Mine, All Mine

Reading through my personal emails, I came across photos of a birthday celebration for a friend. We went to this great Mexican place called Iguana at Clarke Quay. I was early, so I went shopping for an item, joining my two friends when they messaged me that they had arrived. I reached the restaurant to find them already seated, and we proceeded to order drinks. What's a birthday celebration without drinks?? The birthday gal ordered a strawberry margarita, and as I looked at the menu and the size of the glass, I assumed she was planning to share her margarita with her 2 best girl friends as a sort of birthday tradition.

When the pink (and oh so juicy looking) margarita arrived, it came with 3 straws. As big as a bowl of soup, I watched as she took big gulps of the margarita. Not sips, gulps as if she were drinking water or orange juice.

"Hey, go easy on that! That's margarita you know, not strawberry juice."

She looked at me with her big, round eyes while continuing to gulp down her margarita. Worried that she'd get herself drunk even before dinner arrived, I said it was our turns for the margarita. She looked at me, puzzled.

"What do you mean?"

"Didn't you order the margarita to be shared among the 3 of us?" I demanded.

"No!! I want it all by myself!! Look, its this pink! So beautiful!! I'm not going to share this beautiful pink margarita with anyone!"

She grabbed the glass possessively and glared at us.

I was stunned. My friend hardly drinks and the last time we went out together, I remembered she couldn't even finish a glass of alcohol. I reasoned that it had been some time since we'd gone drinking, and she could have become a better drinker without my knowing.

"So when was the last time you went drinking? How many glasses did you have?"

The answer was not encouraging. I pulled the glass away from her and told her to stop and wait until the food came before gulping down any more of that margarita. She was annoyed, but put up with me or she knew I'd nag her until the new kingdom came.

So dinner came, and halfway through our appetizers, she suddenly barfed into her own mouth. Pressing her hands to her lips, she looked around desperately for a vessel to hold whatever she needed to let out. Without missing a beat, my other girlfriend grabbed my empty coke glass and shoved it in front of her. Out came her appetizers and whatever else she had before that. The laughable part was her barf filled my empty glass exactly. It looked like a new cocktail invention that had yet to be put to the blender. However, I was too grossed out to laugh as her vomit sat in the glass that I had been drinking from. I pushed it to the far end of the table and ignored it. The waitress who witnessed the episode, tactfully came and took the glass away, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. She then politely asked my friend if she needed napkins to clean herself. We both stared at her, and she back at us. None of us were capable of speaking at that moment. She then smiled and said "No, thank you.", giving the waitress a generous grin. She then got off her seat and disappeared to the Ladies' for a bit.

My other girlfriend and I just looked at each other. We didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Should we proceed with the evening? After all, our main course hadn't even arrived yet. What if she was too sick to carry on? Should we call it a night and go home? That would be a shame of an ending for a birthday celebration.

Thankfully, the birthday girl returned fromt he Ladies' sober, and composed. She was well enough to continue with the evening and we ended up having a good time still. However, she kept staring at the strawberry margarita the whole evening, complaining what a waste of a beautiful pink drink it was....