Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood Read Online Free PDF Page A

thought that was dim-pled and darling, like tap dancing with “Bojangles” Robinson. Still, the loss is worth it because I have won Natalie’s respect. I can tell she is proud of me for enduring the burn of the liquor and the risk of getting caught. Her esteem is worth every sip. She lets me borrow her favorite Sonic Youth T-shirt. She squirts a bottle of tangerine musk and dances with me through the mist. Before we leave for the party, Natalie pulls two glass bottles from the recycling bin and fills them with So-Co. The bottles
    still have labels from the juice company Nantucket Nectars; we carry them into the backseat of her parents’ minivan, imagining the amber fluid looks like apple juice.
    Mr. Burke either doesn’t suspect or doesn’t want to suspect what we’re really drinking. Every time he hangs a corner with too much gusto, I envision the worst-case scenario: We’ll be pulled over for speeding and a shrewd cop will convict us on open-container laws. But Natalie looks confident. She even manages a few swigs while we circle the block, on the lookout for a mailbox pegged with helium balloons.

    The party is in a basement. We’re made to hide behind the sofa and yell “ Surprise. ” There is a cake, and a horror movie in the VCR. The birthday girl’s mother periodically comes downstairs with more Pepsi or plastic forks, but for the most part, she sim-ply leaves us alone. It’s summer, after all. We have a Ping-Pong table, Sega Genesis, Slip N’ Slides, a basketball hoop, MTV, a gi-ant trampoline, and the pleasure of each other’s company. If only she knew: It takes so much less to entertain us.
    It doesn’t take long for word to get out that I’m holding liquor in my little glass bottle.
    I make the mistake of telling Casey Schiller: flat-assed, mammoth-chested, president of the dance committee, first-rate motormouth Casey Schiller. I do it because when she waves hello to me, it’s the only thing I can think of to say. Casey tells Mary. Mary tells Vera. And Vera snatches the bottle from my hand and announces its contents to the girls who are watching an Aerosmith video and trying to pole dance like Liv Tyler around one of the basement’s cast-iron pipes.
    Natalie is on the perimeter of it all, hiding her bottle behind her back. It’s clear that I’ve lost her admiration. She’s shaking

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    her head in the disapproving way she always does when I’ve acted like a real shit. For the moment, I don’t even care. I put my hands on my hips and shake my head back.
    Seventeen ounces of Southern Comfort is all it takes for me to make new friends. It is all I had to offer to the goddesses of my idolatry: the student council president, the captains of the girls’ softball team, the girls voted “most daring” and “most talkative” in the junior-high yearbook. I give it up gladly.
    I’d like to think I want to share because it means I have to drink less, but the truth is I like the attention. Now that they know I drink, girls invite me to their houses; they reach for
    happy birthday napkins to write down their phone numbers. In
    a matter of minutes, everyone has gathered around me like I am the one about to blow out the birthday candles. Every girl wants a sip. You’d think I’d bottled the cure for menstruation, the way they line up for a swig and close their eyes while they knock it back.
    It is a moment that reminds me of an ad for sparkling wine I saw once in a magazine. The ad pictured three women dressed in sleek black sheaths, all laughing and gasping at their own wickedness. Below them was the slogan, “When it’s just you and the girls without all the men, drink it in, drink it in, drink it in.” For the time being, it is always just us girls. We have our own gym class, our own choral group, and our own corner in the cafeteria. The occasional coed functions, mostly birthday parties or school dances, are self-segregated. The boys stake out a space that is separate