APOLOGIES FOR THE LONG-WINDED diversion from malt liquor.

“You hid a full six-pack of malt liquor in the desert?” Jerry smirked.

“Yes,” I replied in complete confidence. “It’s lodged under a cactus where nobody will find it.”

“Including you, no doubt. How long has it been there?”

In our world, it was not unusual to store an illegal alcohol stash for months then forget completely about where you placed it. While in high school, I did that once with a few six-packs I carted up north to do trout fishing with a friend. We took a full case of twenty-four cans in a cooler, but could only drink fourteen of them during two days of predictably poor results.

Unaware they were still there, the remaining ten cans and a small, dead fish sloshed around in the cooler water for a week, poaching in the sun in the Ford’s trunk. My mother’s olfactory soon went on high alert from the stench, and she let me know she found the stash with an ‘I see you caught only one fish’ comment.

I thought about Jerry’s question for a moment. Two weeks? Three?

“Less than a month,” I replied, beaming at my ingenuity.

Since the brew was no doubt getting stale in the sun, my plan that day was to impress my friends by telling them about the stash, speed through the desert pitted with ground hog holes to find it, split the liquid treasure between us four wrestlers, and be none-the-worse on our return. Another successful venture to brag about to the women.

“No way I’m drinking month-old beer that’s been broiling in the sun all that time.” Jerry then reconsidered. “Did you bring a cooler? Any ice?”

Jerry was a weight class above me, and wrestling had just begun. Being a boys-only sport at the time, like many sports, the ‘mat-maids’ were new additions in the mix. They would pensively sit at the edge of the mat and cheer us on to pin or win. Indeed, that team of non-elites lacked the visibility and status of cheer or pom-pom, but it was nice having them watch us in our muscular frenzy.

Jerry had been going out with one of them, wondering whether he should partake in a noon desert drinking foray or have lunch with his love interest.

“What do you think, guys?” he queried, frowning at our other two wrestling friends.

“Let’s do it,” they responded without thinking, which was very typical of wrestlers.

So we loaded up in the Ford after the lunch bell rang and headed due east, straight from the school lot, across the two-lane, and onto the dusty and roadless desert, dodging creosotes, palo verde trees, and cacti along the way.

“Shit, dude, can you drive any faster?” Jerry asked as we bolted to and fro in the Ford. He was riding shotgun next to me, and the other two were in the back getting the hell beat out of their butts.

It was a facetious comment, obviously. I was tearing a streak across that desolate brown wasteland, worried about the time. My mind was affixed on making this illegal and improper venture work successfully without getting caught.

After the bell rang, we’d have ten minutes to get to the car and load-up. Fifteen minutes of driving to locate the malt liquor, as it had been a while since I placed it there. Twenty minutes to guzzle down the brew and shoot the bull about wrestling or planned or actual sexual escapades. Ten to get back, and five to run to class. That was a full hour, but it would require skin-of-the-teeth timing.

However, I was having trouble finding the spot and drove around more than fifteen minutes searching for the hidden brew. Jerry was getting noticeably impatient.

“Not worth it, asshole, and I’m hungry for lunch. Turn around and drive back,” he demanded.

The other two sitting in the back agreed, and I started explaining how we should just skip lunch to lose wrestler weight. Just then, I spotted a silvery glint beneath a cholla.

“That’s it!” I exclaimed joyfully. After slamming on the brakes and kicking up clouds of dust, we piled out of the car to grab our lunchtime delight.

“Fuck!” Jerry screamed. “It’s not just warm. This is hot shit. Who the hell wants hot malt liquor?”

It was so hot, he was barely able to hold the can in his hand. The other two backed off.

“Wimps! People drink hot beer all the time,” I claimed arrogantly.

“What the hell idiots would do that? Nobody drinks hot beer.”

“No,” I countered, “in Germany, they drink it at exactly this temperature.”

“Bullshit,” Jerry remanded. “I’m not touching any of this crap.”

My ingenious lunchtime plan was fading fast in the noontime heat. “Look, let’s get it out of the sun first to cool off.” I brilliantly considered that, sitting a few minutes in the shade of an otherwise hot car in late fall, the beer might cool off enough to drink.

“What the fuck, dude? That’ll make you sick as a dog,” my angry friend in back mentioned.

I was steadfast, however, and grabbed the remaining five cans loosely jangling in their cardboard holder.

“When the hell are we getting out of here?” Jerry asked. Although he rarely spoke a sentence in any mood without a swear word, I knew he was hungry, thirsty, and not happy.

Grabbing the snap ring on one of the cans, I pulled it back nonchalantly to prove my manhood. I could drink hot beer, no problem.

As the three onlookers anticipated yet failed to warn me, the beer exploded straight upward. It poured onto the worn blue headliner and across the Ford’s console, spraying everywhere for a moment and settling onto my jeans. Quickly shoving the can out the open window, I waited for the bubbling to stop, ignoring the screams and taunts from my buddies.

Jerry was incredulous. “You scumbag! You got us all wet. You’re fucking really drinking that shit?”

“Why not?” I countered, lifting the half-empty can to my lips.

The still foaming liquid was not just warm, it was nearly ablaze on my fingers. I understood that fully because half of the hot liquid was now soaked into my jeans.

“You’ll smell like a skid row bum when you get back to class, shithead,” he quipped.

With a continuing air of certainty, I took another swig of the abominable fluid. “You worry too much. It’ll dry off and nobody will know.”

By that time, all three friends were well down the road of anxious wrestler anger.

“Wait. I’m almost done, you guys!” I pleaded after gulping down a third half-filled can. The last thing I wanted to do was to waste good contraband, especially knowing that I could have ventured out one far cooler evening to do this with Elena at my side. With her, I’d have been far better prepared to drink the rancid stuff. Ice it down good. Sit and talk for a bit as it cooled.

But there I was, my pants covered in pungent malt liquor stench, with three half-cans of hot brew churning in my gullet and three friends about to eject me from my own car and drive back to school without me.

Two cans remained unopened, and I couldn’t leave them both, particularly when staring wistfully at the one baking on the ground that Jerry had cast aside minutes before. “Sure you guys don’t want the last few? I’ll drink the one on the ground out there.”

That was it. Jerry leaned over and grabbed the keys, jammed them into the ignition, and started the Ford with a loud grinding of the starter. He knew better, but this was appropriate recompense for his pain.

“Drive!” he demanded.

Heads were nodding furiously in the back of the car. Heads with irate faces. I threw a full can, a full, unopened, sixteen ounce can out the window, to join the others discarded in the dirt. One partially filled can remained between my legs, so I placed it out the window to cool off while speeding toward the school.

“Fucker!” the two in the back seat were yelling. Their windows were open and their faces were sprayed with the foam that emerged at every ground hog hole we hit.

We arrived just in time to make the class bell, and my three friends rushed out like they never wanted to see the inside of that car again. I stood in the parking lot, watching them run to class, and instantly realized two important things: I smelled like stale beer, and my stomach didn’t want me to run to class.

It didn’t want me to walk, either.

This was a clear moment of teenage self-reflection. Should I go to class and possibly throw-up, or should I go to the school nurse, confess my lunchtime sins, stay in her office puking stale beer, stench up the place, get into severe trouble with the principal, and disappoint my poor mother?

Mom. She had enough on her hands. My older sister had recently flipped her life’s direction entirely, going from leading the pom-pom squad at the first part of her senior year to subsequently falling in love with the class hippie with hair to his waist.

It was the early 70’s, mind you, and long hair on boys was highly frowned upon. He was the rare hippie, in fact, in a school comprised mostly of matching male-female versions of cool jocks, cowboys, and band-orchestra geeks. Now my sister was off at college, living with said hippie, and my mom had just divorced the evil wife-beater.

No, I decided. I’d rather risk embarrassing bodily eruptions from either end while in class than place more weight on that poor woman’s shoulders.

I ambled carefully to class and sat down slowly in my seat, a minute after the bell rang. The teacher, who liked me, cast an unusual evil eye. Did I smell that bad? I looked around and every student within a few yards knew that I had been drinking.

My color was apparently pale white, and my teacher asked, “Greg, are you feeling ill?”

Those two scenarios ripped again through my gray matter, but the latter one was looking more likely. Inebriated and woefully sick to my stomach, I quickly envisioned a third possible scenario that might work.

“Yes, ma’am. I threw up this morning before school.”

This tale was unusually ingenious. It allayed suspicions of probable lunchtime antics, which were always in wide use by many students. If I was sick beforehand, she couldn’t accuse me of desert misdeeds, despite the fact that I reeked.

Then I added the clincher: “My sister was sick a few days ago. I must have caught it.” With that, I twitched and jolted a little as if an upchuck was imminent.

Though she knew my little sister, I surmised she wouldn’t go to the trouble of hunting her down on campus to ascertain the veracity of my claim. In an amazing act of grace, she didn’t rise from her desk, sniff the air, and send me to the dreaded Office.

“Go home,” she gently advised. “Get some rest and try not to get anyone else sick.”

By her last words, she knew what likely happened. There were others in the desert with me, and they too might be ill from drinking the same concoction that was making me sick.

I slowly rose from the desk, ignoring the classmate snickers as I exited through the door toward my Ford. Upon opening the door in that sacred old beast, I finally puked-up the putrid stomach contents, mostly as foam.

I recall waking up around 6 p.m., laid out on the back seat. Missed wrestling practice. The lot was empty, save for a few athletes’ cars, and my poor, blue Ford’s interior was rancidly stewing in its unfair share of beer vomit.

Regurgitating these memories from my brain is a thing of wonder for me, although very likely just me, alone. It’s not that my memories are more interesting or meaningful than anyone else’s, it’s just that you, presumably a descendant of mine in some way, might find them slightly worth the read since the times you are living in are likely somewhat different than these.

***

I was just in the shower singing “Werewolves of London,” then “London Homesick Blues.” Classic songs and artists. They reminded me of how fortunate I was to live through that unusual and brief epoch of great music. Thinking about that first song, however, brought me back to one crazy night in college; admittedly, another alcohol-fueled one.

It was a late fall Saturday, and I was with a few mates at a friend’s house in downtown Tempe. We were all tired of the constant press of homework and decided to celebrate the approaching end of the semester by drinking too much beer and wine.

As the evening drew late, the air ceased being an oven, so we turned off the air conditioner, opened the front door and left the screen door closed. ‘Werewolves of London’ was blaring on the stereo, and we were verbally jousting with our usual jokes and taunts.

“Know what?” I belched. “This song makes me want to howl at the top of my lungs.”

Drew, the owner of the little bungalow, thought this was a lousy idea. “Don’t you dare go outside tonight. It’s bad enough the music is so loud. My neighbors on every side are old and quite grumpy about what’s happening to their neighborhood, given all the rowdy students moving here. Don’t give them an excuse to use you for target practice.”

I thought he was joking. “What?” I yelled, barely hearing the last sentence.

At that moment, he got up to use the restroom, and I used that exit as my cue to sneak out to the front of the house. I recall looking up at the desert night sky, stars twinkling in the crisp air. It was such a rarefied desert night, and I immediately felt an urge to howl at the top of my lungs. With my belly full of beer, and not being too concerned about what others thought, it seemed the appropriate thing to do.

After a minute of my raucous, annoying screech, I heard something zing barely above my head like a bee on rampage. Then I heard the thud as it struck the tree behind me. The crack of a rifle shot immediately followed. I continued howling anyway, thinking I must have imagined it.

Another bullet whizzed overhead, this one within a few hair widths of my ear.

At that moment, and to my great fortune, Drew rushed outside and pulled me indoors to safety. An avid outdoorsman, he had also heard the shots and suspected the next one might actually hit its mark, whether intended or not. In hindsight, I’m not sure if he saved my life because he was my friend or if he was concerned about his implied liability.

As I now recall that day, however, I understand it was personal stupidity taking another swing at me, with dumb luck saving me from going down for the count. That was also one of the few times where my short stature exposed a benefit.

Given my many close encounters with the grim reaper in those first few decades of life, most of them bathed in stupidity, by the way, I’m surprised every day that I made it this far. With my father dying from natural causes when I was so young and my mother passing when I had just turned nineteen, I now feel like I’ve lived every subsequent day abundantly thankful of that which they no longer possess – conscious awareness.

Happiness and sadness. Pain and pleasure. Fear and courage. Anxiety and calm. I feel in every fiber of my being that those emotions, positive or negative, are not me. They are not Greg. They are only physical bodily manifestations of experience in time and space, and I am quite separate from them.

And speaking of height, while running a few miles today I experienced an unusual sensation of being tall. Though I claim to have achieved an ‘average adult height,’ the argument is a cheat because women and elderly are included – across the globe.

Within a few seconds of that sensation, I felt out-of-body. It was an immediate, gestalt awareness of inhabiting an oddly shaped being sporting interesting appendages to help it move forward on the surface of a small planet.

This mind-body separation sensation occurs occasionally, though more frequently than in the past. Maybe it’s a result of meditating daily, a practice of disengaging my conscious self from the concerns of my body or thoughts. This allows me to distinguish my spirit, soul, self, whatever you care to call it, from emotions, fears and entitlements, or anxieties and anticipations of past, present, or future.

The intended message here is pretty simple – assuming you aren’t at this stage yet, you might consider viewing yourself as a temporary visitor to consciousness, an occupier of a bodily vehicle that allows you to experience. Marvel at this awareness, for it is fleeting. Indulge not too greatly in pleasures, powers, or self-obsessions, as they cloud your amazement at conscious living.