Day CLI: 151

I was 18 the first time I had Bacardi 151. The night turned into a hoarder's nest of mistakes and "I'm Sorry's," but I don't find that entirely surprising. A girl I knew ate plants from the hotel railings. A boy slipped on a wet pool area floor, and his head cracked and bled everywhere by the hot tub and all we did was laugh. And when he joined us in the pool, freshly rinsed from the pool-side shower, his wound began to spill once more, coloring the bubbles like rust.


In the year 151 AD, an earthquake destroyed two entire terrestrial sections of Asia. Meanwhile, in China, the Han Dynasty was experiencing--as history would label it--its very first era.


There were 151 Pokemon in the original versions of the game. And while you could only access 150 of them in the games, Mew was available if you felt like cheating or taking a game-glitching trip to Cinnabar Island. To this day, my favorite of all 649 current pokemon, Starmie, is available from the very first round of games. Red and Blue were great to us all, weren't they?


Psalm 151 is contentious in that it may never have existed in Hebrew. Still the church recognizes it as canonical.


When I sampled 151, drinking it in gulps from a plain, white coffee mug, I made out with a girl--perhaps several--and watched a 19 year-old blonde give a hand job to her friend's brother. One guy spat his chew in a Mountain Dew bottle. Another drank sixteen beers and then ran a lap around the Best Western. A senior girl, and board member of the sorority we were celebrating, stripped for fun and laughed as she rode the glass elevator up and down and up and down.


151 is a palindrome. A prime number, too.


In the Padovan mathematical sequence, 151 is the twentieth number.


Unquintunum holds the atomic number 151. It's a temporary name.


The morning after the banquet, where I tried 151 for the first time, I climbed into a car and rode back--in near silence--to Gustavus. I cried in the car. The driver pulled over on 169, vomited, and continued to drive while not a single word was exchanged between passengers. Atop the hill, when we'd returned miraculously unharmed, we departed with no fanfare, no enthusiasm. We said our goodbyes in knowing, half-hearted smiles and lingering eye contact.


I haven't had 151 since.