first time

step out of the car now.
okay, just let me-
don't touch that!
sorry, i jus-
step out of the car!
fuck
three hours ago i was swimming in alcohol. bottles of vodka poured into shot glasses like running water after a hard rain. who could remember when it began? we all knew where it'd end. and even then no one was ready for how it did. but i remember most of it now. it's funny imagining it all happening again, thinking that there's no way in hell you're going to remember this the next morning. but then again there's something mystically powerful in the way a handcuff smashes against the bones of your wrist in such a way that every memory, every detail up to that point comes rushing back to you in waves of guilt and pain and you suddenly realize that, holy fuck, you're in it and you're in it deep.
side note - they should really bottle that feeling, sell it as a sort of morning after hangover medication for the disillusioned and disheartened minds and bodies that wake up, stumbling forth from such a disruptive and unsettling event. i can imagine vendors parading the outsides of fraternity houses and nightclubs, peddling some fictional drug to the lifeless, ragged people that spill out into the streets like zombies.
but things like that don't exist, and if they do then i haven't heard of them and even if i had it wouldn't have changed much of anything.
can you touch your nose?
sure.
do it.
recite the alphabet while touching your nose.
they really say that shit? fuck, did i just say that out loud?
what?
what?! nothing. um, a. b. c...
i don't know what the hell we were thinking. there's a party down the street, i remember brandon saying. let's go then! but we had to wait for a friend of his. jenny was her name, or something like that. i stopped caring after that first hour. we put them away pretty quickly. i was surprised myself that we were even still coherent. i mean, everything was happening at a normal speed. maybe coherent isn't the right word. conscious, maybe. i was surprised we were still conscious. like i said, i stopped caring after the first hour. but jenny finally showed up. her fake, black rimmed glasses could see right through our facade of sobriety. let's do this, someone had said, and we all cheered, like a battle cry towards something even more idiotic than what we began with. and so with that we piled into brandon's car and headed for the party.
okay, see that line?
yeah.
i want you to walk, heel to toe, along the line.
just like cops
i just want to cooperate. that's all.
can you do that?
sure. just gimme a second.
we pulled up to the house where this party was supposed to be. a "going away" party, i think. as it turned out it was for a mutual friend of brandon and mine's. that alone was more reason to celebrate and with what else? more alcohol. we made it to the door and i remember someone greeting with an overly-happy hello. it sounded fake, but really, who gives a shit. the house itself was pretty nice. simple and straightforward, the kind of stuff i tend to gravitate to. it wasn't trying to be more than it was and i liked that. so we found our mutual friend. sean was his name. sean something. and by the way, fuck spelling sean with an s, e, to begin with. since when does that make a shhh sound? i don't know. regardless, i suppose sean was more of an acquaintance than anything else, but any reason is a good reason to have a party, right? right. that's exactly what we did. looking back now i remember the exact moment i hit that over-the-limit point. we were all in the kitchen, me, brandon, jenny, sean, and a few other people i didn't know and really wasn't in the mindset to meet. sean said, drink this. it was a shot of something. jager or jack or something that had no business being inside me with the rest of the fucked up shit that already resided there. but i drank it anyway. it's a celebration, a going away, he said. that was more than enough reason for me. i couldn't just leave him hanging. what kind of person would that make me? a smart one most likely, but that's easier said now than before.