Drunkeness

I'm not a person who gets drunk.  I enjoy the taste of alcohol, which I've learned over the years is not the reason why most people drink.  When I was young, vodka was my preference, but as I've aged I'm more apt to buy a bottle of rye; specifically, Gibson's silver label.  There is a mild pleasure in being lightly affected by alcohol, but I imbibe infrequently, drinking perhaps just two or three bottles, or about 3 litres a year.

Yes, you read that right.

Once upon a time I had a friend at university, who was not a university student.  His name was Ken and he was the graphic artist for the university newspaper, the Gauntlet, in which I wrote weekly.  Ken had a degree in commercial art from the Alberta School of Art & Design ... and in some strange way, our personalities just meshed.

I would head up to the Gauntlet every once few weeks, even long after I'd finished university, and sit in Ken's office while he worked on business ads and the occasional bit of art for a story.  The atmosphere was so lax that no one cared that we would sit and chat all day, as I studied Ken's movements or asked him for advice for my own page design efforts.  And then, if I had nothing doing that night, we'd go down to "The Den," the campus bar, and buy a pitcher of beer.

Ken usually bought the first one, and then I'd buy the second ... and for reasons I've never been able to explain, one of us would then buy a third.  And sometimes a fourth.  I discussed the phenomenon often.  I did not like to get drunk, it was not my habit to get drunk; but somehow, with Ken, as we'd talk for hours in the bar about Frank Zappa and social engineering, the idiosyncracies of women and art, I'd drink and drink until yes, I would get absolutely smashed.

I'm a very relaxed, high functioning drunk, as it happens.  Ken's bus and mine both came to the same stop, so we'd walk over and go on talking until one of our busses showed up.  Mine at that time was the 73, which was just a 12 minute ride to the little condo village I was living in at the time.  From the Den to my front door, there wasn't a single street that needed crossing and I don't ever remember losing consciousness.  Michelle was always sweet to me when I got home, because I was always a sweet drunk ... and in all, this didn't happen more than about half a dozen times.

One time, however, I was sitting peaceably on the bus home.  I'd guess I was about 29 or 30.  I sat contemplating our long and fruitful discussions when the bus made a sharp jog to the left ... and whoop, it tossed me right off the seat and into the aisle.  I barely remember the short trip, but next thing I knew I was on my ass, on the gravelled bus floor, with others jumping up to ask concernedly if I was all right.  And I began to laugh.

I didn't stop laughing even as arms helped me back onto the seat, and for the rest of the short trip I giggled most of the way home.  I'd never been that drunk before, and I was never remotely that drunk again ... but somehow, I found it funny.

Ken moved on from the Gauntlet in the mid-90s, and after that I'd go over to his house and sit in his living room, surrounded by three giant tanks that housed his turtles.  Sometimes we go for a drink at a nearby bar, but the magic that would make me drink hard with him evaporated.  Things just change.  I lost track of Ken entirely somewhere between 1998 and the year 2000.