(You) Set Me on Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

in the day, all the shots were called, like, Blow Job and Panty Waster, with a handful of ethnic shots that had racist names no one I talked to that night could remember. I guess the fraternity council, fearing a lawsuit, said the night would be scrapped if they didn’t come up with some way to keep it sounding less XXX. So now the shots were reallyfruity and slightly more poetic. To avoid “excessive drunkenness,” fraternity seniors were supposed to keep an eye on younger students to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. Plus, the idea was, with a max of one shot per floor, a book in the library.T", students could avoid excessive drinking.
    Right.
    Of course, these kinds of parties are hardly ever orderly events that follow any kind of rule. By the time we lined up at the double doors of the house, word had spread that the way to avoid the one-shot rule was to grab as many shot glasses as possible while drunken frat boys made a show of (seemingly randomly) checking IDs. One guy wearing plastic goggles (like the kind they handed out in chemistry labs) even had the foresight to bring his own bag of shot glasses, which seemed a little insane and kind of nerdy to me at the time, but I guess that guy got super laid that night so there it is: foresight is sexy.
    The place was a zoo. I’m not saying that to be stereotypical and I recognize that it’s kind of a wornout metaphor for describing large crowds, but at the same time, if the shoe fits … By ten-thirty the air was thick with bodies and music as people packed around the first makeshift bar to get their little cups filled with what looked like stale latte mix poured by two super tall boy bartenders in construction hats.
    A herd of guys in navy blue ALPHA, BABY! T-shirts crushed their shot glasses against their foreheads and pounded each other on the chest.
    Crick, crack. Thump thump thump thump!
    “TO-WER of POW-ER!”
    After swallowing the first shot, everyone headed for the stairs and started scrambling up to the next floor. Girls screamed and boys hollered like unrehearsed warriors charging onto the field.
    Surprisingly, everything was going pretty smoothly for the first hour or so. Moving from floor to floor, I tried to absorb, but not get crushed by, the raging mass of students. As increasingly puffy and increasingly drunk faces zoomed into my space, I tried to make comments that were not anti-social sounding. Mostly I said stuff like, “What’s the shot here?” and “This shot is not bad actually.” I think I even had a handful of fairly lucid conversations until my impromptu crew of alcohol-swilling new friends hit the third floor, which residents had covered in neon yellow construction paper. On my fourth contraband shot of Acid Drop, my sixth shot of the night (plus beer), I felt a sudden internal loss of gravity. Lurching into the nearest room, I did a massive, somewhat projectile, lemony upchuck into someone’s Bugs Bunny garbage pail.
    Mostly into someone’s Bugs Bunny garbage pail.
    Anyway.
    By the time I found Carly and Missy and June again, I was woozy and they were on their fourth Pink Panthers. Popping her shot glass out of her mouth like it was a ping-pong ball, Carly threw her hands up in the air, sending dribbles of the leftovers from her glass flying.
    “TOWER OF POWER!” she cheered.
    “TO THE TOWER!” someone else shouted.
    “THIS LOOKS LIKE PEPTO-BISMOL!” I yelled. Pretending it was, I imagined the cool liquid coating my stomach and made a silent promise not to throw up in anyone else’s garbage can. I felt pretty guilty about the whole thing. “THIS IS NOT BAD ACTUALLY!”
    Until about ten minutes later.
    As we moved toward the stairs and the music changed from techno to rock, I caught sight of Missy out of the corner of my eye … covering her mouth.
    I’m sure you can gues things I needed to be doingCCN0s what happened next.
    So, as it turns out, the other name for the TOWER OF POWER is the TOWER OF PUKE. This is what