I drank, and drank, and drank. Eventually I missed marijuana, since it had been my go-to for getting over hangovers. And I missed LSD. So I found Gregg again and he (unofficially, as always) moved back in. I drank and did drugs for the rest of 1988. My family faded into the background again.
When Thanksgiving rolled around, I told my parents I would not be joining them for any festivities. I’d always wanted to have a zero-pressure holiday without any silly turkey dinner, so I told Gregg I wanted to go camping.
I sure did love the idea of camping.
On Wednesday afternoon, I bought a case of beer to chill, and rented a car for $26.50 – a long maroon piece of junk. I still had the Bug, but we wanted something special for the holiday.
Gregg borrowed a tent from one of his brothers and off we went to have our young-and-free Thanksgiving holiday. We took Kitty, the beer, some pot and cat food, and drove to a rustic campground somewhere near Donegal.
Kitty leapt out of the car and raced off into the woods. I hoped she would come back.
We had a tent and a cooler, and enough daylight to make camp. Neither of us had ever set up a tent on our own, and we failed repeatedly in our attempts to make it stand up. We ended with a pile of nylon canvas on the ground, finally falling on top of the pile and staring at the trees through the waning light until it got too cold to lie on the ground anymore.
We climbed in the rental car and smoked a joint and drank beers until we passed out – Gregg in the backseat and me in the front.
I was so focused on remembering a tent, I hadn’t considered blankets. We used our coats – which we had to remove from our body – to cover ourselves. It was tremendously uncomfortable and, in late November, impossible to stay warm. But I was drunk, so I slept.
At some time well past midnight – BOOM! – something fiercely loud awakened me.
I leapt up with a start and there was Kitty on the hood of the car, mewing loud enough that I opened the door. I thought she’d jump in, but she stayed on the hood. So I stepped out, half-frozen, to cuddle her – and she leapt off the car and ran into the woods.
I hadn’t thought to bring a flashlight, so I just watched her disappear into the dark. Then I crawled back into the car and slept – until Kitty landed on the hood again. And again. And again. All night long, Kitty woke me from a dead sleep by jumping on the car, running away when I reached for her – such a fun game.
When the sun came up, Kitty was nowhere to be found. We slept until at least noon. I headed for the woods to look for her while Gregg rolled up the tent pile. I took two steps into the woods and Kitty appeared, then happily hopped into the car.
For Thanksgiving, we gave Kitty Fancy Feast turkey dinner.
We decided to get our Thanksgiving meal at a diner but – surprise! – the diner was closed on Thanksgiving Day. In fact, every restaurant we passed all the way home was closed. We couldn’t even buy more beer.
Somehow we hadn’t anticipated this.
We were starving, hungover, and utterly exhausted. We ended up eating peanut butter and jelly. Then we got high, passed out and slept until the next day.
That Thanksgiving sucked.
Oh, how I loved my return to alcohol.
After six weeks without it, that first drink was like magic: the slow burn down my throat, my head feeling ever so slightly lighter, the buzz of both emptiness and excitement. That first beer was golden, godly even. Immediately I felt whole and perfect and good.
It had been so very long since I’d felt good.
Instantly my raw, painful emotions were drowned by the alcohol.
One week earlier, I’d ditched my friends because they could drink and I could not. They could be free and I could not. They could dance and hug and flirt and cavort and all I could do was flop around like a sausage stuck in a sugar cookie.
My experience had nothing to do with specific people, friendships, my past or my future. I simply didn’t know how to function in a room full of people without using alcohol as a buffer. I didn’t fit because I hadn’t learned how to live without drinking.
I didn’t know it was possible.
The only thing I knew is that without alcohol, I couldn’t do anything properly. Not only could I not dance at the wedding, but I couldn’t even hold a conversation. Emotionally I ached and wailed. My return to alcohol had everything to do with my complete inability to function in the world without it.
After six weeks without drinking, beer was the greatest gift I could give myself. It returned my courage to speak my mind, to be myself in a room full of strangers, to dance to the jukebox and pour out my heart to the old men who had once dreamed the way I did.
I believed that alcohol allowed me the freedom to do whatever I wanted. And what I wanted most of all – suddenly and again – was to drink.
I didn’t tell anyone in my family that I’d had another alcoholic weekend, but I did share the news with my therapist. I confessed that I’d been drinking on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I’d slept all day Monday and saw him on Tuesday afternoon.
“How much did you drink?” asked Dr. C.
“What do you mean, how much? I have no idea how much I drank. I just drank!”
“More than three drinks?”
“Of course more than three!”
“So maybe six?”
“Oh my god,” I said. “Why would anyone stop at six?”
“So how many?”
“I DON’T KNOW,” I said, frustrated. “I don’t exactly count the beers.”
“Okay,” he said. “Maybe count them next time.”
Why wasn’t he ordering me to quit?
“I wasn’t planning to drink again,” I said.
“Okay,” said Dr. C. “Then maybe we could get back to doing some real work in therapy.”
“Great,” I said. “That’s so fucking helpful.”
“Well,” he said. “I thought you were making more progress when you weren’t drinking. Maybe we could get to the underlying issues we’d been discussing.”
“Maybe,” I harrumphed. “I just think drinking helps me to live my life the way I’ve always wanted to live it.”
“Do you mean the life where you’re a writer, living on a farm with dogs and children?”
“No,” I said. “The one where I am actually free. I’ve wanted freedom my whole life but instead I have to do what everyone else expects me to do!”
“Is there something keeping you from being free right now?”
“YES.” I groaned. “There’s ALWAYS something keeping me from being free.”
Dr. C waited.
Finally he said, “So what is it? What’s keeping you from being free?”
“I have no fucking idea,” I said.
September rolled around and I was still sober. My emotions were raw and agonizing. I hadn’t allowed myself to feel emotions for years. Now they’d clawed their way to the surface. They brutalized me one intense sensation at a time.
I was still so sad about Mocha dying, I could barely function. I burst into tears every few hours. A week later, I had my 24th birthday.
I felt ancient and angry. When I wasn’t crying, I was seething. My anger was this whole additional being that took over my ability to function rationally.
My rage was focused on men. I wanted to kill Larry for terrorizing Mocha. I wanted to kill Kurt for calling me a coke whore. I wanted to kill Gregg for his lies. I wanted to kill my rapist from 1987 and the guy who’d thrown me in a closet at a party in 1980 and every guy who’d had sex with me when I just wanted love. I didn’t see that I’d played any part in anything that happened to me.
I was furious with the world. And I wanted to kill myself, in spite of my decision not to try that again.
After just a few weeks sober, my emotions were completely out of my control. I felt only fury and despair; I experienced nothing else.
About two weeks after Mocha died, my friend Marti got married. And I was still sober.
Finally: there was cause for celebration! Marti was one of my favorite people in the world, and I was excited to witness her big day. I couldn’t wait to see my college friends again; it had been more than two years since I’d graduated as a biker chick and run off to Florida.
I wanted to show my friends the new me – the independent, sober me – but I was a little scared, too. Since the age of 14, I’d never stayed sober at a wedding.
I drove to Ohio, blasting Meat Loaf through the boombox in the passenger seat of my little VW Bug, offering me courage.
The ceremony was perfect. I was so happy for Marti and Donny and the beautiful future they had ahead. The reception allowed me to finally see all my college buddies. Ecstatic to be there, I hugged my friends and enjoyed the party … for about ten minutes.
That’s how long it took before I focused on the alcohol.
She was drinking; he was drinking. They were all drinking. I was not drinking.
Then they were getting drunk and dancing. They were waving drinks over their heads and screaming, just like we’d done in college. It looked like so much fun! I tried; I waved my Diet Coke and swung my hips aimlessly, like an imposter.
Tears stung through my smile. Nobody noticed; I ran into the bathroom alone. It felt like the whole world was spinning to the right and I was spinning to the left. I felt completely out of whack, like I was missing an appendage.
I didn’t fit.
Suddenly I didn’t belong with the people I’d thought for years were “my” people. Someone invited me to spend the night at her house, but I just wanted to go home. I didn’t belong in Ohio anymore.
I cried all the way back to Pittsburgh, feeling friendless, my entire identity having evaporated.
I stayed sober for six days after the wedding, crushingly sad, bitterly lonely, white-knuckling it and wondering when I’d be happy. I tried absolutely nothing new.
Then I walked to the bar and got plastered.
I arrived at my parents’ house in time to say goodbye to Anne – and everyone – as they headed out for the airport. They all said goodbye to the dog, too. Then they all headed out, leaving me alone in my parents’ house for the first time in a very long time. I plopped myself down on the couch which was extremely clean, unlike my disgusting sofabed.
Mocha, the beloved short-legged brown poodle we’d had since I was 10, flopped down to nap on the floor beside me. Mocha was breathing heavily, panting even, so I turned up the air conditioning. It was August and, even in Pittsburgh, it could get quite hot.
I petted Mocha for a little while but she didn’t even bother to raise her head. She’s really starting to get old, I thought. When I’d been there for dinner only a week prior, she’d been her usual puppy-like self.
Bored already, I moved to a different couch. Imagine having two couches, I thought. It had been so long since I’d lived with my parents, I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be comfortable. Just barely sober, I was already starting to garner some gratitude for such things.
Mocha walked over to where I was sitting in the other room, and flopped down again, still panting. I patted her on the head. Then I stared out the window.
Outside, I saw something move near the bushes in the backyard. It was tiny, like a pine cone, but it was moving around under the bush. I couldn’t figure it out.
I sat up and looked closer: it’s a bird! A baby bird had fallen from its nest in that bush, a nest I’d never noticed before, and it was flopping around on the ground, unable to fly.
I ran to the basement and put on work gloves, then raced out the back door. I found the baby bird, barely old enough to open its eyes. I carefully lifted it from the ground and put it back in its nest. I looked around for Mama Bird, who was nowhere to be found, so I headed inside to watch for her from the window.
When I went back upstairs, Mocha was lying on the floor where she’d been when I left, but she wasn’t panting anymore. In fact, Mocha wasn’t breathing at all.
I got down on the floor and checked – no no no no NO! – for any kind of movement. She was completely still. I put my head on her fur, hoping to hear a heartbeat, but Mocha was gone.
I burst into tears.
I didn’t know what to do, so I called a grown-up.
Aunt Joy, who had raised Mocha for the first two years of her life, stopped whatever she’d been doing and raced to my parents’ house to be with me. She stayed with me for hours, letting me cry, crying with me. And when my family came home from the airport, they understood immediately what had happened.
I couldn’t help her, I thought. It wasn’t my fault.
But it felt like my fault; I should have done something.
I couldn’t talk. We all just hugged and cried. We wrapped Mocha in her favorite blanket. We stood sobbing together as my dad dug the hole, and we buried the shell of our beloved pet in the ground. Together, we mourned until crying became mundane.
Then we cried some more.
I forgot to check on the baby bird. Later, I went back to my apartment and cried for days.
I did not drink.
Given that I could not have my ideal life while being a raging alcoholic/coke whore, I decided to try something different. In August 1988, I quit drinking, quit using drugs, and even quit picking up men.
Instead, I got up in the morning and went to whatever temp job I had to do that day. I came home and blasted albums. I wrote down my thoughts in a notebook. I didn’t call anyone.
Not going to bars meant I had no distractions – no people, no noise, no dart boards or pool tables or jukeboxes. I didn’t even have a deck of cards. I found myself craving Space Invaders and Gorf, but I couldn’t play video games. The internet, smart phones – even personal computers – didn’t yet exist.
I played with my cat for as long as she would let me. I tossed furry faux mice across the room and she carried them back to me like a retriever.
Drinking no alcohol meant I gorged on Diet Coke. And I ate. I consumed ridiculous amounts of pasta with Prego. I devoured Fifth Avenue candy bars, peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and heaps of fried bologna. On a big day, I rewarded myself by walking to Arby’s for a roast beef with cheddar.
I walked right past my favorite bar, feeling proud. It looked so dreary from the outside, I couldn’t believe I’d spent so much time on its dreary inside.
It never occurred to me to eat healthier, smoke less, exercise, or play a sport. It never occurred to me to read a book or watch a movie. It never occurred to me to travel, even locally, to visit touristy places, or go to church, or go shopping. It never occurred to me to make new friends.
It never even occurred to me to go to an AA meeting.
I couldn’t think of a single additional thing to do with my life. I thought I was doing “whatever I wanted.”
Eventually I told my parents that I’d quit drinking. Given the horror of our Myrtle Beach vacation, my parents were tentatively happy about this decision.
I didn’t mention drugs to my parents, but now I wasn’t doing those either. My parents seemed to sense the change (somehow) and occasionally invited me over to dinner. I always accepted a free meal.
My parents had a beautiful exchange student living with them, from France. Anne was sweet and kind and funny, and the whole family – me now included – loved spending time with her. After I stopped drinking, we went to Kennywood with her and had a glorious amusement-filled day.
But it was hard being around my parents. I still felt like I was doing something wrong, even though I wasn’t doing anything even remotely “wrong” in the eyes of the law. I felt like a moral degenerate, and I knew they knew I was still a horrible person, even without drinking.
I was sober. I was stone-cold, glaringly, blindingly, despairingly, dully, thuddingly sober.
When it was time for Anne to go back to France, my whole family wanted to be with her, to see her off. My parents called me and asked if I would sit with our dog, Mocha, while they took Anne to the airport. Mocha was older and faltering, and they didn’t want her to be alone for long.
It was a chance for me to show that I was responsible – and I could be in their clean, cool house without feeling guilty about it. I was happy to oblige.
I had no idea what that August day would become.
After returning from Myrtle Beach, I didn’t know what to do with my life. This wasn’t unusual, of course. What was unusual is that I was even considering my future.
I mentioned this to my therapist. I told him about wanting to live at the beach, about considering drowning myself in the ocean, about my mother and my family and the end of my childhood dreams.
“If you could do anything,” said Dr. C, “what would you do?”
“Anything? You mean like a job?”
“I mean anything. If you could just pick a future for yourself, what would you pick?”
“I’d be a rock star,” I said. “A singer.”
“Okay,” said the therapist. “How can you make that happen?”
“Well, I can’t make that happen,” I said. “I will never be a rock star. I can’t just blink and make myself famous.”
“Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t work that way!” I whined.
“How does it work?” my therapist asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Is there anything that you can make happen just by blinking?” He was trying to point out the obvious.
“I used to think I Dream of Jeannie was real,” I said, “But no. I can’t make anything happen just by blinking.”
“So what does it take to make something happen?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “So far, nothing I have ever wanted has actually happened.”
Dr. C reconsidered his line of questioning.
“Okay,” said my therapist. “Let’s say you could just blink and make something happen – your ideal life. Let’s pretend it’s possible to have whatever life you want. What would your ideal life look like?”
I stopped whining for a minute and imagined my ideal future. I had never actually thought about it realistically. I was a dreamer, but my dreams were far-reaching and sporadic.
Finally a picture popped into my head, and I answered.
“I would be married to a guy with long hair,” I said. “We would laugh a lot, and we’d play games together on weekends. We’d be totally in love.”
“Okay, so you would be happily married.”
“Yes.”
“What else?”
“What else would I need?” It had never occurred to me that my happiness wouldn’t come from whatever man married me.
“What would you do when you weren’t with your husband?”
“Ideally?”
“Yes.”
“I would be a writer.”
“What would you write?”
“Books.”
“What kind of books?”
“Fiction? What other kind of books are there?”
“There are lots of kinds of books,” said Dr. C. “You can write whatever you want.”
“Well I’d write books for kids. And I’d have a German Shepherd. Or a Saint Bernard. Or both! I’d like to have four dogs. Oh! And a farm.”
“Okay, so you would be a happily married writer with four dogs on a farm.”
“Yes.”
“Would you have children?”
“Yes!” I yelled, surprising even myself. “I want six children, like The Brady Bunch!” My ideals seemed to stem entirely from television.
“It sounds like your ideal life would be very busy.”
“Why?” I said. “I don’t even know what I’d do for fun.” I was serious. I had no idea that taking care of six kids, four dogs and a whole farm, all while writing books, would not allow for any downtime.
“Let’s start with what you have,” said Dr. C. “What do you think the first step would be for you to get this ideal life?”
“Meet the right man,” I sighed. I imagined that ever-elusive perfect human being I’d created.
“I’m not sure that should be first,” he said.
I thought hard. “Maybe quit drinking?”
“Maybe,” he said.
Back at the house in Myrtle Beach, sunrise brought a flurry of activity. Every adult in the house was awake, making breakfast and packing to go home.
My mom’s sisters looked up as we came inside.
“Kirsten!” my aunt said.
Another aunt hugged me. “We’re glad you’re back.”
My mom had been fairly silent for the entire walk, and this didn’t change. “Pack your stuff,” she said, heading upstairs. “I’ll tell Daddy you’re back.”
My whole extended family had forever graciously accepted me into their homes for visits and holiday dinners. These people had raised me as though I were one of their own, and loved me even though I didn’t love myself. These were happy non-alcoholics who had never tried to change me.
And I’d run away. I’d left them, purposefully, and made a plan to live on the beach rather than go back to Pennsylvania and spend my life as part of this loving family.
My reason? Nobody drank.
I didn’t fit in. I didn’t feel like part of this loving family. I felt like an outcast, a reject, a person undeserving of their love. I felt like an imposter. Childhood Kirsten, who made straight A’s and loved animals and just wanted to do the right thing … that person was gone.
I packed quickly, then walked out onto the porch to look at the ocean one last time, this time in daylight.
I lit a cigarette.
My cousin’s wife stepped outside. “Can I talk to you?” she asked. When a prodigal returns, I guess it’s customary to be wary.
“Sure.” I took a short drag on my cigarette, confused.
She was quiet for a long moment. She didn’t seem to know what to say.
Finally, carefully, she said, “Please stop drinking.”
This was new. Addressing the elephant in the room when it was standing there felt unfamiliar, crazy. No one in my family, other than my parents, had ever really addressed this enormous, fat beast.
But this woman was doing it, and she did it with love.
“I’m trying,” I squeaked.
“Try harder,” she said. “Please quit. It affects everyone in your life, even if you don’t see it.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know,” she said. Her eyes welled with tears.
I didn’t understand. “You do?”
“I do.”
Her eyes filled with pain from someone in her life who’d also been an alcoholic. She made quick work of telling me her story, purposefully not crying, choking a bit on her words, then got quiet quickly. I’d never heard her story, never known any of this.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I felt numb and guilty. I didn’t know how to do better.
“You don’t have to be sorry for me,” she said. “Just don’t do it to anyone else.”
“I’ll try,” I said.
I meant it. Although … what had trying gotten me thus far? My family was disappointed in me again. I’d hurt people again. This time, I’d hurt more people than I realized.
And I hadn’t even gotten to live on the beach.
Soon, we all got into cars and drove to our respective homes. I crawled into the backseat and fell asleep, dreaming I was sleeping in the sand, and that sleeping in sand was beautiful.
I woke up hours later, sweaty and parched, achingly alone.
I felt terrified that I was going to drink again, that I’d never be able to quit, that I’d never have a real life.
But I felt – again – like I needed to try.
It had been eight months since I’d seen that shooting star, and somehow I was still a drunk.
While I was drinking, several of my family members went out looking for me. Like any loving parents, mine were worried that something bad had happened to me.
Meanwhile, I was sucking in as much alcohol as I could find. I had decided to move to Myrtle Beach permanently; I was never going home. I wanted sun and sand and freedom. I wanted the things I believed I’d been promised when I moved with Larry to Florida. I wanted the things Scott had when he lived on raw potatoes. I wanted no responsibility and no consequences.
I didn’t know yet that consequences emerge directly from evading responsibility.
Then, quite suddenly, I decided that I wanted to die. Something about that teenage boy not wanting me anymore…
Wasted, I left the party and wandered down to the ocean. I stared into the abyss. It was so dark, I couldn’t see anything but black.
I wondered if I could drown myself. I thought about The Awakening, a story I’d read in school. Spoiler alert: at the end of The Awakening, the main character walks into the ocean and purposefully drowns herself.
This seemed like a pretty good plan.
I’m drunk enough to drown, I thought. I deserve to drown. My head was woozy with alcohol; the dark was holding me captive. I stood with my feet in the water; I took a few steps forward. The water was warm.
I took a few steps into the water and considered my options. I could just keep going, but …
Wasn’t I just thinking about living at the beach forever?
I imagined life eating raw potatoes and realized: I don’t even like raw potatoes. But I like peanut butter sandwiches! Why couldn’t I eat peanut butter sandwiches instead of raw potatoes?
I could.
The fickle nature of alcoholic mood allowed me to abruptly forget about drowning and stand there for another moment, listening to the waves in the blackness, while planning to be a vagrant – another good plan. Then I headed back to the party for another beer.
I didn’t notice the sunrise, but the sun was shining when I saw her.
And she saw me.
My mom was standing at the bottom of the steps near the hotel where the party lingered. Drunk beyond even my own comprehension, I wished hard that I was imagining her presence.
But no. She was there, locking eyes with me as I haltingly started toward her. The closer I got, the clearer her face became.
Hers was the saddest face I had ever seen, sad in a way I couldn’t characterize. Her skin was freckled and pale, her cheeks hollow, her eyes dark and sorrowful, almost crying. She looked as though someone had died, an infant maybe, or a beloved pet.
Maybe she was grieving for her own beloved infant.
For the first time in my life, I saw the pain in my mom’s eyes, and I knew without a doubt that I’d caused it. I felt real remorse: a deep, agonizing regret for hurting this woman who loved me. For the first time ever, I didn’t feel just shame and guilt; I didn’t just feel anger.
I felt empathy. My mom was human.
She waited until I got close enough for her to almost whisper: “Let’s go home.”
I wanted to tell her I was staying, living in Myrtle Beach forever. Instead, I put down my beer and walked with her silently in the sand, all the way back to the beach house.
And I knew, once and for all, that I’d never live on the beach.
Shortly after the debacle with Kurt, my parents invited me to go to Myrtle Beach with them. Every year, the entire extended family – aunts, uncles, cousins, cousins’ kids, sometimes even family friends – got together and rented a house.
I had no permanent job and nowhere else I’d rather be, so I quickly accepted the invitation. We’d gone to Myrtle Beach every year when I was a kid, and I’d missed a few years as a biker chick, so I could hardly wait to go again.
I didn’t mind sleeping on the floor; it’s a small price to pay for a free trip to the beach. My family had to step over me until well past noon; they might have minded, but I was happy.
I spent days in the ocean with my family, body surfing and watching the sand sift through my fingers. I spent evenings walking to the pier, playing video games, and admiring the waves from the porch, and the rising moon from my space on the sand.
Everything went well … until the night before we headed home.
I wasn’t thinking about drinking when I went for a walk alone. I hadn’t had a drink or a drug all week, so I figured I had everything under control. I was just enjoying the summer evening.
I walked about a mile from our beautiful beach house, in front of the giant oceanfront hotels, just generally being barefoot and alone. Everything was cool.
But when some teenage boy said, “Hey, ya want a beer?” I nearly jumped into his arms. A single beer was useless; that boy awakened the beast.
After one beer, I felt free. After two, I felt healthy. After three beers, I felt invincible. The week with my family vanished from my memory; the carefree, careless, completely irresponsible version of me reappeared as though conjured from dust.
Suddenly I never wanted to go home; I didn’t want to face what I’d made of my life. I didn’t want to work temp jobs, or pay rent, or date men who called me a coke whore. I didn’t want to deal with adulthood in any form.
What I wanted, I realized, was to live in Myrtle Beach, right there on the sand. I thought of Scott and how he’d lived off the land, subsisting on raw potatoes and being free from responsibility. I didn’t think about his post-beach life as a grocery store stock boy, or how he’d moved back in with his parents, or whatever came after the raw potatoes.
I just thought: I want to stay and live in Myrtle Beach.
So I drank, and drank some more. The youngster who’d invited me to the party figured out pretty quickly that I was not only older than he thought, but a total lush. I climbed all over him in the outdoor hot tub and made an ass of myself. He suggested that I go home but there was still free beer.
I thought about how I would live just like this, going from party to party every evening, getting drunk and high and sleeping on the sand until sunrise.
I imagined the sunrise as this beautiful thing that would somehow wake me and make me beautiful, too.
The drunker I got, the more I believed my own dreams were possible.
It never occurred to me that anyone from my beach house – my family – might expect me to return, that I might want to share my plan. I figured I’d just “run away” and no one would care.
I didn’t know my actions were already affecting my family.
After months of living and drinking in Swissvale, I discovered a bar with an electronic darts game. To me, this was the ultimate fun: drinking and playing darts. It reminded me of college and The One, who taught me how to play. Even better, the machine kept score so I didn’t have to try to remember numbers when I was too wasted to think.
I’ll call the bar Fannie’s, because I can’t remember its name. Drinking at Fannie’s meant that I could play darts all evening and – drum roll, please – not have to pay for my fun with sex. When I went to Fannie’s, I paid for my own drinks and always went home alone.
The real reason for this is it seemed to be a guy’s bar – a place where groups of guys congregated. And I don’t mean “grabbed a drink after work” groups of guys. I mean “retired ten or twenty years ago” groups of guys.
Nobody bothered me at Fannie’s. They watched me run back and forth from the bar to the dart machine, but only in a vague sort of way. Nobody leered at me. Occasionally people bought me a drink, but we didn’t hold court over it. I thanked them and went back to being alone.
After many years of drinking to the point of losing complete control of my decision-making power, and after latching on to so many, many men who took advantage of my powerlessness, I finally recognized that the only safe thing for me to do was to drink alone.
My dream was to buy two, three, maybe four cases of beer and hole up in my own home. With a couple of cartons of cigarettes, I figured this would allow me to do what I truly wanted to do: listen to my albums. I wanted to lose myself in music, chain-smoke without judgment from onlookers, and sing as loud as I wanted to sing without anyone telling me to “turn it down.”
That was the dream.
I had already forgotten that I’d lived exactly like that with Larry, during those hours after the bars closed. I had already forgotten that it had been the loneliest time of my life.
Somehow, though, I never bought cases of beer. Somehow I ended up hanging out alone at Fannie’s.
I regularly saw a guy who intrigued me – a gray-haired fellow who could have been 45 or 95. He looked so sad, sitting at his regular table, his eyes both vacant and longing. I would smile at him as I passed on my way to refill my glass, and he would lift the corners of his lips in return. Every time I went to Fannie’s I saw him, and every time I saw him, he seemed sad.
He broke my heart in a new and different way. I wanted to help.
So one night as I strode past the sad old guy, I stopped.
I smiled directly at him and he looked up, his eyes momentarily bright. Then I leaned down and kissed him. I kissed him for a solid minute, then two, maybe three. Finally I rested my forehead against his forehead, my left hand on his neck, my eyes still closed, vaguely aware of a murmur from the other old guys at his table.
Then I stood and smiled again. He beamed at me with a true, happy smile. I blew him a kiss and walked away.
Standing at the bar, I hesitated.
Then I put down my empty glass and I walked out the front door. I never went back.
