by Aaron Reichenberger trentsteele007@hotmail.com

It's incredible for me to think back and reflect upon how fantastically nut-popping this year has been when I consider how it all started. You see, faithful reader, my year started in a very unique, one of a kind way. It started with a fundraiser, a pill of ecstasy, three blown opportunities of hooking up with sexy ladies, and finally a puddle of vomit. Typically, one might think, this would be a signal of doom, or a harbinger of ill times to come. But this time it instead served as a rather fitting sign of the wickedly adventurous year to come. The following is a reflection on why I think this year's goodness is all tied into starting the year off on a selfless and positive note (even if that positively did involve me sleeping in a puddle of my own vomit.)

If you'll think back to last New Year's Eve, you'll remember of course that a few weeks prior to that night a tsunami laid waste to Southeast Asia and parts of Africa. Like a large portion of Americans at the time, my roommate and I felt compelled to somehow help these innocent victims of Mother Nature's fierce wrath. Callahan, my roommate at the time (with some help from our buddy Ben,) came up with the brilliant idea of contributing to tsunami recovery efforts by throwing a massive fundraiser/New Year's Eve extravaganza at our humble pad in Denver (unbeknownst to us, we were not the only people to come up with this idea, as success stories from all over America soon flooded the Internet bragging about the amount of money they raised, or what celebrity showed up. Almost all of them ended up doing better monetarily than we did, but I will bet my life that no other party came close to matching ours in the categories of flashy hip-hop maneuvers pulled off and semi-hot friends of friends.) Callahan proposed the idea to me over a couple of domestic beers and Aqua Teen Hunger Force reruns, pitching it as not only a way to rack up the good karma, but also as a means of enhancing our always important "street cred." I took to the idea right away and the planning commenced.

New Years Eve came around, and the fundraiser was ran as follows: We provided multiple means of intoxication, ranging from wine and beer to vodka and, well, beer. A champagne toast and party favors would ring in the New Year, with the aforementioned hip hop helping fill the time until then. Heavy conversation filled the air as friends rehashed the last year and debated important current events. At first the party was a smaller affair, close friends and loved ones. Asshole (or as the Midwestern lady lying naked next to me calls it, "P & A") was most certainly played, and I (per usual) maintained my role as six-term President with an iron clad fist. A $25 cover charge was strictly enforced at the door, no IOU's accepted. People who did not trust us to turn over cash to UNICEF could write out checks made to the same, but the majority of our friends knew us well enough that this was not the norm. I am proud to say that we raised approximately $700 that night, and there was no recouping of expenses out of the kitty. To the people's effected by the tsunami, you are welcome. Callahan and I were glad to help.

Eventually enough people arrived and the Asshole was put away (with me losing my presidency at the very end to an incredible string of skips, doubles, and clears by my vice president, and if you think that my former constituents did not exact humiliating revenge against me, well then, you must have never played Asshole with a president like me.) The hip-hop was turned up, naturally a space was cleared on the floor, my friend Roux took off his button down striped shirt unveiling his wife beater and hair shirt in the process. The second bottle of vodka was unscrewed, and the party started to hit its stride. An eclectic group of people came and went through out the night. There were long-time friends mingling with new faces, there were girlfriends meeting ex-girlfriends, there were co-workers and their social circles, and, of course, there were the sexy ladies. Regarding these sexy ladies, I learned a highly valuable lesson that night, and being the guy I am, I have decided to pass it on to the four of you gentlemen who have managed to read my article this far. The lesson is thus:

Sexy ladies totally dig guys who throw fundraisers.

This is an undisputable fact, and I will now tell you why. I am far from a ladies man. Sure, I have dated and hooked up with some very attractive women in my time, but they are invariably of the "What the fuck? How did HE get her?!" type situations . You know, the kind of scene where you are walking down the street and see some gorgeous woman walking hand in hand with a hunchback wearing a fanny pack. That's me. My point here is not that I hook up with sexy ladies all the time, but rather that I am a hunchback who also happens to wear a fanny pack. Now, back to my point, I learned that night that throwing a fundraiser is sexual gold because throughout the night I was confronted by not one, not two, but three chances to hook up with a sexy lady. They are as follows:

Cache: A 21-year-old art student with impeccable style. Not only was I attracted to her unique name and sexy qualities, but she was also dressed that night in a style not seen since the glory days of 1987. Think mesh and loose hanging clothes. She and I had our moment when I gave her a copy of the Christmas card I made with three of my closest friends. In the card we were dressed as a white version of the Cosby family. Only I had a mullet. For some reason she kept telling me how cute I looked in the picture, and finally admitted that she found mullets sexy. I am not making this up.

Amber: A friend of a friend's girlfriend visiting from Arizona. A former sorority girl who enjoyed hip-hop dancing and listening to me go on and on about various subjects. Our moment came when during a particularly heavy hip-hop maneuvering session, I quipped some one-liner and she was forced to cling to my shoulders in order to keep herself from falling down as she laughed. I shared many drinks and hip hop songs that night with Amber, and found out later that she was extremely disappointed when I vanished from the party and thus, became unavailable to her for the remainder of the night.

Trisha: Trisha was the roommate and friend of Amber. Trisha and I had our moment when I gave her a burned copy of a Modest Mouse CD. She thanked me by whispering in my ear that she wanted to fuck later. I found this sort of subtlety romantic in a fashion all but lost in today's society.

Ahhhh, my three sexy ladies. "So, what happened?" You might be asking. Well it's quite simple: Ecstasy happened. Ecstasy and a lot of booze.

Midnight came and went, we toasted Dick Clark's plastic smiling face (or was it Carson Daly? Is there even a difference?) with cases of high-class $3.95-a-bottle Brut champagne, and unsurprisingly the night's events got kicked up another notch. It seemed that everyone's inhibitions, or whichever inhibition a person might have clung to with their fingernails up to that point, was tossed to the wayside after the party poppers were popped and the champagne uncorked. Callahan was everywhere at once, one second flashing hip-hop maneuvers on the makeshift dance floor, the next pounding down a shot or six of Jager. Our guests were either enjoying the booze buffet in the kitchen, or jumping up and down like wee children on our once proud furniture. It was in the midst of this merriment that I found myself enjoying a brief moment of solitude. In this brief time I pondered which of the three sexy ladies I would try and enjoy a nightcap and breakfast with. I never actually made the decision though, because it was during this moment of peace and clarity that my friends Chris and Lars approached me with a somewhat disarming nonchalance and relaxed air to them.

"Hey Reich."
"Hey Chris, my man, what's up?"
"Well nothing much, except for this extra pill of Ecstasy sitting in my pocket telling me it wants you to eat it."
"Great Christ man! Really? I don't know, I haven't done Ecstasy in a long while...but I remember it being a good time...so sure, why not?"

"Why not?" Looking at the situation now I can come up with a handful of reasons for "why not." The gallon and a half of booze in my stomach and the three sexy ladies spread throughout my house being the most obvious. But at the time these two thoughts came nowhere near my brain, and so 'a tripping I went. We made our way out to Chris's truck and got cozy and out came the pills, and for a split second I still had a chance to back out. Unfortunately, the second passed when Lars reached over and plucked his pill out of Chris's hand like a worm hunting bird. Upon popping the pill into his mouth I heard a strange crunch crunch and realized that the crazy bastard was chewing it.

"To make it hit your bloodstream quicker?" I asked.

His only response was the wide-eyed fiendish nodding of his head, accompanied by a Cheshire smile, and the crunch crunch of his chewing. Never one to pass on a method for efficiency, I followed suit and chomped that baby down. Making our way back into the party the effects were almost instantaneous. Things moved slower. Faces became distended, like a carnival mirror. Conversations became harder to follow. Hip-hop maneuvers more difficult to pull off. But most importantly, my sense of control over my body and mind became almost minimal. I managed to avoid the sexy ladies for the majority of this time (even though this should have been the time for me to make whatever move I was going to make), and felt that if I could just ride out this bad wave I could somehow get back in control of things and finish the night on a high note. Gods was I wrong.

It was during a conversation with my friend Morris that I felt the unmistakable trickle of drool slinking onto my chin. "Did anyone notice?" I thought to myself while wiping it away with my sleeve, spilling half my beer in the process. My head became the next bodily function to go into shut down mode, uncontrollably moving from side to side like a bobble head doll. "I need to get out of here, clear my head." I thought, leaving the conversation with Morris. It was while I was making a beeline to my bedroom that I felt the situation move into a state of emergency, it was then that I started to lose control over my gag reflex. I knew that should control of this function be lost then, there would be no chance of enjoying a nightcap and breakfast with one of the sexy ladies. I needed to regain control and fast. Getting to my bedroom I closed the door, opened my window, and laid on my bed. It was this simple mistake, the laying down, which sealed my fate. Almost immediately after I did this, what I felt would be an innocent hiccup/burp turned into a hideously unstoppable stream of vomit.

I'll spare you the rest of the details, but suffice to say I did not enjoy a nightcap or breakfast with any of the sexy ladies. I did, though, hear several times people yelling out my name trying to locate me, with one of my friends finally having the intelligence to check my room and, in the process, discovering me there sleeping in a puddle of my own stupidity. Beautiful person that she is, Michelle asked her boyfriend Morris to come in and help get me situated a bit more comfortably so that I could better enjoy what was sadly to be the remainder of my first foray into fund-raising.

Now then, what in the hell does this have to do with my initial statement of this night serving as a harbinger of the incredible year I just lived? It's because of the lessons I learned from that night, and how by applying these lessons to my everyday routine this past year, I can say unequivocally that 2005 was the greatest year in my life. These lessons are:

1.) Never overdue your consumption of intoxicating substances, you might just end up puking on yourself when you could have been in the midst of an orgy.
2.) Sexy ladies dig dudes who throw fundraisers.
3.) It feels good to help out people in unavoidable situations, especially when you can get liquored up in the process.
4.) Romance is not dead, it's just hiding in the husky whispers of boozed up Arizonians.
5.) Never be afraid to pull of hip-hop maneuvers or any other equally embarrassing action. No one really cares what you look like, so long as you look like you are having fun.
6.) While it may be fun to rule as a tyrant....yeah, no other part to this rule. It's simply awesome to rule as a tyrant. But only in the game of asshole.
7.) When you find yourself lying in a puddle of your own stupidity, unable to pull yourself out of it, it's inevitably going to be friend who helps pull you out.
And most importantly:
8.) Never trust any bastard named Lars.

Happy New Year's Everyone.