Drunken Places I've Been Sober In the Last Month

-My Triple-Ex-Girlfriend's Birthday Party, at a tiny bar on El Camino run by a guy with the same name as the author of "The Da Vinci Code," literally fifty feet from the apartment of my then-ex-girlfriend, who I'd broken up with one week earlier. The hangover from break-up night convinced me to take a sober month.

-A bar in the Mission right next to where I work, with several of my fellow interns and a couple of actual people. There was some sort of party happening in the bar that involved taking pictures with a gigantic flashbulb which filled the silence between words like a lightning flash.

-My cousin's engagement party. My uncle bought a couple weddings' worth of catered food and professional drink. There were several toasts. I spent the night coming up with new and interesting euphemisms for "intern." Free booze alert!

-Gaieties Retreat. "Gaieties" is an annual Big Game tradition - a comedy-musical about how much Cal sucks. Kind of like "Beach Blanket Babylon" with lots of college humor. I was on the writing staff of the show three times. Gaieties Retreat is a legendary bacchanalia where the actors, crew, and assorted hangers-on retreat to a cabin in the woods, drink profusely, make out in hot tubs, and smoke out in teepees. I explained to my friends that I was the sober monitor. "Yes, you are!" insisted some. "Vag-face!" shrieked others. Ended up driving my two drunk friends home. Free booze alert!

- A sports bar near my new apartment, where my roommate and I went to watch the USC-Stanford game. My school, which was never better than mediocre while I was an undergrad and achieved a 1-11 record last season, beat the number one team in the nation on their home field. The smug faces of USC undergrad richfuck pussies crying their eyes out made me happier than I've been in years. No one in the bar was a Stanford fan, but everyone, even the guy in the Cal shirt, hated USC.

- A trendy bar on Polk Street where I saw two of my fraternity brothers for the first time in over a month. When I walked in, they insisted on buying me a shot. "Can't do it, " I said, trying not to sound smug or cowardly, "I'm sober tonight." They concluded that I was both a woman and a homosexual.

- An Alumni golf tournament for my high school. There was free beer in the clubhouse, coolers full of coronas and bud lite scattered throughout the course, and a gigantic truck with October Fest and Pilsner beer pouring out of spigots in its side. We saw only two other guys from our era. "I'm just hear to get wasted!" they said. "Me too!" said my friend. Free booze alert!

- A Beirut concert. Beirut plays a kind of folk-rock-waltz fusion with Eastern European influences and every kind of instrument you can imagine. His performance was so extraordinary that it made me reconsider my life and how I try to live it. I wanted to fall in love. I wanted to fall asleep on that beach on Mykonos. I wanted my former ex-, now maybe-girlfriend to be there, but I wasn't sure if she would appreciate it.