My mom always told me never to drink without eating. It was my first time. Of course, my parents drink exactly 1.5 glasses of red wine per day. To them, blacking out is a scary, alien concept -- the generation that made their bodies chemistry sets for a Skittles factory of hallucinogenics no one knew were bad for you has yet to fathom that their sons and daughters black out frequently and sometimes on purpose.
I've never heard of anyone going from first drink to oblivion as fast as I did. Apparently, I have the hippocampus of a goldfish. And this was no garden-variety blackout. The people surrounding me kept me talking and moving, the momentum of drinking was still going forward, and the formal itself hadn't even started yet.
Hours passed, no one knows how many. At least four. I have two snapshot memories during that time: a dark image of the bus to the formal, onto which champagne is traditionally smuggled, and a dark image of the dance floor at the formal itself, a country inn in Lyme, N.H.
The sorority was supposed to provide dinner. It didn't. My date told me later that she waited for me as I vomited in the bathroom and eventually gave up, assuming I'd safely pass out -- which is the last thing anyone knows about my whereabouts. Everyone else was too drunk to know that I was too drunk to know where I was.
Hours later I came to inside a dark convenience store I'd never seen before. The store was closed and I was alone. I was eating -- strolling the aisles and eating Chex Mix. I didn't know how I'd gotten in at the time, but later I dimly recalled breaking a window with my elbow and climbing inside. Small town New Hampshire, no alarm. My sport jacket probably prevented massive blood loss (you bleed faster drunk, of course). After managing not to drink until my heart stopped, it was the second of the night's three brushes with death.
Still blurry, I found the freezer and took a pint of ice cream. I still don't know why I broke into that store or what I was doing all those lost hours, but the foraging supports my leading theory: abject hunger. Months later, I had an unexpectedly friendly conversation with the owner of the store on a bright sober afternoon. After a pause, he said, "So Alex, you couldn't find a spoon, could you?" I had no idea what he was talking about. "There were teeth marks in the Ben and Jerry's."
After the ice cream I gathered the shards of my reason and decided I should at least leave the building and determine where I was.
On my way out, I saw two things I liked and took them with me: two bottles of $9.95 red wine and the Sunday New York Times. After I found the back door and fumblingly unlocked it, I stumbled into the New Hampshire night with wine in each hand and the Times in my armpit, bleeding onto my nicest clothes.
I saw nothing. Trees and scattered houses, maybe, but no cars, no people, no gas station, no obvious way out. It was around three in the morning. My cell charger had broken a week earlier: no phone.
I don't think I would have known what to do if I had been sober, and I was not close to sober. I didn't know what I was close to at all, actually: I didn't remember arriving to the formal, so I didn't recognize anything around me -- Hanover? Near Hanover? Walkable? I couldn't know.
At this point a few friends were back on campus and beginning to realize that something was wrong. A series of frantic e-mails were exchanged, and one of my roommate's has survived: "It's fine, guys. I'm sure he's just blacked out and wandering New Hampshire. The state, not the dorm." There'd been two buses back from the formal. They'd left at different times, and it was assumed that I was on the other one.
I was lost. I remember wondering whether I could make it outside until daylight, but it was November. I decided to determine which house looked friendliest and knock on the door.
I saw a nice white one nearby, put the wine down in the yard and knocked and hoped. An angry old man came to the door. I can't imagine what he thought when he saw me, but the store owner would tell me that I "couldn't have picked a worse house. When he came to the door, his wife was standing behind him with a shotgun. God's honest truth."
I was not shot. I managed to slur something about having lost my Dartmouth group, and he offered me a phone call. Without my cell, though, I knew no numbers. He took the phone and said, "It's your lucky day." He called someone he obviously knew well and told me to wait outside. His wife wished me a happy Thanksgiving.
Flashing lights, multiple police cars. Talking to an officer. I still had the newspaper under my arm. He asked why my clothes were torn up, why I was bleeding. The police report records my response: "It is old blood. I was at a formal, it was a 'dress in old grubby clothes thing' and this is what I wore." He pointed out that the blood was fresh and asked if I'd been drinking. I said, "Not more than usual." Where? "SAE," I lied. He asked for my ID, saw that I was nineteen, and cuffed me for internal possession.
Back to the station in the back of his cruiser. The building was tiny. I was questioned by the matronly chief -- Mama Cop, in my re-tellings. I gave them my basic information, but I'd begun to sober up and knew enough to stop talking when she asked what happened. The size of everything, and how bad -- something awful is happening to me -- was slowly settling on my shoulders, but I mostly just wanted to get home. (The more accurate "I did something awful" was not yet a thought I was ready for.)
They quickly connected me with the broken-into store. They turned out my pant cuffs and found glass, took pictures of my lacerations, took my shoes for footprinting. (To this day, they have my shoes.)
I was charged on the spot with burglary, a felony -- years in jail, no voting. Another cop drove me back to Dartmouth at what felt like unsafe speed. It was around five in the morning, and I was dropped off in the middle of campus. The cop de-cuffed me and told me to stay out of trouble, and I walked to my dorm. Andy Blancero '08 was still awake in the common room. I told him the story. Then I went up to my room and told my roommate.
"Well, you topped me."
Unfortunately, it was only the beginning.
