have all the respect you want,” Aaron said, leaping in like a referee and saving me from sprinting toward the subway. “Take our respect.” He mimed handing Ogre a lump of respect about the size of a newborn infant.

“That’s all I wanted,” he said venomously, glaring at me. “Was that so tough?”

I nodded, long and slow, and took another sip of canned trouble.

Drunk of the Day: Call the Circus!

I told you that drinking makes you more talented. This man is a genius. A genius! I want to hire him for my birthday party.

Drunk of the Day: A Little Gangster

Grandpa doesn’t like it when you thrown down gang signs. No, he doesn’t like it at all.

Drunk of the Day: Open Up and Say Ahhhhh!

The sign of any good night: People are too trashed to focus on the camera. And what the hell is the guy on the left doing? Is that some weird mating call I’m too old to understand?

Gut Instinct: Meat Your Match

Every so often, my friend José likes to remind me of his brief flirtation with bulimia. He was dining at Midtown’s Churrascaria Plataforma, a Brazilian meat circus where customers can chomp unlimited medium-rare barnyard animals.

“It was so good,” he says, eyes glazed with flesh remembered, hands caressing belly. “But I was full. And there were still meats to sample.”

A normal man would cry no más. But José brims with machismo, stubbornness and, most crucially, a thrifty streak. José wanted his money’s worth. So he excused himself, wandered to the bathroom and, like a teen suffering self-image issues, calmly turned his stomach inside out.

“Then I sat down and ate until I was full again,” he says happily. “I had two dinners.”

José tells this tale not with shame but pride at his simple solution. I’m hungry. How can I eat more? I can vomit. No matter how often I’ve heard this story—and lord, I can by now taste José’s bile—I’m still mortified. Go on, call me a hypocrite: One recent belly-roiling weekday, I chopsticked up 20 boiled pork-and-leek dumplings at Zheng’s, then nipped numerous bourbons at Brooklyn whiskey lair Char No. 4.

The crucial distinction is that a deep chasm separates the hedonistic giddiness of devouring your favorite food…and upchucking to eat seconds. Think of all the starving Ethiopian children! His wanton hunger was tricky to fathom—until I received an invitation to test my eating off switch.

“Come dine at Porcão Churrascaria [360 Park Ave. South at 26th St., 212-252-7080],” the invite said. Two dozen meats, served tableside rodizio-style. A salad bar. All-you-can-eat for $50.

“Not in a million years,” said my girlfriend, a staunch vegetarian.

“There’s salad. You love lettuce. I’ll eat enough cow for both of us.” Mmm…double dose of bovine.
She looked aghast, as if I said was considering becoming a transvestite hooker. Scratch that. I went to Plan B: Julie B. Licorice-skinny Julie has the appetite of a female Michael Phelps and a chain-smoking teen’s metabolism. She regularly devours greasy cheeseburgers and a dozen chicken wings, still keeping a single-digit dress size.

“I like to eat,” she explains, as if unabashed love of gooey nachos and bacon magically allow her to retain her girlish figure.

“It’s time for the tummy test,” I say as we arrive at Porcão’s cavernous dining room, New York cool as interpreted by a neon- and leather-loving Don Johnson. But tonight’s sole vice is unrepentant carnivorism.
A cordial, clean-faced waiter introduces himself. “And this is your…”

“Surrogate girlfriend,” I say. “Mine won’t come within a hundred feet of a steakhouse.” The waiter smiles, his face frozen in friendly rictus, and passes us several plastic discs. When hungry, he explains, flip the disc to green; when full, flip it to red.

“Is it go time?” I ask Julie.

“I’m wearing elastic,” Julie says, turning our discs shamrock.

As quickly as unleashed caged tigers, a procession of servers spring forward. Each cradles a throat-slitting knife and spitted meat. Skirt steak, rib-eye and flank are carved into silky-thin slices, which I grab with mini tongs evidently fashioned for munchkins. Tender beer-marinated chicken breasts give way to gnaw-worthy beef ribs.

“Is churrascaria Spanish for heart attack?” I ask Julie, chewing provolone-topped prime rib.

“My elastic needs to stretch further,” she replies, stabbing soft, pecorino-coated pork loin.

Gluttony comes quickly and tastily. “Filet mignon…wrapped in bacon,” says one server, like he’s selling an illicit drug. I take two slices, savoring the juicy, fatty animal-on-animal heresy—I’m too stingy to become a smoker again, but I could become addicted to this flavorful cattle-pig Frankenstein.

To further muddle our senses, a bartender wheels around a drinks cart to muddle caipirinhas. “He’s like a drunken dim-sum lady,” I whisper to Julie. I sip my third blend of passion fruit and cachaça, fermented sugarcane juice that, on its own, recalls first-aid antiseptic. The caipirinha is fruity. It is refreshing. It is, after all that medium-rare animal, much too much.

Churrascarias—like unlimited buffets and sushi dens—offer overdoses of pleasure. What’s great in moderation is not exponentially better by the wheelbarrow. Despite a lifetime of beer commercials pleading us to “know when to say when,” we still don’t. Open bars are guaranteed to end in slurring shambles, just like a churrascaria visit inevitably concludes with hands clutching distended stomach, cursing cows for being born so delicious.

“More filet mignon?” a server asks, his knife poised on the burnished, bacon-wrapped exterior.

“Nuhhhhhhhhh,” I mumble, flipping the disc to red and waddling to my bathroom fate.

Drunk of the Day: Fire!

Once again, how do drunken men always end up shirtless? I must start an inquiry. Anyone good at writing grants?