Those Aren't My Blankets.

I woke up and I was alone. The sun shone through the open flap of the tent and knifed into my eyes, eyes still fastened with contacts. The absence of my three friends confused me. I still had all my clothes on, and the only things around me were my neatly positioned sneakers and the food I ate the night before.

*

I am indoorsy, more so since I've gotten older. The great outside doesn't hold the same allure it did years ago. Back then, I obsessed over mountain biking and rock climbing, doing it as often as possible. But as I aged, I developed apathy for outdoor activities. I didn't turn into a hermit, I just found more comfort spending the afternoon in a city park, a crowded family kitchen, or the confines of a bar with friends. I didn't go out of my way to strap on the hiking boots as I once had.

Part of it was my environment. I went to college in the wealthy suburbs of upstate New York, surrounded by Long Island accents wearing brightly colored polo shirts. The Adirondacks were close by, but 19 year-old sophomores don't typically forego Saturday binge drinking to assemble soon-to-be leaky tents somewhere off the beaten path.

I was a late bloomer when it came to drinking. Some of my friends already had three or more years under their belt by the time I showed up to that party. I had a sanctioned, experimental beer on occasion, but didn't encounter the warm-body feel of six Busch Lights until midway through my senior year of high school.

It just wasn't on my radar. I came from loving, but moderately strict parents and spent six years in the school band. I took some honors classes and cared about my academics. "You're Colin's little brother, aren't you?" my teachers would say, my confirmation instantly placing me far atop the riffraff.

Lady Booze is a fickle mistress. One moment you're on top of the world, the who's-that?-he's-cute guy; the surprisingly nimble and expressive dancer; the pioneer of funny.

Those of us now, balder and wiser, who have been on the mouth-end of cheap beer or room temperature tequila knows that alcohol giveth, but alcohol can certainly taketh away.


*


It was Memorial Day Weekend in 2004 and high school graduation was a few weeks. I found myself on a long stretch of highway en route to Keene, New Hampshire. I spent the previous night at a girl's house I loved, so I was happy. I drove north, ready, so I thought, for a weekend with my best friends.

By 17, I had been pulled over just the once. My mother worked for the city and hired many of the police officers, so I had a tangible fear instilled early on that the law was not to be fucked with. I took care of goody two-shoes and wore them well.

Having said that, all teenagers speed. It's like we had no choice. Slow driving was for geriatrics in Florida, not high school kids. We had lives to live, people to see, fast food restaurants to spend money at.

I cruised down the road, oblivious that the Hyundai needle bounced around eighty-five. The state trooper laying in wait on the side of the highway, however, noticed. I looked in the rearview mirror as he walked toward the car and realized I was dressed like the Unibomber. The beautiful day had a slight chill in the air, so I had the hood of my sweatshirt up. That, coupled with aviator sunglasses and criminal rate of speed, didn't paint the most innocent of pictures.

Conversations between state troopers and honor roll students tend to be brief, so he handed me the ticket and I drove the rest of the way in panicked moderation. It was my first offense for speeding and the ticket was $225, which, to a high schooler, seemed like a mortgage payment.

I pulled into Justin's house in a sour mood. He opened the trunk of his Jeep and I shook hands with our booze supplier, a smiley friend of his who looked like he emerged from the womb a strong-jawed, broad-shouldered farm hand. Beers in tow, it was off to Nate's house.

*

The trip resembled any overdone horror movie. Four friends, smiley and high-fiving, venture into the woods to "camp" with a large quantity of alcohol. A party with attractive nameless girls and a roaring fire takes place. Then, they all die.

Our plan ensured there would be plenty of high school females clambering to sit on a rotting picnic bench in the dark and drink shitty beer. We packed up our five-person tent and two coolers. With supplies stowed, illegal and otherwise, we piled in the car and drove across the Vermont border.

In keeping with our unseasoned barometer of the outdoors, we arrived at the campsite after sunset, which made starting a fire difficult. As we fumbled in the blackness for kindling, lighters were put to empty Coors Light boxes and stolen firewood from the welcome cabin in desperate attempt to create flame.

Assembling a tent in the dark is another fiasco. Armed with the dim glow of Nokia cell phones, we took turns deciphering the misinterpreted instructions in size eight font as tent poles jabbed haphazardly into what we thought were the correct holes.

With a fire crackling and our flimsy sleep house erected, the red and white cooler---a Pandora's Box purchased at Walmart---opened.


*


I struggled in the first few moments of consciousness and blinked to clear the shimmery blur. I didn't remember going to bed, so I was confused how I got into the tent in the first place.
The big orangey ball stung the bloodshot marbles that had contacts cemented to their surface.

I had never felt quite this horrible before.
My mouth required a heavy dose of Listerine and my soul yearned for a Gatorade.

Inside my stomach surged a blustery ocean of regret. My skull racked with a pain more acute and biting than anything I'd ever felt. I sprawled on the tent floor like I had gone several lopsided rounds with Mike Tyson.
Only seconds into a beautiful, sunny day and I felt I was swirling the drain to Hell.

"Howya feelin, big guy?"

It was Justin.

He stood in front of the tent door. I muttered something expressing my misery and proceeded to become vertical.

The drive back to Nate's house seemed like a road trip to Saskatchewan. I occupied the window seat and tried not to vomit. There wasn't much said, but then again, there wasn't much to say. Nate's mother and aunt sat on the front lawn sunning themselves as we pulled in the driveway.

"Howya feelin, Chunks?"

They giggled and sipped their icy drinks. I shook my head and wore a look of shame only reserved for those humiliating moments that unfold in front of people you're still getting to know. News of my vomitty demise had spread and my reputation was now as tarnished and sullied as the tent floor.


*


I remember drinking Coronas and, because the female presence was limited, I remember drinking Smirnoff Triple Black. Getting drunk was a new development in my provincial, honor-roll universe. I finally understood the draw. Alcohol put everyone at ease. My jokes appeared to be funnier and, according to myself, I seemed vastly more charming.

A boyish zeal and naiveté steered the ship as I drank with unbridled confidence. We sat around the fire and joked and bickered and told stories. At some point, I ate most of a bag of beef jerky. The wicker chair, snatched off some neighbor's lawn earlier, lit up the night.

Paranoid that our illegal soiree would be busted, the cars were positioned to shield us from other campers, especially those with colicky children. An attempt was made to play beer pong, but the game was called off due to a dwindling supply of ping-pong balls and the swarms of giant moths magnetized to our flashlights.

Joe proposed a hopscotch tournament and a standing contest, motor skills that had become increasingly difficult as time passed. Rosy-cheeked and bundled up, I tipped back the bottles around the campfire, happy to be with my friends.


I don't recall anything after my seventh drink. From what they tell me, my night ended with me hugging a two liter bottle of water. In some instinctive reflex of blotto, I knew I had to hydrate. The evening drew to a close for everyone but me, and according to them, Party Alex was less than enthusiastic about going to bed.

A one-sided wrestling match took place as they heaved me into the tent. I laid down for a few minutes. Then, according to them, the spitting began.

Joe let off a rousing "Abandon Ship!" as I brought forth the contents of my stomach onto the tent floor, a soupy medley of beer, Smirnoff Ice and fireside beef jerky. In a flashback to a Jimi Hendrix biography he read, Joe knew I couldn't be on my back. So he, all five-foot-nothing, hoisted me by my belt and flipped the boozy heap of dead weight over. They retreated to their cars, leaving the soon-to-be-snoring teenager to sleep it off.


*

I put my clothes and the dirtied articles of the tent in the wash. After a nap, I ventured downstairs to rejoin the living. I stood on the back porch of Nate's house with his father Jim. He flashed a devilish grin at me, his bushy white mustache covering his top lip, and shook his head at the naive and embarrassed kid in front of him.

That weekend, fate assigned me a second family. They healed my wounds, empathetic to the notion that I knew absolutely nothing about overindulgence and its consequences. I cringed at the thought of dinner with my parents, explaining why I'd be paying a hefty fine to the state of New Hampshire and how I drank so much that I threw up in a tent belonging to someone else. Privileges would be lost, lashings would be given, a juvenile detention center would be contacted.

Jim rightly poked fun at me, recalling his own beer-soaked teenage follies as he clothes-pinned a large rectangular piece of blue to the crowded line.

"Looks like we got everything out. Your folks won't know a thing."

I paused.

"Those aren't my blankets," I said.

He cocked his head and furrowed his brow, the playful grin long gone.

"You mean to tell me," he started, "that I just cleaned your puke off my blankets thinking I'd save your ass with your parents?"

I paused, thinking of the best thing to say next.

"Yes," I said.

He smacked me on the back of my head as only an admonishing father could.

"Dumb ass," he said, and walked inside.

And with that formative thump, Chunks was baptized. I drove home the next day with a nickname given from my new family and an infamous story to be forever told.

But I learned a lot that weekend.

Speed and you'll get caught. Invite girls into the woods and they won't come. Drink too much and you'll wake up in a tent alone and hung over; puzzled by the half-digested beef jerky next to you, wondering how your shoes came to be so neatly tucked in the corner.