OK, regarding Tequila:

I used to live at the Grand Canyon. Worked there for a year and some, and got to know some of the Navajo guys that worked there. One night, at a house party, I started swapping a bottle of tequila with a dimunitive Navajo, who, after every shot, would slap me across the chest and shout, “You’re my brother!”

After each pull from the bottle, he would demand I hit him equally hard across the chest before passing the bottle back to him.

I’m a large mammal. He was not.

After a bottle plus is gone, he finally hits me hard enough to make me forget our size disparity, and I hit him. He goes backward, hits the wall, and JUMPS UP like nothing happened, screaming, “yeeeeerrrrrr my bruuuuutherrrrr!!!”

This goes on for another hour or two. LOTS of tequila was downed that night. Next thing I know, a pickup truck pulls up, and all the natives are rushing toward it. This dude says, “you’re coming with us,” and I hop in the back of the pickup, because after a bottle plus of tequila, why the fuck not?

We apparently drove 100+ miles to the Rez that night, passing a bottle around the bed of the pickup. I know this because when I woke up, THREE DAYS LATER, I was in Kayenta, and had vague memories of an early-morning tea I was not supposed to drink but led to a great time I have no desire to repeat here in PA.

I had to call a friend of mine to come get me from a town I didn’t even know the name of at the time, two hours away, after a three day peyote and tequila binge. And that, kids, is why I no longer fuck with tequila.