Dude…?

Two cocktails led to eight more a week back, and before the night was over I’d been in and out of establishments from Hertel Avenue to the Old First Ward. Somewhere along the line I had brief moment of lucidity in which I realized I’d better stop driving. After calling in sick to work the next day, I realized I had no idea where I’d left my car. I figured it would come to me, but two days later it still hadn’t. Come to find out I’d given the keys to a bartender, who drove me home, and proceeded to borrow my car for a long weekend in the country. He put about 600 miles on it. Did this guy behave ethically? I mean, I was drunk. He did me a favor, sure, but I don’t remember telling him he could take my car for four days.

—Lost Weekend

Ruthless says: Um, dude, he stole your car. Six hundred miles? Four days? That’s hilarious. Wasn’t he the one who poured the last drink, the one that launched you into oblivion? Sounds very suspicious. Perhaps he slipped something in it? Some GHB, maybe? You might want to check your trunk for bloodstains, or make sure your plates weren’t reported fleeing the scene of a robbery.

Or maybe your bartender has this scam down to a science. Why bother to get your own car when there’s bound to be some drunk guy throwing his keys at you night after night? Not a bad idea at all, actually. Ethics got nothing to do with it—it’s pure practicality.

On the Brighter Side: You’re supposed to hand the keys over to a dear sober friend and let him or her get behind the wheel…not the dude who is pouring you weak mixed drinks and robbing you of your drinking allowance. Did he at least have the decency to fill up your gas tank after he took his little detour to Middle Ohio? If I were you, I’d go back to the scene of the crime and demand free drinking dollars for the rest of the summer. Perhaps you should hail cabs to and from the bar scene the next time you decide to go out on a bender.

P.S. If it makes you feel any better, I once dated a functioning alcoholic who got drunk, woke up the next morning, and discovered his Taurus had been “stolen.” Insurance reimbursed him for the loss and he purchased a heart-healthy bicycle. A few weeks later, he received a phone call from the police station. His “stolen” vehicle was found on Elmwood Avenue outside of Louie’s hot dogs.

Dr. Sigmund Fraud says: “Drunk” is putting it too mildly, pal. You had attained a level of inebriation only comparable to that experienced by religious zealots in a state of transcendent ecstasy. When you poured that 151 rum on your shoes, lit them on fire, hopped on the pool table, and started mimicking the dance moves from “Thriller,” I knew I had to take your keys. Your girlfriend, bless her heart, knew you wouldn’t be your normal self for several days and suggested we go explore the Finger Lakes Wine Trail. (Really, why should she have had to suffer next to you as you curled up in a fetal position next to the toilet?)

I gotta tell ya, since I know you’ve never gone, you can have a lot of fun—I mean a lot of fun—hopping around to all the cute little bed and breakfast places. And when you go, as we did, during the off-season, the rooms are cheaper. So you can buy more wine. And the antique stores? Forget it. We actually found this genuine bear-skin rug that was perfect to throw in front of the fireplace at night. Did you know there are over 100 wineries along Keuka, Seneca, Cayuga, and Canandaigua lakes? In four short days you can build memories that will last a lifetime.

I know we did.

The Straight Perspective: Of course your bartender behaved unethically; it was outrageous for him to take your car out on a long date, and without inviting you. The good news, though, is that this is probably just a karmic reward for your own bad behavior. It’s great that you gave the keys up, but I’ll bet you’d done your share of driving drunk earlier in the night—and if you wended your way from Hertel to Hamburg, you drove right by where I live. You could have killed me.

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