Never Sicker

So now I'm absolutely sure I'd never been drunk before. Not in Germany, and certainly not in America.

Overall, The Great Ormsby Drinkeroo was a success. Four of us planned it about a week in advance and had the helpful Miss Bates pick up most of the drinks; we had Gin, Tequila, Vodka, Pucker, Ameretto, Grenadine, a few cases of cheap beer, some wine-coolers, jello shots, orange juice, lemonade, Sprite, and some good beer for the pre-party party.

As I pointed out to Jubb: This is how we become men.

I've always had a problem with drinking. I still do, actually; I just sold-out my principles for the Drinkeroo. I mean, really: it's illegal (and does the pleasure of the crime justify breaking the law?), it makes people act differently (there's a German saying that contradicts that, but there's a German saying for everything), and alcohol, unlike pot and cigarettes and video games, can really turn on you. A hangover is nature's way of telling you what an idiot you were the night before.

My body is pissed at me. I know first-hand some of the horrible stuff drinking can lead to, and even if I'm too sick to appreciate that now, I'm a lot wiser.

I learned a saying, for one thing. I learned it before the party but now I realize that things can rhyme and still be true. Liquor before beer! Drinking a couple good beers, then drinking two improperly made Tequila Sunrises, then drinking a couple cheap beers prettymuch guaranteed that Our Bold Hero would get sick.

Paying a little more attention while I was playing Waterfall might have helped, too. And next time I play a drinking game, I'm drinking beer, not Tequila. Ugh. I can't even look at the bottle. I can't even look at the orange juice.

So yes, I learned to be more responsible, the hard way. And I learned that I can puke through my nose. And this morning our RHD told me all about incident reports.

The party started wonderfully. We had some strange U-Frisbee types crash the pre-party at 8:30, but rather than start too early, we sat around drinking Killian's and Beck's Dark and watching BASEketball for another hour.

I suppose the Drinkeroo started at 9:30, a little early but not too bad. About twenty or so people showed up. I didn't look at the clock, but I think I lasted a few hours before the horrible part started.

Amazingly, I'm lucky enough to remember the whole process- as suspected, my mind clings to lucidity until the very end, long after my coordination is gone.

(We would always philosophize in Konstanz, when we'd been drinking.)

For the record—and this is my record as much as it is yours; I don't blog and journal anymore—I noticed some things that were pretty interesting:

For one thing, besides its obvious role as a social lubricant (Surprise! I was friendlier!), alcohol makes the world feel like a movie. I went from watching all the frames, to watching every third frame, to watching every fifth, and, finally, as I lurched back to the bathroom to besmirch a white toilet and a foolishly-placed Objectivism poster, I mused that I had every seventh frame. It's hard to tell what's going on, when your consciousness is flickering like a strobe light. But it's oddly exciting.

Also, I've noticed before that people get tipsy when they've been drinking—and I've even stumbled a bit in my day—but I had no idea how much fun it is to be tipsy. Left and right were suddenly really enjoyable, and it felt natural to go in these, the better directions, instead of sitting still or walking straight. I explained this to some people, hoping that—even if they missed my profundity—they'd at least be amused.

The weirdest thing was my preference for the word "nevertheless." I use that word occasionally, but after a few drinks it was all over the place. What better way to give an objection and then disregard it?

During Waterfall, this vain-looking Freshman in a funny outfit started speaking German. I tried out my Blaudeutsch and was pleasantly surprised to find it intact. I thought that was really cool, but once I got snapped into thinking that way it was a little hard to snap back to English. I think I even tried addressing Jonas in German, which was rude but, under the circumstances, forgivable.

At the five-frame level, I noticed that I was in the bathroom with this one guy with an easily fixed fatal flaw (the world is more exciting if we're all tragic characters with the obligatory single "fatal flaw").

I realized I could say something, thought that I shouldn't, then realized that, since I was drunk, I could say stuff without the usual social repercussions, even if I actually meant it.

So I knelt in front of the toilette and gave him some advice at an inappropriate volume. It was pretty clever, to exploit my inebriation like that, and I was/am kinda proud of that. He humored me a little; everyone really uses kid gloves around drunk people. You know, I'm not ashamed at the drunkeness, just my stupidity in getting to that level so early and so definitively.

I definitely think a lot more of the people who helped me when I was throwing up and cleaned up the mess. They really came through. I know that most people would have done the same, but nevertheless I've got their backs in the future.

Don't let anyone ever say I'm not loyal to the handul of people who earn that kind of credit with me. Well, except my parents and exgirlfriend: they can call me ungrateful.

So I learned a lot, got to write a lot about my experiences, and, up until I started throwing up, I had fun. I was out of the party really early, probably three or four hours before it ended. I went to sleep in my clothes, in The Politician's room. Rock Show Girl, the only other unlucky person at the party, slept in our room on Fort Makeout.

I'm going to have some water and some aspirin. Here's to stupid decisions; may we never be above making them.