The first time I drank liquor

I spent most of the afternoon in a daze.

A friend of a friend invited us over

to take part in the eternally average

yet respectable activity of suburban

disregard for any certain set of rules.

You wouldn’t believe their faces

when I said I’d never had the stuff by 19,

had so far in life only tasted cheap beer

at grungy parties that were everything

but intoxicating. Once shock had left them,

the one friend Christa slid a clear container

from under her bed and I could hear

the angelic chorus of glass on half-empty

glass. From each bottle she poured a double

into plastic cups, assumed the air of an expert,

and told me which poison was which.

The rum scabbed up my throat and the

vodka left me singing an old Russian tune

that is mostly just rough, crippling coughs.

I felt tight as Tuesday by the time I’d stopped

to breathe and by then was the only one.

They watched and laughed and thought

to catch up would be a noble cause, if not

just to make me feel like part of the team.

At one point the friend I knew better, her

arms thin and beautiful, fragile swan necks

wrapped around the bottle, holding so tight,

almost told me secrets when begging for

a kiss as she rolled around the wooden floor.

I went to pick her up, but she just pulled me down,

and I sat there, already sobered up beyond belief,

uncomfortable, sketching the ceiling with my eyes and

hoping to leave. We fell asleep, all three of us

in Christa’s bed, except I was just too nervous

to close my eyes, and instead spent six hours

smelling the beautiful one’s hair and holding her,

regretting all my decisions beyond the ones that

brought me here. My would-be kiss

got up at six and stabbed me with a question,

“Haven’t you ever wanted to know what

it feels like to be some kind of slut before?”

I honestly hadn’t, but now I started to think

of all those girls, expelled from the throne they

sat upon for just one night, their crystal slippers

held together in one perfectly manicured hand,

the other either cleaning some smudged up makeup

or to clear a virgin tear, and thinking that

the sun seems to always stay much too still.