Treatises on Alcohol

He's doing this because girls are watching, so maybe I DO have a little Captain in me...

I believe I’m a closet Mormon. I sometimes go door to door trying to convince people how awesome I am*, I don’t smoke, and up until recently I didn’t drink, either. I know what you’re saying: I’m wasting the precious four years in which I can get absolutely shitfaced every night and not be an alcoholic for it. I’m well aware that I’m squandering my youth by opting not to spend most of my evenings with my head in a toilet, because people often tell me this between games of beer pong or while sponging their own vomit off the bathroom floor. I’m just not quite willing to dive into drinking yet, and since I’ve got a whole lot of blog left to write, I’ll share my reasons with you.

*I’ve got a lot of readers from Utah – particularly you, Allie – and I just want to let you know that I’m not making fun of the Mormons with that comment, I’m making fun of organized religion’s penchant for pimping itself out to complete strangers. I mean, hey, at least the Mormons don’t kill thousands of people when they go on mission trips – I’m looking at you, Catholicism!

For one thing, I aspire to be a writer, and if not for alcohol there would be literally hundreds more writers on Earth, traveling in majestic herds and foraging throughout the Upper East Side for cheap coffee. By not acquiring a taste for alcohol, I already figure I’m dodging a bullet that hit the likes of Poe, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Joyce, Melville, Crane, Roethke, O. Henry, Lowell, Steinbeck, and so on – there’s so many alcohol bullets flying around in the writing community that that you’d think God had a Tommy Gun.

Furthermore, I hate throwing up. I probably hate throwing up a lot more than you do, in fact, that’s how much I hate it. Like, how much you hate throwing up times infinity, and then you’ll be close to knowing how much I hate it. Leading my normal, healthy lifestyle I scarcely ever do throw up, and I don’t see why I should increase my risks by drinking. Now, I’ve got friends who drink that claim they’ve never thrown up despite countless tequila binges and games of beer pong. I’ve also got a friend who blacked out and spent 45 minutes crying and vomiting all over the bathroom during a concert at the student union and only escaped a citation through the guile of her sober friends. I don’t know why, but somehow the bad stories always stick out in my mind even more, particularly when vomit is involved.

However, the primary reason I don’t drink is my mother. You see, last weekend, my parents went to a wine tasting party put on by the manager of their condominium for all the residents. Now, as time went by, my mother tasted a little too much wine, and then she wound up talking about me to a large group of our neighbors. “How’s your son doing at U of O?” Someone asked, to which my mother offhandedly replied, “Oh, he’s doing fine… He just wishes he could get laid.” This reportedly brought on the granddaddy of all awkward silences. See, thanks to alcohol my own mother said this, knowingly, to a group of people who I’ll be seeing on a regular basis all summer.

Yeah, that’s right, Mom, you embarrass me in front of the neighbors, I’ll embarrass you in front of the Internet. Now everybody knows what you did! It’s on! Happy Mother’s Day.

All these perfectly logical reasons not to drink aside, I did indeed take my first shot of alcohol this past Thursday. “But Truman!” You, the highly offended casual drinker shout. “If you’re so opposed to drinking, why did you do it?” The answer is quite simple: Someone offered me a shot of Malibu rum while girls were watching. Had girls not been watching, I probably would have said, “No thanks.” It’s a little known fact, but nearly everything men have ever done, including jousting and the Spanish American War, happened because girls were watching. If girls weren’t watching, men wouldn’t be perceived as ignorant, macho lugheads, but would instead selflessly dedicate themselves to the creation of art. Writers selflessly dedicate themselves to art regardless because they know that they can’t do anything to impress girls anyway, and the reason so many writers become alcoholics is because they start drinking in a vain and desperate attempt to impress the girls who are watching.

The experience itself wasn’t really an eye opener. The shot (which smelled like Herbal Essences Mango Orgasm shampoo) made my mouth numb, and my first words after swallowing were (direct quote), “Urgh. Blarg!” My friends quickly passed me a chaser, which happened to be one of the girls’ bottle of pink lemonade, to help me wash down the fruity mango rum, officially making this the gayest first drink in history.** It wasn’t all bad, though, because shortly thereafter my esophagus got pleasantly warm for a few minutes. That was the extent of the experience for me – I didn’t have any more to drink, I didn’t throw up, and the girls weren’t impressed enough to have sex with me. You hear that, Mom? You want to let the neighbors know? I can call grandma right now, if you want.

**Unless you had your first drink while having gay sex, which would be considerably gayer than my first drink.

It’s becoming clearer to me that college binge drinking just might not be my thing, along with anime and swing choir. It works for other people, and I’m glad they can have a good time, and despite my highfalootin’ language I don’t look down on them, but it’s just not my scene. I don’t like the taste of alcohol, and even though I hear it’s not all about the taste, I don’t see the percentage in putting stuff in my mouth if I don’t like it that’s what she said. And yeah, maybe being drunk is fun. In fact, I’m just as curious as you are about what I’d be like while drunk. The thing is, I’m also frightened by what Drunk Truman could be like. A lot of my friends already consider me to be an outrageously vulgar and irreverent person, and alcohol would take away the precious few inhibitions I have left. Maybe Drunk Truman thinks he can sing and dance. Maybe Drunk Truman will ramble on for hours about his novel. Maybe Drunk Truman will kill a hobo. And sure, all of this sounds like fun and games to you, but in the morning, Drunk Truman is just going to be Mortally Embarrassed Truman, or possibly Fugitive From Justice Truman, neither of whom can dance.

Truman Capps has no problems with gay people, and only said that his first drinking experience was “gay” because the simple fact is that mangos and pink stuff are really, really, really gay.