Hiccups

Most of my funny stories involve illicit activities, and this is no exception. I was nineteen (a whole six months ago!) and was studying abroad in England. Like most teenage Europeans, I was drinking and was looking at my last shot of vodka, sitting just across the room. I left the bottle far away because cradling a bottle of vodka made me feel like a drunk (because, drunk logic). My friend and I were talking on the phone about something that ended up devolving into me telling her that Sandy Hook was my 9/11, and us laughing at the randomness of my comment to keep from crying about how true it was. But, the night was still young.

I wandered over to the shelf where my alcohol lived and tipped the rest of the bottle into my mouth. If you've never tasted vodka, it tastes like how nail polish smells, and that made me laugh. I tried to get back to my bed, which was literally two feet away, and ended up a foot away from it, sitting against my dresser, with the empty bottle in hand. I was laughing my ass off. The whole situation was hilarious since I had lied to my parents and told them I didn't drink a few hours before that. In the ensuing hours, I had drunkenly stumbled to do laundry (would not recommend doing it drunk), ended up talking to a million people, bought another bottle of wine to mask the fact that vodka tastes like fermented potato death, and talked to my friend about my male troubles.

It was funny to me that I could be such a hypocrite, that I could use my parents' money to get drunk, and that I could not hold my liquor despite weeks of practice. I was laughing to keep from feeling bad or crying about it, but it wasn't working. The best part of being drink, the part that keeps all those suburban moms and deadbeat dads hooked, is that you can laugh about shit that scares you about yourself. So, I laughed for like an hour about the fact that the vodka had taken my legs out and that I was staring at my bed but couldn't get there. I laughed at the irony that I would pretend that that night never happened when that was one of the most fun nights I had had in England.

I laughed for hours because alcohol had destroyed the barriers that held me from connecting with someone romantically, letting a friend in, and letting loose and having fun; yet it was a thinly veiled secret that I drank. That laughter almost didn't turn to tears, well, until Sandy Hook got mentioned, but who wouldn't cry about Sandy Hook?