Friends Who Were There

We had been watching a punk-rock show at the 9:30 Club in Washington DC and drinking dollar beers. But when you're slamming in the pit you tend to sweat the beer out and you never really feel the buzz, so by the time the show was over we had worked up a mad thirst for more alcohol. I can't remember how we got a hold of hard liquor, but the four of us were riding through a cold city in the back of George's pickup truck and taking swigs of cheap gin straight from the bottle. It tasted like kerosine so we squirmed and holler, and we told each other to pretend it was cold water and that we were stranded in a desert and dying of thirst. It was a desperate Jedi mind trick.

The only thing we tricked ourselves into doing was taking bigger swigs that came with a bigger kerosine burn in our nose and deep in the pit of our stomach. It was painful in a good, youthful way. By the time we reached George Town, the bottle was empty and the city lights were a zigzagging blur and we laughed at everything and nothing in particular. Christiani had been trying to light a cigarette for nearly ten minutes and we laughed at his repeated failed attempts until the wind blew the cigarette right from his numb little fingers. And then we laughed even harder. We were cold and warm at the same time, and dizzy. Time shifted and our memory became convoluted but eventually we made it home to Jim's house at 1 AM, where we sobered ourselves with chili hot-dogs from the 7/11 down the street.

Until this day I am not sure how we survived the ride from Washington, DC, into Virginia, onto I-66 and then 495, at speeds no doubt reaching 75 to 85 miles per hour, in the back of a pickup truck that had bad suspensions, in the middle of winter, drunk out of our minds.

So many bad things could have happened. Now, years later, my maturity conjures images of what-could-have-been, which effectively frightens and shames me of ever being a young person. How could we not know better?

But as much as I can chide myself for the stupid things we did, I must remind myself that, as a group, we never allowed each other to be harmed. If we drank, always one of us was a designated driver; this was often determined swiftly and without argument. We laughed and went crazy often, but each of us always had one foot on solid ground just incase the other didn't. We always had one eye on each other's back, ready to reach out and grab the other's arm to lead back to more sanity.

As mindless as we sometimes were, we were always mindful of each other's well-being. We were there for each other.