The first time I ever got drunk was the second week of college. Jolene, Payal, Ashu, Alessandro and I went to a party where all the girls were misogynistically required to ingest Peppermint Schnapps shots off of an ice luge built by a group of frat boys. Looking back, I'm offended by both the sexism and the lack of hygiene involved in this undertaking. However, after one shot, I was the life of the party. Then a window fell on Payal as she was pointing out the boy she had a crush on, who was seemingly passed out, on the lawn of this enormously dumpy frat house with an excess of wooden and leather surfaces that were oddly both sticky and dusty all at once, and I was so afraid for her, I started crying. I had convinced myself she had a brain hemorrhage and would be dead by the next morning. And she was my friend and I loved her. And back then I didn't have that many friends. Hell, I still don't have that many friends. most of the people in this story are still the closest friends I have. That night I puked into a wastebasket as Jolene held my hair up. Payal was still alive the next morning. She lives in Chicago with her husband. We have slumber parties whenever I'm in Chicago. We order dessert-for-dinner room service and bill our respective companies. Jolene is in New York. I'll see her in two weeks and maybe we'll take a trip to Magnolia? Alessandro still hasn't emailed me the co-op letter about feces fling-a-thons that I requested a couple of weeks ago, but I still love him. In the end, it all turned out well. That was my last experience with ice luges.