QuakeCon: Day 2 (Friday)

07/24/14

The middle day of QuakeCon (inconsistent capitalization on my part there). I played Counter-Strike and some Super Meat Boy before the great adventure for booze began.

I don't drink very often, but I decided early on this Friday to drink a lot. The only thing I can drink a lot of without getting a horrible head ache is vodka. So, I joined my friends on their quest for booze, my goal being to get vodka.

I'm not really sure if this is normal, but there was only ever wine and beer in most of the places we looked (Walgreens, Walmart). Eventually we found a general liquor store and got the variety of spirits we desired.

The great adventure for booze had a purpose. We were going to see Master Pancake that night for the day's QuakeCon event. They are a comedy troupe that makes fun of bad movies for their routine. For this show, they made fun of Labyrinth.

It was amazing. Probably helped that I had already drank half a flask of vodka by the time everyone was seated.

What followed afterwards was awesome at the time, but I felt guilty thinking back to it. I probably should've stopped drinking at half a flask. I stopped drinking closer to two fully-filled flasks in. (In my defense, this was like my sixth time ever really drinking, and I had lost a lot of weight, so I didn't know my limit at all).

I was falling all over myself and my very intelligent and much less drunk friends decided I should go to bed. They carried me out of the QuakeCon area, much to my protests, and then down the hall. I was telling them how they were being really good friends, and how it was interesting that how being drunk didn't stop me from thinking rationally, it just made it easier to dismiss rational thoughts. I told them that the first chance I got, I would run away....

And then one of them tripped, and I sprinted full speed back to the computer area of QuakeCon. That's another weird thing, I couldn't stand still or walk normally without losing my balance and slow collapsing to the floor, but I could run just fine. They freaked out. I was having a blast. I temporarily went back to my computer, told the crowd of Melee players that I ran away, and then I went to hide amongst the other people in QuakeCon.

The room was huge, and I spent a good hour just walking between computers and watching people play games. I walked past the large castle of empty Bawls cans, I watched someone play FTL for a bit, and I stopped by some random woman and told her the story of how my friends tried to take me to the hotel room. Eventually, I made my way back to my area, and joined in on the Super Smash Bros. Melee play.

Eventually, my friends who were looking for me found me back at my station, and yelled, quite reasoanbly, "What the ^@$!" They had been looking for me the whole hour; they thought for sure I had gotten into horrible trouble.

It was at this point I started to realize that what I was doing was both probably dangerous, and if not dangerous, would at least make a lot of people uncomfortable. Here I was, a person so drunk that his friends thought it smart for me to go to bed. All those people I was watching play games, maybe they weren't laughing because it was funny... maybe I was making them nervous and they were humoring me.

It makes the memories a lot less fun to relive, but not a complete waste, at least. I will simply make sure next time to drink much less. It was a lot of fun, still, but it's important not to spoil anyone else's fun if I can help it.