The Wallace/Kirby Birthday Bacchanalia

Hey, remember how yesterday I said I was going to get really drunk? Well allow me to land my metaphorical fighter jet on the aircraft carrier that is the ISB, and say to you two simple words:

Mission Accomplished.

It was Brandon's birthday, after all, and if that's not a good excuse to get both drunk and crunk, then I don't know what is. Which is why I rolled into Rock Hill at around six and immediately got started indulging my rarely-sated thirst for libations. Which is to say, I finished off the Seagram's I'd started in on the last time I was at Brandon's dorm.

The party actually got started at around eight, and it was indeed a celebration. My friend Jennifer was playing hostess, and had invited her friends, who were mostly gay men. Brandon, however, had taken a different tact and invited mostly hot college girls, thus ensuring that he spent the evening surrounded by nubile young ladies and cake, which are probably my two favorite things in the entire world, comics and pie notwithstanding. I, on the other hand, spent the evening growing progressively more and more boisterous and obscure in my choice of topics. I was under the influence of Brass Monkey, after all, and was therefore obliged to put my right leg down, my left leg up, tilt my head back and finish the cup.

For instance, Brandon's friend Sarah (with whom we'd played Badminton during the Summer of Outdoor Sports a few months ago) brought along one of her friends, introducing him to me as I nursed some kind of fruit drink that Jennifer made for me.

"Hi, I'm Chris, and I'm well on my way to being drunk. And you are?"

"I'm Hugh."

"Oh, like David Sedaris's boyfriend."

I'm pretty sure the association made him vaguely uncomfortable, especially since I repeated it every time he told me his name, which I kept forgetting. Nice guy.

At one point during the evening, I thought I'd spontaneously developed superpowers. I'd abandoned Jennifer's classic NES in frustration at not being able to beat a single level of Ducktales, a game which at age 10 was the focal point of my entire existence, and taken to answering the door as Brandon's guests arrived throughout the evening. Opening the door at one point, I was surprised and thrilled to find not one, but two ladies waiting for admittance. I let them in, closed the door, and then decided to see if there'd be two more when I opened the door again...

And there were.

Unfortunately, that was the only time my X-Gene chose to make itself known, or I'd be out there using my powers for evil as we speak.

Disheartened by my lack of lady-conjuring super-powers, I hit the sauce with a vengeance, getting drunk enough to decide to pretend to be a fashion photographer, snapping photos of Brandon while shouting out phrases like "Show me sexy like a tiger!" and "I love it! Now make me hate it!"

Continuing the theme of implicit homosexuality, Brandon and I also did a few duets on Jennifer's karaoke machine. It may surprise you to learn that I know all the words to the Backstreet Boys classic "I Want it That Way" and *NSync's "Bye Bye Bye." And that pretty much blows being in bed with Scott right out of the water in terms of the gayest thing I've ever done while drunk.

Maybe "blows" was the wrong term for that sentence. But I digress.

I have an odd habit of learning something about myself every time I get drunk, and this time what I learned was that my thing for girls named Gail is not necessarily tied into said girl having written Deadpool before. Pictured to the left is Gail, who, along with Emily (the girl with glasses to Brandon's left above), captured my attention for the majority of the evening.

Those poor, poor girls.

Gail kept speaking Spanish (having completed one of her stated life goals of going to Argentina and subsequently being eaten by a Great White Shark), apparently unaware that in the world of Chris Sims, bilingualism is hot. I made a double-entendre out of nearly every sentence she said, but fortunately I had the presence of mind to make them aside to Brandon, even in the deepest throes of my inebriation. She endured not only my questions about her clear plastic bra-strap (Well I'm sorry, but my underwear rarely comes with optional features) as the night wore on, but also sat patiently through Brandon and I extolling the virtues of why The Prisoner is the single best thing either one of us has ever seen. The fact that Emily was sitting in a chair opposite me stretching out her legs above her head while I tried to explain the nuances of "Hammer into Anvil" makes me amazed that I made it through a sentence at all.

They were even there for my favorite moment of the evening, when Brandon and I toasted to the King of Comics, Jack Kirby. It was 1:37 AM, and we'd finally settled our debate on whether or not to go through with the drinking. Considering I'd been going strong for seven hours at that point, I initially balked, but I steeled myself, reminding Brandon that he created the New Gods. So we poured our shots, I loaded up a picture of OMAC on my PSP, and we began our toast.

"Jack Kirby was a good man," I said.

"Was?!" said Gail.

"Yeah," said Brandon.

"He's been dead for years."

"Oh my God!"

At this point, we had to explain to Gail and Emily that Kirby was not a personal friend of ours, but rather someone whose work meant a lot to us. Brandon explained about Captain America and his indomitable spirit, and I threw in the bit about Cap punching out Hitler months before official US involvement in World War II.

For Brandon, Cap embodies Kirby himself, the unshakeable belief in what's right that makes a man even Gods will follow.

I understood him perfectly, but I think our drunken musings were lost on the girls. So I continued my toast:

"Jack Kirby was a good man. He loved his wife, he loved his children, he loved his country, and by God, he loved comics. He never learned to drive, because he had too many ideas to keep his mind on the road. Thanks, Jack."

Then we drank.

And then I thought I was going to die.

But fortunately, I didn't, and survived long enough to get a handshake from Emily and a hug from Gail before stretching out on Jennifer's couch, hoping to God I'd get to sleep before Brandon, because that guy snores.