It’s been three years as of last Friday.
Unlike last year, or the year before, I don’t have anything uplifting to say. I’m just not feeling it.
I’m not struggling, I don’t think. I don’t really have any compulsions, no monkeys on my back, other than maybe ice cream. But neither am I on some damn pink cloud any more either.
For a while I’d been kicking around the notion that maybe someday I could go back out. Just be more careful. Drink like a normie. That whole idea changed a few months ago when I was out with Maitri at some pub in the Quarter. I bought a round of drinks, and her Guinness spilled onto my can of Rockstar and down my hand, and without thinking I licked all the Guinness foam off of where it spilled.
It shot straight up into my brain and down my spine into all my nerve endings. It was electric. Almost orgasmic.
Alcohol. Wow. I’d pretty much forgotten. I’d reduced it to a distant memory, a sort of academic curiosity about myself, like my shrimp allergy. It was just something I’m not supposed to have. And it all came rushing back.
I liked that one little lick waaaaay too much.
I’ve been wrestling with my place in society lately. It’s changed so much in the last three years, and even more since I moved. I used to be the guy that organized the pub runs, the Bigfoot beer schnocks, the Sunday afternoon darts and pints. And when I quit, I stopped calling people, and they stopped calling me. I know how it goes, I used to be the same way. You don’t know whether to call up the recovering drunk and invite him out when you’re gonna be drinking, in case it might somehow be rude. And so vast stretches of my social life just kind of slowly faded away.
And now we’re in a new city. A city where everything revolves around booze, and where a guy who is visibly not a drinker just kind of doesn’t quite fit a lot of the time. And I am the stay-at-home dad, and I have a high-pressure job, and so vast stretches of my social life just seem barely out of reach. I can see them, but I can’t get to them.
Sometimes the only things that remind me what city I’m in are my lunches, and my gutting days. Which is why I’m so passionate about the gutting, and why I’m gaining weight. Another kind of gutting.
I had a majorly frustrating weekend, and I tried to finally clear my head of the crud last night by taking the Triumph out. Which led to more frustration, since the motorcycle is both 1. infrequently ridden, and 2. British, so it was a bitch to start.
I headed out to a meeting, to a place I’d never been, thinking to maybe pick up my three year chip. Turns out it was a speaker meeting, at a halfway house, and they don’t do chips on speaker nights but I wasn’t really feeling the love anyway. Halfway-house and rehab meetings are like that. Sometimes they can give you perspective, but sometimes they give you too goddamn much…perspective.
Afterwards I took the bike and decided to wander vaguely in the direction of Angelo Brocato’s.
I was on the freeway, going way faster than I’ve gone on a motorcycle in at least a year, feeling the wind going up my sleeves and ballooning out my jacket, feeling my hands pulling away from the handlebars. I felt like letting go. I felt like something in the universe wanted me to let go, just to see what would happen. Do you ever get that feeling when you’re looking over the edge of a great height, and you have to resist the urge to just step off the edge? I get that feeling all the time. I always have. It just fascinates me that it only takes one second of courage, or stupidity, to step off, and then you’re committed and you can never take that step back.
The bike was like that. I could just let go, and maybe I would float backwards while the bike raced on ahead. Or maybe something else would happen.
Part of me wanted to find out. But more of me really really wanted a cannoli.
Maybe the Guinness was like that too. Maybe that one step is just a pint, and maybe nothing happens. Or maybe I die.
Maybe shrimp is the same way.
Angelo Brocato’s was closed.
I headed back Uptown to the Creole Creamery. Thinking that it’s dark, half the streetlights on St. Charles still don’t work, I could hit a pothole and that would be the end of me. And I tried to remember what my last blog post was, and would it be a fitting last post. And I wondered what happens to somebody’s blog when they die a premature death. Does somebody pull the plug? Or does it stay up for weeks or months while total strangers pick through the archives finding every mundane post suddenly fraught with meaning and foreshadowing? I remember thinking about this last summer when Hiromi was having her dark days. What happens to her blog? Would Karl and I, her blog maintenance man and her blog gardener, respectively, know what right thing to do if she were to leave us?
Creole Creamery was open. Chocolate malt chip is very good. I called somebody. They teach you rule number one before they even teach you the steps. Call somebody. Somebody who gets it. I know people who get it. I know people with only months under their belt who sometimes get it better than I do.
I’m OK today.
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Can’t really critique this, since it’s a blog and personal. I enjoyed reading it, you used good imagery. I gave high scores so it will be easier to justify spending points on opening this up. i’ve thought about quitting drinking many times. i probably should. i’m such a cranky person sober though, many times i feel mean and don’t like myself.
hope things are well with you.
austin
Allergic to shrimp and a native of New Orleans? That’s torture, surely…
This was a powerful insight all told. Didn’t seem quite so much a long vomit really, it reads quite well – all the thoughts to yourself, the random musings of someone with way too much to have to think about. The perspective gained from just letting the issues tumble over awhile is more useful than that gained by telling yourself to get some perspective and act, and the writing reflects that – the confidence gained along the motorbike ride until you get to the goal.
I like the almost inversely proportional addiction you’re ascribing to ice cream – as if surrendering to it helps you ease past the alcohol troubles – although you do know it’ll be harder to buy clothes if you eat ALL your troubles away…
brilliant! In a way, I think the alcohol is the less important part of the story. You describe the ‘stepping off’ – off the edge, off the bike off the wagon – with so much.. I can’t even think of the word.. commitment! I felt the contraction in my stomach and the little peal of excitement. I got it. Thank you
This is an incredible piece and so wonderfully human. It never ceases to amaze me that despite the borders and vast distances of land and water that separate us how similar we all really are. I have also considered the potential of the blog as legacy and have wondered if we are entering a great time in human history, where future generations will have unparalleled access to their ancestors. I don’t know if my blog will survive that long but I hope so. I look forward to reading more from you.
The way you described that small taste of alcohol was very effective at describing an experience that I CANNOT share. For most people the taste of alcohol (not necessarily the beverage itself, but the alcohol bite underneath it) is unpleasant, and it’s the end results that are important. Describing the kind of pavlovian reaction you had to the taste of the alcohol put me into that point of view that is normally unavailable to me, so good job.
Aside from that specific high point, the rest of the blog was almost businesslike in the way you describe the events that happened to you. You make it simple and write basically: “This is what happened to me, and this is how it made me think, and this is how it made me feel.” This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it was effective.
Keep Writing and maybe continue this with updates. Not only is it good for you but good for others struggling with the same addiction. Blogging is an excellent way to share with other of similar circumstance and strength can be drawn one from antoher.
The art of the blog was devised so that people whose lives were of interest, whose struggles in life were of the nature that someone might wish to read about them, would get the chance to do so. This blog pinpoints the soul of the true blog… it eschews all those dullards like me who prattle on about the tedious minutiae of their bourgeois lives but who gas on about a lot of nothing. Congratulations for conveying something interesting using magnificent economy of language.
Your achievement makes for a blog-tastic piece of autobiographical scribery. I find the anecdote about the first encounter with spilt beer a tense, climactic moment in the piece. I was unsure that this anniversary was going to go off without a hitch at that point and as a writer, this dramatic tension makes for a seat-of-the-pants moment. It also reassures the reader that you have conquered this struggle, making an inspirational moment for all.
It was also brave to include these light ruminations on death. I would imagine the feeling hangs over someone such as yourself, who has lived on the edge and overcome his demons, and who has a great deal left to ponder in life. The grim detail about losing friends after you quit alcohol is also quite melancholic… often people are fickle and untrustworthy, despite knowing them for years.
The blog is well-written and people will be able to relate to it, thus making it important for others. I recommend (if you haven’t done so already) shopping other excerpts from the blog around the web.
You will find an audience for this.
Best,
Claire_D
Wow1 Very well written and very intelligent. I work with addicts and have seen the effects of alcoholisim within my own family. I can relate. i understnd that breaking a certian lifestyle and starting out new is like learning how to walk and talk again. Thank you so much for sharing your message. So many people can relate to this. Best wishes, Sandi Knapp.
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