Luke 17 (NKJV)

I’m the ninth leper. I was healed, but – you know –I was busy. I had a lot of catching up to do you see. I mean, I had my whole life to get back to, and… Listen, I don’t want to sound ungrateful. Being healed is great and all. It’s just that…

Quick word association game: Spring Break.

Did you think of a beach and girls in bikinis and MTV VJs?

Good, then you're a 21^st century American teenager, fully immersed in our shit culture.

So, I had this vision of a beach party spring break floating around in my head, same as everyone else. Then my friend tells me that he inviting everyone (everyone cool, at least) to come down to his Hilton Head beach house for spring break. I examined my options—go home and watch a movie or two and not much else, or go have an MTV spring break—and the choice seemed clear.

So way back in time, I went to the G W S theater sorority party, and everyone was either drunk or high or both. I overheard people talking about the lasciviousness of it all. They dismissed it out of hand saying, one might as well enjoy oneself now, since after all, "You only live once." Another alumnus partygoer told me to enjoy my college years while I could. "Really?" I quipped. "But I was planning on being miserable the whole time…"

Before we departed for Hilton Head, drinking was discussed amongst those going, and I said that the trip would be an opportunity for everyone to find their optimum level of drunkenness.

When I think of drinking, I have a lot of contradictory images in my head. One of them is of all my friends in high school who were intrinsically more cool than me because they drank. They would talk to me about weekend parties at far away places, and I just sat and listened, wistfully. Drinking makes you cool in the way that smoking should, only minus cancer and plus having drunken fun.

At the G W S , my friend Lexy was the designated driver. She asks me if I want something to drink. I say, no thank you. She says, why? I say, 'cause I'm not cool and drinking is for cool people. She doesn't get the joke. "But, you're cool! …"

I've never really drank before. I put water into my one and only glass of wine in France, because the alcohol was too strong for me. I guess I'm reverse-Jesus. All those bacteria took all the sugar out of my grape juice and put nasty tasting ethyl alcohol in its place, and I didn't much appreciate it at the time.

I called up my parents and told them about my new plans for spring break. I tell them about my friend and how he went to Hilton Head Christian Academy and how he's a friend of some of their doctor friend's children. Anyhow, it all looks very nice on paper, so they sign off on it, though I imagine my dad may have had an inkling of what was up.

The trouble with the "you-only-live-once" philosophy of G W S is it assumes that one should spend one’s only once lived life maximizing pleasure, as though there was an a priori reason to do so. Sure, it may be pleasurable to me to act as a hedonist, but where does my enjoyment factor into ought?

My friend's beach house was palatial. It probably had more bathrooms than my dorm building. We looked right out on the beach. It had a closet elevator. Everything about it screamed the decadent waste of capitalism. My friend's dad owned the whole complex around us.

The point of capitalism is that people will do things for you, and let you do things, that ordinarily they would not, so long as you provide them with tokens ensuring that they too will get similar favor from strangers. Through a combination of luck and hard work, my parents and those of my friends have acquired such tokens to the point of excess. Through more luck, my friends and I are able to waste our parents' tokens at our discretion. My share of the cheap bottles of vodka and rum came to $6.

Surprisingly less than 30 pieces of silver for a whole weekend o' fun.

Something hit me at the G W S and I desperately scribbled it into my Palm Pilot: "Drinking is giving up and admitting that thinking makes life worse."

At my friend's beach house, I went ahead and admitted it. Drinking was going to be more fun than being myself. And it was. For five nights, in complete disregard of state law concerning alcohol consumption by those under twenty-one years of age, I nightly surrendered myself to Baccus. Three times, I became completely drunk off my ass, though never did I drink enough to get sick. Thus, my initial impression of the effect of alcohol consumption is rather rosily without consequences.

The only time that I can remember thinking helping me out was when I was maybe ten years old, and there was some logic game at a business bazaar, and I realized that the toothpicks needed to be lifted off the surface in order to make four triangles. For that, I won a potted plant. At the time, I thought, "Wow! This is the first of many times that my great brain will win me things…"

Wrong.

Do you ever hear people whining about life and think, "Why are they complaining? They don’t have any real problems…"

When people are troubled even when nothing’s wrong that means they have no hope of getting better. When nothing’s wrong, but everything is, then aren’t you screwed?

In my experience, being drunk is like being sleepy, only you don’t want to go to bed. Your soul and senses are separated. Everything lags and blurs. Things jumble together. At the same time, your default emotion switches to happiness, and any sensation can cause euphoria. I can see why people do it; it's fun.

After an incredibly cool S N beach party in which I got my groove on rather methodically, I kept seeing people from the party around campus. I kind of wanted to talk to them about the party, how much fun it was, how I saw them there, but I realized that who you are at S N beach party is not who you are in real life. Even if you wanted to talk to someone about it, you couldn't because you wouldn't be talking to the same person.

Which is sort of a shame.

When you go to the beach, inevitably a seashell collection is formed. No one ever looks at seashells when they are back home. Normally, the shells are conveniently forgotten on the back porch of the beach house. Shell collecting is just a weird beach activity with no bearing on real life.

Maybe drinking is a seashell collection…

In a truly postmodern spirit, I seem to have mastered compartmentalizing. I went home the weekend after school resumed. My brother drove me back and we talk and listened to The Apples in Stereo as we rode down SC 5. The subject of fraternities came up and he asked me if I ever drank at the parties, and I said, truthfully, that I never drank at them. We talked about other drinking things, and he asked me if I'd ever been drunk. With a calculated roll of my eyes, I said, "You and your questions…"

At the end of the G W S , I walked back to my dorm in the drizzling rain, generally pleased with my experience (I got to play some CDs for the crowd) but a little disappointed at how unexciting it was to be the lone sober person in a room full of happy drunks.

Also, the girl that I formed my obligatory love-at-first-sight crush on turned out to be engaged. Something like that happens every time. It's getting rather irksome. Perhaps, it's an omen.

Before spring break, I was somewhat hoping that while drunk, I would think of incredibly witty things and write them down. Perhaps even, return from the beach with a story in hand very much like this one. All I wrote down during my week at the beach was, "You can't kill what you can't change." Which, I believe I wrote on the second night while merely sleepy, as I hadn't yet drank.

I don't think I believe in social drinking. I drank to get my ass plastered. Being plastered causes euphoria; I enjoy it. I don't practice moderation much. I'm a hot or cold, if you are lukewarm, I will spit you out kinda guy. In second grade they start forming the seeds of bad opinions about drinking in your mind, telling you about liver damage and slowed reflex. "Why would anyone want to drink?" says the all-knowing second grader. It's fun replies all-knowing college freshman.

I think I need an all-knowing third opinion.

So, I get back to campus and I'm talking at lunch with my friends who drink, and now, I feel like I'm in loop. Like I get what's going on behind the curtain. I had the same feeling when I re-watched Casablanca after having had French kissed for the first time. "I get it. I understand the emotions and feeling that cause people to act this way. I feel that way too!" It's odd that I'm such a square, yet always trying to appear punk. I'm always acting so much more tolerant than I am. And now, here I am, one of the enemy. How can I judge them now? It's so odd to have to put myself into the category of 'them' as opposed to 'us.'

The more one thinks about it, the clearer it becomes. Our brains are defective. Why else would people be naturally unhappy? Why else would people feel better with control over their bodies given to a foul tasting liquid? Why else would people admit that thinking isn't helping them? Why else do people complain when nothing's wrong!?

A few weeks ago, an S A E fell off the balcony of my building at 2 in the morning. It's the first accidental death on campus since 1978, they say. The toxicology report came back that his blood alcohol level was .17, where .10 is legally drunk, and .20 is damaging organs. The students were upset that the information was released to the media. The way one kid told me, it doesn't matter if he was drunk or not, what matters is that he was a great guy and he's gone and we'll all miss him dearly. You can't just judge his life and death and classify him in your mental box for clumsy drunks.

Me, I never met the kid. So, I wouldn't know. But, I was certainly creeped out for a day or two.

Listen, here's where this whole thing was headed. Jesus, I'm sorry. I really am. I've been busy. I know I squandered the material prosperity of my capitalist parents. I know that if some Samaritan had time to come back, I should have too. I know I've wasted uncounted opportunities and chances. That I've stepped onto a path that leads to nowhere but destruction. But come on man, it was Spring Break, and I wanted to identify with the media generated stereotype. I’m just a victim of the life-art imitation complex! And, I've got a defective brain! Come on, you've gotta understand!

No more excuses.

Please.