It was the same year I turned 21. At the time, I was smack in the middle of a three-month alcoholic stupor that caused all others before and since to pale by comparison. A handle of Jim Beam and two eighteen-packs of Icehouse were prerequisites for a given week during that stretch. Food Lion on Chapman Highway sold the almost-cases of cans for around $7.00 each, which was cheaper per ounce than anything anywhere at the time, including Natty, the Beast, and PBR.

Crossing the Chapman Highway bridge causes the pseudo-cosmopolitan veneer and burnt waffle odor lingering in the Knoxville air to rapidly give way to East Tennessee’s country white trash roots. Each passing quarter mile would feel like peeling a coat of paint off a rotting tool shed to someone who was inclined to look down their nose at white trash. I was middle class all the way, but I’m sure I participated in some subconscious snobbery.

Anyway, the 36 beers were used almost entirely as chasers for the cheap bourbon, which I often drank straight from the bottle in motions resembling the way one might tip a gas can into the opening of a lawnmower’s engine. Trekking to a third-rate white trash grocery store to load up on cheap booze made the process feel complete.

I had just started seeing two girls at the time, who happened to both be sorority girls (”sorostitutes” was the impolite colloquialism), though one was home in… whichever state she told me she was from. There was still the chance open the other might not have anything to do for New Year’s. We both were at our respective parents’ houses for Christmas, and she ended up calling me on the 26th or 27th. She asked me if I was doing anything New Year’s, and naturally, with me seeing two girls at once my arrogance meter was off the charts, I all but blow her off.

“Maybe I’ll be in town,” I told her.

“Okay, well, I’ll be in town…” she tells me in an impish, disappointed-sounding voice.

Long story short, I fucked that up and ended up hanging out with my friend Mike, who was a neighbor that year and would become a roommate the next year. There were a couple of bottles of champagne that probably were purchased in some sad hope the girl with two first names would have a change of heart and come crawling back to me, groveling and pleading imploringly for the pleasure of a few hours of my company. It’s obvious how that turned out.

Midnight rolled around, but there was no champagne to toast with, since Mike and I had motored through both bottles, as well as the ten or twelve beers remaining in the fridge from God-knows-when. And a lot of the liquor.

On a whim, we streaked around the entire apartment complex, me wearing nothing but a scarf, sunglasses, and a pair of gloves; and he a ski mask. The air was freezing, and the apartment complex we lived in mostly dead, so barely anyone could live vicariously through our gleeful drunken haze. We were almost too tired to run when we found a party to flash. We danced and jumped around like spider monkeys hopped up on speed, appendages that need not be mentioned moving in ways that need not be described, as a modest crowd of strangers cheered us on and feigned disgust.

We ran a while longer and found another party, drawing a similar reaction. Someone standing on the balcony photographed us. When I run for president one day, if what I write in this blog isn’t enough incriminating evidence, surely that photograph will surface.

Streaking lost its luster after the second party, so we returned to the apartment, put our clothes back on and wondered out loud, “What next?”

Of course, the natural thing to do was to return to one of the parties wearing our gym shorts, t-shirts, and flip flops in the skin-blistering cold. Mike offered a half-hearted pretense that he thought he knew someone there, which turned out to be bunk, of course. The joke of it was it turned out the guys hosting the party had planned a near-perfect one-to-one male-female ratio, which Mike and I shattered with our attention-sucking half-naked alcohol-fueled boisterousness. We instantly were the center of the universe with whatever drivel was spouting from the depths of our gullets, and caused exponentially-building resentment among the two fellas who were clearly the hosts.

I’d be lying if I said I’d have rather been doing that than getting laid that New Year’s, but it was still a hoot.

In just more than an hour, I’ll be off to a friend’s party. I doubt I’ll be doing any streaking, but if there’s anything worth photographing it might just show up here. No promises though. Feliz blah blah blah.