The Harm in Asking: My Clumsy Encounters with the Human Race by Sara Barron Page A

human behavior, into an insaneasylum designated for the treatment of grubby, promiscuous women. People were screaming and flying every which way. There were indeed a handful of beefcakes, but in person the smell of their cologne was just too much to bear. My left arm knocked into one of them at one point, and instantly my hives sprang up.
    The experience gave me a sense of not belonging, and Melanie made it all worse by abandoning me upon entry to chug a monstrosity called a “forty-ounce beer.” She chugged three in a row before meandering along to the sorority’s mascot, a jumbo stuffed-animal panda. Melanie straddled the panda, then dry-humped the panda. At that point, I knew I’d have to soldier forth alone.
    I knew I
had
to do what I was
there
to do.
    I escorted myself to the bar.
    I say “bar,” although it is perhaps better described as a filthy kitchen counter stocked with bottom-shelf booze. In order to serve myself, I had to squeeze between two couples that were both French kissing. I was about to tap one of them on the shoulder to ask them to move, but before I had the chance, one of the young ladies jerked out of her embrace so she could projectile vomit.
    The vomit went
everywhere
. Everywhere except on me, that is! I used my newfound strength and dexterity to propel myself at top speed out of the kitchen in the first-floor apartment, up through the stairwell, and into the kitchen of the second-floor apartment. There, I found another filthy counter stocked with the identical bottom-shelf booze. From the options available, I chose a festive-looking punch for the singular reason that it smelled like suntan lotion. It reminded me of a sunny day at the beach, which, in turn, helped calm me down after seeing someone vomit. The punch tasted like cough syrup mixed with gasoline. It wasn’t great. But it was … doable. So I parkedmyself in the beanbag chair beside its serving bowl. And I began to drink.
    Over the course of the next hour I did so steadily and with negligible interaction from fellow partygoers. At one point I tried stretching my legs out for a more flattering presentation of my figure, but this just caused one of the perfumed beefcakes to trip over my foot and yell, “Watch your fucking feet!” So then I tucked them in again.
    I thought,
Sara, you can work with this. Just look prettily forlorn
. The problem with that, though, was that while my face does have its workable angles, Attractive Sadness isn’t one of them. If I look forlorn, I just look puffy and deranged. So I kept my face in neutral. If I were to lure in any bait, I’d have to do it with my drinking.
    So I drank.
    And I drank.
    And I drank.
    I drank steadily for a total of two hours. After two hours, I was drunk. I thought, Oh, okay. So this is drunk. I felt confused and a little bit sick. Furthermore, I had finally accepted that no one was en route to find my solo drinking sexy. So I pushed myself up out of the beanbag chair and hobbled out the front door and into the stairwell. This should not have been that big a deal, but I’d lost the ability to balance, and to make matters worse, I’d worn a high peep-toe heel for my exciting evening out. Walking normally when sober took some effort. Walking normally when drunk for the first time was simply not an option.
    I hobbled toward the staircase, then down the staircase. I made it halfway before I tripped and fell. Which is to say, I didn’t walk the rest of the way down the stairs, so much as I
flew
the rest of the way down the stairs. Lucky for me, an emaciated sister was there to break my fall. She’d been standing at the bottom.
    “AHHHHHH!” she screamed.
    She was awfully loud for someone so teeny-tiny.
    So I apologized, like you do, and seeing as how our bodies had landed such that I appeared to be mounting her from behind, I tried to make a joke.
    “Buy a gal a drink first, right?” I tried. But the sister was not amused.
    “What the
fuck
?” she screamed.
    And then