It is not a Saturday, the day I usually drink every week. I like alcohol, but I don’t like drinking it. I like the numbness alcohol brings. Sometimes I get sad, what a beautifully intoxicating thing, but with such bitterness. Not ash or bitter-gourd bitter, but a burning bitter down my blistered throat, bursting them one by one again and again. It hurts, but I drink it. I cover my mouth so I don’t puke. I can feel my throat folding to push out the bile arising from my gut mixed with vodka but I gulp it down. I feel terrible, the kind of terrible you feel after you puke and wait by the commode for another five minutes hoping you don't puke again. You feel empty, numb, sick, and uncomfortable. You want to go back to sleep or just get it out of your system all at once. 

I wanted neither of them. I wanted to wait till the alcohol unnervingly settled in my stomach so I could chug some more. I hold my nose with my fingers to close my nostril. The smell makes me want to puke more. It smells of classroom hand sanitizers, the cheap ones with no fragrance. I push the orange-flavoured vodka down my throat like medicine. It is cheap liquor so it will taste cheap too, I remind myself. And then immediately after the burning, I cover my mouth so that I don't puke. I don’t want to either embarrass myself or waste the money spent on buying this. This cycle repeats until I’m done with the 180-millilitre bottle of dread and comfort. I look up at the ceiling and the fan seems to rotate and spin. I look at the switchboard but the switches are turned off. I look at the fan again and then at my palms. Everything is rotating, revolving and spinning. 

The Orange vodka makes my emotions revolve and spin. I feel everything at once so I don't feel anything at all. I wait. I pause to think. What am I really feeling? I think I am happy but then the sadness hits. I'm suddenly guilty and I want to chew my already bitten and brittle nails off. My nails are the shape of the naked crescent moon with a bloody lining. I sit back, my hands caressing my chest as if it will help me feel better. I don’t want to drink water because I fear it might dilute what is inside my stomach. I want to get the kick, I worked hard for it. I had to go through the painful process of drinking it. I want to get the slightly dizzying buzz that makes my head revolve on its own around my ever-racing thoughts. I realise I haven't eaten all day. I remind myself because it is not a Saturday and I should have eaten today. Because Saturday is the day I usually drink. 

On Saturdays, I don't eat because eating sobers me up quickly. I'm willing to go hungry the whole day so the 180 milliliters of orange-flavoured cheap vodka can do its magic. The label on the glass bottle reads Magic Moments, funny! My heartbeat slows down and I sit back against the pillow of my room. I stare at the people around me. They are all my age, swiftly trying to drink the pathetic-tasting liquid inside a glass-cut-fashioned neon-orange cap bottle. It is exhilarating to watch them get to the last sip and it reminds me of my eyes. Lately, my eyes have been a parched desert. I can’t cry even if I tried to. Sometimes I drink the orange-flavoured vodka just so I can cry without inhibitions. But my tear tanks have swelled up and do not seem to replenish. I cannot even cry about not being able to cry because no matter how hard I try, I just cannot cry. It is strange since before I could easily. When is before, I do not know. My realisation of time and space has been delayed. I am uninformed of my own self and my judgement is diluted, unlike the vodka I just consumed. I envy people in the room who can cry. They are drunk, without any filters nested upon the nerve cells connected to their vocal cords from the brain. They speak in a foreign language and I cannot let myself participate in this escapism. No matter how hard I try, the tears don’t come. 

I give up the pathetic attempt of squinting my eyes and rubbing my eyelids for a drop or two to show. I try to think of John Keats and how he died days before his professed love could be soldered into the union of marriage. I think of the letters he wrote to his lover and him on his deathbed while she read his last poem. I still cannot cry. I make a list of sad things to think of: a dead mother, a dead infant, a dead lover, a dead god, a dead religion, a dead planet, a dead generation. Instead, I am frustrated and I feel a sense of anger rising. It is the colour of the lights in my room, flickering yellow and orange, not red. Sometimes I feel like the Jenga blocks. I anticipate that I'm about to tumble the spineless building down, like I'm about to cry. But I don't, I can't cry. The piece I push deftly with my fingers, hoping the pathetic building will fall, doesn't. The building block stands still. It taunts me. I sigh. I can't comprehend if it's a sigh of relief or of annoyance. Either way, I close the box throwing the blocks one by one and I go to my bed and switch off the yellow-orange lights. Some of the blocks are scattered outside but I can't care less. It's lulling dark and I'm not sleepy. I see the neon orange cap of the empty vodka bottle lying on the floor, blinking at me. Blinking and snickering. I attempt to cry again but the tears don't come. I sleep.

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