I am going to ignore the fact that people are leaving early for the holiday and I am stuck on campus until 8:35 tonight because I have class by posting. Except we all know that I’ll still be dwelling on it while I’m writing this post, so we’ll just pretend that I’m not.
Recently, New York has decided to ban a caffeinated alcoholic beverage called Four Loko. I do not respond well to people telling me that I cannot have something (it’s really a good thing I didn’t live during Prohibition), so in the face of the impending Four Loko shortage, I set out to find some. The first bodega in my neighborhood did not have any, so I went to a seedier one that was a little farther away. Bingo! Although they didn’t have it out in the fridge cases, when I asked about it, they said “Oh, we have it in the back.” Thanking my stars for sketchy bodegas, I told the man behind the counter that I would take a can.
He came back out a few minutes later with a 24 oz. can of Fruit Punch flavored Four Loko, and apologized for only having that flavor. I had no idea why he would do this at the time (it became very clear later), but I plopped down my $2.75 as the other guy behind the counter gave a cheer. I like to think he was cheering for me joining the Four Loko club, but probably it was because they’d sold another can and wouldn’t be taking a loss on that one.
I took it home, and the next day I took it to Lori’s house, because there was no way in hell I was drinking that entire thing by myself. If I’m going to be drinking something that’s illegal and possibly can cause death, I want a friend by my side. (You know you want to be my friend now.) Lori took several pictures. I only took two.
(Notice the ghetto pint glasses that say “Slut” and “Ho.” I gave Lori both of these, one for last Christmas, one as an opening night gift for her last play, Deep Throat: The Sex Scandal. Again, you know you want to be my friend now.)
Please note that the cans say “Contains Alcohol.” 12% ABV, my friends, about the same as wine. The can also says “We ID” on it, but I didn’t get a picture of that. This is one klassy drink! We poured it, and we took a sip. This is Lori’s reaction:
She said it was like drinking cough medicine. I agreed. The sip itself wasn’t bad, it was the aftertaste that got us, and now we knew why the bodega guy apologized for having Fruit Punch flavor. We can only hope that the other flavors are better. But, we pushed on, and after three sips, the aftertaste was less noticeable. After four sips, I was definitely feeling buzzed. The problem is that because you get used to the aftertaste, and because it’s cold, fruity, and fizzy, you are tempted to chug it like a wine cooler. This is a mistake, because as I said before, it’s got the basic alcohol content of wine. Imagine what chugging wine would do to you. Exactly.
So, we sipped at it and finished it in about 15 minutes, and that’s when we noticed a few things. 1.) We were definitely drunk. 2.) We were definitely amped up on the caffeine. 3.) We definitely had gas. I don’t know if it’s the taurine, the guarana, or what, but after drinking it we could’ve gagged a maggot with the stench emanating from our bodies.
So we did the only logical thing: we left Lori’s house and went Christmas shopping to spread the stench through the Time Warner building. Except, per our usual, after the first store it became less about Christmas shopping and more about just shopping.
My review of Four Loko: do not get the Fruit Punch flavor. The end result isn’t bad, I had energy for hours and had a nice buzz for the low-low price of $2.75 (actually, less than that since I only drank half the can). However, caveat emptor, you will have gas. And it will smell like your dog’s gas does. You’ve been warned.
