Not So Funny Anymore

The first time I got drunk, I was 14 years old. It’s a vivid memory. At least, I think it is. Memories are strange that way. You can never really tell how accurate they are, but I’m going to tell this story as though these memories are to be trusted.

I had a friend, and for the purposes of this story, I’ll call him Nate. Nate had an exotic look to him. Extremely tall, slender, and hair so blonde it was almost white. So, you can imagine in our small industrial town, that the albino jokes flew like south bound birds during the chilly seasons. To add to that, his father got murdered in a drunken poker game, and then his mother quickly moved on to a woman she worked with. His sister took that news with such difficulty that she spent that Christmas in the hospital getting her stomach pumped after a suicide attempt of vodka mixed with sleeping pills. All of this is true, and it adds to the reason that we were drinking at such a young age.

Nate lived close to the skatepark, where we spent most of the time that we weren’t in school, shooting hoops, laughing, swearing, getting overly competitive, and the odd time, throwing hands. It was a strange place, but we were bored and there was really nothing else to do. This was during the onset of the housing market crash, where all the businesses in town were falling like dominos, and with that so did all of our folks’ finances. This created a strange sense of restlessness that could be felt through the town like a thick malevolent fog. It also created a desperate need for a hangout that didn’t cost a cent. Just a basketball and some friends.

One Friday, Nate and I and a couple other buddies were sitting on the grass behind one of the nets, when I mentioned that the Flagship Bar downtown was starting a teen night every Friday, or every second Friday, I don’t remember now, but I’d heard it from my older brother. This was a desperation move by a bar owner whose business was flatlining, because all of the regulars were out of work. Obviously, no alcohol was to be served, but all the teens were going to find ways to get sloshed before heading to the bar. So, it was going to be an underaged shitshow to say the least.

Nate tells me that Janie, who was likely the most beautiful girl in town and happened to be a friend of his because their parents were close growing up, that her boyfriend, Aaron, goes across the bridge all the time to get beer cheap and sell it in town to teens for loan shark mark-ups. He says all we have to do is chip in a few bucks each, and we can have a 24 of Budweiser. Me and my buddies say yeah, that’s great. Let’s do it.

So Friday night rolls along, and me, Chris, and Danny, head over to Nate’s with our money, and hand it over to Aaron, who gives us the beer. We stuff a few bottles in each of our bookbags and take off for the dugout behind the high school.

There the four of us drink six Buweisers each, and head for the bar.

Now, at 14 years old, never having drank a sip in my life. Six Budweisers had me feeling like a foreigner invading my own body.

The world looked different. Our shitty small town looked fluorescent and glowing. We stumbled our way to the bar, laughing, momentarily forgetting about our broken town, our fighting parents, or in Nate’s case, a dead parent. Forgetting about big Tarzan, who was a double sleeved full bearded senior who punched us freshman in the gut every time we walked past him in the hallways at school. Forgetting about all the things that kept us awake at night.

At the bar, we walked in and it was packed. I mean, we were squeezing our way in. Maybe, Tommy, the bar owner, was on to something. Or maybe, like most of us suspected, he was just an old perve, trying to find a legal way too eye fuck underage girls. Either way, the place was bumping in an otherwise deserved ghost town.

So we waltz in like we own the joint, find a table to stand behind near the dance floor, and laugh. We just started laughing. We saw two girls dancing together and I said, “Look Nate, it’s your mom and her lover.” and he bursts out laughing. We see a tiny, gangster wannabe with a New York Mets flat cap on sideways, a baggy shirt, and jeans that were showing 90 percent of his underwear, and Nate says to me, “You never told me you had a twin.”

Those six beers sat in our bellies, like liquid courage. We felt strong, and we felt good. There was nothing that could be said to us that hurt our feelings. Or so, I thought.

The guys eventually started razzing Nate to the point where the smile started to dissipate. He was just an easy target. All the shit that was going on with him seemed too easy to pick apart. A suicidal sister. Lesbian mother. Drunken dead father. For three first time 14 year old drunks, the jokes continued until Nate lost his temper and flew out of there.

The buzz left instantly, and the strong feelings of courage, and laughter, all dissipated with it.

Then my stomach started to turn with guilt and the foreign liquid. I went outside, and in an alley beside the bar. I threw up my lungs.

All these years later, I still have moments of deep quiet where I’ll think about what a colossal asshole I was. How back then, I’d do anything and say anything for a laugh. A laugh was as precious as gold. A laugh was more important than the hell my best friend was living in.

Then I think about Nate, who I know, that still to this day, is in deep pain over his life.

He messaged me not long ago, just to say

“Hey. Do you ever think that life just isn’t what you expected?”

And I answered, “Yeah, man. All those things that seemed funny then, just aren’t very funny anymore, are they?”

And he said, “Nope. Not at all.”