My friends don’t just like to drink: they fucking love it. Me? Not so much. I’m not a big drinker. I don’t really do drugs. I’m, for the most part, a pretty straight-edge dude. But it was New Years 2018, and me and my friends decided that we were not just going to get drunk, but we were going to make a concerted effort to get absolutely obliterated.
We started pre-drinking at my friend Kehao and Austin’s downtown condo. Their place was right next to the entertainment district where all the bars are so it was the perfect place to begin chugging beers, doing shots and slinging back tequila. By 8 pm, it was already clear that this night was going to be messy. By 9 pm, my fate had been sealed. I was seeing double and practically drooling out of the side of my mouth and the night hadn’t even started.
Given that I was already hammered, I did what any responsible adult would do: I headed to another house party with my friends to drink more and smoke all the weed I could get my hands on.
It’s about 11 now and I can barely see straight. We’re walking to the bar with 8 guys, 3 girls, and no tickets to enter. The group as a whole is a complete mess and it baffles me – to this day – that we were even allowed within 100 feet of any bar. But, by some stroke of dumb luck, we knew the security guards at the bar. So we greased the bouncers, thanked them for being so cool to us, and slipped in through the side door.
As we enter the club, I’m hit with a wave of nausea that drowns out the thudding of the music. I’ve got limited time before my night comes to a crashing end and I know it. So, I make sure to squeeze in some last-minute Jägerbombs to boost my energy and mood and try to extend what semi-coherent time I have left before I’m rendered into an immobile alcoholic puddle.
Despite my best efforts, the second the alcohol hits the back of my throat, I get hit with the worst spins of my life. My nausea is peaking. I feel like I’m in Inception with the walls and floor folding in on each other as I enter another dimension. I can barely stand up without feeling like projectile vomiting.
There’s no ignoring it anymore. I need to leave: NOW.
I stumble over to my friend Ash, who looks a little bit like a combination between Will Smith and the Somali Pirate from the movie Captain Phillips, and tell him that I need to go home. He turns around and gives me a look of sheer disbelief as he recognizes how drunk I am. Realizing that I urgently need to leave, he goes to grab the keys to the condo, gives them to me and I zig-zag my way out of the bar.
The walk back is a complete blur. But by some miracle, I successfully made it to their condo. I fumble the keys out of my pocket, jam it in the key hole and fall through the door. Without even thinking about it, I crawl my way to the bathroom and cram my fingers down my throat to make myself throw up but nothing comes out. Exhausted from dry-heaving, I laid my body on the cold tile floor of the washroom and passed out.
I wake up to a tap on my shoulder. I don’t know what time it is…I don’t know how long I’ve been knocked out for, but I’m up with vision so impaired by the alcohol coursing through my body that I can barely make out what’s in front of me. I turn around to see Ash standing over me. He helps me up to my feet, grabs a big jug of water and encourages me to chug as much of it as I can. I dap him up and say, “I appreciate the help man.” He nods and walks me to the couch where I immediately pass out, again.
As I lay on the couch, I see Ash go into Kehao’s room to look for something. He’s making a lot of noise and a huge mess doing it, but I don’t think much of it. He then goes into Austin’s room and does the same thing. After a few minutes, Ash closes Austin’s door, checks on me one last time and leaves the condo.
I’m laying on the couch, half-asleep, when suddenly I jolt up. It’s like my body was screaming at my brain to wake up. Something was off. I stand up and stumble over to Kehao’s room. It looked like a bomb went off. His drawers were all open, his closet was ransacked, his shelves were cleared and all of his watches, jewelry, and electronics are gone.
I ran over to check Austin’s room. Same thing. We’ve been robbed.
I’m standing in the doorway of Austin’s room, dead sober now from the panic and anxiety that has overtaken my body, when all of a sudden I hear footsteps. I walk out, hoping to see Ash so I can warn him about what happened, when I stop dead in my tracks. It’s not Ash. There’s a stranger wearing Austin’s Canada Goose jacket looking me dead in the eyes. “You’re not Ash! Who the fuck are you?!” I yelled. “You gotta calm down. You don’t want to start New Years like this,” he responds in a threatening tone. With my drunk courage, I yell back at him “No. Who the fuck are you? Are you the guy who took all of our shit? Fuck you! Get out of here!” With a shocked and timid look on his face, he mumbles something in a weak tone, turns around and hurries quickly out of the condo.
I immediately lock the door, call Austin and Kehao, tell them what happened and wait for them to get back. I sit on the couch waiting in agony, feeling like the ultimate moron. How the hell did I shake hands with a stranger who took care of me all while he was ransacking my friend’s place? What the fuck just happened?!
Austin and Kehao finally returned to the condo, shocked at what happened. We sit together for a moment in silence, taking in the situation and its absurdity and eventually call the police to inform them of the situation. After several agonizing hours of silence, the police arrive. They sit me down and ask me what happened. I will never to this day forget the look on the cop’s face as he jotted in his notepad that the man who took care of me out of his pure concern for my well-being was also the one who robbed us blind.
Despite all that, Austin and Kehao ended up profiting several thousand dollars from the whole ordeal, as the insurance company overvalued the items that were stolen that night. Whoever said crime doesn’t pay clearly has never been belligerently drunk during a home invasion before.