Birthday With the Scrapes

I went to a party of nurses three whole zones away from my apartment. That probably sounds meaningless to anyone outside Copenhagen, but to get from zone 3, where my apartment is, to zone 30, where the party was, takes a 20 minute train ride and a half-hour bus ride. We were running late, but the bus ride gave me time enough to mix a couple vodka-limes in an empty Coke bottle. After the bus though, we still had a meandering walk from the station. We were looking for a house to left left of the tunnel under the highway, but there were tunnels every quarter mile under the highway. When the nurse who was celebrating her 21st birthday (plus 7) went outside to yell "DONNA!" from a balcony we were nowhere near close enough to hear her booming Australian accent. Four desperate phone calls and a couple wrong turns later, we landed in front of a three story house with eleven bedrooms.

I spent an hour getting to know the nurses in the Irish girls' program getting fed wop and drinking more vodka and lime while trying out the "vodka sauna" (sauna in which Bacardi rum was poured onto the coals). I stumbled out of there with maybe two thirds of the completely female party population to go to an Irish bar on Stroget called, transparently enough, The Irish Bar.

There I finished my vodka and my lime before dancing on a 4-foot counter with the Irish girls. The next thing I can recall, after sucking down the last of my ten-dollar bottle of Russian potato liquor, is walking on a street with blood running down my cheeks and meeting two very attractive, surprisingly sympathetic, Danish girls.

[maybe] a flight of stairs later in the morning

"Are you OK?" one of them asked in a sexy voice that made her "ay" vowels sound like sexual advances. "Yeah..." She told me to sit down, and I did. She called the Danish emergency number and they both talked to me until the EMTs came. It was the closest I have come so far to getting with the beautiful Danish girls I had avidly anticipated before arriving in Denmark. I don't remember what was said, but I distinctly remember that the girls were more sympathetic than any of the vitriol Danes I have dealt with in customer service.

The Irish girls brought cupcakes and ice cream

Aside from the horrible deformation, my 21st birthday the next day was satisfying. Orla and Donna went with me to a restaurant downtown, Cafe Dalle Valle, that had half-priced entrées four days a week. Wowee zowee is right folks! I cancelled out the great deal on a platter full of Danish-quality nachos by paying almost twenty bucks on the girliest drink on the cocktail menu. They both very delicious, but considering the size of the drink they gave me, enough liquid to fill a cologne sample vial, I would pass given the choice again. I paid to have an orgasm in my mouth or to get instantly smashed. What I got  was a puddle of mint Frappuccino.

Trying to detect signs of a party in my mouth

We went to the only bar we could find that was open on a Sunday evening and ordered traditional Irish libations, apple cider and Guinness. After shooting the shit with each other for half an hour, laughing about the absurd cost of my effeminate cocktail, a man speaking Russian stumbled into the bar asking for a drink in what appeared to be his best impression of the mumbling Mr. Bean. Following shortly after was a young Danish man who ordered a pair of Irish car bombs once he heard it was my birthday.

When the Dane went to the bathroom, I consulted the Irish girls. "Is he gay? I think he's hitting on me." They said no, he was just nice; there was no gay vibe. When he got back he told me he was going to order another drink. "Would you like anything?"

"No thanks." He pressed me. Typical... He asked me what I wanted. I said "surprise me," not realizing the flirtation connotations of the trite phrase. The bartender developed his own variation of a Jager-Bomb that had a shot of schnapps resting against a shot of Jagermeister over a pool of Red Bull. He called it a "Disaster." It was delicious, but the Dane left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

Sure enough, before leaving, the Danish guy who was spending more money on getting me drunk than I ever will, mentioned a fancy restaurant in Copenhagen, MASH (Modern American Steakhouse). "I will pay for you. I am going to give you my number, and you should call me when you're back from Paris."

I wish I could say I smoothly accepted he number and just left him feeling a mild success, but I ended up stuttering through a rejection. "Well, uh, considering the implications of that..." He cut me off before I could finish. "It's OK."

I suppose that's the price you have to pay for free drinks.