Someone at work was talking about how the team works too hard, and nobody goes out drinking anymore, so he can't find out all the scandalous things about everyone. I said that even if I did go out drinking, my life is so boring that there was nothing scandalous for me to even say. His response was that everyone has a skeleton in their closet, and it always comes out after a few drinks. I asked him if that was a challenge. He responded that it was. I am never one to back down from a challenge, so we picked a date (which was today - or yesterday, by the time this will get posted).
Ever since we started that Dota challenge, D has been trying to work out which hero I plan to play. He claims that he doesn't know enough about the game to counterpick me, but his friends do, and since it is 3v1, I feel like having an unknown hero is my only advantage in this game. I know he has a fairly limited hero pool, and his other friends are a bit more versatile, but I am starting to get the feel for which kinds of heroes he likes to play.
I mentioned the drinks thing to D, and invited him along (in hindsight, I don't know why I did this). He agreed to come, thinking he'd be able to weasel my secret out of me after a few drinks. Seriously, I feel like people have so little faith in me.
Well, I guess I can understand that. I've probably been watching too many spy shows, but I was thinking about whether I'd be able to tolerate being interrogated. I was thinking about that scene in Alias where Sydney's character is tied to a chair, and this dentist guy is threatening to pull out one her teeth. She cooly requests that he pull one of her back teeth out so it doesn't damage her smile. Then proceeds to kick ass. I imagine if I were in that same situation, I'd probably spill the beans before they even finish tying me to the chair. Of course, they won't believe me, and will continue to torture me to find out the "truth". But even knowing that, I'd spill the beans anyway, because I have such a low threshold for pain, and an even lower threshold when it comes to suspenseful pain.
After thinking that thought, I started to worry a bit about the drinks challenge. I really don't think I have anything scandalous to say. Anything that could be scandalous has already been posted for the world to see, and if people at work found out about it, it would damage my reputation, but I feel like it's the "true me", so is it really that bad? I don't think I've done anything that's worth being fired over, so there's that, too.
So after some thought, there were really only two things I was worried about revealing tonight:
1) The identity of the hero I plan to play in the Dota 2 match against D.
2) The identity of MrCrush.
They're not even that scandalous. The first I want to keep secret because I want to win. The second I want to keep secret because it's embarrassing, unprofessional, and I would like to preserve my working relationship with this person.
Suffice to say, since I was able to write so much, and I am not curled up in a ball of regret on the floor, I managed to protect both secrets. Challenge successful! My big secret: just staying silent and staring at the person who asked me the question. Which I had to do for all questions, otherwise I'd end up revealing something by picking and choosing which questions to answer and which not to answer. I've realised that staring at people is really disorienting, and I have to fight my natural instinct to fill the silence, which is surprisingly easy when your brain is moving at the speed of plate tectonics.
The downside is, I definitely drank way too much, and for the first time in my adult life, I ended up throwing up after drinking too much alcohol. Definitely not something I want to experience again. However, I got to know a couple of people on my team a bit better, and saw a side of them that I don't get to see in the office. I got to impress people with my ability to scull a jager bomb - an ability I did not know that I had. I laughed far too much at jokes that really were not that funny. I managed not to fall asleep, despite having 4 drinks on an empty stomach and over a short period of time.
I feel like I did have fun tonight (minus the throwing up part), but at the same time, I also hate that feeling of slowness. Like there are thoughts in my mind and I'm chasing after them, but it's always just out of reach. So instead I say garbage. D asked if I'm a "fun drunk" and I didn't know how to answer that. I think people just like seeing me drink because it's such a rare event. That and they want me to say something incriminating. Jal asked why I didn't just lie, and I responded that I prefer not to lie because I have trouble keeping my story straight, and so the lie gets revealed anyway.
Plus, I've found that if you go in with the knowledge that you can't lie, then it forces you to behave a certain way, because you know that you won't be able to cover your tracks with a lie. So I feel like I don't need to lie as I have nothing to lie about. That doesn't mean to say I go around telling the truth about everything. There are definitely lies of omission, which is a form of lying.
For the most part, I'm glad I survived today, and can go forward with the knowledge that no amount of alcohol can make me say something I don't want to say. Another adventure to chalk up to the 365 photo challenge. I'm definitely growing as a person. And look, it's a drunken blog post that isn't full of misspelled words and bad grammar!
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