Natural Dudesasters: The Dudebacle

The Dudebacle

It's town hitting time, and you and your entourage are about to go out and do so many things that you won't actually do. Unless you get plastered. But to get achieve that level of intoxication, drinking only at the bar is not going to be enough. Your advanced tolerance to alcohol won't let you get buzzed off of only a few drinks. 

So you Pregame.

The hours leading up to a night out -which in a dude's case consists of drinking at least a case of cheap beer, watching either FCS football, UFC bouts, or a toss-up between NBA basketball and Season 7 of Family Guy- coincide with a time interval known as the "Pregame." And to add to the ambient media, you may add-in a card game that's rules are predicated upon Public University trade secrets. Each school has a different set of rules for seemingly the same game. Typically a game that on the outside looks like Go-Fish, but on the inside is a "get your buddy plastered trench war." 

All of the above involved, as I'll re-iterate, incorporates a tremendous amount of alcohol. Thankfully, the booze comes cheap. But pretty soon a threshold is crossed, and the cheap quantity that was such a godsend an hour ago is becoming a cautionary tale of the intersection between  impulsive behavior and a cornucopia of pilsner. Taking a certain intoxicated dude to the point where he can no longer feign the signs of inebriation, eventually turning him into an extreme liability (physically, fiscally, and cock-blockedly).

These signs of inebriation are in no way subtle. It's an hour before you're heading to the bar, and he's already developed a lazy eye. And he's nowhere near as articulate as Stuart Scott. He either thinks everything is funny, or everything sucks, and soon his antics lose their novelty and begin to irk you.

But then what really starts to gnaw at you is that you should have seen all of this coming from the beginning of the Pregame.

While you were playing "Drink at your Own Pace," this dude was pounding beers like Wade Boggs.

By the time you were on beer five, he was on case two.

The consequences for his actions have slowly built like water before the dam, and the reckoning has arrived like a roaring flood.

Bar night will soon become Barf night

When your party leaves for the bar, this dude has at least 100 ounces of draft in his gullet, has the motor skills of Alf and instantly becomes a  mortal enemy of the cab driver. When he's nearly drilled by an oncoming car as he leaves the taxi, it makes you think he's both an asshole and out of karma.

Following your exit from the cab, you head to the street and on to the bar, but this drunken dude stumbles toward the sewer. As he leans over in heaving position, you think to yourself, why in the hell didn't we do something to stop this? This guy is going to ruin everyone's night, and he obviously doesn't realize it. 

This is an example of the inevitable dudebacle, which appears swift and sudden to the novice. Once the booze begins to occupy and dominate the bloodstream, all you can do is be a buffer to the damage about to be done.

He reeks of beer, vomit, and partially digested nachos. He asks you to come be his wingman. This guy is unbelievable. So drunk he can barely stand, but so eager he can barely stand still. A stumbling maelstrom that goes for any opportunity, regardless of whether or not it is an opportunity. A living, stumbling zombie with a Visa rewards card. He says and does things that are well beyond the line of social decency, and his behavior will directly affect you and the rest of your group (permitting he remembers that he came to the bar with you and your party). You may meet the new people you were hoping to, and you'll have your icebreaker:  "Do you know this dude?"

You enter the bar, and miraculously the bouncer has let him slide by. As soon as he reaches an opening, he's gone. He's disappeared among the abyss of collared shirts and cocktail dresses. Possibly in the search of a bar counter or bathroom. A thorough scan of the bar comes up negative, his bright Lacoste polo not sticking out like you hoped it would. You see a group of grinders on the dance floor, but he's not near them either.

You finally figure out where he is, and it's sort of what you imagined finding. He's wedged himself into a tight crevice at the bar, ordering shots for either a mildly attractive older woman, or a desperate transvestite. You ask the ladies if they're being bothered, and they were doing alright up until your wasted friend displays squirrel cheeks holding back another spot of vom. This is not a mating call.

It's time for him to go.

Eventually, the dudebacle hits your buddy hard, and the resultant hangover is usually an experience that starts as confusingly whimsical but ends up being wholly brutal. He goes from laughing and asking "what in the hell happened?" To wanting to die, to wanting to puke, to having nothing left to puke, to thinking that maybe if he died he wouldn't have to worry about wanting to puke. 

Thankfully, the dudebacle is only a Category 2 dudesaster, and during the next day reflection, you find that the faux pas from the night before need only require about two weeks worth of redemption for your crestfallen friend. He has become the interim douche, but this only lasts until someone else in the group does something drunkenly idiotic. The most important take-home concept is to raise awareness of the early signs of the dudebacle: the voice volume demodulation, the belching, the slurring rants about politics and what seems to sound like baseball.

He's fallen hard, but he's your buddy, and since he's your buddy you're willing to pick him up again and again, hoping he'd do the same for you. But just because you're open with your friend and reliable, doesn't mean you don't deserve to pick and choose what you disclose to him. If he did something extremely awkward the night before, you tell him that he did. If he tongue-punched a heifer, you let him know. You keep his best interests at heart just to ensure that he doesn't grow up to become like Lenny Dykstra. But that's as far as you go. If he hasn't yet noticed the magic marker penis spanning his forehead, you keep that one to yourself for as long as you can.