You're Too Old to Be That Drunk!

On Wednesday night, I went to see Jens Lekman at the Black Cat with TNG Ben. The show was just as good as his show there last October (minus the appearance of matching costumes and two horn players, which I'll allow.) Sir Lekman is just as charming as I remembered him, and by midway through the show everyone was grinning from ear to ear.

Except I couldn't fully get immersed into his onstage world of Swedish whimsy and puppy love because a drama in the audience was eclipsing it. The 45 year-old woman standing in front of me was so intoxicated that she fell ass-backwards on the floor, and spent the next half an hour reeling on her feet and groping on strange men until a concerned young woman and her boyfriend helped security escort her backstage.

I don't think I ever even got that drunk in college, and I used to drink 7 beers as a pregame.

If you could see an arial view of the audience at that point, it would've looked like a donut with a toothpick in the center. No one wanted to get near Mother Booze, so there was a three-foot gap in any direcion between her and the next closest person. At a fully sold out show, this is no small feat. When it finally became clear that she had a problem, and wasn't just drunk with the spirit of the music, we were more than happy to help her out. I asked four times if she was alright, and she refused to look at me. Luckily, a group effort finally got her somewhere safer.

I am not saying that once you reach a certain age, your social life has to change. The nice thing about a good rock show is that it's appealing entertainment for a wide range of age groups, from a 15 year-old with a fake ID to the man in the back corner with a grey ponytail and dangly earrings who probably had more debauched fun over a single weekend in 1976 than I will have in my whole life.

The lady in question on Wednesday definitely looked like a cooler older woman. With a sexy red dress and shoulder length bob, she could've passed for Maude Lebowski's older sister. But I think that wisdoms of age afford a certain amount of dignity. Right now I have neither wisdom nor dignity, and so I look forward to being gifted them as I grow. At that age, though, I hope to never be so drunk that peeing my pants would be a step in the right direction.

Just as the 50 year-old gay man at Cobalt with a backwards baseball cap, cargo shorts and two appletini's seems to be missing some fundamental truth about getting older, so did this woman. Have fun and don't let your age restrict you, just do it in a way that actually fits your age. Just as I don't feel the need to guzzle martinis and valium while discussing an invented mortgage when I go to dinner parties where I am the youngest person by 20 years, I don't think its good for anyone to try and party like their kids do.