The moment Sproner set the table on fire, the evening took a crooked turn at the Orange Shillelagh Pub.

Where else would a college kid want to be on Saint Patrick’s Day? As a sophomore at Western University in London Ontario, it was my pleasure to introduce the freshmen in my dorm to an honoured Saint Patrick’s tradition, Pukin’ In Lucan. I rented a big yellow school bus to transport 50 guys from our campus to Lucan, a rough, working-class village of Irish descendants 30 minutes from London.

The clientele at the Orange Shillelagh that night was a mix of college kids with alligators on their golf shirts and the Irish townies who wanted to kill them. As a self-satisfied member of the former group, I was unaware how irritating our boisterous drinking games and other antics must have seemed to the locals. We chugged pint after pint of green beer, and sang vulgar rugby songs, standing on chairs. We took breaks to hoot encouragement toward Princess Glow, a corpulent, energetic stripper on a stage slightly larger than a coffee table. I sat at a small, round table with three guys from my dorm: Sproner (one name only, like Prince or Madonna), Hulk (not the real Hulk, but a guy with fists the size of hams, ready for clobberin’), and bespectacled John Mann. The table was topped by a drab, felt slipcover, best to absorb spilled beer. Bored, Sproner flicked his lighter and touched it to the felt. With a whoosh the entire surface became a low flame. The fire lit something in Hulk’s eye, or maybe it was the mickey of vodka he guzzled between beers, but Hulk took the empty bottle from his breast pocket and threw it at a townie table. The bottle smashed against the chair holding a townie wife, spraying glass on her back and hair. Hulk sauntered to the townie table, very cool, to end the fight he started. The townies stood so quickly their chairs overturned and they lunged at Hulk.

“He’ll be fine,” said Sproner. “There’s only three of them.”

“Uh, Sproner….look at the table,” I said. Flames licked higher as the felt blackened.

“Oh, shit.”

Sproner and I swept our table of glasses and tried to smother the fire with plastic-covered menus. This only fanned the flames. Amid the chaos, John Mann really, really needed a bathroom break. And not the kind of bathroom break one would like to have in a gritty bar of questionable sanitary practices. The sit-down kind.

A word about John Mann. He lived in the dorm room next to mine, and never made one peep. Never played his stereo loud, never banged on the wall (the other 30 guys we lived with did this every day). He was gangly, pimpled, and socially awkward. His eyes looked enormous as seen through coke-bottle glasses. He rarely spoke above a whisper. So I was shocked he came to Lucan, drank his share of green beer and seemed to be enjoying himself. He was a new man(n). I was thankful for the transformative properties of beer, ribald songs, fighting and a naked woman.

John Mann was in a hurry, and lucky the only bathroom stall was free. The latch on the stall was broken, but John Mann could close, if not lock, the door, the kind that hovered a foot from the floor. He dropped his underwear and pants to his ankles, sitting just in time. Once the emergency had passed, John Mann contemplated his life in the pose of Rodin’s The Thinker. The evening was shaping up to be the highlight of his social season, the highlight of his social life, the best night of his life. John Mann couldn’t have been happier than he was at that exact moment, sitting on a scuzzy bar toilet with a fuzzy head and diarrhea. He was yanked from his reverie by a loud bang as someone crashed through the outer door of the bathroom.

Under his stall door, John Mann could see a pair of frantic feet, darting to and fro. John Mann sat up straight upon hearing a low gurgle, deep in the intruder’s throat. The disembodied feet dashed toward John Mann’s stall. The door burst open, scraping John Mann’s knee as it swung. John Mann’s roommate Cyrus leapt toward John Mann with an arched back and an open mouth. John Mann was frozen in place, but really, where else could he go in that split second? A gusher of emerald puke exploded from Cyrus’s mouth, landing on John Mann’s naked lap, legs, and the clothes bunched at his feet. John Mann could feel puke sliding off his thighs and testicles, dollops splashing in the toilet bowl below him.

Cyrus swiped his mouth with the back of his hand and silently, sheepishly, left John Mann on his throne with the stall door open. John Mann sat still for a few moments, then calmly stood. He methodically wiped his body and clothes clean of green vomit, as clean as was possible using one industrial size roll of toilet paper. John Mann pulled up his pants, washed his hands and returned to our charred table in the bar. He ordered another green beer. John Mann wasn’t going to miss the rest of the best night of his life.