Santa Con: A 15 Hour Bender

I had been looking forward to this day since November 1, since it was my other opportunity to wear a costume besides Halloween. Let me school you in what makes up Santa Con: it is basically a massive bar crawl where everyone involved is dressed as santa or another seasonal character. I had decided to be the grinch, which is very festive, for those of you that have seen the movie (the cartoon, not the creepy Jim Carey rendition). I had planned out an adorable costume, if I do say so myself. Green jeans and a green fleece with a giant sparkly red heart pinned to it. I put my two green pipe cleaners in my hair to mimic his grinch hair. But the icing on the cake was the little stuffed grinch backpack (worn by ravers and me in 7th grade) with his own little santa hat. And within the grinch backpack I had put a water bottle filled with vodka/cran. I was pumped and ready to go.
I met Russian Rocher in Union Square so we could subway down to the Financial District to catch up with the crawl. It had begun at 10AM and it was now about 1PM so we were getting a late start. This proved to be a bad decision for me since all the bros were drunk and were not too welcoming of my grinch costume. I was cursed at twice on our walk to the bar. Am I currently stealing your presents douche bags? No, I'm engaging in the festivities like everyone else. Stupid bros.We met Russian Rocher's group of friends where one of their drunk bro friends proceeded to swear at me. The joke was on him though because he was too drunk to realize I was now with them. One of the guys forced him to apologize and offer me a swig from his bottle of Wild Turkey. When amends were made we all drank more (as is the point of Santa Con) and I made friends with the two girls sitting next to us, one of which had the pluralized form of my name. Weird. One of our guys overheard this and proceeded to make fun of her. She obviously heard him and he then made up a story that his sister has the exact same name. Another narrowly avoided fight--time to head out.
 I had been in contact with Prom for awhile and he was of course holed up in Beckett's so we headed there. Now Prom can be a surly one  and tends to make a lot of asshole comments, though he usually behaves himself around me. Not this time. As soon as he found out Russian Rocher was Russian, he began to spout his self-proclaimed hatred of Russia, because no one was nice to him when he was in Moscow (probably because he made a lot of asshole comments). So shortly after we ditched him and headed out to try and catch up with the rest of the Santa Con crawl in Grand Central, a couple hours late. Trying to get a group of drunk people on the same page and heading in the right direction is quite a task so all of this took much longer than one would think. After getting turned around on the subway, we finally got on the correct train heading to Grand Central (4:30PM).
There were a few straggler santas on our car, and as soon as they saw my costume they burst into a drunken rendition of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch". At first I was concerned that I was about to get jumped but then I realized that they were a group of harmless babies who were just trying to talk to us. They walked with us into Grand Central, all of them loudly demanding how I could have dressed up as the grinch on an occasion such as this. Obviously this was not at all threatening; one of them demanded that I cover my "baby" and threw a Pittsburgh Steelers towel over the grinch (who had lost his santa hat very early in the night). There were no other santas to be found in the train station so we all decided to head to a bar nearby (with babies in tow). Obviously we were getting some pretty strange looks from pedestrians and the Steelers towel baby kept yelling at them to "never mind the grinch, just ignore her, she sucks!". We chose our bar and the babies promptly bought us shots (turns out they worked in finance...of course).
Awhile later RR's two friends headed home but RR and I decided to stay with the finance babies, who had invited us to eat dinner with them, at the very classy Irish pub we were in. They ordered every appetizer off the menu, plus an entree for each of them. 6:30PM--Russian Rocher and I are involved in a very festive (and free) feast with the finance babies.
GF had been texting me--he did not participate in Santa Con but was now ready to begin his night. I invited him to meet up with us and we made the unanimous decision to head to Penny Farthing in the East Village. GF and I will never learn our lesson that sometimes the subway is just easier and tried for quite awhile to hail a cab, while I froze in my green fleece. We finally met up with Rocher and the babies but I was disappointed to find that the one with the towel must have thought GF was my boyfriend and wouldn't really talk to me. Or it could've been that he saw me give my number to a guy in the bathroom line, who told me that he thought my costume was the "wittiest Santa Con costume" he had seen. Absolutely correct. Unfortunately he turned out to be not so cool when I tried to show him: http://damnyouautocorrect.com/13603/the-25-funniest-autocorrects-of-dyacs-first-year/
and he didn't get the humor. I had sent another guy to nevercall land, just where he belonged.
At around 9PM, GF, Rocher and I decided that our night must continue but we needed an intermission. Rocher headed back to her apartment to nap and I forced GF back to the Shwick with me so I could change. Once in the apartment he took charge, probably because he wanted to leave asap, as his allergies to Baby Kitty were growing worse by the minute. He mixed us some drinks, put on some house music and selected my outfit for me. We were ready in record time and headed back into the East Village and to my fav, the 9th Ward at about 10:30PM. We drank Purple Haze and waited for Rocher to show, but after some unreturned texts we figured she was out for the count. I wanted to try a bar I had read about on St. Marks called International Bar, so we headed there. It turns out I had unknowingly led us to a hipster bar and GF was not pleased. He rallied though, and we sat at the bar drinking PBR. It was then that I noticed an attractive hipster sitting next to us. Yes, you read correctly, an attractive hipster. It was as elusive as a double rainbow or a clean subway car. I knew I had to take advantage, so when GF got up to go the bathroom I leaned over and very charmingly said "You're drinking Genny Cream Ale, what's wrong with you??". Luckily he responded sans tude and we delved into a lengthy conversation about books and how he also lived in the Shwick (surprise). It was then that I noticed GF sitting sulkily at the end of the bar. Apparently he had been sending me texts about leaving but I was too involved with hottie hipster to notice. Afraid that I was about to get ditched, I bid the hipster farewell but was disappointed when he didn't ask for my number. The hipster failed me! Annoyed I followed GF who announced that we were going to Hell's Kitchen so he could meet some men. He led us right back into Blazing Saddles, which was once again filled with (his words not mine) "fairies and bears". When none appeared to talk to him GF grew fed up and claimed he would never meet anyone with me around. I agreed that was the case for me as well and this is where we hastily parted ways. I'm not really sure how it happened but before I knew it I was walking towards the subway to head home at around 2AM.

While standing (teetering) on the subway platform I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to discover the one-handed stalker. This was the third time he had found me in the subway and I was growing concerned that maybe this wasn't a coincidence. However I had been drinking for 13 hours straight at this point, so my reasoning skills weren't so good. I agreed to accompany him to Union Pool in Williamsburg to grab a drink. I demanded a beer and headed to the bathroom. Once presented with it I proceeded to blab his ear off about dumbass guys, my drunken-rambling topic of choice. He sat and listened and it couldn't have put him off too badly because when we were leaving he asked for my number. Even in my drunken state, I pretended like I didn't hear but when he asked again I had no choice. I begrudgingly gave it to him because I would apparently run into him again. We parted ways at the Lorimer subway stop and at 4AM I stumbled back into my apartment and into bed. 15 hours later. What a ridiculous Santa Con.
Addendum: The next day I obviously felt like an absolute train wreck. I could barely walk and spent the whole day on the couch, with Grinchy next to me for company. I also ignored One Handed Stalkers two texts . Luckily he gave up but I'm sure this is not the last of him...