The Alcohol Exile

And so, I entered the tenth grade. On my first day back from summer vacation, I approached Paul.

-I think you were right, I uttered.

Paul knew what I meant.

So here we were. The alcohol ban still in force for me and Paul. The stricter regulations had now been lifted but there was always the specter of suspicion, especially from the dorm parents on the floor below mine. As they were not my dorm parents, they very rarely had any real power over me, but they still gave me dirty looks (or so I interpreted them).

We could not drink, so Paul and I devoted our time to making movies. We had invested much of our time over the years to making short films based on biblical passages for our respective Bible courses. While other groups slapped together tiny passion plays, our group staged larger, more complex productions requiring more effort each semester. At the beginning of this semester, it was my turn to film an issue relating to the Protestant reformation. Paul planned to make my bible project his project for video productions. The subject matter was fairly violent and fairly sectarian. Basically we distilled the Protestant reformation in to a large gang-war.

As our films became more stridently Christian fundamentalist, our religion became more obviously atheistic. Deprived of our substances, we found less benign ways to rebel. It was in these days that I began openly challenging the outliers of religious belief which I found most obviously erroneous. I argued with dorm mates that swearing was much less egregious than other words spoken in malice, I said that masturbation harmed no one (especially if no lust came into it), and (after a quick foray into Marx's Communist Manifesto) I suggested that capitalism might not be the most moral system of governance. All these arguments were made with a veneer of Christian pragmatism; I was merely testing the limits of my own faith, I intoned. I gained a reputation as the Devil's advocate, but no worse (certainly not an unbeliever).

The tensions were certainly rising between me and the authorities by the day. I no longer stood or sang in chapel or church. I had also found worship songs banal, but I now found them downright loathsome. One day, a chaplain approached us as we sat and ordered us to stand for the song. We stood. A few days later, my dorm-parent lectured me on the need to be more engaged in the chapel experience. It became clear that even when I was sober there remained a great deal of tension between the authorities and myself. And I certainly was not going to stay sober forever.

The Day After

I felt fine in the morning actually. No ill effects as far as I could tell. Paul wasn't at school- I guess he wanted to do his chemistry test with his full mental capabilities about him. That evening there was a basketball game, I had little love for watching high school sports teams but there were people there at least. At half-time I wandered outside the gym to the concession stand, there stood Steve. He motioned me over excitedly.

-We're done man. Steve said. -Paul's parents found the bottles under the bathroom sink. They are coming down hard on him

Evidently, Paul's parents were suspisious of our little study session. When Derek came back they listened at the door and heard the tell-tale clink of bottles. From that point it was not hard to find the evidence. Paul may have been able to finagle his way into lesser charges but he was in no state to do that once he got home.

Very soon after that horrendous news, my mother flew in to visit me at the boarding school. the trip had not been planned. Very soon it became clear that my mother's arrival represented a kind of intervention for my soul. In a handful of long sessions my mother interviewed me on my current lifestyle. She claimed that she had not been informed of any antisocial behaviour by the dorm parents. Or by Paul's parents. No, she claimed, the Holy Ghost had let her know in that 'still small voice' that all was not well with her youngest child. So here we were. I copped to swearing ("they're just words", I argued), to not being cooperative with the school authorities, and finally to drinking.

The dorm parents were brought into the loop. Soon a partial solution was found with Paul's mom; Paul and I were not allowed to spend evenings out with Daniel, who it had been decided was a bad influence on the two of us. The terms of my parole were set in place, I could only ever spend nights over at Paul's house. I never understood that decision as I had consumed more alcohol with Paul than with any other member of our small gang.

So now Paul and I embarked on a long period of sobriety. My parents and dormparents worked hard to help us see the weight of our sins. I already knew that Paul and Steve cared little for those invocations and they were beginning to lose their resonance with me as well.

Chemistry Night: Part Three

My brother and Daniel had come out of Paul's house down the block and joined us in the park. I stood up and in some fit of sober sadism my brother pushed me and I fell and scraped by forearm on the steps. It hurt- why would you push your obviously drunk and distraught brother?

My head was whirling now. I had a headache from my tears (and I suppose from the hard liquor). Derek Anderson had finished his dinner and had joined us. Most of the people around me were still on the way up. I could not comprehend their happiness. The group filed back into Paul's house. A few more drinks. Did I have any more?

And we were off again, on one of our walks to the school. To my dorm. I was slipping in and out of incoherence. A few blocks down and someone realized that we had left the bottles out in Paul's bathroom. Derek was sent back under the pretense of using the washroom. He put the bottles in our rather obvious hiding spot and dashed back out- nothing discovered, we were cool. We made it to the dorm and out onto the roof. Some overeager fellow students had set up a small barn that supplied the dorm with some fresh eggs. I hated overeagerness. We sat beside the barn and talked for a while. Then Paul vomited.

For us vomiting had been the undeniable marker of drunkenness. A crew member had gotten drunk-drunk, no more loopholes. We did our best to cover our tracks there as well. The gang left, and I went to bed. I wandered into the room of a fellow student. He was already asleep but I woke him:

-Never drink man.