The best thing about angel gin is you don’t have a hangover the next day, and your memory actually gets better. Like now I remember the way Marcia W. stretched out seductively on her side, head full of shiny black hair propped up on one hand, on the radiator in speech class in 8^th grade, batting her big, heavily-mascara-ed eyes at me, and the way our teacher, an attractive young woman on whom I also had a crush, said something to her like, “You’re wasting your time, Cleopatra.” I suppose she realized that I was a late-blooming dolt.

And I remember the way my uncle who lived next door to us named all his cows, and his pickup trucks. And the way it took him over an hour to get his motorscooter started when he dragged it out of the shed in spring and gave us all rides around the field.

He also brought back a suitcase full of firecrackers from Hawaii in the days when they were still illegal in Washington State. I can remember finding a dead baby bird with some friends, who stuck two firecrackers down its throat and blew it to pieces.

I can remember that the cultural highlight growing up where I did was visiting the home of a highschool kid when he was away and asking his parents if we could go look at his 40 gallon tropical aquarium, because the aquarium stood on a cabinet that held his Playboy magazine collection.

And we used to go into the filbert orchard and dig enormous holes. And the wild grapes that grew there were sour, and the yellow cherries were sweet, but gave you a bellyache.

Fu*king angels.