:| The Universal Language (of drunkenness) |: {Cato}

This warmth, has it always been there?

I didn’t have to touch my face to feel the heat that was starting to flood my face as I just stared at the groups of people conversing. Their words fell flat to my ears; the only evidence of music was through the gentle trembles that coursed through my body. The drink in my hand was still cold and begging for me to finish it in one swift gulp. It would be replaced with another drink within five minutes, I just knew it would. Every blink seemed to take more than a second, and I was content.

When all of my senses were dulled, it made me feel okay, comfortable. Whenever I was sober, the gradual muting of my world scared me as if I was being separated from it. But when I had a few drinks in my system, my detachment from the world felt more like a bubble was enveloping me rather than a string cutting away my connection to reality. It was an added bonus that most of the people I met at this party I would never converse with again. It was okay if I had to use my hands to talk—no one was thinking clearly enough to not talk with their hands. They would begin to speak my language, and that made me feel safe. For those few hours, everyone was my friend and no one would judge me.

I had no clue whose house we were in—and that was always the case. My coworkers would tell me a place to go on a Friday night, and I would meet them at a spot in District 4 before we moved to the party. Usually at least one of my coworkers would know the host of the party, but I never did. Sometimes I would meet them at the house, but I would never talk to them again, not unless I ran into them at another party. Faces started swimming through my memories, names floating in a different pool that I couldn’t connect.

That night, I wasn’t feeling particularly chatty. I spent most of the party looking at other people, probably a small smile creeping up my face as the effects of the alcohol quickly consumed me. I never understood why I liked watching people so much as if I wasn’t anything like them, as if they were their own specimen and I was just an observer. But in my drunk state, I wasn’t one to make sense of anything no matter how much I tried. For example, there was this one boy who was standing in the corner and for some reason, I wanted to know how he was feeling.

I walked up to him, a drink in hand and before I knew what I was doing, I was giving him the drink. “Here,” my lips formed the words. “Drink this.” I could feel my lips move, but I could never tell if the sounds followed the movements. If I was sober, I would have used my hands to feel the vibrations from my chest, but the vibrations from the music seemed to overpower anything I could register so for all I knew, he was trying to read my lips. I gave him a small smile that had been a little difficult to form. “Are you having fun? It’s good to have fun sometimes.”