Drugs, Sex, and Rock & Roll.

I'm sitting in my kitchen, listening to Ray LaMontagne, and wrapped up in my favorite green fleece. It's an L.L. Bean pullover, with a little pouch in the front--the kind that goes straight through from one side to the other so you can burrow your hands together for warmth. I've always felt warm in this fleece because of the tag that says "Polartec." Anything called "Polartec" must be business.

When I wear it, I think of being in college, specifically, of partying in college. Not because I ever wore it to parties--grass-green fleece is hardly skanky party apparel, even at a liberal, intellectual private school--but because I always wore it the morning after.

My friends and I had a little weekend mid-morning soiree we liked to call "the pow-wow." A sort of X-rated, egocentric version of "The View," wherein we all gathered 'round the couches, and proceeded to spill the juiciest details of the previous evening. Who we slept with, how much we drank, whatever kind of drugs had happened onto our path, and any other slanderous gossip we had come to hear. There was chinese food, maybe a mimosa, and definitely debauchery.

I have mixed feelings in the retelling. I can't pretend like debauchery isn't fun as it's happening. To block all of that off, and deny its charms would be just as much a lie as to say that I think that it was OK.

I had fun. Did you know that if you drink a whole bunch, and dance for a couple of hours, the effect is almost like that of a hallucinogenic? Seriously. Also, sex feels good. And contrary to how your teachers will portray it, the first time someone offers you drugs probably won't be in a back alley with a sketchy guy named "Foxy." Sure, my friends bought the drugs from some guy named Foxy, but it was my friends who did the offering, people I loved and felt comfortable with. I have no desire to forget the fun I had, in the name of purification, or any other.

Having said that, I know things I shouldn't know. I've known fears and hurts that my Father never intended for me. I can't go back, and I don't want to. But on the other side of that fun is often something terrifying. I know what it's like to wake up next to someone I don't love, and who doesn't love me, to scramble to find my clothes, and to think "Holy God, did I...?" Sex can be a lonely intimacy. I know what it's like to be so drunk I could barely stand, and what's worse, to still feel the emptiness, and to feel even further from God. I've felt the clouding of the mind, and the abandonment of reason that leaves one to wonder... what am I? Why am I?

So many memories are rushing up to meet me. Some happy, some not so happy. I'm trying to figure out if my thoughts are at all representative of those of my friends. Or if I'm an anomaly. Why should I have felt the call, and not them?

I don't know if they ever felt the isolation, or the pain, the confusion, or the despair. To be frank, they did far more fucked-up shit than I did. My friends make my memories look like an episode from Happy Days. But we never "pow-wow-ed" about how messed up it might all have been.

So I look to our current lives to try to figure it all out. Did we know it wasn't ok? Did we maybe think it might not have been? I realize that if my friends are to read this post, they might think I've "gone God." Maybe they'd wonder why I'm even asking...is drunkenness ok? Is laissez-faire sex ok? Are drugs, and slander, and throwing up off of your adviser's porch, ok? Because I've never asked, I imagine that half of them might think those are valid questions. The other half might say "Of course, it's all ok. Why wouldn't it be?"

Interestingly, I think the latter half are those who are most unhappy now. Most far from knowing themselves, and from knowing God. Paradoxically, also the most able to fully know both. Great gifts of thought and intuition seem to be those most often plagued by doubt.

As I write this, I realize how far I am from the world that I describe. Firstly, because I gave up that scene shortly after leaving college, and find myself with no great desire to return. Secondly, because the events and situations that I remember are not analogous to the experiences of many of the people now around me.

I am beginning, for better or worse, to identify myself with the sort of conservative Christianity of James River, and as I do so, I start to feel that I am very much split down the middle. I have one foot in the religious world, and I think and feel and act in ways that reflect that. My other foot is in the world from which I came, and though no longer fortified by action, remembers what it's like to think (if in fact a foot can think or remember) "Why should we even consider what is right or wrong? Don't murder. Now go forth and party!"

It is interesting to see both, and to be both.