The balcony

I was not 100% nerd, and on the weekends, I liked to party, just like everybody else. Thus, on the following day, a Friday night, an Around-The-World was planned. A whole group of us got together, and traveled from dorm room to dorm room, drinking a different type of mixed drink at each stop. The group was fairly large, somewhere between 30 and 40 people, and we lumbered from one tightly packed dorm room to another. The music was loud, the drinks were flowing; all in all, a great Friday night.

My stop was about halfway through the evening, and I ducked out of the group and skipped the stop before it to prepare. There wasn't all that much to do in preparation, but I wanted to be ready when everbody showed up. When people started to trickle in to my room, the music was loud, and the drinks were ready. I barely remember the actual 15 minutes that the party was in my room, as I was so busy that I hardly had time to think. It was over in a second; the throng was filing out of my room, though there were a handful hanging out, taking their time, and nursing their drinks. These people were, by and large, already very far gone, and would doubtless be praying to the porcelain gods sooner than later.

Notable in this group of laggers was Carrie, who had been dancing herself to a state of near exhaustion, apparently, and had stopped by her room as we came to our corridor to change. She had started the night in a pair of jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, but she was now wearing a tank top and a thigh-length skirt. At the moment, she was sitting on the couch, talking to one of the other slow-moving, heavily-drunk party-goers.

The various people sitting around my room looked like they would be there for a while, so I decided to indulge myself with a cigarette or two. I only smoked when I was drinking, and I had to kill time and wait for the drunks to leave my room, so that I could lock up and continue on the Around The World. I wandered out of my room, over to one of the common spaces, and out onto the balcony to have a smoke. I knew how bad they were for me, but didn't particularly care. I stood out on the balcony, leaning against the railing, looking out across the campus, and watching below me the members of the party filing across the lawn in front of dorm, on their way to the next stop. It was peaceful, as I was high enough up that the yells and hoots were hollowed and quiet by the time they echoed up to me. I pulled one cigarette down almost to the filter, and lit another with it before lazily flicking the spent but still glowing butt. I watched as the spinning, glowing cigarette end slowly descended to the lawn below.

"Can I have ... one of those?" I practically jumped as the voice spoke from behind me. I had left the balcony door open, and Carrie had walked out on the balcony silently. She was now leaning hard on railing next to me. I silently lit another cigarette, and handed it to her. She took it, and rolled her head from side to side, apparently having difficulty keeping it straight. We smoked together in silence for a few seconds, then she turned to me, and slurred, "I want to thanks ... for fixing ... you know." I nodded, understanding what she was trying to say. She reached out with one hand, and grabbed my package through my jeans. "I want to fix," she slurred.

I was drunk, but not blitzed. I was certainly drunk enough that my inhibitions were more or less gone, and when Carrie grabbed me, through the jeans or not, I was hard almost instantly, and thirsty for flesh. "Follow me," I said, leading her back to my room, where I fully intended to mount her. I took one of her hands, and pulled her behind me back to my room, and she stumbled behind me awkwardly. I opened up the door to my room, only to be encountered with the sight of three drunk people sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, trying to clean up someone's vomit. I nearly gagged myself from the smell. The floor was tile, fortunately, and I had pulled up the place rug before the party in anticipation of such an outcome, but still, it was a mess, and I didn't want to deal with it.