How To Almost See Hamilton For Free

Let me start off with a big obvious disclaimer that musical theater is f*cking gay, and there's no way around that fact except to get shit-roaring drunk, which is where this story originates.

I was cracking the whip on myself for a little while after the whole bender thing. You see, even though I'd gotten away with everything, I wanted to solidify my place in the office and continue to scare the shit out of my boss by coming in stone sober for a few days, just to throw him off.

This tactic messed with his head as well as my own, as I'm definitely not used to the feeling of being focused and alert without grinding my teeth and browning out here and there. On Wednesday I had already decided to reward myself with a big-ticket item this past weekend. Tickets to Hamilton.

I know, I know, Lin Manuel Miranda is a beta chump whose refusal to cast white people in his show is basically reverse blackface, and how the fuck is that okay, and also, again, Broadway is gay as fuck, but god damn it if I didn't have a moment of absolute glory this summer listening to "My Shot" at the gym while lit all the way up on Woodford and creatine.

And how hard could it be to find tickets? For normal people the answer is "impossible through the rest of the decade" but I have more than one source I can go to when I need something that average losers can't get. It was basically already a done deal.

I consulted with a dime I'll see when I am feeling like a particularly fucking awesome individual. I told her to rent a gown and go on a liquid diet for the rest of the week or whatever the fuck she needs to do to make sure she doesn't embarrass me.

Two thousand god damn dollars per ticket for the orchestra section, which is the only place I'll ever sit inside a theater. I called the dime and told her there was a change of plans and the gown needed to be floor length and she needed shoes she could run in.

We got there early Saturday night. I brought a flask so we wouldn't need to hit the bar at all and I even considered strapping on my Stadium Pal but then thought better of it. The ushers were busy with a couple of blue-hairs when we got to the entrance to the house, so we just walked down to the seats I should have paid 4 large for and took our places. It was 10 minutes of drunken theatrical anticipation before we promptly found ourselves being carried by the armpits up the aisles, past a bunch of confused tourists in their shitty Jos. A Bank suits, and out onto 46th street.

At least I tried. I celebrated my near success by ditching the woman in a swarm of pedestrians and mourned my total failure by getting level 10 drunk at Madame Tussaud's and knocking over all the female Ghostbusters. By the way, that's a place that's much easier to sneak into.