Drinking

It's been a while since my last post, and I promised everyone a story when I finally posted again. Well, with only a week and a half of school left, I will be able to post a little more frequently. To tide you over until then, when I will give you a big long story to satiate your minds, I will tell you the story of the first time I got drunk, or "The Victory of the 20 oz. Bottle."

It was 2001, I was 15, and living in Victor, IA. Victor is a small town where everyone, and I mean literally everyone, knew who I was. The fun thing to do, at least when you had a license, was to drive up and down the main street of the town, back and forth, for hours on end. Such was my life in high school.

In high school, I was in Show Choir. If you don't quite know what that is, though I assume everyone does, watch the show Glee. Yeah. That's pretty much what we did. Except not as cool, not as much drama, and not as awesome of a soundtrack. We did a lot of medleys. The only song I can actually remember doing is a Grease Medley while dancing on boxes. Pretty lame. But it was kinda fun, I guess.

Anyway, I was going to a show choir... show... at a nearby school on a Saturday, so I stayed in Victor at my aunt's house on Friday night. My cousin, Gary, drove me out to my house (as I lived in the country) to get some clothes for the next day. Thank God we did that, too.

I need to backtrack and state, for the record, that I was a stupid kid. Well, not really stupid so much as... I was a dink. One day, for no reason whatsoever, I took an empty 20 oz. bottle and filled it with a rum, tequila, and vodka mixture. Even thinking about it now makes me cringe. Well, instead of drinking it, I hid it in my room. In the closet.

When Gary took me out to my house, I gave him the bottle to drink with his friends. The house he was going to drink at was up the hill from my aunt's house. Well, I sat at the house for a couple hours, watching a movie. I got bored and decided I'd go up the hill to see what was happening at the house my dad later referred to as "The house of ill repute." And, my friends, he was right.

When I got up there, I was introduced to the few people there I didn't know and we began chitchatting. At one point I asked if anyone had drank the bottle I had given Gary. One of the guys there said "Fuck no! There's no one here who could stomach that shit."

Keep in mind I had never had a drink before.

"You guys are pussies!"
"Then you fucking drink it."

And I did. I chugged it down and didn't even flinch. Everyone in the room cheered when I finished and smiled and winked at everyone in attendance. Someone yelled "That kid's got an iron stomach!" So they decided to feed me as much alcohol as they could find. I drank a small bottle of Mexican Brandy, a couple beers, a few things I can't even remember, and about a quarter bottle of Jeremiah Weed, the most foul alcoholic beverage I've ever had the horror to ingest. Out of everything I drank
that night, that was the only thing that made me flinch. It was disgusting.

Well, after a few hours of drinking very VERY heavily, I decided it was time to go home. So I started walking back to my aunt's house. When I got there, Gary's sister Elle was on the couch. So I sat on the floor at the end of the L-shaped couch. Elle was still awake, so she asked me if I had fun.

My friends, I have no idea what I actually replied. All I remember is talking and in the middle of talking... I threw up. All over myself. Elle sat up and yelled "Joel, get to the bathroom!" So I crawled... Read again, CRAWLED... down the hallway to the bathroom where I continued to throw up all over the toilet and floor. I laid down on the floor and passed out for what seemed like about 10 minutes. I think it was actually about 4 hours, because when I got up, I took off my shirt, puked a little more and crawled back to the end of the couch.

I laid down and tried to sleep. About a half hour into laying there, I heard my aunt and her boyfriend come out of their room to go to work. I heard them talking about how I puked all over the bathroom and my aunt, God bless her, cleaned up the mess AND washed the shirt I had been wearing. In the morning, when I woke up, she gave me some breakfast and told me she wouldn't tell my dad. When my dad picked me up later to take me to the Show Choir thing, he asked me if I had fun. I groaned in pain. He laughed.

"You won't be doing that again for a LONG time, will you?"
"No..."

So he took me to the 4 hour show choir concert and left me, alone. I laid on the bleachers in the gymnasium the entire time. It hurt to move, it hurt to breathe, and standing up meant fighting the urge to throw up. Finally, my dad came to get me and we went home, where I immediately went to bed and slept for about 5 hours.

I drank only one other time in high school and it was with my dad. We drank a bottle of permafrost together and called my stepdad at 3 A.M. Dad and I thought it was hilarious. My stepdad did not. It wasn't until years later, in college, when I would get drunk again at all, let alone that drunk.

Now, the only time I drink to the point of throwing up is when something is upsetting me, severely. So if I'm with you, and I'm drinking so much that I throw up or am going to throw up, there's something wrong. I've only been that bad four times in my life at this point.

Silent Lucidity

I started this blog for many reasons. The catharsis of telling stories and getting feedback on them is one of them. To prove that I am a good storyteller is another. For the most part, though, it’s an introspective reason: I’m using this to sit down and remember things from my past and reflecting on who I was. To see how much I’ve changed over the years. And to see the things that have changed me, for better or for worse. There are still many more stories to come, but I wanted to take a break from the norm and let you, the readers, get to know me a little better. Because no “about me” section can ever truly explain who a person is. And even this one post, with all its insight into my soul, can’t even begin to show who I am inside. The stories in this blog and these personal posts should help.

Lately, I think a lot about the concept of love. I’ve always had a belief in three different kinds of love: Friendship, Family, and LOVE (as in “I am in love with you”). Sometimes these can blur together (at least, with the exception of LOVE and family, because that’s illegal pretty much everywhere), but most often are left apart. You can LOVE someone and have love for them as a friend, you can have a close friendship with one of your family members, you can view your friends as part of your family, and you can fall in love with one of your friends. I have at least one person that fits each one of those four blurred together categories, and I’m sure all of you do, too.

Many times, though, people are hesitant to let themselves fall in love with one of their friends. This, in my experience, is the rarest form of love. Every married couple I know says “My husband/wife is my best friend,” which may be true, but were they your best friend BEFORE you started dating or even BEFORE you got married? For a lot of people, the answer is no. I am sure someone, somewhere, answers yes to this. I’ve always believed that you SHOULD be friends with someone you love, first. What if you break up? Everyone’s so worried that the friendship would end, but if that’s true, then you probably weren’t that good of friends to begin with. I’m sorry to be the blunt one and say that, but as we all know, I am an asshole and I say what I think.

I have to say, though, if there is someone who loves you, take the chance. Even if you feel you only want to be friends, think about this: How does this person make you feel when you’re around? Do they make you happy? Maybe I’m naïve, but isn’t that what everyone wants: To be happy? If someone makes you truly happy, then go for it. Because take it from me, people come and go from your life and all it takes is a day. Don’t waste your time playing games, because you never know what will happen to you. And really, what do you have to lose?

I have no idea what will happen to me. I have no idea if my friends today will be my friends tomorrow. Maybe I’ll go to class and a girl will trip and I will catch her and we fall madly in love, like in the movies. Maybe I chase after a female friend of mine for a year before she ends up dating someone else and I fall into a deep depression. Maybe I’ll get a new job in a week, maybe I’ll be at the same job I have in a year. I don’t know. My future is hidden to me, and I can only hope for the best and sit back and let it come.

As for the past, I’ve done a lot of things I regret. I’ve not done things I regret not doing. But you can’t change the past, you can only learn from it and apologize for it and hope that people will forgive you. And there are many people I’ve hurt over the years, most of them unintentionally. I do stupid things and I do things that I think are right, even if they end up hurting someone else. For everyone reading this who can think of something I’ve done to you personally to hurt you, I truly am sorry. Whether it is from stupidity or from righteousness, it doesn’t matter. I’m sorry. I will continue to do what I think is the right thing, and so I am sorry for anyone I may hurt in the future.

What I’m trying to say is: You only live once. Go out, have an adventure or two with someone. Because life is a story and every person you meet is a chapter. Everything you do is a page, and everything on every page, in every chapter: the whole story… It’s all written by you. The pen is in your hands, my friends.

Go write a story.