While I'm eight and a half years sober now, I'm going to tell you three of the drunken stories I have in mind that I think you'll enjoy. One of them will wind up in the strip club, and we'll see what the other ones turn out to be — I've got a few candidates.
Mike's Birthday Party
The first one — I don't want to mention anybody's name, but I guess the name's pretty generic — so we're going to call this story Mike's birthday party. Mike was having a birthday party in 2009, a big milestone birthday party, and I went out to dinner with everybody involved. Now on this particular evening, I did not plan on ending up at the strip club, but I was very interested to see exactly what would happen at Mike's birthday party. So I went out and started drinking. This was back when I was a police officer, so I was drinking with lots of the other police officers.
After the initial early-game drinking at maybe seven, eight, nine at night, I somehow ended up at another bar downtown. There was an attractive female officer there who worked in another department, and there was a guy she really liked that she was trying to make jealous. So she was buying me drinks to make him jealous, and I thought it was fantastic. I'm like, I've totally made it now — this fellow hot officer is buying me drinks to make this guy jealous. Unfortunately, even after she bought me a few drinks, she ended up having some drama and having it out with him in the bar. So I got bored with that, and a couple of the friends I was with are like, "Strip club?" I'm like, hell yes, let's go.
The Champagne Room
So we go up to the strip club — an old Columbia, South Carolina strip club I'd been to a few times before with these same friends, who were also coworkers. One of the times I had previously been to the strip club with these coworkers, I had dropped $1,000 there to go into the champagne room and did not even get to have a climax. A thousand dollars and no real action — it was a big disappointment, to say the least. And I drunk drove across town back from that as well. Thankfully I didn't hit anything. This is why I'm sober today, because when Jerry drinks, Jerry drives drunk all over the place and occasionally hits things.
On this particular night, I drunk drove across town to go to the strip club, and when we rolled up, this very attractive stripper immediately found me. She started giving me a lap dance and immediately convinced me to go back into the lap dance room. I'm like, okay, sure, it's just a lap dance, no big deal. Then she starts telling me that she's horny. And I'm like, yeah, okay — I know where you're going with this. You're going to sell me on the champagne room, and then we're going to get in there and we're not going to do anything, and I'm going to be out a thousand bucks, and you're going to be able to go buy some shoes and pay some of your rent and get some drugs. It's not a great deal for me, is it? She's like, "No, I'm serious. I really am horny. And if you take me back there, I'll change into a less restrictive thong that we can just pull aside." And I'm like, dang. All right. She's not playing. This stripper is not playing — she's really ready for action tonight. This is fantastic.
So I went back to the champagne room with her, and she was not kidding. We got back there and she got straight to business — and by business, I mean oral. So she's going to town, and all of a sudden, after a few minutes of being in the champagne room, a waitress walks in. The little curtain opens and she starts to ask us if we need anything, and her mouth drops open like some bad movie scene, and she goes walking out. Thankfully, after being caught by my father doing it myself a few times, and by my roommate in college when I had some porn on and he was supposed to be in class and came busting in the door, I had a lot of experience putting my penis back into my pants very quickly. So this girl walks out, and I'm like, hmm, I think I have about two seconds to act like nothing was happening.
Three seconds later, a big, like, Russian mafia bouncer dude walks in. He looks around, and he's not surprised, he's not laughing. He's just looking around to make sure that the girl's not being taken advantage of — I guess from his point of view, he wants to make sure that she's doing this consensually. And she has no complaints and nothing to say when he walks in, which was very strange. It was just strange. This big guy could have broken me in half just by looking at me, and I should have been scared, but I'm not, because I was drunk. I just sit there acting like I've done nothing wrong. So he walks in, looks at me, looks at her, walks out, doesn't even say anything. I'm like, what the heck? This is so weird. He just walks in, makes sure everything's consensual, that the girl's not complaining or anything, and he walks out.
And this stripper was serious. She went right back to work, pulled the thong aside, and wow, it was really good. I would just say the wife experience — she gave me everything tonight. I don't want to be too graphic here, but you can read between the lines. Not a responsible way to live. But at the time, I was thinking I could afford to make stupid decisions, because I was probably going to die soon anyway. At the time, I was struggling with a lot of self-harm thoughts, after I'd had a very unattractive and overweight stripper come over one night, and after I'd gone through with that one, I'd wanted to end everything.
The Morning After
So then I get this stripper's phone number after we've done everything, and — see, this is why drinking is bad — I start telling her that I want to see her again, maybe date her, but I don't want it to be about money. So awkward and lame. We exchange phone numbers, I go home and go to sleep, feeling like Mike's birthday party was a big freaking success. Mike's birthday party went really well: I didn't hit anything drunk driving, got to bang a stripper in the strip club, which was really hot, and got her phone number.
I wake up the next day and find out that this wild stripper had texted me at like 8 in the morning, after she got off of work. She wanted to hang out after she got off work, but it turns out I had passed out. So I tried desperately to get her to come over again as soon as possible. I woke up feeling so sad — I'm like, oh my God, there was even more? She was going to come over after work? Oh my God. I felt so sad for missing out on that, and so lame for going to bed at like 6 or 7 in the morning, before she was actually finished with the evening. I tried for two weeks to get her to come over. I finally relented and got hella lame and started saying I'd give her some gas money or some crap if she came over.
The Question That Ended It
She finally came over two weeks later, and she sat down on my couch. Now, I'd had a girl over previously who had told me about a traumatic experience, and it was a real moment of bonding — we'd cried together, and then we'd had sex afterwards, and it was really hot. I guess I was drunk again on this evening, and I was trying to recreate that. So I made a mistake. The girl that had come over before was the dispatcher I had told that story about, which is detailed in my book, Officer Banfield. We knew each other pretty well before she had come over and told me this very intimate story. Now, the stripper — I did not know her hardly at all. I had met her, banged her in a strip club, spent maybe an hour with her, and texted her a little bit trying to get her to come over. So this is a girl I barely knew, despite us having sex, which is not — I would suggest you don't do things this way. This is what not to do, and this is why I don't drink anymore. And I'm glad I survived this without getting any STDs or unexpected pregnancies that I know of. It wouldn't surprise me if I had a kid come along at some point. I would hope that wouldn't happen, but it's possible.
So I asked this stripper who's come over — and I'm drunk at like 2 in the morning, and I've been desperate to get her over — I made the mistake of asking her something like this: "So, most strippers have been like, raped or molested or something. Have you?" I just made the most piss-poor, direct comment — not beating around the bush or anything, straight in, no warm-up, just BAM — some comment that since she's a stripper, she's probably been raped or molested. And she gave me a short, honest answer. She's like, "Yes, when I was 16, I was raped." And instead of telling me all about it, she immediately took her purse and left. And I'm like, what did I do? I thought we were connecting. I thought we were bonding. We're getting to know each other. Don't leave now. Come on. I thought you were going to tell me about it — we could cry together. I guess she wasn't interested in that experience. And I've never seen her again since then.
Why I Really Drank
So the next night, I'm drunk. And I make really bad decisions. I call up this girl I'd hooked up with before, because I make bad decisions when I drink. And I've also learned since I've been sober that when I'm sober and I'm thinking about drinking and I decide to drink anyway, on some level I must want to make bad decisions even while I'm sober. I want an excuse to make bad decisions. I want something to blame it on. I want the bad decisions, I want the chaos, and I want the drama — and I want to also be able to give up liability for it and say, hey, I was drinking, that's why I did that. But really, at this time in my life, my sober mindset was pretty insane, and that's why I drank even when I knew what bad decisions I was going to make when I drank. So, next night — I think this counts as at least drunk story number two.
The Good Morning Sunshine Story
The next night, I'm drinking and playing Call of Duty: World at War. I'm getting just drunk, and just getting shit on playing hardcore war — getting wrecked. And I start texting this girl that I didn't want a relationship with before. We had sex, but I stopped seeing her and just gave up having sex with her because I felt I was wasting both of our time. I didn't really like her that much. She wasn't that interesting. She was attractive, but we didn't seem to click. Our personalities didn't really excite each other that much, so I stopped talking to her for quite a while.
So on this particular drunk evening — the night after I had that stripper over who left because I asked if she'd been raped without taking the time to really get to know her first — I text this girl a bunch, asking her to come over at like 7 in the morning, trying to get her to come over. We both know that if she comes over, it's going to be sex. And she's resistant. She's at work. She hasn't seen me in a while. We didn't exactly leave on good terms before. So I tell her that I will marry her and give her a baby if she comes over. Ha! This is so stupid, it's hard to even believe. I tell her I will marry her and give her a baby if she comes over. She had to know I was lying. I believed myself at the time. So this story we will call the Good Morning Sunshine story.
She comes over at 7 in the morning after I've been drinking and playing Call of Duty all night. The first thing I notice: she had lost a bunch of weight before I originally hooked up with her, and when she walks in, she's put all that weight back on and more. She put on at least 30, maybe 40 pounds since I'd seen her. I'm like, oh my God. And I tried to get out of it — I'm like, well, I'm still going to have sex, but maybe we can just slide out of this with some oral and then I'll kick her out. And she could read my mind. She called my bluff on the baby. So we did everything you need to do for that.
Friday at like 5 p.m. comes around, and I'm waking up to go into work as a police officer. We do it — we do all of it. She leaves. I go to bed, sleep it off, wake up the next day, and I'm like, oh my God, what did I do last night? That was stupider than usual. I get to work and I'm sitting down at roll call, the sergeant just about to give us our briefing before we get started, and I feel a little vibration on my phone. I look at my phone, and there's a text from her that says, "Good morning, sunshine." I'm like, what? Oh — it's me. And all night at work I'm thinking, I've got to clean this up immediately. I cannot have this girl getting pregnant.
So after a 12-hour shift — just 12 hours after I told this girl I would marry her and have a baby with her — at the end of my shift, with a lovely hangover, I convinced this girl to meet me at CVS so I could buy her the Plan B pill and watch her take it to make sure she wasn't screwing around. I remember there was a really hot doctor or pharmacist there too, and I was so embarrassed walking up to the pharmacist at 8 a.m. Saturday morning with this girl I was not proud to be out in public with, buying a Plan B pill. It was exactly what it looked like. My wife realizes this is not a story for my wife, but she also realizes that I struggled a lot when it came to making bad decisions before she came along.
So we buy the Plan B pill. I pay for it. This girl goes to the parking lot and she's like, "I'll just take it at home." I'm like, no, you will not take this at home. I want to see you take that pill right now. Not having any babies with you. And she said that all the officers at my department were just the same, because she had met me through work. I'm like, what do you mean, all the officers at my department? And she starts telling me about all these other officers she's slept with at my department. One of them was married with a kid at the time. Another was married with four kids at the time. I was single, and she was going through all these married officers at the police department I worked at. I'm like, wow — this is why I made you swallow that pill.
I was not very nice about it. I was assertive. I was not aggressive, as in "I'm going to beat you if you don't take the pill," but I was pushy and assertive mentally. You can be very mentally aggressive with somebody without threatening violence or anything, and that was my mode of operation: I'm going to use logic and reason to push my will on you.
Quick Karma
This girl then ended up harassing me at work — understandably. She wouldn't leave me alone. She kept sending me all these text messages, and I finally threatened her that I was going to report her for harassment and make her lose her job if she didn't stop. I told her, who do you think they're going to believe — you or me? And funnily enough, I got to be on the receiving end of exactly that from the dispatcher not long afterwards. Talk about some quick karma. I know.
My 21st Birthday: The First Time I Paid a Girl to Come Over
These stories are all a lot the same, so I'll tell you about the first time I paid a girl to come over and how I got into that world. This is drunk story number three — Jerry's 21st birthday. The day before my 21st birthday, I got hammered and played a bunch of poker, and I had a miserable hangover on my actual birthday. I'm so hungover I can hardly even stand alcohol. So my friends take me out to a really nice dinner in Columbia at Dianne's on Devine — a really nice fancy dinner — and I enjoy ordering a couple of liquor drinks even though I can barely stomach them.
Often when I had a hangover, I would get really horny on the day of the hangover. I don't know why it worked that way, but often we'd have the whiskey D on the drinking nights, and then there'd be this massive horniness on the hangover day. So on the day I'm hungover, keep in mind I'd just struck out for an entire year in college. I relentlessly asked girls for phone numbers, tried to pick girls up — I spent an entire year striking out, relentlessly, junior year of college. After an entire year of failing over and over — I consistently tried to get dates, I went on some dates — on my 21st birthday I'm like, man, I really just want to have sex. So I went in the phone book and called an escort for the first time, because one of my friends told me about that.
This beautiful escort comes over. Gorgeous girl — I really would have been happy to date a girl who looked like her. And she said she was dating a sheriff's deputy at the time and making him work for it. I'm thinking, this guy's probably banging all kinds of random chicks on the side while he's dating you too. So this girl comes over and checks my driver's license, which made no sense to me at the time. But somebody on my livestream later pointed out that she was making sure I wasn't underage — because I guess a little prostitution is not a big deal, but you don't want to get caught trying to bang a minor. That now makes sense. At the time I'm like, why is she checking my driver's license? I guess I looked so young she was concerned I was under 18. And since then, no other stripper ever checked my driver's license, which is sad. I guess they figured I definitely wasn't a minor based on how old I looked.
This girl, she was fantastic. We had a great time. And my friends both hid in their rooms — we pretended like I was in the apartment by myself, but my friends were both hiding in my roommate's room right next to mine. And I made sure to be extra loud and over the top to entertain them. It took forever, too — like a full hour. It was crazy. I acted like I was creating a porno or something. My performance was pretty impressive, and it was actually difficult to finally get to the end of things. That was one of my longer performances ever. And this girl said she was out drinking at a party, got a phone call, and then came straight over to hang out with me — and she was telling me about her boyfriend, the sheriff's deputy, also. Which was so funny.
This story's not over yet. Things finally get finished, she leaves, and my friends and I are just cracking up so bad, because I was dropping Pulp Fiction lines and yelling really loud. We were laughing so hard. They were like, "Oh my God, dude, I can't believe you were so loud." And my other friend was like, "I can't believe it took so long. You were in there forever." I'm like, yeah — we were having so much fun.
Then one day senior year, about five months later, I'm walking out of class — my Psychology 101 or some basic class like that — and all of a sudden this girl and I practically run into each other. I make eye contact with her, and I immediately get the hugest smile on my face. Like, oh my God, I've seen you naked. And yeah, she didn't look too happy to see me. She just walked off. I was sad after that, but I thought it was really cool — I'm like, wow, we both go to the same university together. This is crazy.
Why I'm Sober Today
This is why I'm eight and a half years sober today. These drunk stories presented me with exactly what not to do. In my experience, having sex with somebody you barely know is not cool. It's not smart. It's dangerous.
Why I Tell These Stories at All
The better way to do things is to be open and honest, to have conversations, to connect with people and really get to know them, and to be open, honest, and vulnerable. That's so much of a better way to live. I acted the way I did when I was drinking because I didn't have any better ideas. So I hope every day, in sharing my stories, that I can give some better ideas. I also hope that in sharing my stories and being open, honest, and vulnerable, something good comes of it — because honestly, I'd rather not tell these stories in public. I'd rather not have anybody who might be involved in them in one way or another hear them. I'd rather keep these to myself. But the way we get a better world is to be open, to be honest, to be transparent, and to talk about the things we do. And also to not allow something like drinking to be an excuse. I made piss poor decisions sober to drink again, even when I'd seen the destruction drinking caused in my life.
What I hope you can see, too, is that I've got no regrets about these stories. I'm not proud of how I treated women in the past, or how selfish and self-centered I was. And at the same time, many of the women I ran into were selfish and self-centered also. Those strippers didn't care about me — they were just trying to get paid and make themselves some money. Today, I hope that my behavior and the way I treat people acts as an example of what to do. I'm glad I survived those crazy drinking days, because lots of people end up dying or going to prison, having health conditions, and not being able to live a nice life after making a bunch of bad decisions.
No Regrets — and No More of That
So you can see I am able to tell these stories with love and joy and with no regrets. At the same time, we're not doing any more of that crap going forward. Today, I live a pretty boring life, most of you would think — staying at home, taking care of my kids, doing yoga. For better or worse, I hardly have any interesting stories that have happened for quite a while, because I'm considerate. But I take care of myself. So yeah, way to end on a down note.
One question I got asked: did I ever get drunk on duty as a cop? No. But I did show up to work still drunk from the night before at least once, and I called out from work from being drunk several times also. So yes, one day I did show up still drunk, and then it turned into a hangover in the middle of the day.
I appreciate you reading these stories. If you want more like this, there are plenty in my Life playlist. Thank you very much — I appreciate your love and support, and I'll see you on the next episode.