I can't burp.

Not "I don't like to belch." Or "I find the loud br-a-a-a-a-pp emitted by my beer-swilling friends so repulsive I can't bear to duplicate the sound myself." This is an honest-to-pete physical affliction: my throat has no burp apparatus.

I've been coached by masters in the art of eructation, like my brother (who can belch the first line of the Scooby Doo theme, or the alphabet up to T), and college professionals (who could douse a candle at three feet). But all for naught. All I ended up doing was sucking in air until I felt like the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man.

Beer drinking, especially using family-friendly apparatus like the beer bong or the funnelator, was not remotely comfortable for me. Fortunately I discovered hard liquor my freshman year in college, so I could still participate in such wholesome amusements as quarters, moose, piggle wiggle, and Bob. (Of course, when everyone else is swallowing Bud and you've got Jack, you tend to be one of the first ones hammered. But isn't that the point?)

So what could possibly be the downside to this mysterious affliction? Let's just remember one of our favorite second grade poems:

"A burp is just a little gas
that comes up from the heart.
But when it takes the underpass,
It turns into a fart."

So while everyone else is gaseously reciting the pledge of allegiance or making the Nantucket limerick sound even more disgusting, I'm looking for an empty balcony. Or a softly upholstered couch. Or an excuse to go outside with the smokers, who can't smell anything anyway.

My life has become a flight from carbonation. I have to order iced tea or lemonade at restaurants, and I'm not even in AARP. I stay away from canned sodas entirely, though I can manage the plastic bottles if I do a repetitive shake-and-release maneuver.

If all you have to drink in your house is beer, I hope to hell you don't have naugahyde furniture. Or those red retro fifties-diner kitchen chairs. (I defy anyone to pass passive gas without sounding like a flock of geese on Coca-Cola furniture.)

And if you see me with a pepsi in an elevator, you might just want to take the stairs.