For kicks on certain boring Friday nights in high school, my friends used to asphyxiate each other. It was easy. All you had to do was take ten deep breathes and on the final exhale pin yourself against a wall while a friend put his hands around your neck. Slowly everything around you would dim, and the next thing you knew reality surrendered to a few moments of vague bliss. When you woke up, you’d be on the floor and everything would gently return to focus brimming with a fresh hilarity. The practice, which is not that uncommon among teenagers in the basements of Small Town America, didn’t so much disturb me as it did amuse me. We did it for the same reasons our fathers bought split screen televisions and our mothers traded in their minivans for pastel-colored Bugs: we were bored. But there was also another reason. We were not able to get our hands on any alcohol.
The other night I was sitting a pub in the east end of London, shooting the shit with some guys I had met the previous night. There were five of us all together, representing Greece, Norway, France, England, and the US. Greece was going for me hardcore, calling me ‘Dahling’ and clasping my hand every time he agreed with a point I had made. France was cute but a little short for my taste. England was pretty funny, but his accent was losing its charm. It was Norway, all cheek bones and cold glances that I was going for. We were sharing a bottle of white wine and when I took my last sip a bartender came and removed my glass. There were two inches of wine left in the bottle. No one else seemed to notice it but me. Two inches. I found myself distracted by these two inches. I couldn’t help myself. So I helped myself. I drank the remaining wine straight from the bottle. Now I could relax and focus on the conversation. But there was no more conversation. All eyes were on me. Greece grinned with embarrassment. England recoiled. France looked at me as if I’d just muttered the words ‘freedom fries.’ Norway left the table.
In one moment, with one gesture, I had lost all four gazes. I’d gone from being an object of desire, to one of disgust. It took me a minute to realize what exactly I had done wrong. And when I did I was flooded with a profound sense of shame. Not for myself, but for my country. For it is America’s absurd drinking laws that I blame for my anxious compulsion to finish off every last drop of alcohol that is in my possession.
I, like many of my American peers, am a classic binge drinker. This news is nothing new to me. I’ve taken those little questionnaires; I’ve read my WesFacts. I drink every weekend, I drink several drinks in a row, and I drink to get drunk. I started to drink my sophomore year in high school. Drinking underage was never a question of morality for me. It was never a question of being cool. But it was always a question. As in how will we get it, where will we bring it, and with whom will we drink it? Now than I am no longer an underage drinker, I’m only beginning to realize the effects that years of that status have ingrained in me. Unlike my European contemporaries, who learned how to drink in a civilized way, I learned how to drink like I was an extra in Animal House. While my European friends were introduced to fine wine, I was weaned on obnoxious concoctions composed of a few drops from every bottle in an unsuspecting parents’ liquor cabinet. (We did this to be discreet. The final product was so wretched it made beer taste like a Shirley Temple.) I drank in drafty basements, swinging my legs off of a laundry machine, while they sat in their families’ candle lit dining rooms.
I never did the passing out thing. I only watched. There were always a few seconds of group panic before the asphyxiated person came to. This would be followed by hysterical laughter when they did, as if our breathless suspense was ridiculous, as if it was inevitable that the person would wake up (which it wasn’t). This was part of the fun. It was kind of like a real-life teenage version of Jack in the Box, that game with the silly song and the clown that would pop out. Do-do-do-do, da-da-da-da DA: Pop Goes the Weasel! (Except instead of a weasel, pop went hundreds of Ben’s brain cells.)
While living in London for a semester I want to undo my underage drinking mentality. I want to learn how to drink like a grown up. I want to be a classy broad, the kind who would never drink the remaining few ounces of wine straight from the bottle. The kind who would instead demand another drink. A fresh one.
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