By Tyson Karrasch, stand-up comic
I was 21, living in San Diego, and drinking pretty much every night.
One particular evening, I went hard. It was my friend’s birthday, and we set out on a crawl of seven different bars in the Pacific Beach neighborhood. I was physically there for all seven bars, but mentally I checked out around bar four. After the final bar, I went home with a girl who I’d met that night. But I have no recollection of this. It was later pieced together by friends.
The next morning, I wake up alone in a strange girl’s bed, soaked in my own urine. At this point, I’m panicking and I know I’ve got to get out of the apartment somehow—and quickly. I can’t find my clothes anywhere, other than my underwear, which is very wet with pee. I conclude that the best solution is to find a dryer and get them dry before anyone wakes up. The problem is there’s no in-unit dryer in the apartment. With my brain still cloudy from all the booze, I figure the answer is to dry my piss-soaked boxers in the microwave. So I throw them in on high for one minute. After 20 seconds, they catch fire. I desperately fling open the microwave, grab the flaming boxers, and throw them into the sink. As the scorched underwear smolders, a cloud of smoke rises up, setting off the smoke alarm. The girl’s roommate comes out and I’m standing in the kitchen very naked, with a pie-eyed expression.
“Who the fuck are you?” she asks.
“I’m, uh, Tyson.”
“OK, uh-Tyson. What the fuck are you doing?”
“I was . . . I was making some popcorn.”
“You were making popcorn? At 9 AM? That’s cool, because I’m pretty sure we don’t have any popcorn.”
“Yeah, I know. I went out and bought some.”
“You bought popcorn without any clothes?”
“Yes.”
“At 9 AM?”
“Yes.”
At this point, two more women I didn’t recognize appeared in the kitchen. All three lined up shoulder to shoulder like some kind of army of judgment. The first woman recounted to the others my tale of the popcorn.
Naked and outnumbered, I finally came clean, explaining I don’t know where I am, that I’m still very drunk, and that I’ve pissed the bed. The very unhappy trio watched me put on my pants, the only item of my clothing I was able to find, and exit with zero dignity. During the cab ride home, the driver observed, “It smells like pee!,” and I cried a little. v