Weeks after my night of entrenched sobriety the whole crew returned to Steve's house for the another night of unsupervised fraternalizing. Again my intention was wholly for an evening of vicarious inebriation. So again I sat and watched the action, taking on the role of caretaker (in an apparent bid to avoid the spills and broken vases that marred our previous outing) I settled in for a night few others would have enjoyed. Indeed, the abstainers from the last night out had opted out of this venture (evidently the act of watching someone else's decline into slurred speech and rambunctious singing appealed less to these others [including my brother] or perhaps they knew what a return to another of these parties would inevitably mean). As I watched, I took slight puffs of the heavy cigars being passed around, I promised myself they represented something far more sophisticated and less morally complicated than the cigarettes which were also making the rounds.

At about midnight the heavy drinkers settled into their fitful sleeps on the couches of the downstairs living-room. Only Steve (who had tried to be the voice of reason) and I remained alert. We turned to each other and then to the bottle of Vodka on the balcony table.

-I'll go mix a chaser to smooth the taste, Steve suggested after the requisite fabricated discussion of moral imperatives

-We should play some sort of game to get this stuff down, I recommended, knowing that this particular brand of Vodka had survived until this time in the night because of its extremely harsh afterburn.

We agreed that our game would involve a test of pain: a person would burn a cigar into the right side of his left palm (where it was thought that scars would not remain [and they did not]). If the person could hold the cigar for five seconds, the opposing person would drink twice; if not, the failed burner would drink a single.

We both failed once and succeeded once. Three generous drinks taken from a hard plastic cup and chased down by Tang with a generous amount of powder. I felt the burn and then the warmth. I settled into a living room couch and feel asleep to the strains of one of the lesser Pink Panthers.