The More I Drink

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Other than a glass of wine on Shabbat or a sip of John's beer, I don't think I have actually been "drunk" since New Year's Eve, 1999. The words from Animal House finally got through to me. "Fat, Drunk, and Stupid is no way to go through life."

A few lines about the eighties:

The More I Drink

There was an unspoken rule that no one ate or drank anything in Squid’s room, as it usually contained extra ingredients. Our friend Dinker ate a brownie, and I spent the night watching her hit her head on a kitchen stove vent while playing a song by tapping her front teeth. She stopped and announced to me every few minutes.

“Look, June-bug, I can play a song!”   

Sher-bear had an incident when chugging the bottle of tequila she found in Squid’s closet. She lay across Squid’s desk with the bottle upright in her mouth.

“You should eat the worm,” someone told her.

“Worm?” Sher-bear asked, sitting upright.  “What worm?”

“The worm in the bottle,” Stagger explained.

“It’s supposed to make you high. I don’t know, it’s too damn gross for me.”

“There’s no worm in the bottle,” Sher-bear said quietly.

Simultaneously, ten people said, “Oh shit.”

Without moving, Sher-bear erupted in vomit, projecting outward onto the desk and floor all of the tequila, and the beer she drank earlier, along with the peanuts from the bar, and what appeared to be every bit of food she had eaten for twenty-four hours.

His shoes covered in vomit, Stagger asked dryly, “Are you high?”

It was in our friend Suds ' room that Stagger got lost trying to find the bathroom and pissed in a closet before he could be stopped. He became belligerent in his denial that he was not in the bathroom.  A group of partiers pulled him out of the closet and shoved him into the hallway, one announcing, “It's time to get your drunk ass to bed.”

Legend is that as he was being dragged and shoved to his dorm room, the Resident Assistant walked out of his room. 

“Who is that staggering asshole?”

Stagger became his name from that day onward.

Our buddy, JJ, was busted for selling marijuana on campus to an undercover narc. As the wheels of justice moved slowly in Northern Minnesota, JJ was kicked out of the dorms but not the University until his case was resolved.  We snuck him into the dorms for the after parties. 

One memorable party during my second year was when campus security finally busted us for drinking alcohol in the dorms.  We were partying late one night after the bars had closed.  Unknown to us, a resident hall advisor had seen JJ enter the dorms.  While we were partying, security and resident assistants were gathering to “bust the party.” Breaking the rules by drinking in the dorms was ignored, but inviting JJ was forbidden. Once they had gathered, it was easy to find the party since the volume of our parties was legendary.

I was drunk and drowsy as the party started, so I decided to crawl into the single bed in the dorm room for a nap.  JJ crawled across me and lay on my other side, announcing, “I’m gonna snuggle Junebug.”

I fell asleep to the sound of the party around me, safe and warm in JJ’s arms.   

I awoke to hear pounding on the door and people yelling.  Dinker dove into the closet, announcing she could lose her job if she got busted.  Half-full bottles of alcohol were being shoved under my body. JJ slowly crawled over me to get out of bed and face the consequences. I sat up in a cascade of liquor bottles and followed.  

We were told to line up in a single line and leave the room, giving our name and dorm room number as we walked out the door. As we stumbled out endlessly, it must have looked like emptying a clown car. I looked directly at the security guard and my hall resident assistant and stated clearly:

“Agnes Masllowski, that’s M-A-S-double L-OW-SKI; I’m just visiting and do not attend this fine establishment.” 

The next day, a sad and ashamed Dinker, as the dorm office manager, typed up our disciplinary action forms.  No one searched the closet, and she and Gack-man, who hid with her, were never busted. 

However, as office manager, she did the paperwork for security and the resident assistants.  Our resident assistant received a wooden baseball bat, the “Buford Pusser Award”, for spotting JJ in the dorms and busting up the party.

Our group spent many hours at the back table of T-Bones, acting like fools. We played a game called Mexico, also known as liar’s dice.  If someone called your bluff correctly, your beer glass was filled to the rim, and you had to chug it down. I can still sing the song that everyone at the table sang as the loser chugged a full glass of beer.

“Here’s sister June, sister June, sister June.  Here’s to sister June, who is with us tonight.  She’s happy, she’s jolly, she’s horny by golly, here’s to sister June who is with us tonight.”

If you didn’t finish emptying your glass of beer by the time the song was completed, you were required to chug another.  Fortunately, I never lost the race.

Grandma Tudball often stood outside the men’s bathroom at T-bones, right in front of the door. As each man approached, she would insist that he share his drink with her; if he didn't have one, he had to kiss her. Either a beer or a kiss, or he wouldn't be allowed into the men’s room—her rules were clear.

Meanwhile, Lori would randomly shout “LAGNAF” to the crowd at the bar.  (Let's All Get Naked and Fuck).  When a woman entered the crowded bar wearing a dress or skirt, we would all shout along with Wally, “Pantyhose Baby!”

If we grew tired of beer, we would all head across the street to the Keg and Cork. There, we would order a pitcher of Combats, a grenadine-flavored mix of several types of hard liquor, served with straws.

“One, two, three!” someone would count, and on three, we would dive into the pitcher with our straws.

A few pitchers of Combats and we would calm down to drink Singapore Slings, another vile concoction of mixed liquor and grenadine.  Wally would get morose and bemoan his lack of female companionship. 

“The whole world can just kiss my fucking ass!” He would yell out intermittently, apropos of nothing in the conversation at the table.

Dinker would begin singing her favorite song in full volume.

“It’s up against the wall, you redneck mothers.”

Bridget would be writing furtively on her hand, trying to calculate how many drinks she had that night and beat a personal goal. 

Lori would be shushing the singers and the yellers. 

“Shut up!  You’re going to get us kicked out!  Get off the floor, sit in the chair!”

Grandma Tudball, Sher-bear, and I would sit in huddled conversation, probably of great importance, but the topics are lost to time and alcohol.

I am grateful that this era was before cell phones with their blackmailing cameras. As Stagger said to me years later, “No one took pictures because no one wanted to set their drink down.”