My forth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth beers were Coronas from a six pack purchased by a friend with a fake ID. I took them to the most epic backyard party of my senior year of high school. These imports (technically bottled in Illinois) were the first beers the taste of which I enjoyed, so much so that I drank them in succession, a feat that pushed me across the "binge drinking" threshold for the first time. Though I didn't document the experience, I came to the same conclusions as contemporaneous research undertaken at the University of Massachusetts.

The summer before college, my friends and I preferred to obtain beer in green bottles because it was most easily hidden on the landscaped slopes that surrounded their suburban houses. Mickey's Fine Malt Liquor was a particular favorite, for it was sold in squat round bottles shaped like grenades, and was least likely to be found and appropriated by municipal gardeners.

When our friend with the fake ID was caught, given a Minor in Possession, and sentenced to community service, however, Coors Light was all we could get. I brought it down to the beach on several occasions, burying a backpack or trash bag full during the day in advance of an evening bonfire party. We thought that carrying a backpack in the parking lot at night would look suspicious, hence the elaborate preparations. Forced to drink a lukewarm beer with a sandy rim, I'd choose Coors Light even today.

As a college freshman I drank Ice House, for that is what the Associated Students of Pomona College provided in the free kegs that graced campus. The Plank Road Brewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, brags that it is "Ice Brewed Below Freezing for a never watered down taste you can enjoy in every sip." If their product is representative, I would not recommend ice brewing your beer.

Natural Ice and Natural Light were the mainstays of mini-fridges in freshman dorms. How did we get it? Upperclassmen helped us out on occasion. On especially lucky runs they'd even bring back 12 packs of Henry Weinhardt's, an Oregon beer for which I have great nostalgia: it was the first delicious brew I drank regularly. In those days a drug store near campus improbably put it on sale for $5.99 a twelve pack, still among the top bargains of my life. But we mostly owed our canned beer supply to Quaggs, the nickname we gave to a 34-year-old New York man we'd never met who fortuitously failed to destroy his expired drivers license. How R. got it I never knew.

In his photo, Quaggs didn't look like any of my college buddies -- he was 34, for one thing -- but a certain nearby liquor store, which carded every customer, would sell to anyone who could show that someone (in existence) was 21. R. always bought. But one weekend he went out of town and left us the ID. Since Quaggs and R. were white, it would've made sense to pick another Caucasian to buy. But that evening an Asian American guy in our dorm insisted he would do it.