I figure there are two ways to burn a bridge: whiskey, and everything else.
I admit it: There’s something beautiful in a martini glass; something so achingly elegant in the way a champagne flute plays its score. And I know it must be in my blood because I wasn’t brought up to drink, it was never glorified, and certainly not encouraged, not in a Baptist household. (At least the Jews in my family drank wine, but I didn’t know them very well, and they always seemed to be committing suicide or losing a few children in Oklahoma or some such dramatic thing as that which didn’t lend itself very well to summer visits). No, at Uncle Larry’s house there was no alcohol, of any kind, ever, except that one time Aunt Ruby came to visit from Memphis and left some peppermint brandy, for her nerves she said, in the cabinet over the stove.
Oh, but there were stories about alcohol.
Grandfathers forever sneaking off, in the middle of the night which seems to be between 10:00 PM and 11:00, and involved Bingo Halls, I’m thinking, and running cars into ditches…almost making the driveway, definitely making the Yaupon and Boxwood. Mothers ruining church cantatas by showing up late, and wearing running shorts and sun hats under which her pills were kept, dangling on the arms of men with names like Churl and Bud. And fathers. There were fathers in there somewhere, I don’t know how I know it but I do.
And there were sons, too. Sons who drank despite, to spite, the parable(s).
I’ve never been to a meeting, never had counseling, like two of my brothers; they told me their experiences and I adopted them as mine. Never had the privilege of rehab, like the other two, though it was appealing on some level to have known people, and smart people too, who went to rehab. I’ve certainly stood in the family pulpit and made pronouncements on them all about their vices, but unlike the rest of my siblings, I seem to be the one who inherited the Key to Managaeability, often disguised as moderation. A good alcoholic can hide right out in public, cloaked in gin or vodka, if he stands very still and smiles as if he’s got a secret confidence. The right amount of teeth shown can convince anyone.
I was…still, am, at times…that kind of alcoholic, and I’m using that term because that’s the point of this blog. I was always fun, always funny, Wildean wit, a Williams flare for the quip, when drinking. It made me sharper, and I think there’s a research study in there somewhere. I think it’s absolutely true that liquor does this for some of us. And I didn’t want that to stop; I’m a writer, I needed it, I needed my brain to click over so I could save myself from the Thousand Thoughts.
Unless I’ve been drinking whiskey, Bourbon, any of that family, though, that wasn’t pleasant. My blood can’t take it. My mouth can, but the man I turn into after a few tumblers is not a nice man. So, what do you do?
You just stop drinking whiskey, is what I said, and did. Or…
…or you do it when no one’s watching. Except Aristophanes. She’s very open-minded and nonjudgmental; she’s also part bobcat. And still, I didn’t have her declawed. I didn’t agree with that.
I had a dear friend who used to hide bottles around the house, mostly vodka, that was her crutch. I never did that. We weren’t hiders, no. We drank right out in front of each other; on my father’s side, we did. If you were going to stare at us, you were going to get the whole picture. It made a life more honest, and also, a lot damn harder to love through. My mother’s side drank too, at least the women did. But not Uncle Larry and not Nana. They had a different size of shoulder.
I get so tickled at people, though, who believe that so long as they make the admission, any admission, that they can use honesty as a defense. That’s not how honesty works at all. The point of honesty is to keep the bridge afloat, not charge a toll. And, for me, I guess that’s what made drinking so glamorous; I could just ignore the toll with a glass in my hand. Hell, I could ignore the whole bridge. I would just drink myself into Who Cares Anyway, and laugh at some personal joke instead, happy as a potato, right in front of the bridge and devise some other method of Getting Over the Creek. One that usually involved driving.
I never drank out of rebellion. I didn’t drink because I wasn’t supposed to. I drank because it was within reach. It was as easy to grab as the fork, or napkin. (But not the bill…ugh, the bills).
To show the whole total would just be too gauche.
I didn’t start drinking until I was 21, living in Orlando, working at Disney on the College Program. No one pressured me into it, no one did anything, and so the mystique became the idea of its privacy. I wanted a secret as much as anyone else did. I had no idea, honestly, that it’d make so much sense to me to drink. I couldn’t possibly be the Total Sum of a Family Tree; I couldn’t be That Root, not when I didn’t grow up with them, or know them, not when I was transplanted at the age of three to a smaller Eden, born away to a great uncle’s house in Mississippi. Not a thousand miles from Home in Orlando.
But, I was.
It wasn’t until My Indiana Years that I fully slipped. I’d used alcohol as a coping mechanism before, yes, but Indiana was the tipping point. I worked solely to drink, to escape the relationship I didn’t really want but took and kept because it got me out of Mississippi. It was easy to drink, and the bloat that seeped into my face and stomach and chin told the story a lot better than I’m doing now. It was a gross story. And, I’m sure, in time, there will be people to thank for the actions they took. But, that’s not now. And, so you know, there’s a good chance that that Time is kept on a watch I gave away accidentally last Christmas.
Time heals all wounds, dries all alcoholics sober, but nothing comes with conditions quite like Time.
I used to say, in jest, that I had to drink until I was drunk enough to drive. Why God saved me from those nights, I don’t know. They were long and shameful nights, the next morning, but never during, and that’s where the intoxication comes from. The things I’ve said, and done, while drunk, are best left unmentioned for two reasons: 1) those stories belong to other people, now, and 2) I can’t really remember them anyway. I hated realizing I’d had a blackout, but god, I longed for them because I was a terribly, privately depressed young man. And if alcohol was a disease, then the blackout was your treatment. To be given the right, or to take it, to forget because of a blackout…that was a blessing.
It wasn’t until last summer that I decided to cash in on this old world and trade it in; I didn’t get that much for it. But, at the same time, I don’t blame anyone for my drinking.
I do blame a select few for making a bar a better bed than my real one.
Still, I don’t drink some liquors at all anymore; I limit my nights out, a social experiment, I suppose, which is appreciated most of all by my wallet, but have I stopped drinking? No.
A fish can’t change his fins. But he sure as hell can keep them to himself and not muddy up the riverbed.
And to be honest, as I still struggle with this everyday, and this being as close to a microphone about it as I’ll ever get, I’m more than a little frightened. I didn’t realize that twelve years had already passed, until this morning, twelve years. I’ve been an alcoholic longer than any job I’ve ever held, or all my years of college and graduate school combined. If only I could find a creative way to put that on my resume to prove that there are some things to which I’ve been faithfully and gainfully employed. If only there were some way to highlight that commitment.
The last interview I went on, they took me to dinner…and drinks. (Sigh).
Over a third of my life has been spent with alcohol, and what scares me is that I won’t like who I am without it. But, that’s what I’m doing, that’s what I’m trying, and if nothing else, my trade in gave me enough money, at least, to pay the toll.
So, I’m gonna pay it, for the very first time (again) and see what happens.
The Clever Kris 