Saturday, September 22, 2007

Drinks and Advice Don't Mix


I learnt two things this past Thursday. 1) In Greece, girls can go to a bachelor party too 2) Potentially useful advice is always best given when sober.

On Thursday night, Mr Zeus’s good friend was throwing his bachelor bash and Mr Zeus asked me if I wanted to go. I was alarmed and pointed out that I was neither a stripper nor a bargirl and therefore had no business attending a bachelor party. I was assured that it wasn’t necessary for a bachelor party to be exclusively male, and even though the venue was a rock café ( I hate Rock and Roll) I was convinced.

The rock café wasn’t so bad. Almost all the men had long hair on their heads and faces. I knew one song in every 10 and excitedly pointed out these tracks to Mr Zeus. He is a rock and roll buff and nearly threw me out of the car when one day The Scorpions Winds of Change came on the radio and I said “What the hell is this garbage. They let anyone make music these days.” Not the best thing to say on a road trip with a car full of rock loving Greeks. I swear they practically screamed in horror at my ignorance. It was the faux pas equivalent of throwing a vintage Chanel dress into the washing machine on the 90C cycle in front of the editor of Vogue.

In the end, the evening turned out to be quite wonderful with a little help from Jose Cuervo. Now, I am an extreme lightweight drinker. Like everything else in life, I caught onto drinking about 10 years after everyone else. Knowing that I would get home safely with Mr Zeus and seeing as it was his friend’s last night of freedom, I tried to be as game as possible by having three whole shots of Cuervo.

LL Cool J was right when he sang to JLo that she was “Hotter than a shot of Cuervo”. Man that stuff burns. This is where the staying sober when giving advice comes in. There was another girl in our party who just did a Shirley Valentine two weeks ago. I was chatting to her and giving her advice about language lessons and culture shocks which started off quite well.

But by my third shot of Cuervo, I began drifting into my horror stories of when I first moved to Athens, like terrifying Greek women who give you the evils if you reveal you stole one of their men.

Thankfully, the small logical part of my brain that had managed to keep it together finally shouted at me loud enough for me to shut up. By this point I didn’t even know what music was playing and Mr Zeus decided it was home time on account of having work the next day. I made a solid effort to walk in a straight line, but when we got home, he had to walk over to the passenger side and help me get out of the car.

Before we all headed off to the café I had given this girl my contacts because she doesn’t live far and I remembered how lonely my first few months in Athens had felt. She still hasn’t called.
So there it is. Don't give advice of any kind if you're anything more than a little merry.

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