It beckons to you, you simply answer it. It sounds like a good idea, it feels right, but you decide you will not go too far.

Step Two: Economics.

If funds are low, and you don't have an entire paycheck to blow, you must decide whether to do The Poor Man's Drunk, (i.e.: drinking on a completely empty stomach) or if there is some possibility that you can con others into providing for you.

Step Three: The Suitable Drinking Partner.

Finding the appropriate person may sometimes prove a little difficult, but a sensible choice has no substitute. You must be careful not to choose a beginner, because you will inevitably end up taking care of them and wiping up body fluids, but you also must be careful not to choose someone who will be functioning well enough when you pass out to stick hot dogs down your pants or cement your eyes shut with toothpaste.

Step Four: The Clink of the Ice, The Crack of the Tab.

The first sip that holds beautiful promises, the initial lick of the lips that christens the inebriation that lies patiently ahead. The drinker begins to feel at eas, shedding the sober skin in thicker flakes after each and every drink.

(The next eight steps can follow in rapid succession or may occur simultaneously.)

Step Five: Sad Reminiscing.

"I don't care if I saw him naked on the couch with that girl who works at Dair Queen, I know he really loved me. Why did he leave me? Why? Can anyone tell me why?" The most worthless step of the entire twelve. It usually concerns relationships, and can lead to potentially hazardous DWIs, Dialing While Intoxicated, which entails calling everyone you ever dated since you are convinced that it is a completely excellent idea.

Step Six: Wanting to Get Naked and Asking Strangers to Do the Same.

Usually done after the DWI has already taken place and the drinker has been rejected again.

Step Seven: Math.

You start figuring out how many hours it will be until you have to be fully functioning again. "I can sleep fifteen more minutes if I skip a shower," "I'll wear what I'm wearing now and won't have to waste time looking for something clean."

Step Eight: 'It's Ten 'til One' Inventory.
A quick assessment that no matter how much liquor you have, it will not be enough and you must get more, and NOW, because it is the most important mission you will ever embark on in your life.

Step Nine: Let's Get a Snack, Too.

A journey to a drive-thru, because you are much too drunk to sit in a restaurant, though you are okay to drive. Purchase $20.00 worth of fast food that will most likely reappear in an altogether different form before the sun rises. You will eat things at this point that you would not normally feed your dogs, like convenience store franks or three-for-a-dollar tacos.

Step Ten: I Love Being Me

You are witty. You begin feeling beautiful. You start feeling thin. You really want to be naked now, and just about everybody is looking good. You will not think twice about sticking your tongue down a stranger's throat in a room full of 100 people. You are sexy. You may also feel the need to tell assorted people that you love them, and this is a good indication that you should probably go home.

Step Eleven: Invisibility

You believe that you are invisible, and can do things that will bear no witnesses, like peeing in a bush or puking on the sidewalk. IT is at this point that you will not remember what the last thing you said was, or that you decided that the street looked like a very good place to lie down.

Step Twelve: The Complete Loop

You lose the ability to communicate with the exception of nodding your head. Also evaporated is the decision making process, all of your money, the use of your limbs, and, quite thankfully, consciousness.

When I found Jeff sitting in the street, he had successfully arrived at Step Ten.

"We were hiding from you," he giggled as he got in the car. "We saw you drive down the street five times. Aren't we good at hiding?"

I was mad. "Where is the other half of the Moron Twins?" I asked.

"I don't know," he offered. "I lost her."

"You lost her?" I said angrily.

"Yeah. She thought this was my street and started running, sort of. She was falling down a lot," he said. "I don't think we'll find her. I bet she's still hiding."

I drove up the street. I drove down the street. We couldn't find her.

We drove around the neighborhood for forty-five minutes, checking behind shrubs, fences and cars, following leads from various people on the street who had seen a drunk girl stumbling down the road in several different directions.

We drove back down the street Jeff had lost her on, each of us searching a side of the road.

"Stop," Joel said dryly. "There she is. She probably better put her shirt on, though. Hey, Jealousy."

I thought he was kidding. I prayed that he was kidding. But as I got out of the car and walked towards Joel's side of the street, I saw her, laying like a corpse in someone's front yard, desert landscape, topless. The only thing she had on above her waist was a black bra, which wasn't doing her a lot of good, anyway.

"I remember now," Jeff said. "She kept saying that she was hot."

Since she had drank her weight in beer and resembled a sandbag with arms and legs, it took the three of us to lift The Little Mermaid up enough for me to put her breasts back in their proper place. She had little pieces of gravel stuck to her back.

This beat the time that she threw up in her purs at some dive bar but got us thrown out, anway; this beat the time I lost her at a bar and found her an hour later, passed out on the hood of my car, parked directly in front of the main door, as boys threw rocks at her; this beat the time she was dancing at another bar, got too close to the stage and fell into the drum set, completely destroying it; this beat the time she went to a party at her Danish then-boyfriend's parents' house and yelled to the other Danish guests, "Shmorgedy borgedy norgedy! This is America, people, so speak god damned English!" When the boyfriend madn an attempt to salvage whatever dignity either one of them had left, he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder like a bag of grain, only to hear the chillings gasps of 70 Danes as tehy witnessed the American girl peeing herself.

Tonight, however, she had earned her Ph.D. in The Stinkin' Drunk Program.