Chivas Regal

Paul and I went to the market down the block from our school. The shop owner did not mind at all that we were buying a bottle of alcohol when we were clearly underage. We stowed our bottle far in the bottom of Paul's backpack making sure that it did not hit anything hard (the clink of glass would have alerted the ever vigilant authorities). Then we were off to my dorm where Paul would be spending the night.Since our last drinks we had rejected the faith of our forefathers. We had equated Christianity with repressive authoritarianism. We had fetishized alcohol as pure pleasure, an experience so all-encompassing as to have the power to upset religous hierarchies. Drinking was to us the embodiment of rebellion and the individual. So after months of quiet philosohpical recalibrations we finally had liqour within our grasps again, and it felt so fucking right.

As we were not about to take any chances, our drinking started after everyone had gone to bed. In my room, we poured our libations into a ceramic coffee mug that we shared between the two of us. At first the drink burned (it had been quite a while) so we took our time. We sat reveling in this historic moment and reading Far Side collections. As the night went on we sipped the whisky with more abondon. At some point it became obvious that even by our ridiculous standards this was drunkenness- not a sin anymore. We stood and punched each other to test theories of alcohol and pain. We laughed. We rejoiced. Mugfulls of Chivas flew down throats like single ounce shots. The bottle exhausted itself.

Paul fell asleep the wrong way on my spare bed on top of the covers. I vomitted in the sink.

And I have never been happier.

Filming

In the second semester of my tenth grade, my film project for bible class was a modernized version of the whole book of Acts. For the project, we provided several narrative changes that we though would provide more cohesion. We added demon characters to be nemeses that would also provide much of the exposition on the central action. Of course, these demons drank and smoked. In our one of our over-the-top celebrations of alcohol consumption we filmed the party that demons had upon hearing the news that Jesus was dead. Swigging tinted water from our favourite liqour bottles while cheering the death of Christ provided its own unique thrill.

Even more exciting was our depiction of Paul (the bible character, played by me) praying during his incarceration. My hearfelt prayers with my cellmate dripped with barely concealed contempt for the whole institution. We even raised our hands in that utterely evangelical motion of praise. If our chiding sarcasm was not detected, the viewer could always pause the film to see single frames of us raising our middle fingers to their religion.

In one of the build ups to filming, we grabbed some wine coolers from friend's house. These were real alcohol and they were tempting. Paul suggested we flip to decide if we should just drink them despite the risks. We flipped about ten times- all but one said we should drink. We did not have the courage to drink on that day but our resolve for sobriety was clearly crumbling.