Vodka is Made From Dinosaur Bones

He does these things you know, being a planner and a doer and a person of interest, he organizes these once a month, different liquors each time. Which gives us all an excuse to get drunk, and K. an excuse to make charts, and P. an excuse to smoke a cigar even though he quit cigarettes, and J. an excuse to bring up ancient British queens in conversation. K. is an encyclopedia, and J. is a Bullfinches Mythology, and L. controls things in space. They are interesting drunks.

This month was vodka. Since vodka is nothingness, is indeed the complete absence of something like hope or work or free countries or a life without Russian borders, we did it blind. 9 mason jars full of mystery nothingness, and we guessed.

9 shots of nothingness, of bone vapors and wheat blood and potato tears, which we smelled and sniffed and sipped and cringed (I brought those mixers for after the tasting yo, we were purists at first, but they sat there laughing at me in their juicy way, as I took taste after taste, until by the end I was already drunk and ready to never taste straight vodka again ever)

I guessed wrong on almost every one. My favorite turned out to be Ketel One, but hey, the local boy, the Paramount from Berea Rd, my go to freezer bottle of ten dollar goodness, it came in second only to Grey Goose. There was a bottle with an LED sign on it, that you could program to say things, any things. And The Rest? Imagine having to drink a bottle of nailpolish remover, only really slowly. Smirnoff came in dead last. Dead.

But then, when it was open free for all and after I had huddled in the snow with the cigar an appropriate amount of time, then is when A. started pouring the shots, and so many shots were had. Just sitting there, talking to the new girl with my birthday, over and over again, fill, tap, drink. I love the tap. The tap is my new favorite thing. Tap. Books! Tap. Boys! Tap. Projects! Tap. Oh god with the tapping.

By three in the morning, it was me and the 2 girls and the roommate left, and I was so drunk, I was so almost but not quite embarrassingly drunk. The kind of drunk where you think the people in the room with you are like the best kind of people that have ever existed. E! She's so cute! And J! So polished! And P! Stand up guy! In the morning, they were still all those things, but really morning was still far away for me. It was at least three drunken emails away, fucking smartphone Little Brother.

A. got up from his ritual mid-tasting nap, and then we had a little dance party for a minute, and I reverted to what I always revert to, taking pictures of building, of doorways and floors and windows. So much more fun than trying to catch people in moments, buildings stay still for you. I am always the last one standing. It is cold. Coldly satisfying, like I get to make sure the doors are locked and the babies safely tucked away, and I'm just one of those girls who can never go to sleep when there might be something to pay attention to. Cold like actually cold, like shivering exhaustion cold, which makes sleep so much better.

4 hours later, I woke up and we all made breakfast no they all made breakfast and I watched, and I decided that in fact I had died in the middle of the night, and I was dead now, but I could handle it, being dead is just a thing. We ate in the middle of the ruins, there was some conversation about ethics and I was being surly a little about Hearst and the duplicity of media (I am so full of bullshit, it's like being drunk fills me up with word spit and then I'm drowned for days) and I drove home, and the entire way back I was convinced I had completely forgotten how to drive. My car was a bike and I was falling off. My car was a machine, and I was toy girl.

I got home, filled up a gallon jug of water, and just lay on the couch for the entire day watching Hercule Poirot movies and documentaries about ancient tsunamis on Crete, and Masterpiece Theater movies about girls in Jane Austen novels.

And now here we are.