I didn’t find God until “Kevin” sloshed half a bottle of rosé down my crop top while my shoes stuck to the sweating floor of Alpha Kappa Psi

It was the first week of undergrad and I had traveled across the country, left my sheltered Catholic high school, and enrolled in a good, proper American college. The first week had been nothing but lonely, made worse by my decision to get a single rather than put up with a roommate’s sleep schedule.

But tonight was different.

This was holy, you see- the waste of the divine for the sake of getting wasted (and I say divine because the most sanctified thing known to man is the power to forget). As I stood in that crowded room, I watched faces glimpse by under yellowed light, a burst of laughter here and there. Everywhere- closed eyelids, grasping hands, the sway of hips and the liquid dissolution of every day problems for the simple fact that we had our hands on our weight’s worth of wine.

I took a swig, felt my cheeks grow flushed and my heart slow. The introvert had been quashed, and I raised the bottle I held weakly in my left hand.

“To rosé!”

The crowd cheered.

“To wine!”

They cheered harder.

“To Dionysus!”

The crowd went crazy. The lot of them had read Percy Jackson in high school and fancied themselves Greek mythology experts.

“To Dionysus!” Around 50 drunk undergrads slurred. My eyes wandered the haze of the crowd and in my drunken state, I made eye contact with a young man at the back. He seemed to have gotten the messages crossed- he had shown up dressed for a toga party, rather than the neon workout wear everyone else wore. He raised his glass at me, sent me a wink.

I drank a little harder.

#dionysus