Can I tell y’all about The Worst Hangover I’ve Ever Earned [LONG format post]

This is a story from my life as a youngish, fun-loving flight attendant

There are many nights I remember clearly.

There are also quite a few nights I remember in fragments.

And then there are nights where my memory is less of a timeline and more of a highlight reel stitched together from leftover vibes, secondhand accounts, stamps on my hand (or wristbands) that let me know where I had been. Oh, and often I get hit with a few deeply incriminating flashes of vibrant clarity.

This story is about one of those nights.

Let me set the stage properly, because context matters here: I was just beginning my third year of being a flight attendant, which is a very specific era of crew life.

In Year Three, you’re no longer terrified of the job and being sent random places on your on-call days, but you also haven’t been ground down by the people yet. You’ve got just enough confidence to be dangerous, just enough money to go out, and absolutely no business pretending you have your life together.

Not only am I a third year flight attendant with a little bit of confidence in the aviation industry, I’m in my prime. I’m 28, and my divorce was final the previous year; I am free and clear to get out there and “shake a tail feather.” I was deep in my “try everything once” era—OKCupid, Match, and one brief, anonymous flirtation with Ashley Madison that thankfully never made it back to me in the data breach.

I was still living in Queens, but at this point I’m in what I will generously call an “apartment,” but was, in reality, a crash pad with slightly better PR. My flight attendant friend Joy was a proper adult, with a good credit rating and a car, so she secured this newly-finished basement apartment a few blocks away from Lefferts Boulevard and Metropolitan Avenue in Kew Gardens, Queens. Great location, a block and a half away from the bus that runs to JFK, somewhere on 121st.

I remember dragging my suitcase through six inches of snow from this basement apartment on streets that weren’t yet plowed due to being non-arterial roads a few months later. It suuuuucks to commute to the airport in winter in New York.

Five of us lived in this apartment, and I had my own room, which sounds luxurious until I tell you I was sleeping on what can only be described as a carefully arranged nest of blankets on the floor because buying furniture felt like a long-term commitment that I was neither emotionally nor financially prepared for. As it was, the pallet of blankets was primarily made up of several layers of blankets “borrowed” from international First Class seats and brought home in my suitcase one at a time.

This might sound depressing, but I assure you that it didn’t bother me to sleep on the floor. I was rarely home anyway, as I was flying so much I barely had time to make it to Trader Joe’s a mile away to meal prep. I certainly didn’t have the capacity to figure out how to get to IKEA and bring home a bed frame. I’ve slept rougher in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport flight attendant lounge under the F gates, so it was easy to deal with. For a period of my life, I didn’t own a lot of stuff and freedom outweighed comfort.

Somehow, in this glorious summer of 2010, I ended up with three days in a row off. Not just any three days, either: Saturday, Sunday, Monday. You can’t possibly know how rare this was for a flight attendant at my seniority level. We were well staffed for the summer. Flights increase in frequency to most destinations through the spring, summer and fall. Where some locations only get two direct flights per week in the winter, they might get five direct flights per week in the summer, or even daily flights. This shift in schedules has an impact on winter flying, because with fewer flights they need fewer crew. I’ll explain voluntary furloughs (and the travel that taking four months off unpaid allows!) another time.

So there I am, off work free and clear, in the City That Never Sleeps. I could do anything! I could go out, get wild, and still have time to recover before my next trip. Enter my best friend Thomas.

Thomas and I met when I was 18 years old during my very brief and extremely unsuccessful attempt at going away to college. We met at some mixer in the days before classes started and became instant best friends. The kind of friendship where you eventually decide, with full sincerity, that if neither of you are married by 30, you’ll just marry each other. Which, in hindsight, says way more about societal pressure to pair off than it does about romance, but at the time it felt like a solid backup plan.

Side note, I realize now that to an 18-year-old reaching the ancient age of thirty feels like forever away, and now I can look back on this as a nearly-45-year-old and recognize that 30 is hilariously young. In case you were wondering how that pact turned out, we were both married and divorced before 30, so the pact was ultimately declared moot.

We stayed close over the years, even while living in completely different places and leading incredibly different lives. So when I moved to New York, (not a terribly far drive from Baltimore where Thomas was living) we did what any two people in their late 20’s with a questionable relationship to alcohol would do: We planned to go for a Night Out.

I capitalized Night Out on purpose, because Gen X/Millenials will understand what I mean. The younger folks who didn’t grow up with the Y2K drinking culture steeped into them might not: we are going out with the intention to get drunk. Typically no one says “I’m going to get sloppy, messy drunk” but…definitely some kind of drunk was the goal.

I maintain to this day that we started the evening responsibly. We had dinner at my favorite local Peruvian restaurant, Tu Casa (it’s still going, check it out if you’re ever in the neighborhood!) We had rotisserie chicken. Tostones. Tres Leches cake. Not just something resembling a “base layer” of food, we had a meal. We also drank a pitcher of sangria that felt harmless at the time and like a slippery slope in hindsight.

Next stop: Astoria. A “bikini bar” where my friend Lex worked. And by “bikini bar,” I mean a place where the women were wearing just enough clothing to legally serve alcohol and absolutely no one was there for the ambiance.

It was loud. It was chaotic. It was exactly the kind of place where your judgment quietly leaves your body without saying goodbye.

I know this because mine left me somewhere in the middle of my 3rd shot of vodka without even giving me a heads up. I was busy hyping up my girl Lex, telling dudes flirting with her that ‘to get her number, you have to buy me a shot’ and they believed it.

Three shots later, along with at least one vodka + club soda that I bought for myself, and I’m having a great time. I’m in my most charming mode, the one where I’m sparkling, effervescent, and not yet starting to slur my words. I was talking to…someone. A man. Details of his face are unclear. Like a G6 is blasting my senses. Thomas was talking to a stunning green-eyed Ukrainian dancer wearing silver hot pants. I horn into their conversation, totally not being a wingman, partly because this is MY time with Thomas, and also because he will fall in love quickly when he’s drunk. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I do remember at some point, the Ukrainian chick taught me how to say “run, bitch, run” in Arabic.

Which is not information I have ever used before or since, but it has stayed with me for well over a decade, so clearly it was important. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

At some point in this part of the evening, we added another character to the night. A man I had gone on exactly one date with. I do not remember his name. I do remember we met on OKcupid.com and he was a middle school math teacher. He was cute. Plaid shirt. Brown hair. Taller than me. For this story we’re going to call him Vince Vaughn. Not because he looked like Vince Vaughn, but because at a certain point in the evening, it will make sense.

I’m sure my thought process was something along the lines of “d’you know what I need? More attention.” Maybe I was jealous of the Ukrainian girl soaking up all of my best friend’s attention. What I remember is that when we went into the bikini bar, there was still sun in the sky, and when we left it was well past sunset, and I was buzzing.

Now, this is the point where things start to unravel.

How did we get to Manhattan from Astoria? I assume it was via the subway, but it might have been by taxi. This part is all a blur. The next clear memory I have is of us sitting in the front row at the Comedy Cellar.

And I have a very clear understanding, in hindsight, that I should not have been in the front row of anything at that point in the evening. I don’t even know who had bought the tickets. Were they were bought in advance or at the door? Who knows.

What I do know is that, like most comedy venues, there was a two-drink minimum.

So, I order two drinks. This time I switch it up and order Crown and ginger ale. That is some dark liquor behavior, which is one of the many flags that should have been called on the play. If Maigen is ordering dark liquor drinks, the night should be over.

Unfortunately, Thomas is equally drunk, and Vince Vaughn doesn’t know me well enough, or perhaps doesn’t have a strong enough personality, to recognize the danger and help us take it down a notch. “Bless his heart,” we might say sympathetically. He had no idea what he was getting into.

I wish I could recall if the host or the openers were funny. I remember none of it.

I only remember the next part because Thomas had such volatile feelings about it when we reminisced the other day about the hangover from this weekend. It took two full days to recover at 29, and frankly, would kill me 15 years later.

The night took a turn when the opening comedian looks at me, obviously drunk (I’m assuming) and smiles. He looks at Thomas (also obviously drunk), then he looks at the other guy, and asks me which one I’m with. This is part of his crowd work, so it’s not subtle. He gestures first at the tall, slightly handsome one, then at Thomas.

“Are you with Vince Vaughn or Kevin Smith?”

Pointing directly at Thomas, meaning it as a funny insult.

Objectively? The comparison is funny. Subjectively? Thomas did not find it funny.

Thomas, as I previously mentioned, is not a happy drunk. Thomas is more of an emotionally reactive drunk, so he gets mad. Big mad. People laugh at the comparison, so Thomas slams out of his seat, growling, and goes out to the street to smoke a cigarette and calm down.

Crazy moment: He remembers someone running out of bar moments later who was being chased down by several people, having stolen a purse. That person caught some hands, flung the purse at the ground, and managed to get away without much injury. Never a dull moment in New York City, amirite?

The comedian takes a few shots at other audience members, then continues with his set. I’m laughing the whole time, because at a certain point of inebriation, everything is funny. I finish the first Crown and ginger. Vince Vaughn sips a beer. Thomas comes back down a few minutes later, and then the next comedian comes on.

We think this comedian was Fortune Feimster.

Thomas recalls “She was a big blonde lesbian who had been on one of the TV comedy-competitions.” I don’t have enough knowledge of comedians of the time to say for sure, but Feimster had recent won “Last Comic Standing” so it could be her.

This cannot be confirmed at this point by anyone but maybe Fortune herself, but the energy checks out. Southern accent, the size of their presence on stage feels similar but at this point my vision was blurry and my memory can’t be trusted.

What I can confirm is this: At some point during her set, I start annoying her.

It’s possible that I was just being a drunk girl and talking too loudly at my equally drunk friend in that not-even-remotely-a-stage-whisper-but-I-think-I’m-being-subtle way. It’s possible I was engaging with her jokes, but if I’m really honest about what I see in retrospect: I started heckling her.

Let me be very clear: this is not who I am as a person. I am pro-comedian. I am pro-women. I am pro-not-being-that-girl. And yet, here I was in the front row, running. my. mouth.

At some point, instead of ignoring it, she leans toward me and, putting on a sarcastic face I know too well: fake smile, overly cheerful voice, scrunched up nose says: “Sweetie, I just wanna punch you in the face.”

And instead of doing the reasonable thing—which would be taking the not subtle hint, shutting the fuck up, sipping water, and enjoying the show—I escalated.

I, in my deeply compromised state of inebriation, interpreted it as a reasonable challenge. Instead of laughing it off like a normal person…I stood up, spread my arms wide, and said “Well, let’s fucking go.”

In my head, this felt like a completely reasonable response. In reality, I was one strong exhale away from falling over. I’m not a fighter. I’m fighting to keep my balance on heels and keep my wrap dress closed and losing at both.

In hindsight, this was a tremendous display of drunk overconfidence. Not only was I absolutely not in fighting condition—I am also 100% certain she could have taken me down without breaking a sweat at this point. A stiff breeze could have taken me down at this point.

This is the moment where Thomas and Vince Vaughn both realize, independently and simultaneously: We need to go. It’s time to remove Maigen from this situation immediately.

And then everything goes dark. Not metaphorically. Literally. I have no memory of how we left. How we got up the stairs from the Comedy Cellar, how we spilled back onto MacDougal Street, how we got back to Queens.

What I do know is this: we did make it back to Queens. Apparently, we got dropped off at Vince Vaughn’s studio apartment, where he attempted to make a move. Thomas, acting as the world’s most chaotic bodyguard, shut that shit down immediately. We both would love to say it was because I was in no condition to give consent, but Thomas remembers it was because Vince Vaughn had no couch.

Sleeping arrangements would have had to be three of us snuggling in one queen-sized bed, and I recall Vince Vaughn being a hard no on that idea. And after the indignity of being compared to Kevin Smith, there was no way Thomas was going to sleep on the floor.

One of us called for a cab, and somehow, through sheer willpower and what I can only assume was divine intervention, we survived the night.

The next two days were dedicated entirely to recovery. And when I say recovery, I do not mean a light headache and a glass of water; I mean full-system shutdown. We were questioning our life choices for a minimum of 36 hours. I had the kind of hangover where your body is like, “I don’t know what you did, but we will never be doing that again.”

And honestly, we earned that.

Here’s the thing about nights like this: they are not my proudest moments (plural, because I’ve had more than a few of them). These are not my most graceful moments. This is not a story I tell to impress people.

But they are so very, very human. That version of me? The one sleeping on the floor in a shared basement apartment, saying yes to everything, figuring it out as I went? That version of me was alive in a way that is hard to replicate later in life. I was messy. Unfiltered. Occasionally a liability. But fully in it. Fully alive.

What I’m most grateful about is that, back in those days, we weren’t capturing every moment for social media. We have no photos of this night. The memories are all we have to remind ourselves of the youth we once squandered getting wasted.

There have been quite a few nights where I’ve been surprised at my survival. The time I met “Jude Law’s Twin” on the flight to Prague and the time I got roofied in Seattle both come to mind.

Every once in a while, when I think about this night (or when Thomas brings up his kidneys still holding a grudge), I don’t think, “God, what a disaster.” I think, “yeah. I really did that.” And somehow…I made it to my next flight.