My longtime friend and frequent collaborator Lars telephoned, asking me to write something for him; ostensibly something which might be easily translated into a screenplay. He said, “just write something about drinking”. Typically, Lars stubbornly refused to elaborate on this request, preferring to allow me to explore the issue without any direction or specificity whatever. The following is the result of this solicitation, composed over the course of a single, sober evening. The reader should be reminded that the present author himself rarely imbibes, and that this fictional rendering of the general alcoholic experience ought not be conflated with the author's real-life habits or perspective. Enjoy.
I am at the summit of a mountain, several miles high. There are no clouds up here. The sun reflecting over the surrounding snow pack, the abrupt panes and angles of white, is nearly blinding me. It is purer than any white on the palette, of a shade few will ever see. I can see the curvature of the earth, and can intuit the featureless black just beyond this final, thin trace of atmosphere. The cold is stultifying; it slows the heart and the mind and it becomes impossible to think, to compare or to fear. I have lost all contact with my extremities. I am just a pair of eyes: for the first time, a genuinely perceiving thing, uncorrupted by anything.
In the next few moments, a celestial object roughly the size of France will fall upon the Indian Ocean, less than one hundred kilometers from the mainland, and our little human experiment will come to an abrupt halt. About one-third of the Indian Ocean will be immediately displaced, along with much of the earth’s crust beneath it, and the resulting tsunami is estimated to reach an altitude of some twenty-five thousand feet or so. This first wave is expected to freeze instantaneously, throwing a great, continent-sized pane of frozen glass shattering across the Himalayas, where I’m presently seated. Thus, I suppose I’m in the V.I.P. section: the last thing I will ever see will be the best I’ll ever see. The last thing most people see is not so spectacular: an I.V. bag, maybe some headlights. The rest of the world will die off slowly, over a period of weeks. Even if I could still feel, I wouldn’t feel a thing.
And then I detect a hand prodding my shoulder, and then a voice. The whirling little eddies of powdered glass and sun slip back into nothingness and I feel my breath on my arm. The mountain retreats and reveals a long, mostly dark room: a bar, one I’d been to before but whose name escapes me. I do, however, recall the name corresponding to the wretched, unclean voice telling me that I can’t stay here: Dolores. The place smells of spoiled butane and is lit intermittently in stuttering little neon advertisements. The jukebox is playing some sort of contemporary country, some glossy piece of forgettable shit penned exclusively for shit-brained NASCAR enthusiasts, and Dolores’ tone becomes more severe: she says
“Sir. Sir, you cannot sleep in this establishment.”
I look up at her face and immediately feel sick. Her cheeks hang down like soft wax, or an old hound’s jowls. The light threw shadows over her face; they coupled with her makeup in all the wrong ways and I immediately thought of Lon Chaney. She looked under green and red light as if abused by some deranged cosmetologist. I could not tell her age: she was somewhere between thirty and seventy. The bar had over years etched her in its own twisted tree-root image. As any personal deity eventually will.
“Sir, we need to get you home. Is there anyone we can call?”
I look around and wonder who this “we” is that needs to get me home; Dolores and I are evidently the sole occupants of the establishment, and I have no particular interest in moving or getting home. The pronoun “we” is often wielded in such a thoughtlessly liberal manner: “we’ve” come so far, “we” landed on the moon, and so on. I thought of the etymology of Dolores: the name is derived from the term “dolorous”, meaning “that which involves pain or sorrow”. I thought about smashing her face in with a hammer. There is no one we can call.
I watch Dolores waddle around the bar in her heels, telephone in hand, and she pauses just before my stool; I have seen this unoriginal gesture a thousand times, and in a dazzling variety of forms: every little cunt on this earth dreams of that spare opportunity to exercise a little power and authority over some hapless other. It is the same empowering reflex of squashing insects, translated unto the defenseless nuisances of our own species, and every bit as without dignity. She stands there tapping her shoe, lording it all over me, oblivious of her own nearness to death. She looks at me with that mean, wide-eyed tentativeness: what shall we call it? The “Impatient Stepmother Reprimand” or “The Unkind Eagerness of the Regional Manager’s Rebuke”? It is all rather sickening and unsportsmanlike. So I laugh a big hearty laugh in defiance, best as I can feign. But there are in fact very few moves left for me: I can acquiesce, and stumble away defeated into the miserable sidewalk sunlight. Or I could just dismember her.
Compassion is generally rare, but it is most rare among bartenders: no one in their tender youth dreams of tending bar; it is either a brief vocation enjoyed on route toward another, or that to which one has been permanently abandoned in the shadow of failure. Either way, they tend to be a pedantic, intolerant crop, not at all as accommodating as their grayscale cinematic forebears: the mythology of bartending is rich with characters sensitive to the complexities of living as a drunk. The dispensers of lore were practiced listeners; an ear meant as much as a good pour. Much is said of the superfluous formality of the forties and fifties, but our own age is suffused with the pettiest sorts of propriety: that a man may not openly demonstrate drunkenness in an establishment maintained specifically to accommodate that purpose is, frankly, far more obscene than any latitude of inebriation. Today’s bartender, charmless human vending machine of state-sponsored poison, ought to pause and contrast his existence against that of his fading heroic ancestor: the poor man’s psychiatrist, the ever-interested, enabling stranger who’d rather take you in than see you kicked in the teeth. It’s the difference between a hole in the wall and a hooker with a heart.
Maybe I haven’t been quite clear. I’d like to do my best to impart to you the content of this creature’s stare: imagine both brows propped up to extremity, as if by old wooden church beams, the eyes beneath them unnaturally widened, fixed in some maniacal indictment, and the mouth bent in a big clown gesture, taxing the perimeters of the facial muscles in its scope, containing both smile and frown in equal measure. It is a look endemic to the privately impotent and the cornered sexless; it is painted on the bulbous countenance of the bored stick-figure security guard who erroneously suspects you of shoplifting, and over that of the closeted Dean of your High School who so lasciviously covets your young ass and cunning little recklessness. It’s an admittedly poignant look that says: submit yourself to me, you skinny little cocksucker. Lay down your arms, you little motherfucker, or you’ll be completely fucking dead. In short, it’s a common bit of theatrical terrorism, most often followed by some embarrassing physical adult tantrum which ultimately undermines the accuser’s credibility and lends some de facto clemency to any alleged crimes. It is a look to be ignored: people with real power either simply exercise it or they do not. Those without it are betting that you’re amply stupid or weak enough to cower before a little raised brow or a few disappointed sighs; they reflexively intuit that you’d rather sacrifice some fleeting conviction than absorb the scorn of a superior. Upon recognizing this gesture, know that it is a bluff, in the truest sense of the term; it indicates that they have considerably more to lose than you do.
But Dolores’ eyes and nostrils are widening into chasms and so there are more pressing issues immediately before me. Again, there are two paths I might take: either amounts to taking the low road. I might suggest that by strangling this fetid little monster to death, I’d be doing the world a favor. But the real tragedy is that the world is too stupid to appreciate such a gesture. The media would run a mawkish little segment, featuring the makeshift memorials of tearful friends and family. They will run a few flattering photos of Dolores in better, incarnate days, all of which will fail to communicate the depth of her heartlessness and idiocy. In erecting a fitting memorial for the deceased, they will prostrate themselves to locate items and images representative of her interests, souvenirs of her earthly endeavors; they will ultimately shrug and have to settle for a few stuffed animals, a portrait of Julia Roberts, and some shitty late-period Aerosmith record. They will remember her as a gentle soul or a free spirit, or whatever; they will not see the monster in her because they cannot see it in themselves. There is nothing unique in Dolores’ shittiness, nor in those who will wail and ask how someone could possibly render into hamburger a face as kind and angelic as hers. They will speak of how she had a heart that could fill an entire stadium, ignoring that, in the end, her entire body was expertly squeezed into a large Adidas gym bag. In the end she was, in every sense of the word, delivered.
So I think to myself that the system has failed me; not the system you’re thinking of: not that of education or of government, but my own little regimen intended to keep me out of situations like the present. If you’re going to be a drunk, you will need a system. And you’ll need to adhere faithfully to it, as well as a drunk can. In truth, the system works; the failure is all my own.
Creating a system presupposes that the drunk actually wishes to live. The system is designed to prolong the life and well being of those who’ve chosen to be drunks. If you are so unfortunate as to remain employed, the system will help you to keep your job; even the homeless will tell you that drinking isn’t cheap. If you are in a relationship with a partner who is not a drunk, the system will help you to pass off your addiction as non-emergency, a humorous, poetic little eccentricity. All told, the system is intended to help preserve everything in your life that is worth keeping, while simultaneously permitting you to stay intoxicated enough to forget life’s less favorable components. Every enduring drunk has a system; it is what prompts you to marvel at his persistence, what makes you wonder how it is that Uncle Jeff is still alive and mobile after all these years without the slightest concession to sobriety. He may possess the intelligence of an insect, but insects understand rhythm: it’s what keeps them from being eaten.
Firstly, the physical limits: these will differ among individuals, depending on constitution and body type. For most of us, anything less than six drinks is insufficient, and eight is more like it. You will make an effort to reason through your stupor and excuse a ninth or tenth beer, and you will regret it: you’ll resort to idiotic, reckless behavior. Probably the first thing you’ll attempt to do is leave your apartment; despite the fact that you cannot really walk, you will find your way to a nearby bar. You’ll do your best to affect some composure, ignoring the double-vision and the fact that your speech is too slurred to order a drink. You may or may not detect the staff eyeing you with suspicion. If there are any women present, you will wonder why they find you repellant: it will be because your breath smells like a fucking outhouse at the State Fair. You’re not fooling anyone: if you cannot walk or talk, you probably cannot fuck with any measurable grace either; thus, any women dumb enough to demonstrate receptivity to your bumbling advances ought to be avoided. But in all likelihood, the women have either gone to bed or are spoken for, and the remainder of your evening will be spent in sad conversation among men even more defeated than yourself. Following a total of twelve or fifteen drinks, you’ll maunder home. Around 7:00 AM, your alarm will sound, but you’ll still be too drunk to care; you’ll sleep ‘til noon and miss another day of school or work. The entire endeavor can only terminate in a crescendo of humiliation, headache and poverty, all of which will cause you to drink even more. In short, you’ll wish you’d simply given up earlier and adhered to your prescribed dosage.
Next are the temporal limits, which imply a kind of schedule: you cannot remain drunk all of the time, sadly, or even most of the time. If you wish for your little impediment to be tolerated as a quirk or novelty, you’ll need to restrict its breadth: like a joke that’s told far too often, or the person who tells it, people will quickly tire of you. In short, you’ll be drunk only every other day: if you are drunk on Monday, you will not be drunk again until Wednesday, as Tuesday will be spent recovering and resetting your faculties. In reality, this little suggested regimen has less to do with social or professional etiquette than with physiological practicalities. There is, firstly, the challenge of maintaining the health of the internal organs, namely the liver and the kidneys: a drunk cannot do without either of them. Drinking every single day will, given a few years, send one or both of these organs into arrest or outright failure, and you’ll probably die. Of course, there will be consecutive days when you’ll be expected to imbibe, as well you should; were you to openly decline, your charmed associates might suspect you of suffering from a clinical addiction, ruining your little charade as tortured pianist or affable train-hopping writer or whatever. Stay in character and don’t allow them to de-author your horseshit little tale of yourself.
Secondly, we ought to highlight the dementia. When an ordinary twenty or twenty-five year old imbecile drinks committedly for several consecutive days, he or she might experience little more than severe headache and loss of appetite; dissonance rarely occurs in the mind of the simpleton. Some budding youth who call themselves artists openly court the classic textbook cognitive sufferings of their heroes, and wonder why such states are so unavailable, so inimitable or difficult to induce. They labor throughout a manifold of embarrassing, obnoxious gestures, drinking to excess and performing all manner of public obscenities in hopes of convincing themselves and others equally of the authenticity of their wholly non-existent insanity. In little time, they will wonder in frustration why they’ve been saddled with the local title of “fucking asshole” rather than the preferred designation of “troubled genius”.
But a developed adult thinker, following a few days of uninhibited alcoholic inebriation, will of necessity begin to exhibit all the classic symptoms of madness, and it will not be at all funny. You might require a team of concerned and well-armed associates to stand guard over you and ensure that you don’t attempt to sever any critical arteries; yours or their own. True dementia is without direction or boundary; it ordinarily stirs in well-insulated psychic reservoirs whose dark contents might best be ignored, or investigated solely in the controlled company of credentialed professionals. But on this particular afternoon, it is apparent that the system is broken; the levees have been opened.
I look at my watch: it’s now 4:00 PM; the regulars would not arrive for at least another hour. I slide off the stool and am pleasantly surprised by my equilibrium; I feel graceful and renewed. I lay two twenties on the bar and walked toward the exit, and Dolores lights a cigarette, probably rolls her eyes and tells me to get some rest. I then quietly swing the door closed, lock both deadbolts and insert a whole twenty dollar bill into the jukebox; this might take a while.
For the record, her last words were: “forget something?” It would make a fine gravestone inscription. But no, mon ami: for the record, this drunk remembers everything.
I gripped a handful of keys and threw all my weight behind the punch, as hard as I’ve ever punched anything, right through the esophagus; her eyes rolled back in grave panic and she fell backward and sort of seizured on the sticky tile, emitting a series of grotesque wet staccato grunts; her weird twitching sickened me and I vomited profusely on site. There must have been a good fifteen keys on my ring, but I only use one of them; and I wondered briefly about what old forgotten locks they might correspond to. I let her jitter and writhe for a few minutes, kicking her intermittently while I made my selections on the juke: Van Halen’s “Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love”, Springsteen’s “Born to Run”, and a host of others. I then jumped up and down on her neck and chest a few times, to the beat of Poison’s “Talk Dirty to Me”, and finally her slithering guttural protest terminated in silence.
But it’s nearly ten after four, and there’s work to be done. Now: I don’t know if you’ve ever attempted to disassemble a full-grown woman in a bathroom stall with a paring knife while “Desperado” echoes in the background, but for me it represents the Everest of Strangeness; I was forced to use the toilet rim as a sort of fulcrum, so that I could effectively separate the head from the spinal column, the arms and legs from their respective joints, and so on. About halfway into the operation, when the first gentle notes of Jim Croce’s “Operator” began to play, it dawned on me the severity of my engagement: I was thoroughly soaked in a foam of blood and there were bits of fatty tissue and cartilage scattered all about my arms. And the fluorescent light above was just beginning to flicker. After some fifteen minutes of scrambling about like some deranged chicken in search of solutions, I located a suitable means of transport: Dolores’s gym bag. I then stuffed her components into the bag, and myself into her pink nylon warm-up suit. With Dolores slung over my shoulder, I then set fire to the establishment and exited through the rear alley.
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