How Drunk Can You Get

The year was 1968. Janie, Sammy and I were enrolled in university. Our friend Micah was in a rigorous pre-med program and a member of a well-known Greek fraternity. He lived at the frat house. We lived in a shotgun house we rented for $60 a month from one of the professors at the U. We called our little gray abode the Gamma Delta Iota (God Damned Independents) sorority house. I was the introverted nerd. Sammy was the socialite. Janie was the glam gal wanna-be fashion designer.

I never understood why the hard-drinking, mostly jock frat gave Micah a bid. He was small, slender, not in the least athletic, a stereotypical “good boy” from rural Idaho, and academically inclined. Maybe they invited him because he could help them avoid flunking out. Whatever the reason, he was a square peg hammered into the round hole of a wild bunch.

It was the middle of the winter and colder than a “well digger’s knees,” as Dad used to say. We girls were sound asleep, having had no mischief to get into or high-stakes tests to cram for that would have kept us up all night. When, to paraphrase Clement Moore, there arose such a clatter we jumped from our beds to see what was the matter – at 2 a.m. Shortly after bar close.

On the other side of the door stood Micah. If you can call what he was doing standing. He was like an overcooked noodle, hanging off one of his gigantic Hawaiian football player frat brothers.  

Lambert, (you can tell I’m making these names up to protect the guilty, right?) dragged Micah into the kitchen, dumped him on one of the chairs at the table and said, “He’s ushering at church in the morning.” With that, Lambert simply left him there, as if we three girls with pillow creases on our faces were his collective mothers.

Micah was a boneless thing, slumped on the Formica table, part slug, part human. Blotto. Plastered. Stinko. I’m not sure any of those descriptions do service to the state Micah was in. He smelled like he’d fallen into a distillery vat and marinated. I’m not sure how he managed not to slither off the chair on the floor except that would have required movement.

We girls hatched a plan. Coffee. Eggs. Bacon. Toast. We didn’t think about the fact he might have drunk so much he’d stop breathing, like some frat boys did every year. At our age, we had limited problem solving skills on board. So, we were shooting for wide awake drunk, at the very least. We were out of bacon and eggs. Since I had a convertible, we decided to put him in it and I’d drive to the store with the top down. I'd wear ten layers of clothing, and see if the bitter cold would wake Micah up.

I went out, got the car started, and put the top down. Not necessarily an easy thing in icy weather, what with needing to snap down the covering and all. Then it took all of us to get him down the steps and into the car. Micah collapsed against the passenger's door, his head bobbling over the side, a line of drool dripping down. I figured it might be for the best, in case he heaved. The outside of a car is easier to clean off frozen puke than the inside, after all.

Damn it was cold! Frostbite was not in our vocabulary or I might have had second thoughts. Kids! What can I say? We do the best with what few brains we have at that stage in our lives. We’re probably lucky any of us made it into adulthood.

By the time we got to Quik-Stop Micah was moaning a little. No stomach contents spewed in or on the car. All good!

It took a little doing, but I got him out of the car and doing a drunken imitation of standing, with one of his arms draped over my shoulder. I was capable of bucking hay bales so I was strong for a woman my size. Once I got him situated, as well as anyone can position someone whose bones have turned to mush, we made our staggering way into the all-night market.

Not looking right or left I lurched back to the cold case where I juggled a dozen eggs and a couple packages of bacon without dropping them or Micah. I was growing concerned about getting urped on with his increasing groans and grunts of distress.

Stumbling our way to the front we got to the check-out counter. I looked up and, lo and behold, was a man with a blue bandana over his nose like an Old West bandit. The woman at the register was stuffing money into a bag. Which meant…I was about to have an even worse night.

Here I am with a grunting, groaning drunk slung over my shoulder, eggs and bacon in the crook of one arm, and a driver’s license and a ten-dollar bill in the front pocket of my jeans. I kept my mouth shut instead of saying “Howdy, cold out, isn’t it? I never thought of wearing a bandana to keep warm.”

He looked from me to Micah and back. Micah picked that moment to belch loudly and we all flinched, not knowing what was coming next. Did I drop the eggs and bacon or drop Micah? Both? Hands in the air? What? I stared speechlessly at the man, waiting for a clue as to what my next action was going to be.

The robber, a guy even shorter than Micah, shook his head and said, “You’ve got enough trouble, lady.” He was right. I had too much on my hands as it was.

Micah grunted loudly and started making retching noises. The man took off, probably afraid of getting puked on. The clerk slammed the till shut, reached under the counter, pulled out a purse and walked out into the night without so much as a coat.

“Hey, lady, I need to pay for this!” I said.

“I quit. This is the third time I’ve been held up. Leave the money on the counter. No one cares.”

So, I put some money on the counter and half walked, half dragged my gagging friend outside.

The pay phone on the front of the store was missing the receiver so I had no way to call the police. Not to mention I didn’t want to stand out in the cold and wait for them. And Micah was underage to drink, so I didn’t want to go there with the cops. We didn’t have a phone at home. Being a Pole I defaulted to the old proverb, not my circus, not my monkeys. If the woman who just quit didn't want to call her boss or call the police from a phone in the back, that was her business. I hoped she wouldn’t freeze to death before she got to where she was going.

Micah upchucked in the parking lot. Better than in the car, I say! There was no such thing as a car wash then—we’d have had to clean it by hand. I drove home with Micah making hiccupping sounds and rolling his head in the bitter cold. I remember having to turn the defroster on to keep the windshield from icing over. We got back to the house and he didn’t decorate the car with puke. A win for me! The lawn was not so fortunate.

By the time we got back Janie had a pot of perked coffee on the stove that was stout enough to stand a spoon up in. Even Sammy knew how to make buttered toast. They tended to Micah while I whipped up eggs and bacon.

In between us pouring coffee down him and shoving food into him he made offerings to the porcelain god. By the time dawn broke we had ourselves a wide-awake drunk on our hands. What he needed was time to sleep it off. What he did not have was time. Wrecked or not, he was expected to be the usher at church. No phone, remember? Couldn't call in sick.

Loaded Mr. Reeks-Of-Booze-And-Vomit into the car and took him to his frat house. This time the top was up, the heater was on, and the smell was ghastly. I beat on the door until one of his fellow lushes answered. I guess the house mother was asleep, or maybe off to church services herself. It wasn’t too long before they had him showered, shaved, dressed in his Sunday-go-to-meeting suit, and back at the car. Why didn’t they take him? Probably still sleeping it off. Why was I sitting outside in the car? Because I was a patsy. And Micah was my friend, he was a good guy, and this was totally unlike him.  

We arrived on time - a minor miracle. Pastor Wills was waiting. We made it up the stairs to the chapel on the second floor of the campus building. I motioned Pastor Wills over and said, “We tried to sober him up, but…” 

Micah passed out, face first, on the carpet as he was walking toward the front of the nave. I’d like to say it was graceful. It wasn’t. At least he didn’t break his nose or bleed all over. Wills said he’d look after him so I took off, longing to get some shut eye after an all-nighter with a plastered man.

What’s the moral of the story?

I hear people my age gripe about Millennials. Irresponsible. Drink too much. Use drugs. The next time grandpa starts harping, have him read about Micah. 

We were the tail end of the Flower Power generation. Even my candy apple red convertible had huge flower stickers on it. I knew people who came back from ‘Nam hooked on heroin. Lots of people smoked pot. Drinking was outrageous in those days. Millennials aren't so bad. Old fogies like to forget how crazy we were.

What about Micah, you might ask?

As far as we girls knew, that was Micah’s only descent into drunken madness. It was probably some frat ritual that went horribly wrong with a clean-cut kid from a sheltered home in a small town. As a pre-med student, he went back to doing his nose to the grindstone, shoulder to the wheel routine. He continued to live in a frat house with goings on much like the 1978 film Animal House. Toga parties. Wild nights with sorority sisters. You name it, it happened there. He was not Mr. Personality so maybe all the frenetic gatherings made it easier for him to meet people. Who knows? We never dated him, we were simply his friends.

That frat almost had their campus charter revoked a few times over sex, drugs, wild parties, fights, disturbing the peace, and rock-and-roll. It is still there and still probably as raunchy as ever. I can only assume their house mother was deaf, dumb, blind, and paid off.

I transferred overseas on an exchange program and then to a different stateside university by the time Micah finished his studies. He and I kept in touch with Janie, which is how I learned he eventually became the only doctor in a tiny community in a poverty pocket. That’s the Micah we knew, the selfless one who somehow ended up living at Animal House, but grew up to be a pillar of the community and a deacon in his church. You did us proud, Micah.