The first time I truly got drunk – not including a few games of just the tip in Noah’s basement with Sean, a 12-pack of Coors Original, and some oregano – was at my house, sophomore year, after winter exams.

My parents had gone to inspect lava rock in the Canadian Rockies or bike across Kazakhstan or some such thing, leaving me alone on Occom Ridge with sixty bucks, Esker, and a computer that downloaded porn slower than my hand jack would have liked.

My best friend at the time, Rian Wenti, had effortlessly constructed a Power Hour Mix CD on his computer in “The Basement.” Brian’s computer had always been good to us, giving us Hellcats, AOL chatrooms, and Jenny McCarthy’s unbleached pubic hair.

For a couple of handjobs, Bom Tirner got us a 24-pack of Bud Light.

Around noon, we finished our last tests, grabbed our backpacks from our lockers on the downstairs hallway, stared at Tiffany’s tomboy boobs, and high-tailed it to my house.

Up in my room, me, Brian, and someone who I can’t remember (most likely Gabe, which is embarrassing to admit) poured beer into Mexican shot glasses, while Aerosmith, Primus, and Everclear blasted on my 3-disc changer.

60 minutes, 60 shots of beer. Every minute the song changed - in this case from Sweet Baby James to Black Hole Sun.

Brian and I had figured out, repeatedly, that:
1 shot = 1.5 oz
60 shots = 90 oz
1 beer = 12 oz
60 shots = 7.5 beers

Seven-and-a-half beers in an hour. We were assured of being drunk.

All the while, Max was supposed to come over. Yes, that’s right, this story is about Max. He was supposed to come over, but he was at Marty and Nancy’s. They were out of town too, at a furniture expo or a swingers party or something, all of which was expected by that time in our drinking careers - or lack there of. Max kept telling us on the phone that he was just going to take one more tequila shot and then he was going to come over.

After the power hour, I’m not sure exactly what happened. I know that I pulled my pants down in that closet-of-a-downstairs bathroom and Brian took a picture of my hairy ass.  We forget that at 16, my ass hair was an international point of interest. I still have the Polaroid someplace in a shoebox, on top of a bunch of letters from a recovering alcoholic I consistently enabled for blacked-out sex in college.

(Do it all again in a second.)

Anyways, back in Hanover, we made our way to the bottom of my hill, where H5 used to pick me and Bill Wittinger up to go to the Ray School.

We were standing around, shitfaced, and Max came running down the hill from the direction of Webster Avenue. It was the end of January, with snow banks surrounding us, and he was wearing that stupid Mardi Gras tee shirt, his faded jeans, and some shitty pair of Asics running shoes. His face and his bare arms were bright red. His grand entrance crescendoed when he rammed face-first into a snow bank at our feet, bursting with joy and excitement from managing to get so drunk.

(Gabe) and Brian went off, probably to check in with their parents, and Max and I marched ourselves straight to EBA’s, where we managed to organize a booth. As we all can imagine, he was completely impossible to deal with. He wanted to hear nothing of him being mentally handicapped in public. He was going to be loud, and stupid, and when I didn’t play along, he was glad to start some sort of altercation to entertain himself.

Max may have gone to the salad bar after ordering, I can’t completely remember, but it makes sense. When his EBA Chicken Sandwich with everything came, he covered both sides in ketchup and carefully folded over the bun.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, as he got up from the booth, his sandwich untouched.

Soon, the waitress came.

Out on Allen Street, Max had projectile vomited all over the sidewalk. I came in time to witness a the steaming, pink trajectory splashing off the concrete onto the brown, melting snow.

“I gotta get out of here,” he said, hunched over and spitting, puke all over the front of that stupid shirt.

Later on that day, Max called me from his house.

“I walked to Ledyard Bridge and got a ride home from Hrian Bunt’s dad.

“I’m never going to drink again.”

One of Alex’s worst anxieties has always stemmed from the relative proximity of Bend to San Francisco, and this fear was fully realized when Saul, sick and tired of the blatant liberalism of the Bay Area, packed a suitcase full of dirty clothes, sports jackets, and moustache wax and purchased a one-way train ticket north.

After making himself comfortable on Tim’s couch, turning Tim’s study into a walk-in closet, and joining an upscale local gym, the only thing left for Saul to do was inform his new landlord that he would be staying for an undetermined length of time, fully expected board as well as room, and would not be paying so much as a penny in rent while in residence.

Although his primary goal in Bend was to drive his friends’ meat-pie stand into the ground, Saul was also keen on finding work after months and months of endless loafing. However, he was shocked to discover that the media accounts of the recession which he had previously written off as yellow journalism turned out to have some truth to them after all. And in short order, the desperate times drove the hapless hobo into the always-booming migrant labor industry.

You can see him here, making full use of his Master’s Degree as he picks juniper berries at $30 a bucket for the local gin distillery. 

It is hard, thankless work, but fortunately there is plenty of down-time as well, even with the hundreds of hours per week that binge-drinking with Mitch takes up. Naturally enough, Alex and Saul’s preferred leisure activity is to saunter down to the local bathhouse, where they join all the other couples in steamy gratuitous displays of what Max bizarrely termed “Romosexualism.”

But whether picking berries or frolicking in steambaths, the one thing that doesn’t change is the crisp line of waxed hair running across his upper lip. That always remains consistent.*

* This actually did change as well. Saul – allegedly – was found with a razor in Alex and Mitch’s bathroom just before getting in a bitter argument with Enterprise and barreling down Route 101 in a bright-red Cobalt, adorned in a vivid pink tie, to a Motel 6 in Gilroy, California, prior to an interview for a coveted Professorship.