Cuban Consumption Crisis: Idiocy Reborn
Just a few months ago the fellas and I travelled to Cuba. It was March break for the Cegep students and our timing could not have been better to meet a bunch of young booze hounds ready to drink themselves into oblivion. But those tales are mired in confusion and enormous memory lapses. What follows is the first night we landed and the only night I will write about due to what I just mentioned as well as political strife and murky international relations.
We were flying out of Pierre Elliot Trudeau airport in Montreal at 5pm. I went to the airport with Dimsum while The Real Deal, Dmilz and PMac would meet us there. They were late, so we sat at the bar and had our last Canadian beer for a week. They eventually showed up and we proceeded to check into our flight and cross customs.
Once they set us loose in the waiting area by the gates, DMilz promptly purchased a bottle of Scotch and we all bought 750 ml Cokes. The goal was to finish the bottle before boarding our flight. We each drank about half of our Coke then filled our bottles with Scotch. It was fucking strong and sobriety would be a myth for the next twelve hours.
DMilz somehow qualified as a privileged traveler due to one of his credit cards, so he left us for half an hour for some fancy VIP lounge, where he could serve himself beer, eat fine delicacies and be genuinely uncomfortable while older business men looked at him with confusion and, maybe even revulsion. We sat next to our gate and drank our lethal beverages while he lived like a King.
Eventually the passengers of our flight were called to board and we stumbled into line and onto the plane. We weren’t drunk but we definitely weren’t sober. I sat next to PMac and for the entire two and a half hour flight, we spoke about gold prices and what crooked shit might be going on with the U.S. economy, in between swigs of our lethal drink and a round, maybe two, of drinks on the flight. I leave it up to you why we would choose such an interesting topic to explore in drunken futility.
We landed in Varadero without issue, passed through customs, got our bags, found our bus to the resort, hopped on and made it to the Barcelo Solymar without issue. Checking in was equally simple and before long we had all our shit in our rooms and we were ready for some cocktails.
There were three bars on our resort, the Lobby Bar, the Pool Bar and the Beach Bar. The Lobby Bar was packed so we walked over to the Pool Bar and ordered a round of two Rum & Cokes each. We took them to go since the Pool Bar was uncomfortably full and walked down to the Beach Bar since that’s the bastard that would be open until 3 am. It was pushing 11 pm.
We were all half-cut at that point and, to put it simply, we started smashing drinks at the Beach Bar like a pack of hyenas attacking a fresh carcass. It was mindless abuse for a night where we would have been better suited to just have a few cocktails, mingle and go to bed at a reasonable hour. Instead it turned into deep, moving conversations and me bragging to DMilz that I was an engineer too by connecting a half dozen straws to make a super straw to drink my cocktail that didn’t work.
We spoke with randoms who would pass by. Some joined us but fuck if I remember what was discussed. The next day people would say hello in passing and I’d ask my friends what the fuck their problem was. Our time at the Beach Bar came to an end when PMac made the discovery of the trip at that point. The grill inside the bar was making hamburgers with a slab of ham on top of the burger meat. This was exciting and mind-blowing to PMac. As we stumbled out of the bar with our food, he stopped a small group of people to share the
news.
“YO! They have HAM. Burger. Sandwiches in there! HAM.Burger. Sandwiches!”
They all looked at him like he was retarded. Who could blame them?
From this point forward, anything remotely resembling sobriety deteriorated rapidly. We all made our way back to our rooms. I was
with The Real Deal while the other three had another room at the other end of the third floor.
For some reason, The Real Deal and I stripped down to our boxers. I went to the other guys’ room to get something, I have no idea what. I was wearing very tight red boxer briefs, the kind you might see in a cheesy X-Rated Valentine’s day commercial for a sex shop. There was very little left to the imagination with these panties. I left The Real Deal and went to the other room. I don’t know what happened while I was there.
The Real Deal joined us after I never returned. I have no recollection of what happened in that room. Period. Neither did any of my buddies the next morning. I do remember leaving the room and hiding in the bushes across from our door to scare The Real Deal when he came back. I fell asleep in the bushes. The Real Deal woke up me up in absolute horror some time later. He spoke to me calmly, like I was suicidal and pulled me over the edge, back into the hallway.
As it turns out, I was sleeping in the most dangerous spot available to me. The banister, apparently, was there to prevent people from plummeting three stories to their death. Had I rolled over a foot to my right, the opposite way of the banister, I’d probably be dead.
After The Real Deal saved my life, we both realized that neither of us had a room key. We were both in boxers/briefs and it was decided I had to go down and get the room key. After sprinting around the hotel in my seductive undergarments and reaching the front desk, to the smiles and unwelcome stares of the women at the front, I got the key and went back upstairs.
The Real Deal had just finished being told to shut-up by our neighbors and we both crashed into (our separate) bed.
It wasn’t until a few days later during our Italian dinner, while DMilz was looking through videos on his iPhone that we discovered what happened that night in their hotel room. It was like finding the black box of a flight crash. Sitting at dinner, DMilz began cracking up. We all huddled around him and watched ourselves acting like cavemen.
PMac was being beaten with a pillow by The Real Deal before he had enough, body slamming The Real Deal onto the bed and floor. Then PMac speared, maybe body slammed DMilz, who was filming. For some reason, I was crawling around on the bed like an idiot while this battle royal was happening. I think Dimsum was giggling to himself in the corner at the scene he was witnessing.
It was 30 seconds of unparalleled stupidity that no one will ever see. Primarily due to us all being in just our boxers as all this was happening. Coming soon to a Youtube near you.