This Is My Blood: Stella Artois

 

Five Times When There Wasn't Enough Beer

1. It was after one of our performances. I don't remember what show, maybe Into the Woods. It was probably Friday night, because Saturday would've been the cast party, and this wasn't the cast party. One of the upperclassmen was having people over his house for a party—again, nothing too rowdy, since we had a show the next day, and it wouldn't have been professional to be hungover the whole day before a singing performance. But on the other hand, we were still young and able to handle it for the most part, and so we started the party at like midnight and planned to keep going. On the way over: "Hey man"—and I'm not revealing who was hosting this party, since I remain to this day a big fan of his and refuse to make it seem like I'm talking smack, let it remain redacted—"do you want me to bring any of the beers I have in my dorm?" "Nah, I'll have some beer." Great. I get to the party. "Hey man, do you want five bucks for the beer?" "Nah, don't worry about it, just go grab one from the fridge." I go over to the mini fridge, open it up... and find one single six-pack of Stella Artois. Since then, I have never been able to drink Stella without thinking about this night.

2. There was this abandoned (or, more likely functional during business hours but dark and quiet at night) factory at the end of a dead end in Lawndale where we would occasionally drink in the rear, near the train tracks. It was also near the Philadelphia/Cheltenham border, so there was less of a chance of any cops from either district finding us. Or so we thought. It's a pretty simple story: I get out of the car with two six-packs of Miller Lite, I completely miss the fact that there are cops at the end of the block, the cops get out, take the beer, and drive away. It could've been worse, but that doesn't mean it wasn't disappointing.

3. It was August 24, 2010. Either school had just started or it was about to. I was settled in at the Woodstock house. Looking in my mini-fridge, I found that I had twelve beers left (not sure which beers, I guess I was still drinking Natty Lights at that time?). The Phillies were barreling toward the playoffs, and it seemed like the perfect night to do Beer-an-Inning. Nine beers for the game, plus three to spare before I passed out. Perfect, right? Well... the Phillies ended up playing sixteen innings. Kept the beer-an-inning going for as long as I could. By the time I was out of beer, the Phillies were out of position players. In the 14th, Ryan Howard got ejected because the third-base umpire was a fucking prima donna, so Roy fucking Oswalt, a pitcher, had to play left field. A batter smacked a long fly ball right into his glove. This game is in my top five Phillies games all time easily, and probably the only one in the top five that was also a loss. Didn't matter. The only thing that wasn't fun about that night was drinking twelve beers and desperately needing more.

4. Back when I was still in high school, I was able to purchase beer easily (Krewstown Beer Distributor didn't really give a fuck), but the problem was where to drink it, and how to transport it. Here was the plan on one random summer evening: I was going to leave work five minutes early, drive my parents' car to Krewstown, buy two cases, drive to Burholme, hide the cases in the woods, drive home, telling my parents I had to work a few minutes late, then meet up with my buddy Drew and a few hometown pals back at the woods. The plan went smoothly until I got to Burholme. I ran the cases into the woods, and ran smack into two 20-somethings who were walking their dog. I couldn't bring the beer home, and I was in a time crunch, so I basically said "Please don't take these cases, here, have four beers from this one case as a sign of trust and gratitude" and then peeled off back home before my parents got suspicious. Of course the random fucks in the woods took the cases, jesus fucking christ, who wouldn't? I was a dumb stupid idiot for believing in the goodness in humanity when it came to clandestine Natural Lights. (Postscript: Drew and I were wandering around the neighborhood, sober, bored, and happened upon two ice cold, unopened bottles of beer on the sidewalk, chilling on a pile of ice, as if a sign from the gods that they owed us one for foolishly having faith in human goodness. It was one of the weirdest things that has ever happened to me.)

 

5. Not a specific night, but for real, every single night we shacked up at Brianna's parents' house to get drunk, my friends and I would start the inevitable discussion at like 8 PM—"do we have enough beer???" Even if there was like three cases of Keystone and only eight of us, we'd be doing math like "well, that's only 11 beers per person, maybe we should go get some forties to supplement this stash" and so on and so forth. That's probably why I was so aghast that I showed up at that college party to only find one six-pack of Stella Artois for a dozen people. Me and my best friends from the Northeast operated on an entirely different level. To not have enough beer was a mortal sin. That's also probably why I struggled to think of even five incidents for this list.

NOTES

BEER: Stella Artois

STYLE: European Pale Lager

ABV: 5.0%

BREWED BY: Stella Artois

LOCATION: Leuven, Belgium

PURCHASED AT: Bottle Bar East

PAIRED WITH: Silence after a long day of single-parenting

GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5

 
BEER COUNT: 365.5