#13. The Awakening (Thursday, January 5, 2012)

#13. The Awakening (Thursday, January 5, 2012)

What was your best day…of making up for lost time?

Just like my relationship with a lot of other things, my relationship with alcohol has gone through some significant extremes throughout my lifetime. Except, for that, it was less of jumping around wildly by day (like my relationship with Steven Fennessy, #51, #17), but more of a single hyper-low followed by a extended high (#68).

Basically, up until my third year of university – during the prime drinking years – I had some kind of fundamental problem with drinking: basically taking the whole “binge drinking and drinking-and-driving is bad” thing and extrapolating that to take the whole activity as pointless and damaging. And as has been made abundantly clear to this point, when I have a fundamental problem with something, I have a fundamental problem. Also, I wasn’t very socially active, so a lot of it was also resentment at something I couldn’t be a part of.

Then, in third year, as part of my “let’s try and rethink everything about my life” process (#34, #28), I did try drinking a few times – by myself, at the sports bar, one drink (maybe two) for the whole game. A few more times like this in the first part of this senior year, but I had never actually gotten drunk in my life. Until this Thursday night.

Note: It goes without saying, but this day took place before every other drinking-related experience on this list (notably, #115 later that year).

It started at around seven at night. Tommy Tong (#121, #28), Kurt Huang (#115, #82), Mike (#115), and Jacob – all friends and classmates in my Financial Math program – and I were at this executive appointment meeting for our program’s student association. Mike and Jacob gave speeches for executive positions, and they got voted in1.2

To celebrate, the five of us go to this “plastic sword fighting on a bouncy castle” activity that they have set up in the Student Life Centre for some reason. We all take turns beating each other up with plastic swords, then head to the university’s Bombshelter Pub.

There, we all get a table and our drinks. This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this in a group, and this immeasurable good feeling just comes over me. Like, somehow the two pitchers of beer sitting on the table between us have created a genuine forget-about-all-the-serious-shit-in-life-and-let’s-just-have-good-fucking-time aura to the whole thing. And it’s the first time a long time, definitely in my adult life, that I’ve felt anything like that. (The feeling is so strong that from then on I always felt that five was the ideal number for a social group hanging out.)

Pretty soon, it comes out that I haven’t ever drank like this before. Which is followed by several gasps of astonishment around the table, as well as a challenge from Kurt and Mike.

I end up annihilating the challenge, and then some; as I join the guys in doing my first ever tequila shot as well as sharing several more of those ten-dollar Mill Street pitchers (outlasting Tommy and Jacob). Turns out, I actually quite liked this whole drinking thing.

And not long after, in what seems to me like a sudden flash, the whole pub devolves into some kind of dance club. And so, I join Kurt and Mike in the center of the floor. And it turns out, I quite liked this dancing thing as well. (I was, in their words, “dancing like a boss out there”.)

And by the time my night has wrapped up, I’m feeling like the biggest hotshot ever. (Though on the way back to our dorm, Kurt does gives me the rather ominous warning: “You’ll feel that tomorrow.”)

But this was only the start for an awesome couple of days, crossing between all the different friend groups I had established in the past year and a half, that really awakened a lot in me:

  • Thursday: All day, I feel like death like I’ve never felt before. I meet our new roommate Rahul (#115) that afternoon3. Then I need to mail out a few Master’s applications at the drugstore, so I bus there. And on the bus, I run into David Huang – my childhood best friend (#98, #66, #49) who’s also going to school at Waterloo (different department though4). He’s there with Dennis Bei (#112)5 and another guy Peter. They invite me to go to Morty’s, the famous Waterloo wing bar, with them – and while I initially decline (having vowed to myself not to go anywhere near a bar for a long time), I decide to join them. It ends up being a really surreal experience: kind of like I’m doing something “cool but forbidden” by being in a bar in my current state. It’s my first time having bar wings as well, and we share forty between us (it’s really, really good)…while I make especially clear that I’m not drinking any alcohol (they don’t either).
  • Friday: Cranford (#32) has brought his Mahjong set, so him, my best friend Masato (#73, #32), and I are excited to play Mahjong for the first time together. We recruit Kurt Huang and Vanessa (another suitemate) to play as well in our dorm. But then, halfway through Kurt says he’s feeling a bit sick and goes to the washroom. He doesn’t rejoin the game.
  • Saturday: Our bigger group of 12 or so classmates has a booked lunch at this Chinese restaurant (organized by Tommy), but Kurt doesn’t come because he’s still sick. Following that, I go with Mike to his place (he’s our neighbor) and help him rewrite some grad school applications. Then Masato comes over and I help him with his grad school applications. All the while, we hear Kurt in the washroom for essentially the entire afternoon. (He tells me later that it had to be the “Sunshine Express”6 he had on Friday, and that he never knew his body contained that much liquid). I end up working with Masato until late at night, we have some Sabatasso’s deep dish mini-pizzas7, and he ends up sleeping on my couch.
  • Sunday: David and Dennis had invited me to their place for turkey that night, and we…have turkey. David and I entertain the others with stories about our silly childhood fights8. A few other people are there, including this girl Kelly who a couple years later becomes David’s wife (they’re not dating yet at the time). And we end up all going to this huge indoor tennis court nearby to play tennis (David’s future wife is surprisingly good).

Everything I had been missing for the first three-and-a-half years of university, all crammed into five glorious days.

  1. There was one speech by this girl who started out by saying: “I’m not actually part of Financial Math…”, at which point Tommy interrupts her and tells her to get the hell out of the room.
  2. There was actually a tie for Jacob’s position. But there was one guy who was undecided. The other four us pressure him hard to vote for Jacob. And he finally relents. Following which another person says he wants to rethink his vote, and all of us shout in unison: “NO!”
  3. He’d been partying in India for the entire Christmas break and then some.
  4. Also, by then it’s been six years since I spoke to him last, so we’ve kind of drifted apart.
  5. I’d just met and made friends with him in my risk management class two days ago. I end up making really good friends with him, and he and Masato come down to Duke the year after to visit me (and to catch a Blue Devils game, which they miss because we got the time wrong).
  6. One of the many Chinese restaurant on campus that looks sketchy and would probably fail any food inspection. I’d imagine Kurt never went there again.
  7. Those should be way more popular than they are.
  8. Like the time I physically attacked him when we were four in front of our parents because he wanted to watch “Batman Forever” and I was scared of it (or rather, the title).