Another night of shame

I got a text message from a friend yesterday. It said: “Was the movie any good last night?”

Which is strange because she was sitting right next to me as I watched it and had a drink with me afterwards.

But understandable in light of her sleeping through it, due to a liquid lunch that went from 1pm until 15 minutes before I picked her up.

We went to a preview screening of Arbitrage, which I had trouble following sober. So I’m not surprised she dozed off drunk. It’s about “hedge-fund magnate [played by Richard Gere] … desperately trying to complete the sale of his trading empire to a major bank before the depths of his fraud are revealed”. I still don’t understand what happened to the $400million in the end. But then I missed the whole GFC thingy, so I have form when it comes to financial mumbo-jumbo. Same thing goes for whatever “arbitrage” means.

One thing I do know is that Richard Gere is looking a bit oooold, his eyes are also much smaller and beadier than I remember them. If I was the hot French chick he shags in the movie, I’d be seriously questioning my life choices.

Conversation at the bar after the movie was slightly troublesome as well, because my friend kept forgetting stuff I told her. It was like being with someone who has early onset senility.

But it did mean I could ask lots of personal questions I’d never normally be brave enough to broach because I was pretty sure she wouldn’t remember the next day.

Our kids go to the same school and her son is on holidays with his dad so, on the way home, my friend asked if I’d return his library book for her. I parked in her driveway while she went inside to get it. Then I waited and waited. Eventually she reappeared with her dog in her arms and blithely waved his paw bye-byes at me. I opened the car window and said “er, library book?”. She went “ah!” and wobbled back inside to get it.

She’s been apologising profusely since sleeping it off, saying she feels “very guilty and embarassed”, but I assured her that I can’t throw stones after my appalling behavior at a dinner party recently.

It seems we’re in good company. Since writing about My Night Of Shame, loads of people have been telling me horror stories about their own misadventures with the demon drink. Like the school mum who destroyed a large patch of her friend’s front lawn with her stomach acid, another whose husband’s “most-asked question” is “why are you always the drunkest person at any gathering?”, an old workmate who forgot to eat before their 40th and crashed out “well before midnight” then didn’t emerge “till about 4pm the next day, which by the way was my actual birthday. Everyone else partied till about 4am, they tell me it was a great night!”, or even the old school friend who got her drink “spiked with MDMA” and became “all lovey dovey out the back of the hotel with a close male friend, who has a boyfriend …”

So we all have our moments.

I’m just hoping I don’t have another one for a very long time.

So is my movie buddy.

That said, we’ve agreed to meet at a new local bar next week for a make-good drink. It’s next-door to the restaurant where I disgraced myself at a school mums’ dinner and was Caught Short. So I’m a little nervous …

PS “Friend” isn’t a euphamism for “me”. I have been extremely good since I baked Sorry Muffins to apologise for passing out before the main course at my neighbour’s house.