Life Lesson #11: Three Grilled Cheese sandwiches: $18;...

One Green tank top, bedazzled: $26;
One Extra Yoo Hoo: $1.50;
One Catamaran, two jet skis, one vespa and one banana boat on First Avenue: $1 million;
My three hungover, transvestite-voiced friends: Priceless (or best offer).

I love how our apartment turns into a hostel on the weekends. You just never know who’s going to take part in the morning festivities of foods most likely topped with cheese, giant Gatorades, DVRd television shows, and ridiculous conversations.

A typical Saturday morning usually begins with me waking up feeling as if a two-by-four was smashed against my head repeatedly as I slept. If I’m lucky, I won’t be the only one in my bed. If I’m really lucky, Goose will be in there with me. I’ll drag my ass out of the tangle of sheets and pillows to get a glass of water from the kitchen, where I might stumble upon Westchester sprawled out on the couch. If it’s after noon, its possible Earl will come struggling out of Madonna’s room.

Eventually we all get up, convene in either my bedroom or the living room, and discuss things that only extremely hung-over, or still drunk, young people are capable of. Random topics are covered, complete confusion occurs, and I often laugh so hard I have to run to the bathroom in order not to pee myself.

If you’re a newbie to the morning ritual, you’d probably occupy a spot on the living room floor or the couch in my room. Perhaps you have a pillow under your head, but chances of having a blanket are slim-to-none. We often make you get breakfast for everyone else. This sucks. Because we order the most annoying stuff as well as multiple beverages per individual. It’s kind of comical. And while we’d never actually force someone to go, they usually do since they did just crash at our place.

A good guest gets everyone’s breakfast with no more than two mistakes, parks themselves on an available square of floor, stays around to watch Best Week Ever, and eventually goes back home. They will be allowed to sleep over any time they ask.

A great guest - who guarantees themselves an invite back any time without ever having to put in a request - gets everyone’s order right, perhaps throwing in an extra Yoo Hoo or coffee for safe measure, adds some quality jokes and comments to our cracked-out morning banter, and takes the garbage out with them when they leave.

This past Saturday was no exception to the norm. I woke up to Goose’s phone ringing.

“Sweet Jesus, I might be dying,” or something along those lines probably came out of my mouth. I can’t be positive, as the level of coherence exhibited by myself at ten am is less than stellar. The only thing that steered me up was the simultaneous squeeze of my bladder and parched esophagus.

I was completely incapable of being quiet and managed to knock over a few glasses and drop the ice tray in the sink. Westchester stirred.

“Woops. Sorry,” I mustered.

I made my way back into my room, noticing the shirt I wore the night before outside my doorway. This too is typical. I have a tendency to start getting undressed before I even make it to my room on a Friday night. I often wake up in a state of semi-nudity, with random articles of clothing trailing all the way back to the front door.

“This is not good,” Goose commented as I got back into bed. “My voice is disgusting.”

“We sound like seventy-year old transvestites,” I sighed. Again, completely normal. A night of drinking, yelling for shots, and belting out “Since You Been Gone” does not help one’s vocal chords.

A few moments later and the hostel was buzzing. The mid-morning, illogical, nonsensical banter was about to begin.

Madonna came out of her bedroom, eye shadow smeared and hair all crazy-like.

“You guys, what time is it?” she asked as she fell onto the couch in my room.

“Way too early,” I responded.

Goose began laughing at Madonna’s ensemble.

“Whatever. Jazzy beater,” Madonna responded. I looked over at Goose who is wearing a green tank top covered in sequins. I burst out laughing.

The recap discussion of the following night went on for a few minutes. I drift in and out of listening and get totally confused as Madonna is saying how “he is taking a catamaran from Florida to Costa Rica. He said he got two jet skis for his birthday.”

“You’re kidding, right? You didn’t believe him, did you? Who the hell gets two jet skis?” Goose was laughing.

“What’s a catamaran?” I asked. “Is it like a banana boat?”

“What the hell is a banana boat?” Madonna asked.

“You know, the one’s you sit in and pedal,” I responded.

“You think he’s going to take a boat from Florida to Costa Rica that you pedal?” Madonna asked me.

“I guess that’d be kind of far,” I said.

“Oh my God you two, he’s not taking a catamaran anywhere! Who the hell drives a boat from Florida to Costa Rica?” Goose yelled.

“I don’t know. He’s Madonna’s friend, not mine. How far is it anyway? Wait. What the hell is a catamaran though?” I was still totally confused.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Westchester said as she walked in the room. “It’s like a sailboat with the two things on the side.”

“Wait, how many miles do you think it is?” Madonna asked as she moved to my computer. Westchester quickly stole her couch spot.

“Are you going on MySpace you loser?” I asked Madonna. “Wait, like those boats you always see for those Hedonism vacations?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Westchester looked at me in disbelief.

“No! I’m looking up a map. I want to see how far it is,” Madonna yelled at me.

“Stop! You are not looking for a map! There is no way he’s taking a catamaran anywhere,” Goose was laughing at us.

“Wait, what if he attaches the two jet skis on the sides of the boat? Betcha then he could get to Costa Rica,” I theorized out loud.

“Holy shit, you are an idiot. Who the hell has a catamaran anyway?” Westchester turned her attention to Madonna.

“Some kid I went to college with. He’s going on vacation but can’t leave the country because he was arrested a little while ago, so he‘s taking a boat there,” Madonna responded as she pulled up a map. “Okay, so here it is, kind of. It looks like, well, I guess like 750 miles, if you could go straight there?”

“If I had catamaran with pedals, I would go everywhere with it. Like up the block to get breakfast,” I said.

“Oh my God. Catamarans are not pedal boats,” Westchester yelled at me. “Don’t we like own Costa Rica though? Do you really need a passport to go there?”

“You’re thinking of the other Rican, Puerto Rico, which isn’t part of the country anyway idiot,” I said smugly, feeling like I was not the asshole for a moment.

“Madonna, there’s no way this kid is taking a boat to go there. The point, people, is that this kid is lying and Madonna believes him!” Goose laughed.

“Wait, maybe you can take the Panama Canal there,” I started laughing. “I would totally take my catamaran through the Panama Canal all the time.”

Madonna suddenly got up.

“Oh, I don’t feel very well,” she said walking out. She came back in a few minutes later with a pillow and blanket from her room and lay down on my floor.

“I’m starving, we need to order food immediately,” Westchester said. Which we do, because it’s just the four of us this morning, thus no breakfast bitch to take our orders. And you could not pay any of us enough to actually go out into the real world in the shape we were in.

“I would totally go out and get breakfast if I could go on a banana boat,” I noted.

My idiocy wins me the job of having to place the call to the diner, a task I dread almost as much as actually going.

Another conversation that would make an outsider cringe and our order was finally straightened out. I place the call. After giving my address and telephone number, I began the difficult process of getting it all right.

“Okay, I need one cheese fries, one grilled cheese with bacon, with a Coke, or Pepsi, whichever….okay, that’s fine…..well, is it a small fountain soda? Because the can would be the same then….yea, do up the fountain if that’s bigger…two black and white milkshakes, large….oh, sorry, didn’t know there was only one size….a grilled cheese with tomato, wait, two of those…no the first one is with bacon, two more with tomato….no, three altogether, one bacon, two tomato….yes….two chicken noodle soups….and the western omelet, but with egg whites, toast, dry….yea, you better repeat that back to me.”

I hung up the phone just as a life lesson popped into my head.

Life Lesson #11: There is nothing quite like the mornings after being out with my friends. We are ridiculous, in every way imaginable. We look like homeless people stumbling around from room to room, spouting incoherent thoughts and glorious breakfast orders.

And it usually lasts all day.

After eating our food in the living room, Goose and I crawled back into my bed, as Madonna and Westchester did likewise in her room. The next hour was filled with us on speaker phone talking to each other, our voices echoing through the hall. Discussions of great depth ensued: me spending the entire summer in the Hamptons sans car, using a bike to get everywhere, including the bars we frequent every weekend; of Westchester getting a high five from someone after sleeping with them not too long ago; and of Liberace and I driving cross country at the end of the summer on a Vespa, he holding on for dear life as I take the helm.

And sometimes, this can be even more fun than actually having gone out the night before.