I’ll see you at the Lotus Bar

I don’t drink. In fact, I’ve never tasted a single drop of beer.

Alright, alright. Let me try rephrasing that: I’ve never had any real beer and I’ve never drank any alcohol.

What can I say? Boring nights in Laie do strange things to people.

I’ll avoid the sordid details of how we came to acquire the St. Pauli’s non-alcoholic brand beer from a sleazy retailer at Foodland (let alone what on earth possessed us to go driving around campus with windows down and music up while drinking the crap), but suffice to say I’m amazed how people can teach themselves to actually like the taste of beer.

So where was I?

Ah yes, men acting like women while drunk.

The report hit the mark right on the bullseye. What’s most annoying is, just like women, men are suddenly able to go from outrageously happy to ridiculously sad at will. Happy, sad, happy, sad.

(It gives me a greater appreciation of how much I enjoy pretext — a little transition — between moods, while at the same time entertaining me endlessly with the sheer randomness of the behavior.)

However, the article made me think of how my relationship with booze-infested people is a complex one.

Life and work often bring me into environments where drinking is actively encouraged. I’ve decided that beer is an interesting vice people use to expose their uninhibited side with relatively few repercussions. Most of the time.

It’s genuinely hilarious to see your bosses buzzed and not in their right mind, but only until you realize you have to wait for them to finish before you can share a cab back to the hotel. Getting back at 5am and having a full slate of convention appointments starting at 9am sucks hard.

What’s intrigued me is how much fun moderately intoxicated individuals can be. Less uptight, more relaxed and easy going. It’s like there’s an internal switch that’s been toggled between “Boring” and “Fun” modes. A perfect example of this was my cousin Heather’s wedding at Ko Olina.

People drank socially, but not excessively which I think is where the difference is. People were outgoing, even the ones not normally so. There was laughter, excitement and movement. The energy in the room (or under the tent on the beach, I should say) was something I had never before experienced.

While extremely rare, you find yourself in these high-energy environments and life becomes more visceral. Like you could somehow scoop the atmosphere everyone’s sharing and bottle it for future use — it was that tangible. My cousin’s wedding was definitely one such occasion.

(Case in point, even I danced.)

Since then I’ve been asking myself, why can’t Mormon wedding receptions be this fun? Certainly, the members of my family in the church (who don’t drink) had no trouble enjoying themselves and cutting loose. I know I didn’t. But it’s true, Mormon wedding receptions are more serious with less energy.

On the flip side, why do people need to ingest alcohol to lighten up in the first place?

Caroline, a good friend I made while traveling in Asia, told me about the Full Moon Party she attended in Thailand where she met a few guys who were incapable of being social until the local drug dealers arrived and they got high on ecstasy.

After the pill was swallowed, it was the difference between night and day. And what’s more, after one shot that was it for them. They were good for the night, but they needed it to chill out to the point where they could interact with different people.

I’ve thought of traditional booze as a similar social gateway drug ever since — a required artificial key required to unwind for some people.

But when that key is turned too far, which inevitably it almost always is, people loose control.

On Ko Toa, the epicenter of SCUBA diving in Southeast Asia, the most popular place on the island is the Lotus Bar where tatami mats are rolled out on the beach, paper lanterns are flown beyond the eye’s reach and the music is something truly otherworldly. It’s a surreal environment and one I enjoyed to a point.

I had gone there one night with my friends from the Asia Diving Resort. We spent the night talking about places we had traveled, crazy people we met and even politics. It was intelligent conversation with intelligent people. But then the drinks started flowing.

For 400 baht, you can buy these bucket drinks loaded with an assortment of booze. To put that in perspective, 400 baht is a night’s stay at any decent hostel.

Within an hour, four of these buckets had been ordered and many in my group were getting extremely drunk.

Gav, a dive instructor at our resort, began seriously hitting on girls that could have his daughters. He struck out, time and time again, but kept drinking bucket after bucket. Around 1am, he turned to me and gave what has become the 2nd drunk confession that I’ve received in my life.

In one of those moments that leave you screaming, “WHY ME?” he spilled every little horrific detail about his failed life.

He had left his wife, though she was currently unaware of the fact. Gav used getting his Dive Master certification as an excuse. He’d cheated before, would cheat again and pretty much assumed his wife was going to take him for everything that he was worth. His children didn’t respect him for some mysterious reason.

In short, when I asked this drunken fool if anything could be done to salvage the situation, he shook his head deliberately and said no in his thick British accent.

Pathetic.

Less than two minutes later, he was back in happy-go-lucky mode tossing a drunken Irish girl into the ocean and waddling around like the deranged walrus he is. Vainly trying to relive his glory days. Moments after the water dunking began, he and the said Irish girl ganged up on me and tossed me into the drink.

Wallet, passport, camera and all.

The fun for the rest of us ended pretty much after I recovered and we left the remainder of our party to their own devices. Turns out Gav and the girl almost got themselves killed after they took a swim around 4am and went out of sight.

Among other things.

(I would have paid good money to see a Great White Shark meander by to put Mr. Gav out of his misery in true Spielberg-fashion.)

From one extreme to another. But always an interesting time and learning experience.

“Everything in moderation,” is the cliché of choice to spout out mindlessly, I would suspect. But really, Homer Simpson said it best, “To beer, the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems!”

That and I could really go for a drink. A Tsunami Sobe is just the ticket, baby.

July 9th, 2007 in Commentary |