The Lost Weekend, Chicago Edition

Labor Day has passed, and my cadre of white pants has been relegated to the storage bin for the next nine months. It was quite an exciting weekend all around. Dave, friend of mine from college who recently separated from his wife, was in town visiting from North Carolina (or "Cakalakee," as the locals down there call it). He was staying with a buddy named Brandon, who lives near Clark and Wrightwood. This location will hold some significance later on in the story, so please commit it to memory.

Saturday night, a bunch of us went to Rocks to eat and drink, as is the custom. After Rocks, Brandon and a couple of his friends went to Schoolyard, while the rest of us (including Dave) went to Chi-Town Tap in order to increase the patronage in the bar by approximately 150%. After a beer there, most of us headed to our respective homes. Dave decided to meet up with Brandon and the others at Schoolyard.

After Jester and I got home from Chi-Town Tap, I texted Dave to say that he was welcome to stay with us Monday night. That was at 11:45 p.m.

I woke up around 10 Sunday morning, unrefreshed from another round of night terrors. I turned on my phone to find this text from Dave, in response to my 11:45 text, which had been awaiting me since 5 a.m.: "What is Monday bigh sadly I'd raterh b sancibg w u bur …." I replied with "What?," which was not responded to for several hours.

That afternoon, my mom, aunt, brother, and sister-in-law came into the city for a mid-afternoon Turkish feast at A La Turka. On our drive back to my place after linner (I assume that's what a meal at 3 p.m. is called), we came to the intersection of Wrightwood and Seminary. And there's Dave walking down Wrightwood with a cup of Starbucks in his hand. I thought it was odd, since there are undoubtedly many Starbucks stores closer to Brandon's apartment than the one at Wrightwood and Racine from whence Dave had come. Regardless, we stopped and said hi, since my mom hadn't seen Dave in a few years. It appeared that Dave was not completely shitfaced.

After exchanging pleasantries and small talk for several minutes, we went on our separate ways. This story would be rather unremarkable if it were to stop here. However, as I learned later Sunday night from Dave, there was a curious set of circumstances that led Dave from the Chi-Town Tap at 11:30 Sunday to the corner of Wrightwood and Seminary at 5:30 Sunday.

Dave apparently did some shots when he arrived at Schoolyard. Brandon, Dave, and a couple other guys later went to Frank's, a late-night bar on Clark a couple blocks from where Brandon lives. Dave does not recall going to Frank's. He does not recall leaving Frank's. He does not recall why he did not leave Frank's with Brandon. What he does recall is waking up sometime around 7 or 8 on someone's back porch. He does not recall how he got there or whose porch this was. He was also without his debit card.

After making a stealth exit, he reached for his phone to find out it was dead. Nonetheless, he grabbed a cab and told the cabbie to take him to "Clark and Lakewood." For you non-Chicagoans, Clark is a diagonal street for a large stretch, and Lakewood essentially runs parallel to Clark. If the two streets were to meet -- which they don't -- it would be several miles north of Brandon's apartment near the intersection of Wrightwood and Clark.

The cabbie drove Dave north on Clark, past Wrigley Field, before telling Dave that the two streets did not intersect. Dave then just asked the cabbie to take him down Lakewood, and maybe that would spark Dave's memory. It didn't. Eventually, Dave got out of the cab and found himself at Bird's Nest, a bar at Southport and Altgeld (although Dave did not recall the name or location of the bar until Monday afternoon). This was at around 10 a.m. Dave asked the bartender if he could charge his phone on the bartender's laptop. The bartender obliged and told Dave that it was time to do some shots. Dave obliged. He then played darts and drank with the bartender for several hours, because she was "hot" and, well, he's on vacation, so he can pretty much do whatever the fuck he wants.

At around 2, Dave used the bathroom. It was at this point that he realized he was no longer wearing the boxers that he had been wearing the night before. So, at some point between blacking out at Schoolyard and waking up on a foreign porch, Dave took off his pants. As you might have guessed, Dave does not recall taking off his pants. There is one theory -- propounded by a man named Goni -- that Dave may have pissed himself inside the apartment attached to this porch and then been forced to sleep on the porch by whatever hobgoblin that may have inhabited said apartment. This theory has since been discredited, as Dave's shorts did not appear to be soaked in his own urine.

So, after drinking for a few (i.e., over six) hours while his phone charged, he decided to head back to Brandon's place, stopping at Starbucks on his way back. And that is when he happened to be crossing the street in front of my car Sunday afternoon.

Later that night, he went back to Frank's with hopes of retrieving his debit card. The bartender at Frank's remembered Dave from the night before as the guy to whom the bartender was serving double tall gin and tonics. Dave did indeed have a tab there the night before, but the bartender distinctly remembered giving Dave his card back.

Sadly, unlike The Hangover, there is no magic camera full of photos to recount the evening's events. Thus, Dave will never know if his debit card and boxers were taken by some hilariously perverse muggers or whether he was raped repeatedly or whether he humped a tiger or whether he peed all over himself (but only on his boxers).