Northeastern Road Trip

It had been three months, two weeks, and six days since my best friend Marty had turned twenty-one. I was nearly bald from all of the hair pulled from my own scalp �" the frustration of sitting on the sidelines, hitting on the same BU girls at the same BU frat parties, while Marty and our older friend George discovered a brave new world of bars and clubs that my fake I.D. would never get me past the door to. But finally, yes, it was finally the day when the alcohol aisle of life opened and said come Daniel, and see what you have been missing out on for all these years.

My twenty-first birthday arrived, and despite already being jaded from going out every night of the semester, Marty and George were game to take the ultimate initiation of boozing with me: a road trip from Boston to Washington D.C. We would drink and we would drive �" not at the same time, mind you �" and then we would drink some more.

Our first stop was to see what bars in Boston were all about. Our bags were packed, we escaped the comfortable confines of our campus, and we headed over to Marty’s cousin’s apartment, which was right smack in the middle of all sorts of debauchery. I’m not sure whether to call that night in Boston a success or a failure.

We made the dangerous decision to pregame with a bottle of Makers before hitting the town, and by the time I had made it to the first bar, I was at a point, well, where I guess most people should be at on their twenty-first birthday: I didn’t remember a thing. The night was a blur of over-priced Irish car bombs at places like Ned Devine’s and Tommy Doyle’s and obscurities of other signs that I couldn’t recall for the life of me.

The next morning I awoke in a moving vehicle, already en route to New York, with Marty at the wheel. It’s a good thing they didn’t ask me to drive because I was still hammered. Speaking of hammered, the night in New York eerily resembled the night in Boston. Turns out there are way too many things to do in NYC, and when the goal is to get a drink at every single one of those things, well, it’s a race between your wallet and your body to see which one is ruined first. In my case, it turned out to be both.

After another night in New York, hungover beyond belief and a few hundred dollars into my rent money, I was ready to call it a trip. But Marty, being the sonofabitch great friend that he is, said the two words no self-respecting young partygoer can refuse: “man up”.

And with that, I was driving down busy roads towards the Capital, trying to fight off the throbbing migraine that the glaring sun was doing nothing to help. We were able to crash with Craig, a BU alumnus that George used to roll with, but it was still going to be a toss-up on whether I would have enough bankroll to pay the covers for the clubs in DC.

We pre-gamed at the apartment and somehow schmoozed Craig’s girlfriend into driving us around from bar to bar, where my friends bought my drinks, and finally hit a few hot nightclubs in the city. The covers were crazy, but at that level of drunk, you don’t just let a pricey door keep you from having a good time. Marty and George went inside Barcöde, George made a giant scene by spilling bottle service on some high-roller VIPs, and Marty was able to slip the backdoor open for me. Getting grimy and dirty on the dance floor with Honest Abe’s bronze immortalized face just a few blocks away was what being twenty-one was all about �" thank god for good friends.

           

Daniel Hogan is a writer at Party Earth - a global media and entertainment company that publishes reviews and listings of the best social experiences around the world including: bars in Paris, pubs in London, beaches in Ibiza, plazas in Rome, parks in New York, festivals and concerts everywhere, and more.