Of Folly And Of Vice

I remember the dilapidated house on the street with the name of a spice. I remember the blue glow of the porch light and the hum of people in the backyard. There was an older guy with a backwards baseball cap selling the cups on the porch, under the single blue bulb.

All of us had walked nearly a mile from our dorm in search of a party to that house, there was probably 15 or so in our group. Milling around on the porch, handing the guy our $4 for a blue Solo cup.

My fingers fit into the grooves of the cup comfortably. I just wanted to try it. I was an adult now, legally, and although I wasn’t “drinking age” yet, I felt that this was an important thing. This is college, this is what we do.

The keg was sloshing around in a plastic garbage can, titled on the slight decline of the ground where it had been placed. The beer was lukewarm and it tasted unlike anything I had ever tasted. The bubbles broke over my tongue. I made a face.

“This is not very good,” I said to my dorm mates.

“No, it’s not,” they said, genuinely agreeing. “Nobody likes keg beer.”

It was my first alcoholic beverage, and I barely finished one cup. I looked around. No one appeared to be having a ton of fun, everyone was just drinking and talking, and occasionally, someone would shout out. It was late September, but not quite cold yet. I saw a girl I went to high school with, talking in another circle of 18 year olds. I thought about high school for a moment – how it seemed like a million miles from where I stood, crunching in the foliage of someone’s rented backyard with about 100 other people. How it seemed like nothing was going to be the same after this. How everything was changing and I was just grasping to hold on to it.

I fidgeted with the empty cup for a while before handing it off to a friend who looked at me suspiciously.

“You sure you’re not going to want anymore?” He asked.

“No, please take it,” I said.

I walked home shortly after with some of the boys from the dorm. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to drink beer again. Someone said, “Oh, it’s never that good, but there’s other stuff that tastes better.”

I would eventually find out that it never tasted better. But I would drink it anyway.