“Want some?” He asked, holding his pint of tequila up with a grin and raised eyebrows, one strap of his overalls dangling, his narrow chest exposed. “I’m good.” I held up my can, rocking on my heels. We stood in the backyard, drunk in the heat of the afternoon. The yard was strewn with stray piles of patio furniture reduced to kindling and shattered plastic, and near the fence piles of compost and trash, and little keepsakes from the street. There was an aluminum swing-set from another time, two forgotten swings hanging on chains. I was well into a twelve pack and he was nursing his tequila, the cheapest he could find, just the smell making my stomach turn. Flies buzzed around the untended compost heaps that threatened to overtake the yard, some in trash cans, most piled thoughtlessly, rotting in the dry Western heat. “Just take a slurp.” He said, grinning, holding the open bottle up and swirling the contents. “I puke every time.  Especially that cheap shit.” I said, nauseous at the smell of his tequila in it's little plastic pint bottle.  He looked at it, peered into its mouth, then took another long pull. I killed my beer and tossed the can into the yard where it fell amongst others and a punctured plastic kite and some pizza boxes. I cracked another beer and peered into the hastily torn hole at the top of the box to gauge how many I had left. The trick was to drink the first twelve quick so that they hit you only as you left the liquor store with the second twelve-pack in hand. A case or two twelve packs at once only resulted in the same second trip to the liquor store in about the same time, but in a dangerously more drunken state. My strategy centered on pacing myself as well as attempting to make only two or three trips in a day. We were both 86ed for life from half of the bars and liquor stores in town. I had negated many supposed lifelong expulsions with simple early afternoon sober apologies granted to bartenders and the owners of liquor stores. The difficulty was in remembering the offense so as to appropriately tailor the apology. I once blacked out in a bar on a quiet Tuesday night and decided to use the table I was sitting at as a battering ram. It was directed forcefully and repetitively at a table nearby where other more peace-loving patrons were seated. I was ejected with physical force and wasn’t allowed back until several apologies had been made and an entire campaign of good words put in, which of course held their own debts to be repaid somehow. The social debt of being a drunk reverberated this way, penetrating everything. “Almost gone.” He said in a singsong voice, dangling the bottle in front of my face, the last swallow splashing around feebly. Ignoring him, I gulped down my beer, tossed the can and cracked another, leaning into a long belch, my head back, triumphant. He killed the bottle and reached in the back pocket of his overalls, producing another. “Jesus Christ man. Have a beer.” I made to hand him a beer and swiftly pulled back when he reached for it, then cracked and drained it in several large gulps, gasping through my nose and tossing the can aside. “Fucker,” he murmured, lightly kicking the cardboard pack, a single can shifting as the box tilted in its place on the grass, “I’ll fight you for the last one.” “My beer. Mine,” I said as I reached in for the beer, shaking the box loose as it clung around my wrist, suddenly light without the other cans to provide ballast. I looked at the beer with a mock quizzical expression, then cracked it and guzzled it, handing him the empty can as I belched into the approach of evening, holding my hands out in the air in an operatic gesture. He tossed the can at the pile of others in front of us in the grass. “Now you have to take a pull. In penance for your drinking crime,” he offered the small bottle of piss yellow tequila. My eyes watering from chugged beer, I swiped the bottle from his hand and pitched the cap as I gulped the tequila. I pivoted to take a step toward him, grabbed him hard by both ears and vomited with the full pressure of twelve beers into his balding forehead and full into his face, gripping his ears as hard as I could, the spray splashing in all directions as he swung and kicked, briefly holding onto my forearms as the still cold and carbonated beer soaked his face and ran down the front of his overalls and his bare chest. I let go and stepped back, laughing in a wane high-pitch, as he stood with his shoulders drawn up and his hands dangling limp.  He was soaked with beer that had shot down to my stomach, touched the wall and sprinted back out again faster than a swimmer in a sprint. He reached for his face, sputtering, his laughter punctuated by a blunt moan as he scooped the liquid away from his eyes and shook it from his hands, stepping around in a small circle then leaning forward and shaking the clasped strap of his overalls and mashing his other hand over his groin where apparently the puked up beer had found a resting place in the crop of his pubic hair. He opened his eyes to look at me and we burst into drunken laughter.  He reached for his scalp and slicked the wet stringy wad into a Mohawk shape with a single upward motion of his clasped hands.  His hair stood straight up and we let out a duet of hyena squeals and giggles, falling all over ourselves, our boots kicking up dust and empties all over the yard. I fell weakly to the ground, my stomach wrenching from the effect of expulsion followed by uncontrollable laughter and saw him begin to come to, to realize he was covered in vomit, his laughter giving way to deep spasms. He suppressed some small gags as he lunged for me but I rolled onto my stomach and got to my feet and stumbled out of the way as he expelled a thick spray of vomit into the yard, hunched over and clutching his knees. I got to my feet, laughing hard and out of breath as I planted my boot at his hip and toppled him onto the grass and dirt, the cans and bottles and scraps of a life surrendered to chaos and sacrificed to a shapeless deity that shared our ambivalence for decency and was also drunk, wrecked on our mindless offerings.