With only thirty-four days left in my college career, I had my first real alcoholic beverage tonight. It was this drink they call an Electric Iced Tea, which was a mixture of vodka, gin, and that blue stuff they use to disinfect combs. Now, the whole drinking thing's been growing gradually, both because I'm currently overdosing myself on Paxil and I worry that I might be called on to save New York City by driving and/or operating heavy machinery and because for my first two years of college, I had no friends and nothing says your nineteen-year-old life has hit rock bottom than spending three hours at a bar all alone. I mean, there were health reasons, too — I never exercise, I'm essentially a red-meat-and-junk-food-etarian, and if there was one nice thing I was going to do for my body, it would be avoiding the spirits.

But honestly, when you're a college freshman, who cares about the excuses? It's bad for you, it impairs your judgment, it's illegal. Truth is, my bullshitting lying cunt of an elementary school health teacher told us that you might be an alcoholic and not even know it, and you might throw away all your money on booze before going on to harder drugs like pot and smack and crack, and your family would disown you and your friends would hate you and the cops would arrest you, and then you'd die in prison and the temperance union ladies would come and piss on your grave. Same thing would happen if some mean fifth-grader offered you cigarettes in the playground and you smoked once. And she showed us that picture you've all seen of the healthy liver on the left and the cirrhosis-rotted liver on the right, and there was that Lifetime movie about the kid who gets his driver's license, threw a party with all his friends and the devil's beverage, and then drove home and ran over a family of missionaries. This was back in the days when the philosophy of our educational system was based around a complete lack of respect for the students' intelligence, and no one had the gall to tell me the, ahem, truth.

They still don't. Last year, my mom freaked out when I told her I hadn't smoked pot. Then she gave me a pamplet from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. When I asked my doctor about for some facts about the dangers or lack thereof from marijuana, he looked at me as if I told him I was thinking about experimenting with cannibalism before telling me, "Don't do that." I think I would have gotten a more frank answer had I asked him about the benefits of urine therapy. I guess there's a certain wussiness factor at work here, too — the same trepidation keeping from haphazardly putting things such as booze, acid, and wasabi into my body — otherwise I'd just yell at my poor pediatrician, "I'm trying to make some informed decisions here. Do you want me to make uninformed decisions? Would that be healthier for me?" I hate people.

Back to the alcohol, ever since Sarah and company took me to The West End last year and found out that I was too abstinent (read "scared") to drink anything stronger than water, it's been a pet project of just about everyone I know to take me out for my first drink. It just never happened. The closest we got was a bottle of cooking wine in Erica's room before those more experienced than me decided that wasn't the way to start me out on my new career as a dipsomaniac. Sarah's suggestion, after I listed all the things I wouldn't drink — nothing carbonated, nothing fruity, and, had I known, nothing blue — was a White Russian: vodka, kaluha, and milk. Sounds delicious.

Meanwhile, hoping to not be totally pathetic, I was experimenting with, groan, my dad. Had a sip of his beer last Halloween; tasted like lawn fertilizer, only more bitter. Took fifteen minutes and three packets of soy sauce to get the taste out of my mouth. Tried white wine, Lord knows what kind, on Thanksgiving; tasted like lawn fertilizer, only sweeter. Neither time, I got drunk, so things were looking good for me not being an alcoholic and not so good for my bullshitting lying cunt health teacher.

So last night, me and my ad hoc friends Rian, Rachelle, and Uma went to the Amsterdam Cafe, or "Am Caf" if you're lazy, for drinks. Rian invited me around seven, they spent the next four hours at the Varsity Show, and I spent the next four hours teaching myself about mixed drinks. They all have such telling names: there's a Borrowed Rum, and Kamakaze, and Liver Rot, and Hey Whose Bed Is This. Rian, Rachelle and Uma are all neuroscience majors, so I figured if they didn't care about fucking up their brains, then neither would I. See there, bullshiting lying cunt health-ed teacher — three real-life almost graduated twenty-one-or-two-year-olds who think you're full of, um, bullshit and who know more about brains than you do! I guess another thing keeping me from drinking was the whole bar atmosphere, by which I mean the West End. The West End is crowded enough to make the fire inspector freak and it has about the same cheerful lighting as a movie theater. My guess is that it's crowded with ugly people, which is why they keep the lights down. Also, the crappy music is really loud in there, presumably because your friends don't have any interesting conversation worth making anyway, and hence suck ass. They would probably make good plutonium miners. People at Am Caf were slightly more attractive, but evidently no more conversational, considering the music volume.

Stupid question: how the hell am I supposed to pick up chicks if they can't hear me?

So there I was, me, my inhibitions, my itchy, gnawing temperance, and a beverage list. No carbonated nothing, no fruity stuff... but I can't say I've ever had a blue drink before. Besides, it's an Electric Iced Tea, and on what planet is iced tea blue? And I order. Twice. The waitress can't hear me first time. I wonder why. We're waiting for our drinks. Uma says something. I nod politely. Low talker. Rachelle's done with her MCAT. Good for her. That sounds stupid. Don't say stupid shit. Uma: "I want a Sex in the Library." Rachelle: "You like having sex in the library." Uma: "Shut up!" Jay: "That's what you get for making a pun." Uma: "What?" Jay: "That's what you get for making a pun." Uma: "What?" Low talker. Goddamn bass line. Where's the drinks?

And there they are. And mine's, well, you know. But I figure, what the hell, I paid eight bucks for this mutant drink and no one in the real world is quite as understanding as they are in public service advertisements. So I sip the stuff, and wait to see if it'll kill me like my bullshitting etc. teacher said it would. It didn't. And it tasted.... well, not like lawn fertilizer. It was kind of bitter, like unsweetened iced tea, and then it became really pungent. Caustically, bitingly pungent. Imagine a blue version of Nyquil.

So, the prediction was that I'd either lose my inhibitions (that's Erica's idea) or I'd be rushed to the hospital from some horrible interaction between alcohol and Paxil (that's my idea). I guess what transpired was a bit closer to Erica's prediction. I talked more than usual, worried less than usual, but since I only drank about an eighth of a glass of that nasty comb-wash stuff, I'm not sure that the alcohol was the cause. Still, Erica should be a sibyl when she grows up.

It's just, here's what I don't understand. So beer tastes nasty and wine tastes nasty and Electric Iced Teas taste nasty. (Rachelle concurred with me on that last one, so it's not like I'm a complete abberation.) So what the hell is compelling people to go out drinking? If you just want to get drunk, there's always 180 proof Nyquil. And if you want a refreshing beverage, get one that, I don't know, doesn't make you want to vomit. Nobody agrees. I feel so alone. It's like fifteen years ago, being at a birthday party for one of my eight-year-old friends, and not drinking any soda because, goddammit, carbonation burns your throat! (Not as bad as Electric Iced Teas burn your throat, though.) But here, it's worse. Everybody else is an adult — a semi-mature adult, at best — and I'm a little kid with my sippy-cup full of chocolate milk. And you see, if I ramble like this when I'm sober, imagine when I actually am inebriated.

Anyway, there's thirty-three days left to try pot. Then my college experience will be complete.