In Drink, Play, F@#k Bob Sullivan, a jilted husband, sets off to explore the world, experience a meaningful connection with the divine, and rediscover his passion. His travels lead him from his home in New York City to a drinking bender across Ireland, through the glitz and glamour that is Las Vegas, and to the hedonistic pleasure palaces of Thailand. After a lifetime of playing it safe, Mr. Sullivan finally follows his heart and lives out everyone's deepest fantasies. For who among us hasn't dreamed of standing stark naked, head upturned, and mouth agape beneath a cascading torrent of Guinness Stout? What could be more exhilarating than losing every penny you have because Charlie Weiss went for a meaningless last-second field goal? And what sensate creature could ever doubt that the greatest pleasure known to man can be found in a leaky bamboo shack filled with glassy-eyed, bruised Asian hookers? Bob Sullivan has a lot to teach us about life. Let's just pray we have the wisdom to put aside our preconceptions and listen. Because what Bob Sullivan finds isn't at all what he expected. Drink, Play, F@#k One Man's Search for Anything Across Ireland, Vegas, and Thailand By ANDREW GOTTLIEB Black Cat Copyright © 2009 Goodness Incorporated All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8021-7052-1 Chapter One I wish Giovanna would kiss me. There are many reasons why this would be a terrible idea. Giovanna is an exchange student from Milan studying marketing in Dublin. I am an American businessman in my late thirties hiding out in Ireland trying to get so drunk that my wife's recent betrayal will stop burning my insides like hot lava. Giovanna's a beautiful young Italian goddess with a lion's mane of jet-black hair, and I'm a thoroughly average-looking New Englander with the beginnings of love handles and some gray creeping into my temples. So Giovanna is almost twenty years younger than I am. She is engaged to a guy named Teodoro back in Italy. She is sweet, and innocent, and deeply religious. But the real reason why Giovanna kissing me would be a terrible idea is that she is so incredibly drunk right now that if she were to kiss me, she'd probably throw up all over my face. Ireland is an amazing country. In no other spot that I have come across on my travels has drinking to excess been accepted to such a degree as normal, everyday behavior. I used to think that Texans didn't actually wear cowboy hats-that it was just a stereotype propagated by movies and TV. But one day I had a stopover in the Houston airport and I saw a bunch of people wearing cowboy hats for real in a totally nonironic fashion. Well, Ireland is just like that-only instead of cowboy hats, it's people getting shitfaced. And instead of just a handful of good ol' boys rocking their ten-gallon lids, it's every single person in the country slamming shot after shot and beer after beer from morning till night and then starting all over again. As further proof that Ireland is committed to promoting a drinks-based culture, I'd like to point out that one of the most popular sections of Dublin, where all the tourists go and the fun happens, is called Temple Bar. They have the word "bar" in the name of their most famous neighborhood! That would be like Parisians calling the Latin Quarter the Escargot Quarter, or Los Angelenos changing the name from Beverly Hills to Cocaineville. In defense of the Dubliners, the "bar" in Temple Bar doesn't actually refer to a bar where you order drinks. But it's not like they don't know about their international reputation for throwing it down. If the Irish didn't want to encourage the stereotype that they're all booze hounds, they easily could have called the place Old Dublin, or South Bank, or Liffeytown or something. But these sauceheads love everything that even tangentially has anything to do with alcohol. So they have been calling the cultural center of their capital city Temple Bar for four hundred years. There's a reason that the Emerald Isle has never produced any world-class painters, sculptors, or architects-none of them could hold a brush, chisel, or pencil steady enough to get the job done. The poets could dash down their rhymes and romances in shaky letters on cocktail napkins in between pints. And the singers could wail and moan while teetering on the verge of alcoholic unconsciousness-but that's where Ireland's artistic contributions peter out. These people really drink, is my point. If you were to cut an Irish hemophiliac, you'd have beer on tap until the poor bastard bled out. I should mention that as I'm staring at Giovanna's gorgeous face, lustrous hair, and devastating green eyes, I'm probably even drunker than she is. Here is a quick recap of what I've had to drink in the three hours leading up to my current emotional quandary: six pints of Guinness, six shots of Inishowen, three large Bacardi Breezers, two glasses of red wine, half a glass of water. At this point it's really a toss-