how drunk was i
Today is gray and rainy, but the temperature isn't too bad. Typical spring day in Portland, I think. A little depressing after a couple weeks of premature summer, but still, it could be worse. I've been sitting in my little cave under track lighting, reading my book "The Victim," thinking about drinking.
I love to write about what a horrible drunk CB was, but I don't like so much to write about how much *I* drank during our relationship. Can't blame it all on CB though, can't even blame it on my dead brother. I came to Portland in 2001 and started drinking cheap beer like water. I guess I was depressed. I had a ten dollar bicycle and my friend Leo helped me bungee a milk crate onto the back -- I called it my Pabst mobile. I would cycle down Vancouver from our house on San Rafael to a little market to buy a half-rack of Pabst and some potato chips, then I'd cycle home and start drinking. Alone. I think I thought: this is Portland. We drink in Portland.
I was lonely, depressed, new. Portland was a grand mystery and in the face of that mystery I drank. Of course, I worked like a maniac -- I still had a car payment to make, even though I'd left my car in Florida at my mom's, and I had to pay rent and buy food etc. I worked on-call in the place I still work today. I worked any shift I could, any shift they called me for, I was desparate to work, constantly worried that I wouldn't be able to patch together enough shifts to make ends meet. I worked and worked and when I wasn't working, I was drinking.
Then September 11th happened, then, a week later, I found out my brother was dying. Etc, etc, fast-forward through the return to the East, the inevitable death, the packing up and moving out of all my stuff, my car -- February of 2002, I'm back in Portland. Drinking and working. I got together with my friend Carlson. We eventually moved-in together. She drank a lot. We had that in common. Together, we drank a lot. All she wanted to do was play the Sims on her computer and watch teevee and drink. I hated it. I even got sick of all the drinking, but when I left Carlson it was for CB and that was like hopping from the frying pan into the fire. (Or from the shot-glass into the punch bowl...?)
By then, though, I was in school. I didn't have the time or inclination to waste my days on alcohol. I was also on anti-depressants which helped remove a lot of the impetus to stay altered all the time. CB's drinking was masked, shrouded, she normalized her extremes somehow and soon I found myself forgetting to question the wisdom of our early afternoon trips to stale smelling bars because we couldn't think of anything better to do.
Today (the gray and rainy spring day, lush green, a little humid) reminds me of a phase we went through together of visiting a bar called the Basement on 11th or 12th, whichever street runs North. We liked the Basement in this kind of weather because you could look out the huge front windows and see the trees. Inside was a fish tank which glowed a lovely, clean blue and there were also lots of plants. It was always so dark inside, the only light coming through the front. They had great beer specials, though I always got Pabst, so cheap, and drank so many pints. So many pints. How could I drink so many pints? And, of course, it's no surprise that I've lost 15 pounds since I left CB and stopped drinking so much. Imagine the cut in daily calories! Incredible.
I mostly don't miss the afternoons spent in stale bars drinking cheap beer and playing cards, wasting time, wasting money, getting drunk often enough that being drunk became somehow normal. I don't miss forgetting what it's like to go to sleep sober and to wake feeling clear-headed and well-rested. I don't miss the lifestyle of boredom that accompanies the lifestyle of drinking. But there *is* something about it I miss, some tiny element. The taste of the beer, the afternoon spread before me with nothing else to do, no one else to see, the giving over of all my concerns for the moment, the acceptance that I was not happy, that I had walked into the bar not happy and that I had, therefore, nothing to lose in drinking except maybe my awareness of my unhappiness.
I miss the naive hope that swelled up quietly when the first pint was before me, in the first few sips, crisp and sweet, when the cards for gin rummy were dealt or the dice were brought out, the tiny hope in that threshold moment: maybe this will be good. To foolishly put faith in something simple -- I will drink this elixer and maybe this will all become good. Maybe I will be happy. It was wrong-headed and oversimplified and it never worked, never, ever worked, but I miss the hope and the simplicity of it. The faith that something easy might fix something otherwise complicated. I miss the delusion.
I love to write about what a horrible drunk CB was, but I don't like so much to write about how much *I* drank during our relationship. Can't blame it all on CB though, can't even blame it on my dead brother. I came to Portland in 2001 and started drinking cheap beer like water. I guess I was depressed. I had a ten dollar bicycle and my friend Leo helped me bungee a milk crate onto the back -- I called it my Pabst mobile. I would cycle down Vancouver from our house on San Rafael to a little market to buy a half-rack of Pabst and some potato chips, then I'd cycle home and start drinking. Alone. I think I thought: this is Portland. We drink in Portland.
I was lonely, depressed, new. Portland was a grand mystery and in the face of that mystery I drank. Of course, I worked like a maniac -- I still had a car payment to make, even though I'd left my car in Florida at my mom's, and I had to pay rent and buy food etc. I worked on-call in the place I still work today. I worked any shift I could, any shift they called me for, I was desparate to work, constantly worried that I wouldn't be able to patch together enough shifts to make ends meet. I worked and worked and when I wasn't working, I was drinking.
Then September 11th happened, then, a week later, I found out my brother was dying. Etc, etc, fast-forward through the return to the East, the inevitable death, the packing up and moving out of all my stuff, my car -- February of 2002, I'm back in Portland. Drinking and working. I got together with my friend Carlson. We eventually moved-in together. She drank a lot. We had that in common. Together, we drank a lot. All she wanted to do was play the Sims on her computer and watch teevee and drink. I hated it. I even got sick of all the drinking, but when I left Carlson it was for CB and that was like hopping from the frying pan into the fire. (Or from the shot-glass into the punch bowl...?)
By then, though, I was in school. I didn't have the time or inclination to waste my days on alcohol. I was also on anti-depressants which helped remove a lot of the impetus to stay altered all the time. CB's drinking was masked, shrouded, she normalized her extremes somehow and soon I found myself forgetting to question the wisdom of our early afternoon trips to stale smelling bars because we couldn't think of anything better to do.
Today (the gray and rainy spring day, lush green, a little humid) reminds me of a phase we went through together of visiting a bar called the Basement on 11th or 12th, whichever street runs North. We liked the Basement in this kind of weather because you could look out the huge front windows and see the trees. Inside was a fish tank which glowed a lovely, clean blue and there were also lots of plants. It was always so dark inside, the only light coming through the front. They had great beer specials, though I always got Pabst, so cheap, and drank so many pints. So many pints. How could I drink so many pints? And, of course, it's no surprise that I've lost 15 pounds since I left CB and stopped drinking so much. Imagine the cut in daily calories! Incredible.
I mostly don't miss the afternoons spent in stale bars drinking cheap beer and playing cards, wasting time, wasting money, getting drunk often enough that being drunk became somehow normal. I don't miss forgetting what it's like to go to sleep sober and to wake feeling clear-headed and well-rested. I don't miss the lifestyle of boredom that accompanies the lifestyle of drinking. But there *is* something about it I miss, some tiny element. The taste of the beer, the afternoon spread before me with nothing else to do, no one else to see, the giving over of all my concerns for the moment, the acceptance that I was not happy, that I had walked into the bar not happy and that I had, therefore, nothing to lose in drinking except maybe my awareness of my unhappiness.
I miss the naive hope that swelled up quietly when the first pint was before me, in the first few sips, crisp and sweet, when the cards for gin rummy were dealt or the dice were brought out, the tiny hope in that threshold moment: maybe this will be good. To foolishly put faith in something simple -- I will drink this elixer and maybe this will all become good. Maybe I will be happy. It was wrong-headed and oversimplified and it never worked, never, ever worked, but I miss the hope and the simplicity of it. The faith that something easy might fix something otherwise complicated. I miss the delusion.
posted by reasonably prudent poet at 1:48 PM
1 Comments:
This is a gorgeous post. Very evocative.
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