This week I highlight a problem that no sober person can comprehend, and no drunk person can deny, I speak of course about clumsily dancing with a drink in your bourbon soaked paw. Drinking and dancing are respectively age old traditions, and have been co-existing since the scant eight minutes after consumeable alcohol was invented and someone combined the two. They leave out the parts in the old testament where people would get blitzed out of their tiny minds using sacramental wine to bless the shit out of things, then convince a drummer to give them a beat to get on up, next to a lady. At parties and clubs the two activities are almost symbiotic; Drinking makes you think you can dance, and then dancing makes you want to drink. Ideally you shouldn't be caught on the dance floor with a beverage in hand. One sharp move and you could ruin a good shirt or spoil the affections of the ladies with one slosh of Long Island on aptly selected shoes. Some of you may be talented at keeping your forearm gimballed enough to compensate your third degree grinding manuevers, but more often than not, given time and innebriation, the booze will win the battle of balance, and better judgement. But fear not here are somehandy tips on how to handle the situation.

So lets say you just got a fresh vodka tonic from a crowded bar. You've been anticipating it since you went to sleep last night (and since the last half dozen you just downed), the next sip greets you like a well paid lover. Tracking through the dance floor while defending a beverage was hard enough, but you spot the girl you think was making eyes at you (that or it could have been her fifth mai-tai putting out the look for her) and she's alone for the moment. A deft parry around some girls sends you cutting off another gent heading for the same easy target, and she leans right into you like that father that was never there to lean back. Your hips find the bare minimum of what could be considered rhythm withinin the shitty club music playing, but your drunken hand starts to slip around your glass sending some v&t floorward. What do you do? What DO you do.

One of the advantages of drinking and dancing in tandem will eventually turn the girl on the right into the girl on the left.

Jettison the cargo: Chances are you aren't in a place where a waiter will walk by and have a tray you can drop the problem off on, but for the properly prepared, you had this angle covered before you even got the club, any half decent Wingman will pick up on the cue and air lift the drink out of there. For those of you not so fortunate, or with jack asses for wingmen, you need to improvise, because drunk girls may not be so picky in the immediate sense but, much like a bloody nose, demand immediate attention. So don't lose focus. If you are outdoors, or on a rooftop when this happens, you might think about simply throwing your beverage to safety. Aim for trees, or parking lots from up high, or if you're in a backyard try over a fence. But lets try and be a litttle classy about it, make sure your dance partner isn't watching. The key to distract and dispose is to do it smoothly. Lots of people pointing out you just shattered a window with a glass or knocked out the birthday girl by lofting a tumbler can go wrong. I've seen this one pulled off from a balcony where people were dancing. The guy had no intention of walking away from his ladyfriend, who's judgement center had been demolished by wine coolers-he landed his full glass of dewars and soda into a grove of trees in the adjoining backyard. I don't know if maintaining the dance connection helped, but 9 months later their mistake that night was brought into the world.

Dump & Stuff: Maybe you are too self conscious or too indoors to throw a drink. Another angle to follow up on is turning your glass in hand problem in on yourself. I myself, once was feeling hindered by a vodka tonic and used the darkness of the room to empty the contents onto the floor, jam the glass into my jacket, and proceed to get the grind on. Today's dj's are so concerned with maching beats and songs they forget that stopping the music for a few seconds might help a guy out, but in these uncertain times we have to be ready. I woke up the next morning with the glass still in my coat pocket, and a sense of satisfaction knowing I could keep focused while blindly commiting to not even giving myself a second to set a drink down. God Bless America.

Keep on Keeping on: Sometimes the only option is to keep the drink in hand. Commiting to the dance with the drink in hand is a noble effort. Pray that you were drinking beer out of the manageable bottle, if not, try slamming most of your drink really fast to reduce the sloshage factor. Women seem to get away with not really moving while inbibing, but guys need to be ready to shift, angle away from other guys and assume grind position. You take your own fate into your hands, it could mean the difference between getting some, or the time honored alternative: Trawling the internet for nude photos of women that look like your friends/coworkers.

Raising one's hands as if to indicate a state of uncaring, does not exempt you from caring about others dancing near you.

Dance type 1:
Simple sway, you wont get penalized for bobbing back and forth, but it is the bare minimum. Safe and sane. If she's as drunk as you hope, your date wont remember that you were dancing as stiff as a fossilized adamantium, and hopefully she also wont remember that you only pantomimed putting on a condom.

Dance type 2:
Raise the drink in the air, almost as if to indicate that you do not, in fact, care. Holding a drink up and dancing makes it look almost natural, it also alerts neaby dancers, wolves and poets you have a drink. There are few other positions that the drink doesn't look like a mistake. After all, holding it out infront of you looks awkward and distances you from said dance target, and out to the side is liable to get slapped by another guy forcing your hard to fight that guy for knocking something out of your hand you didn't want in the first place.

Dance type 3:
Involve the drink as a prop while you dance.

Try the "hat."

The "big nipple."

Or my favorite: the "faux parrot on your shoulder."

You could also try alternating between them. It's really not that you couldn't try and steer toward a table when you are dancing, but more that you will probably be in a mental state which won't be conducive to that type of logic. Seriously, go with the flow.
And that's the whole Trufis.