I squinted my eyes and cocked my head. Was my roommate retarded? How did she figure that because I wasn’t drinking for six weeks, a personal detoxification that I do every year, I couldn’t eat pizza? I imagined her as one of those kids that keeps trying to jam the square peg into the round hole. Perhaps I needed to clarify it for her because maybe she plops her pizza in a blender and adds vodka. How else had the tart come to that conclusion?

When I mentioned this to my friend Ana, she had a serious go of it.

“Since when have pizzas been alcoholic?” she sarcastically asked. “Hey there, I hope you’re not going to drive after that pizza. You’ve had pizza? How are your faculties? How many fingers am I holding up? Oh maaan, we had like three pizzas last night: a pepperoni, a Hawaiian, and a meat fest followed by shot of garlic bread. I feel totally hung over.”

“Extra cheese,” I added. “Shouldn’t have had that last bite. I’m never eating pizza again!”

“Just because I’m not drinking right now it doesn’t mean I can’t eat pizza,” I said to my daft little roommate who didn’t want to share her pizza with me because of her dim-witted rationale.

“Well, I think it’s stupid that you’re not drinking. Don’t you like to party?” She squealed while her entourage cheered her on with screams and whoops of “Yeah! Party!” like Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. Was I living in some kind of frat house? And was I actually being peer pressured by a group of kids that I could have chaperoned to prom? It’s not that I don’t like to have a good time; in fact, it was all those numerous good times that have led me to my yearly six-week detox.

I started tending bar when I was 17 and since then have worked in perhaps two of the most nefarious industries for partying: skiing and sailing. I still can’t decide which adrenaline junkies drink more. I was perhaps ten years senior and this girl had best count her lucky stars that I wasn’t drinking because I could match her Jell-O shot to my Jagear shot any day. I’d send her back crying to her mother after I kicked her off her swing at the playground. I suppose my past relationship with alcohol isn’t really something about which to boast. What if I was some recovering alcoholic just out of rehabilitation? Wouldn’t she have felt like a jerk not knowing the reason for my prerogative?

I lived in a flat, sharing a space with unemployed yachties. Some yachties on shore, I have decided, manage to forget their manners and common sense. The kids come and go, stopping in for a couple of weeks before landing a job and then the next batch would arrive. The landlord had divided the rental; the top floor for mature adults and the level below was for the more boisterous and rowdy. Unfortunately, he had miscalculated this lot and I was already at my limit with these kids when the pizza remark flourished.

It wasn’t the first night of partying on a Wednesday until three in the morning that made me want to pulverize their Bacardi Breezers to smithereens (who drinks that stuff? I tried it when I was 16 and thought it sucked). It also wasn’t the following night of partying until four that made me want to add Visine to their cheap rum. But by the third consecutive night of partying and complete disregard to others that were staying in the flat, I was done. Waking up to the sounds of drunken promiscuous yachtie sex was not in my rental agreement. I also didn’t appreciate it, Kyle, when you knocked on our bedroom door, after we had gone to bed, cooing for our company and full well knowing that we had our Yacht Master class early the next morning.

As far as I was concerned, we were guests of the landlord and Dean and I respected his space. We were clean and polite because quite simply, this is how a guest behave. Obviously, this was the first time these kids had left home. They behaved like their mothers would pick up after them. After the frequent binges, the apartment was always trashed with empty beer bottles and cigarette butts. This is not how you behave, anywhere, ever! It’s certainly not how you conduct yourself on a boat. How then, had my juvenile roommates conjured up Pandora’s Box on land? It’s no wonder sailors have such an internationally recognized bad reputation as inebriated fools. My flat mates had certainly reiterated that fact.

I love a good party and right now I’m really missing a good glass of wine (three more weeks to go), and I don’t mind when other people hit the bottle.  But I do mind it when the lack of respect goes out the door.  Oh yeah, and share your pizza.