My First Hookah
During Christmas Break my sophomore year, my friend Rabab had gone home to Egypt and brought back for me a hookah. It was a cheap bazaar one, but it was still a genuine Egyptian hookah. I sealed up the joints with sewing thread, notebook paper and poster putty, loaded it with cherry pipe tobacco (yes, yes, I once smoked that dreck) and was very proud of myself.
Here’s a picture of me at a Tri-Gam party called GTE:
GTE
officially meant Gams on Thursday Evenings,
but
it really meant Get Trashed Early
; it was held on
Thursday nights whereas most parties were on Fridays. It was a great
party and the Tri-Gams were great guys; I really wish that I'd
pledged. Note the date on that picture? It was 22 January
1998—ten years and two days ago; tonight they’ll be
holding that same party, a decade since.
I still have that tweed coat, that bow tie, that vest and I’m pretty sure those pants are still in my closet somewhere. The hookah, too, is sitting in a different closet. I think the other fellow on the couch was named Josh, but I’ve not seen him since I graduated. Thankfully, the black cherry pipe baccy is nowhere to be found.
