Officer, I can explain.
I understand completely that under UT’s constructive possession laws, my only suitemate who is not of age must never have his virgin eyes violated by the sight of an open alcoholic beverage, and his virgin ears must never hear me disclose the location in the quad where I have buried my stash to prevent him from accessing it, lest he rent a jackhammer and a backhoe, delve forty feet into the Earth’s crust, and return with a half-empty bottle of Absolut Vodka.
I realize that chaos and debauchery are rampant at home and abroad, and we must make every effort to prevent those under age 21 from ever learning about the mere existence of alcohol, lest all of society’s carefully cultivated mores come crashing to the ground in a rampage of unbridled animal lust that will send even the most sober (ha!) and conscientious student sailing with The Captain over the distant edge of our beloved flat Earth.
In the latest judgment of the powers that be, it has been determined that intoxicated people may never be seen or heard – and by some readings, are actually prohibited from existing, though I don’t think many will turn themselves in.
Perhaps they will simply vanish from the substructure of the universe until some hours of non-being allow them to sober up sufficiently for polite company again.
Regardless, I must admit that my suitemates may have been fleetingly cognizant of my mild intoxication this evening when I suggested that the force commonly known as gravity may in fact be God’s love holding everything together.
However, I feel that gunning down mild-mannered newspaper editor Steve Knauss, with whom I live – or rather, used to live – was something of an overreaction to my indiscretion. I would to petition for the redress of this grievance.
You see, I had convened an informal meeting with a number of respectable gentlemen to discuss philosophy. Before us were the works of Hegel, Heidegger, and just so we would have a French guy, Sartre.
After comparing existentialism with the God-centered views of Paul Tilich, and comparing postmodernism with apple pie, our thoughts turned to the latest inter-national affairs and the vexing question of whether it would possible to circumnavigate the globe in a hot air balloon.
Unfortunately, it had not occurred to me that, though there were some 35 pillars of the community gathered about my dining table, the bottle with which I had briefly filled glasses was an “open source” container. I admit that I failed to card my fourth suitemate, Mr. Adam Garnica, when he briefly passed through the room.
However, I was as surprised as anyone when Mr. Garnica espied my drinking glass, let out a gurgle of shock, clutched desperately at his throat and promptly dropped dead at my feet.
Needless to say, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
This alerted a local constable, who – it being ten p.m. at the time – had just finished setting up large barricades around every door leading into Straz Hall with the able assistance of ten of his fellow-men.
This was in case the University of Tampa should be suddenly beset by our mortal enemies, the rapacious Huns.
Attracted by the disturbance, Steve Knauss, who had been busily folding origami cranes and composing haiku in his quarters, entered the parlor to find out what was the matter.
At that same moment, a barrel-chested gendarme with a large handlebar mustache had just succeeded in kicking down the door and was likewise entering from the other side of the room.
The gendarme announced that since we were not all 21, we would be facing social host and constructive possession charges, though the smuggled Maltese Falcon, Oriental killing stars and full-grown African elephant also in evidence throughout the room luckily went unnoticed.
My late friend the Right Hon. Steve Knauss protested that he was a law-abiding and upstanding citizen of the highest caliber and had not even been present when the violation took place, whereupon he was mowed down in a hail of gunfire that also left the next door neighbors quite disturbed.
My own protests that we were merely attempting to aid UT’s beloved Writing Program by emulating the habits of such luminaries as Ernest Hemingway, Faulkner, and Jack Kerouac also fell on deaf ears.
In the days since, any of us have since been exiled to Burma on account of our prosecution by the University’s resident federal agent, a Mr. Elliot Ness.
Had the full responsibility – or, indeed, any responsibility at all – for protecting their fragile innocence fallen collectively on those under 21 who live in upperclasmen dorms, rather than upon we whose only crime is greater age and experience, I would by now have completed my Great American Novel, and I am quite sure that Mr. John W. Phifer’s experiments in smashing the atom would have been a rousing success.
Sadly, as I write to you from Sing-Sing Correctional Facility, that can never be.