Tempestuously Acquiescent

I could barely wait to begin drinking again. Of course, they were always watching now. Strict curfews, transparent itineraries, lists of acceptable friends. In my more courageous moods I lit a cigarette on my walks to yet another chaperoned event- inhaling fleeting freedom.

Unfortunately, the favourable consumption of alcohol requires time, it requires space. I remained constrained. So I did wait. Awaited a break-down of vigilance, a resumption of apathy, a recreation of distraction. But the downstairs dorm authority retained his justified suspicion- he had once been a dorm kid (a disaffected one at that) and knew that I was beyond their cheap platitudes. I would drink again if he looked away, so he looked on.

Other authorities picked up on his paranoia. One day the inestimable Mr. Garland approached me. "I heard you talking to a dorm mate the other day and you mentioned that you had done something that would get you in trouble."

"Uh... I think that I might have been kidding"

"Just be careful, you know that you have signed that contract."

So we've gotten to the circumscription of my teenage posturing.

Now we were really getting down to it. My mind shook with fury at my vicarious father's surveillance; if I hadn't needed a drink before I needed one now. Yet he stood at the bottom of the stairs "where are you off to?" at the threshold of my room "who are you seeing this weekend?"

The next step was always inevitable. Although at the time.

The Contract

In the early days of my eleventh year of schooling, the dorm authorities called me in.

"I have recently talked to someone who claims that you are drinking again" Mr. Garland, the dorm supervisor began.

A rat- I thought and immediately winnowed the list of suspects. While I pondered my Brutus, I mumbled platitudes about not-really-possibly-recalling-in-a-way-with-some-caveats-under-the-auspices-of-a-social-engagement-only-over-dinner-and-only-ever-wine (Christ that was unconvincing).

"Well since we know you drank we are going to have to lay out some sort of consequences for if you do this again" he intoned and produced a sheet of paper "we'll need you to sign this."

Ten points, no drinking, no smoking, no drugs etc.

"And if I do not?" I asked.

"We'll have to ask you to leave the dorm and the school."

I guess I could have seen that coming. I looked over the paper again. Boilerplate except for number six, which read that I could no longer discuss controversial topics with my dorm mates.

"What is this proscription?" I asked

"Well, it has come to our attention that you have talked with some of the other kids about whether some things are actually sinful, like swearing, and we consider those conversations a bad influence."

Well fuck, thats interesting. I knew I had to sign this totalitarian screed but I had to express some discontent. It was about an hour before dinner and because I had nowhere to be, I decided to reread the one page for the full hour before signing just to slightly inconvenience my dorm parent. It was a totally pointless protest which bored me as much as it did him, but we all need our share of empty acts.

That evening, after dinner, I sat in my dorm room at the beginning of another grounding.

In my mind, I had another drink.

The Battle Lines are Drawn

At first, we drank late at night in locked bathrooms, behind a wall of impenetrable caution. We smoked in nylon coats that never held the stench of stolen drags. We huddled by fans cribbed from old computers that pushed our fumes outside. At first. But now that I had regained the marginal trust of the dorm parents, I began abusing that trust with aplomb. We drank in the bars of the forbidden parts of town, we smoked over-sized cheap Cuban cigars on streets that the authorities used, we played the nickel-slots in the casino right next to the most popular mall in town.

My dorm was split into two floors, I had duped the authorities on my floor but those on the other floor increasingly questioned my continued good behaviour. They made their feelings known more and more, giving me looks of suspicion, probing questions, circumscribed allowances. Here we had it, adults two levels removed from biological imperatives who still lorded paternal authority over me. They suspected I was drinking, I knew they suspected, the danger was there, their glances and aspersions were justified. Christ, I hated that.

But even so, we ate our meals; smiles and cordialities. I inclined my head in prayer's repose. My Potemkin Village, my self-conscious hypocrisy.

So we reached an impasse, a detente which stood as I ended the tenth grade. I had enrolled early in AP Lang (a college-level English class) and picked up a group of books to take back to Peru to get ahead. My personal revolution, fueled by hidden cigarettes, stolen swigs of cheap liqour, and whispered blasphemies now found its heroes in my youthful misapprehensions of French existentialists, Russian radicals, and German social theorists. God, and the dorm parents who were his representatives, now had an ideological enemy.

The Drunk

I had cleared the last hurdle, the final vestige of my own moral limitations. I had been gloriously, unabashedly, totally drunk and I no longer cared. They had caught me and dragged me back into the confines of their stunted world-view but only corporally; I would never again agree with their reasons for not drinking and now even their strictly enforced sobriety had fallen under the weight of my sheer will to drink. And it had fallen hard.

We would have to be a bit more cautious now, of course, but I would never not drink. My manifesto was clear:

1. God does not exist

2. His rules are void

3. The authorities that enforce that enforce that petty code are illegitimate

4. I will drink