December 17th, 2020 was a great day for two reasons, my best-friend’s little sister turned 21, and the idea of hotmessexpress was born.
Now, I know that I trashed HME as my social media identity and switched it to livinglaud, but let’s be real… I still am a hot mess.
Here’s the thing. My college years were pretty rambunctious and wild. I was always the last one standing and the least hungover the day after, with a second and third wind in me to keep the party going. No form of alcohol could make me flinch, absolutely no slowing down or tapping out.
Naturally, my ego got the best of me when Lex invited me to her birthday celebration. I was a college girl not too long ago, surely I could hang and survive ONE day with 20 something year old sorority girls… Right?
Wrong. Let’s play it back, and try to figure out when the heck things took a turn for the worst.
- full disclosure, I took some creative liberties to fill in the blanks and add comedic relief to this butt clench of a story-time, where MY tail ended bruised and bloody.
The day begun with us meeting at the SLS in South Beach, I was one of the first guests to arrive, which meant I was one of the first ones to start sipping on mojitos. Life was sweet, I had toes in the sand, sun in my face and laughs all around. Sounds lovely right? It was for a while! The guests began to trickle in, each one younger and more full of life than the next, jerks… (wait till you’re aging and day dreaming about botox, you’ll remember me.) Being the social butterfly I am, I started chatting up all the youngsters. I was throwing unsolicited dating advice left and right, talking wonders of my singledom glow up and how most boys are clueless puppies that just need a good “trainer” before we can feed into developing a decent relationship with them. (still true)
The drinks were flowing, I was going on tangents about my college days, my wild child memories and all the fuzzy nights which included chugging contests, tequila bombs and way too many blackouts.
“YA’LL, CHECK THIS OUT! FRAT CHUG!!” < my first mistake of the day, with many to follow.
“WAIT, TIME ME! LETS SEE HOW FAST I CAN CHUG A FULL CUP, THE ICE SLOWED ME DOWN LAST TIME!” << second mistake (also no one cared)
And so, the day progressed. The girls continued to feed into the binge drinking route I established. Eventually we were all buzzed enough to become ‘the girls we all judge’ and began scoping out cute backdrops for pictures. It was a birthday after all, did we really celebrate if we didn’t document it? 45 minutes or so later, the *shocking* result of the session was a whole lot of middle fingers in the air, hair in our drunk faces from wind, and a few overly sexual butt shots that were most definitely NSFP. (not smart for posting)
Now, realistically speaking… I was one drink away from full blackout. It was 4:30 PM and my wits were gone.
“FULL SEND BABY, WHERE’S THA TEQUILAAA?” *lau blacks out*
I vaguely recall heading up to the hotel room, and repeatedly saying “imjustsofuckinpretty, TELL ME I’M PRETTY!” “honestlyyyy, I’m a mess but atleast I’m pretty.” and “boys are just so stupid, you’re too young to stress about men, you’ll age!” and “YOU KNOW WHAT JUST DUMP HIM! YOU’LL GET SO HOT JUST LOOK AT MY GLOW UP” Then I fell asleep, half naked on the floor. I somehow managed to get into an uber around 5. The plan was to go home to change, walk my dogs (yup, even blacked out I am a responsible dog owner! love you vold & zz) and head back over to the beach for dinner. Easy enough? Surely…
- The next day as I was hunting for clues on why I died, I found a 20 second video of me saying “Honestlyyyy, I’m an absolute shit show, and I am jappiiii for anyone to show up at ma plazzzaace, love u guys see you soon bye.” (no one was coming over, we were going to dinner?)
Thankfully nothing untoward happened at dinner, we were definitely the most annoying table, with half of us screeching along to hips don’t lie by shakira, and the other half moaning through bites about our love for tacos and randomly screaming “SHE’S LEGAL MOTHER FUCKERSSSS”.
The real issue arose when we headed to Bodega. The set up was outstanding, unfortunately my bestfriend Ali tapped out early so I was on my own. Just me, a table with a crap ton of booze, 6/7 sorority girls and Lex’s boyfriend to baby sit us and make sure we didn’t die. (Good job Thanos, I ended up with stitches... You had one job.)
Let me be candid, I cannot dance. It’s something I made my peace with years ago after more than a few instances where I had someone worriedly ask me if I had a leg cramp or if I was having a seizure. BUT, something I can (not really) do is bounce around a table and shuffle. (nope, not really) So that’s what I did! The night went on, I was having a blast and spinning in circles, hopping on one leg and with no cares in the world. Then… CRASH.
I was mid MJ moon walk when I felt my ankle catch onto the lower level of our table, the room fell around me and I opened my eyes to find myself sitting on the table. Phew! Close one. I got right back up and continued my hopping and shuffling (sorry to anyone who had to watch that live, it ain’t cute)
“LAU YOU’RE FUCKING BLEEDING”
“HUH??? NO IM NOT?” I was infact, bleeding.
One of the lovely girls with whom I drunkly bonded ushered me into the bathroom. Fuck, I was bleeding a lot… Weird. Taking a closer look, I realized there was still glass inside my damn leg. what’s a girl to do? Pull that sucker right out, problem solved! I thought that was the end of it, another err in judgment on my end. I was walking out, holding a damp paper towel against my thigh when I felt another cut. I had what looked like a punch biopsy hole directly above my butt cheek. The skin was literally handing by a thread. Well, shit.
Any sane person would have called it a night, but hot mess express was full steam ahead. I happily skipped back over to the table to find that the culprit to my demise was a Tito’s bottle which the servers were still cleaning up. Oh wait, another bottle of vodka survived. Cool! Isn’t vodka like supposed to work for disinfecting? I poured a glass over my leg, poured myself another glass, downed it and congratulated myself on a job well done.
Finally, Bodega closed for the night. You’d think I would have tapped out after getting injured, but momma didn’t raise a quitter! (Sorry mom, I know you’re disappointed) I proceeded to invite the last few standing over to my apartment for a nightcap. For some god forsaken reason, I also opted on inviting two total strangers that recognized one of the girls that we met outside the club. Fast forwarding to my apartment, I played host and got everyone drunker. This entire segment is based only on witness testimony (thanks Kat!)
So, we’re all having a hoot and a half of a time, my leg is still bleeding profusely, my dogs are worried but I’m blasted. For some tragic reason, pizza was delivered to my place. It sounds like a magical end to a long night, I know. It wasn’t, here’s why: During quarantine I went fully vegan for 6 months. I honestly lost way too much weight so I had to reintegrate animal protein into my diet. I had a very serious breakup with dairy just due to the fact that my skin really doesn’t appreciate when I eat cheese. The only faint recollection I have of hanging out in my kitchen was me shoving my face with VERY cheesy pizza and crying while I chewed saying “i literally cant eat cheese” and “ohhh man i’m gonna wake up so ugly tomorrow because of this cheeeeeeze, I’m too pretty to have acneeee” Kat wanted to call it a night after fully sabotaging my clean eating, but the two strangers were still there. One of them was too wasted to leave, so naturally I made him a bed on my couch and threatened to bill him if he messed it up. (it’s a white cloth couch, danger zone.) Eventually, everyone left. Even the poor guy I so generously made a bed for. I guess he was a bit intimidated by my death threats if he stained my couch. I dragged my broken butt to bed, and waited to fall asleep while the room spun, goodnight world!
The next morning, I got the rundown of my heinous behavior from my newfound friends, and thus — “The Night of the Glass Ass” was born.
- Luckily, I have a dermatologist friend that was willing to make a house call and stitch my leg holes. The cut was 3 cm away from my femoral artery, and I was an absolute idiot for pulling the glass out. 3 cm to the right and I would have probably bled out, that would have been awkward. 9 subcutaneous stitches and 6 epidermal closure stitches later, I feel like an absolute klutz, I will need laser scar removal, and I had a helluva night.
