The First Time I got Drunk - A Journal Entry from
March 30, 1999

    I have lived my life like so many of the children of my generation. In a fog of drinking and unearned independence. I think back to the first I was really drunk.
    It was the last night of finals week my freshman year. I had spent the whole semester not drinking. Proving to myself that I didn't need to drink in college. But the semester was over and I had done reasonably well. I had the largest role in a main stage production of She Stoops to Conquer. I had seen a couple of naked women. I had convinced myself that I was in love with the same woman that I would convince myself that I was in love with four years later.

    Everyone I knew that was still on campus was drunk or on their way. The guys down on 2nd Right were having as much of a hall crawl as was allowed in the dark days of 1991. I really didn't know them well enough to party with them yet. I was still hanging with those freshmen friends. Those are the friends we all make in those first couple of weeks of college and then barely speak to after second semester.
    Rachel Libonati and I were hanging out in Shel Spangle's room on 3rd Right P.G. Shel had that curly blond hair I really love on a woman. And skin so soft you wanted to put your hand on her face and leave it there. Shel and Rachel had been drinking since the semester started. Not literally, but almost every weekend. Weekends at St. Mary's started on Wednesday and didn't end until Sunday afternoon. Shel had a bottle of vodka or maybe it was half a bottle. We got cans of juice from the vending machines in the lobby. I think it was apple juice, either owing to our inexperience with mixed drinks or its being the only juice available.
    We drank from stolen juice glasses and slowly got buzzed. For those of you unclear on the difference between buzzed and drunk, here are my definitions. Buzzed thinking you might be the handsomest man in the room. Drunk is knowing you are the handsomest, smartest, and most virile person in the room and making sure everyone else knows.  And I mean really knows, so you have to explain it a couple dozen times.
    It was funny, all three of us up on the top bunk watching television and acting stupid. I have to be honest I really wasn't acting stupid, I really was. And I think we were watching the newly released Fantasia video.
    I don't talk to Shel anymore. Rachel's still my best friend and she's just been certified to trade stocks.
    I have been  drunker since that night. But, I don't think I'll ever forget the silliness of my first real drinking experience. I used the word silliness because after that night there was no going back. It led me down the path to even more drunken nights, terrible hangovers, an arrest, kareoke bars, and one or two New Years parties I am still very unclear on.
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