Sew it'll bea mah twhentsryfrst bethdai inn 1 weak, an' Ah'm
	allreadyready celbratin'. But that was nothing compared to the night before my actual birthday...

I went to my local liquor store, grabbed a big old bottle of

something nasty and cheap that I won't ever even consider drinking, went up to the counter and slapped my card out in front of the pre-midnight shift, prominently displaying I was underage. It was 11:50pm, so my ID wouldn't be valid for another ten minutes. He didn't sell my intended purchase to me, and so I waited around reading magazines and following the counter person a bit too closely. He cracked two minutes early. Heh heh heh.

My actual 21st I spent with family, which wasn't so bad

(wine whine wine), but the real party was the week after. I went to Costco with my friend Matt, because he has a Costco card, and I have a valid ID and a car and neither of us have what the other has. We threw nothing but about 400oz of liquid barf-fuel into the oversized shopping cart and stormed up to the register, but only after drooling at the candy section they have right before the checkout lines. 400oz, exactly thirteen hours of being of legal drinking age and they didn't card me. Actually, since I was using someone else's Costco card, I couldn't say: ``Card me Dammit, I've been waiting 21 years for this!" and risk not getting anything because it wasn't my card. Thusly my quest is to see how long I can go on buying alcohol without getting carded. It's been more than a month now.

Drinking is actually kind of a waste to me, it's the social
	interactions that count. I don't really get a ``buzz" off of Rum&Coke, though coke by itself is quite a lift. After a while, I just sit down and look at the ceiling, talking to someone who's gradually getting more and more attractive, wondering, hoping that I'm coherent, and probably just slurring: ``I am really really dizzy" over and over again.

I think the art of not drinking is really the art of not

being a stiff at a party. For a while I used the lines: ``I can be clumsy, stupid and offend women without alcohol, what do I need it for?" But everyone knows that just means you don't like to drink, which means you don't like to get really crazy and party, be the latter true or not. That's how it is. Most of the people I meet at parties where there is drinking, yet they aren't, are usually sitting quietly somewhere talking to someone they came in with, or being creepy voyeuristic types and watching everyone as everyone side-remarks ``who's that weirdo watching everyone?" to each other. Used to be that people would ask me how much I had already drank. I'd yell back from under the lamp shade while hanging from the ceiling fan by one arm and scratching my armpit with the free hand like a gorilla, that I was totally sober. People always found it amazing that I could do shit like that with a clear head. Ten bucks to the first person who can spot the fault in the preceding logic.

My friend Rob proudly proclaimed that ``one has bigger balls

when one is drunk" after the two femmes he was skinny dipping with convinced him to turn the bubbles back on in the hot tub. Turning the bubbles back on consisted of walking butt-naked across thirty feet of wide open space in front of the apartment parking lot, including the management window, to twist the timer. My only inhibitions in any given moment would probably be how much a kick I thought I could get out of it without making too much of a conservative stiff out of myself in the process. Draw your own conclusions, but I think that people who need alcohol to get into the social/party mood don't understand what a party is really all about: people. Rob didn't really regret revealing himself to the world, though he doesn't drink with those girls anymore cuz he got tired of getting worked for his body.

Anne totally couldn't believe I started a chocolate pudding/pie

fight with her in her best friend's house, resulting in permanent carpet, couch, wall, and ceiling stains, when she was the drunk one. We were having a crew party in celebration of the play that was about to open which we were all working on. Incidentally, if any of you out there ever get to see a John Fisher production, jump. Anyway, Anne sat there with one eye of her glasses smudged in fudge, remarking in disbelief about how inconceivable it was that I was sober. I just tried to get another big glob of it tangled in her hair. The next day she told me her best friend wasn't too mad, and she would see me drunk someday, for comparison's sake.

Watching people with no alcohol tolerance is perhaps the most
	fun thing to do. Some of my petite female friends, one beer and they're already falling off of their chairs and laughing at everything I say. I know I -can- be entertaining at times, but absolutely everything I say is not really that funny (except to myself). HAHAHAHAHA.

I guess my drinking, when I do drink, isn't so much a succumbing
	to peer pressure but a lack of resistance to societal expectations regarding drinking. It's like, I turn the inside out, and have myself judge myself and urge myself to drink when I'm really not into it. Peer pressure from the only peer that counts: yourself. Try to figure that one out. If you get any answers, tell me, because I'm tired of drinking alone.

___ _-'" | "`-_ \ | / \ | / \__|__/

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A.U.B.I.E.|Out of Order