Choose Your Own Adventure: Cinco De Mayo

It is 8:16 p.m. and you are incredibly drunk. So drunk the street lights are swimming in your vision. All your body understands is that it is dark and it wants to fall into bed and close your eyes forever. You have that warm, fuzzy feeling from having been drinking all day but it’s rapidly closing in on nausea because you haven’t eaten since brunch. Oh my god, you are suddenly so hungry.

“Hey,” you wobble over to your crush. You think you seem cool and sophisticated but you’re actually slurring and your eyes are a little bit crossed. Your hair, once nicely done, is now suffering from the frizz of being sweaty-drunk and your clothes, once pressed and clean, now smell like body odor and cigarette smoke. Your eyes are red. Being too drunk for too long is never a good look. Your crush grimaces at you.

“I need to eat something,” you say. You think you’re just touching their shoulder but you’re actually kind of leaning on them really hard.

“You want to go to a restaurant?” They ask, incredulously. “Ah, I don’t know if we can do that. There’s a lot of us and we’re sort of settled here.”

You nod, not really processing the words. “Okay, well I want something, like, Mexican or something for the holiday.”

“Okay,” they say. “Well, do you want to just go outside and see what’s around. I’m sure there’s some food places nearby you can get something quick and come back to the party?”

“Yeah, yeah,” you say, hoping your crush will come and help you find food. They nod and then turn back to the circle of people they were already talking to. You’re being a little annoying, you realize but in your drunken state you think you’re actually being THE MOST ANNOYING PERSON.

Without saying goodbye to anyone, you walk out onto the street. To your left, a girl in high heels and sequin skirt is vomiting into some dude-bro’s sombrero. To your right, a guy is sleeping on the steps of an apartment building using a folded Mexican flag as a pillow. Suddenly, you feel anxious. You walk up a street, looking for anything that could even remotely be authentic. A lot of stuff seems either closed or too crowded. People are screaming and whooping and yelling, sometimes in garbled Spanish.

Then: there it is. The soft light at the end of the tunnel. The glorious answer to the emptiness in your stomach and soul. TACO BELL. Rolling up to the counter, you drunkenly order a Crunch Wrap Supreme, delighting in your “authentic” Mexican food success. You eat it openly, alone on the way home and then finish it up in bed.

You pass out, hugging the wrapper to your face in shame. It is 9:30 p.m.

THE END