Jarrett tended to forget things when he was drinking.

He once forgot that he hated cheesecake and ate an entire President’s Choice chocolate cheesecake all by himself.  The next morning when he’d heard what he had done, he threw it all up again.  Not because he felt sick at the time, just because he was disgusted that he had eaten it in the first place.

Jarrett also loved dares when he was drunk.  Giving them, taking them.

This obviously made for a very interesting and dangerous combination.

.         .         .

The last day of classes before summer break there was a huge bonfire down by the lake.  A bunch of us from film class went, and then we called our other friends, and they called their other friends, and soon enough the lakeside was packed.

Anybody could have picked Jarrett out of that crowd, party animal that he was.  He was swinging around that bottle of tequila so much that I was surprised he could be that drunk, given that it was splashing out at an alarming rate.  But that was Jarrett, and I wasn’t surprised later to find out that he had been drinking from a vodka filled water bottle during his last exam.

He was drunker than anyone else at the party and he wanted everyone to know it.  He kept shouting out for contests, dares, anything, just to prove to us how manly he was.

The party started to peter out around 3 in the morning, and by 4, it was just seven of us, all sitting around the fire, some of us passed out, most of us minutes away.  But not Jarrett… Tank that he was, he was still vertical, though barely.  By 4:30, everyone was asleep except Jarrett, the hot blonde next to him, and me.  I was laying back against a huge piece of driftwood, and just watched the whole thing play out.

I listened as the hot blonde asked Jarrett to go swimming.  As he drunkenly slurred to her that it probably wasn’t a good idea.  As she flirted back with him, then lifted up her sweatshirt and threw it to the ground.  As she dared him.

I just watched.

Jarrett never learned how to swim.

They ran off, stumbling the entire way, and I just sat there and watched.

I was the only one Jarrett had ever told that he couldn’t swim.  I guess he forgot that night.

And I just watched, paraplegic that I am, thanks to another one of Jarrett’s stupid dares.