back in the day when i was a teenager...

tonight i'm staying home, no bars, no chicks, yes whiskey. jame-o's to be exact. it used to be protestant whiskey, but i've switched to the distillations of catholics now. i've read that tastebuds die and new ones are grown about every seven years, so maybe it makes sense. maybe i'm feeling my irish roots? i did end the last post with an irish cheer. either way, i didn't always drink whiskey by choice. beer was my gateway liqour. i've been thinking about one time in particular as one of my first memories of drinking, which is an oxyoron.

location: new wilmington, pennsylvania.
age: 14.
alcohol tolerance: zero.

new wilmington is 45 minutes north of pittsburgh. it's a well homogenized blend of white people and white people. my mom used to say the only diversity in the town was whether you were protestant or presbyterian, but a large amish population also inhabits the area. in new wilmington, there is an 11 o'clock curfew. nobody under 18 allowed out after naughty time...which is exactly what became of that time. new wilmington was also a dry town. for anyone trying to get liqour, it was either steal from your parents or drive 20 minutes and find someone to buy it for you. for the clueless 14 year olds, driving was out of the question. so...
the night in question, we met at "the tree." "the tree" was a large field surrounded by mostly trees, laying adjacent to the elementary and middle/high school. a group of us met around midnight planning to drink even though none of us had anything. i was staying with my grandparents for the summer. their house was close to "the tree," only a few fields in between, so my midnight sneaking was easy. it was pretty easy in general, because new wilmington had only one police cruiser. i arrived late, and discussion was already in progress.

"we should raid larry's dad's fridge in their garage. it's never locked. we'll just grab a case or two."

i don't think anyone ever considered whether or not larry's dad would notice. he did. he beat the fuck out of larry. larry wasn't even with us that night.

i didn't go with the group that broke into larry's garage. i stayed at the tree with my best friend at the time, smoking cigarettes and feeling cool breaking curfew. that does not excuse me from anything that happened to larry. i drank the beer when they brought it back. even though this began as a recounting of my first night of drinking, all that happened was some asshole yelling, "shutup and drink your beer, pussy." me puking. me walking not-so-sneakily home. as i said, a drinking memory is an oxymoron. but this is really about larry. we all shitted on larry's life that night. i never admitted sincerely to the suffering i helped create. larry will most likely never read this. does me writing "i'm sorry, larry" do anything? i don't know. sorry, larry. kids are cruel and uncaring, and so are drunken abusive parents. we're all shitheads. sorry for being in the way...