Brilliant … But Bouncy

I Was Livid.

The music was still at full volume inside The Decade, but watching my boyfriend being dragged away by the police had been sobering – metaphorically speaking. Although I normally closed down any bar I visited, I decided to just go home.

I started walking to my car, pondering my options. Should I try to find Gregg? He’d humiliated me and then left me, thoroughly ruining my night. I assumed I could figure out how to post bail and then Gregg could come back. But I didn’t want Gregg back.

Instead I stomped my way back to the car, more alone and angrier than I’d been a long time. That mother fucker, I mumbled, seething under my breath, storming past groups of college kids. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna pay his fucking bail. He should be paying me!

I nearly ripped off the door of my little VW Beetle, opening it as I did with such great vigor. There wasn’t a single cell in my body that wasn’t fuming with rage. I threw myself into the driver’s seat and roughly shifted gears, taking out my anger on my beloved car.

A stick shift requires a little more patience than an automatic car, and my fuse was already blown. I didn’t have the patience for shifting, or for waiting for drunk college students to cross the street in front of me, or for sitting at the stoplights on my way home. It was late and I was livid.

Drunk driving – well, driving in general – became easier for me if I pretended it wasn’t real. I drove like I was in a video game. This method had helped me before: stay between the white lines, take the turns sharp and smooth, floor it on the straightaways. As long as I thought I was in a video game, I could concentrate and get myself home without crashing.

I got out of the city, into the suburbs, and almost home. The whole time, I was fuming. I muttered, screamed and spat: mother-fucker-stupid-shit-asshole-fucking-liar until my voice was hoarse and my throat was raw.

When I reached the last red light before my house, I was in no better of a mood than I had been when I’d left The Decade. There were no cars anywhere but the stoplight changed to red as I approached, in spite of the post-midnight traffic lull.

Fuck this fucking light, I thought. I am so fucking sick of fucking red lights! I purposefully hit the gas and pounded right through the intersection, still in fifth gear and less than a mile from home.

The flashing lights appeared behind me in mere seconds.

I froze, my foot still on the gas. I stared into my rearview mirror like a deer in headlights. What am I supposed to do? My stomach lurched. I was so drunk, I couldn’t think. What AM I supposed to do!

I’d just watched Gregg taken away in handcuffs. And now I’d run a red light, drunk.

Pull over, a voice of reason said, as though it were reading me an instruction manual. You’re supposed to pull over.

In the darkness I pulled over, put the car in neutral, and waited.

“Woooooo!”

Like most alcoholics, I blamed everyone else for my loneliness. I whined to my therapist, “I don’t go anywhere! I don’t do anything!”

“Maybe you could try doing something different this weekend,” he said.

“Maybe,” I said.

I thought all week about what I might do. I remembered good times, before I’d discovered that Gregg was a pathological liar, when we’d gone to clubs in Oakland.

I wasn’t sure this is what my therapist had in mind, but Gregg and I headed to The Decade, where a cover band was playing and drinks cost too much. I deemed this to be exactly what I needed.

I wanted to drink something special, too. Tonight would be more than just draft beer! I chose a “slow comfortable screw,” because it was the best drink name I knew. Gregg got Jack and Coke. We ordered two drinks each.

I had no idea how this would help me be less lonely, but I got drunk fast.

I stood in the back of the room and guzzled very strong, very expensive drinks, swaying slightly as the music blared.

Gregg, who never went anywhere unless someone else was buying, walked straight up to the stage and started dancing wildly, holding his drink above his head and screaming “woooooo!” every few minutes. This went on for many songs; it was embarrassing. I stayed away from him.

Eventually Gregg jumped up on stage with the band and gyrated at the musicians, obnoxiously bumping into guitar players. They laughed and shooed him back onto the floor.

A few minutes later, Gregg was back on stage again yelling “woooooo!” and waving his drink.

“Get off the stage, man,” said the singer between lyrics.

But Gregg jumped back up there again. I stood in the back of the room, humiliated.

By the fifth leap onto the stage, no one found it funny. Security pulled Gregg down and walked him through the crowd to the door. They tossed him out into the parking lot.

I went out after him.

“What the fuck!” I screamed at Gregg. “What were you doing?! They told you to get off the fucking stage!”

“Well I’m off the fucking stage now!” Gregg shouted, laughing, completely plastered. “WOOOOOO!”

“What the fuck!” I shouted back. “You got us thrown out of the fucking bar!”

“I was just having a good time!” he yelled. “Wooooo!” He laughed. I screamed at him.

We continued in this manner until the police appeared from nowhere, along with their giant paddy wagon. The cops took one look at Gregg, who was at least sixty pounds and eight inches larger than me, and they stepped between us, facing Gregg.

“Wooooo!” Gregg hooted at them, spinning around. “We’re having fun now!”

The police cuffed Gregg immediately. They started walking with – or rather, pulling – Gregg toward their vehicle.

“Hey!” I yelled at their backs. “He really didn’t do anything!”

One of the policemen spun around sharply, glaring darkly down at me, his eyes glowering, his weapon too obvious at his side.

“Do you want to go with him?” he snapped. “Because we could make that happen!”

I cowered. “No.”

“Then stay quiet and get out of our way.”

“But …!”

“Stay quiet! And GET. OUT. OF. OUR. WAY.”

I blinked and stepped back. “Okay.”

After one last “wooooo!” the paddy wagon doors closed on Gregg.

I watched the vehicle pull away and stood there, stunned. The space was suddenly devoid of all life.

I felt grateful to be standing on solid ground rather than going to jail.

But I wasn’t home yet.

My Options Felt Mysteriously Limited.

In spite of my new job at the museum and all of my wonderful colleagues, I started to get bored. I loved the work I was doing, and I loved the place. I even loved the people. But – as was the case with every permanent job I ever had – I felt stuck within a few months. I started to question if I wanted to work for the museum for the rest of my life, like so many of my colleagues seemed to be doing.

I hadn’t had a full-time job in a very long time. My commitment to my future felt tenuous at best. I took the job because I needed a job; but what if I had to stay here forever?

I started to question the rest of my life, too. I was still going to therapy every Tuesday. We were talking about my dreams, analyzing what they meant. But what difference did it make? I mean, it was cool to understand whatever symbolism or meaning might be contained in my subconscious, but it had no effect on my conscious life.

And on weekends, I was still somehow enmeshed with Gregg. I had wonderfully independent weeks where I’d get up, hang out with smart, independent women all day, and then go home to a blissfully empty house. Sure, I was still drinking at the local bars, but sometimes I left at midnight. I had a job to do!

Then on the weekends, Gregg would reappear as though I actually wanted him there. I didn’t want to be lonely, but I didn’t want to be with Gregg, either. My options felt mysteriously limited.

I didn’t know what was limiting them.

Every morning felt like, Oh no, not again. And every evening felt like, Everything sucks. And in between, when I was actually doing my job or drinking – the only two things I ever did – I felt simultaneously numb and guilty. The alcohol no longer muted the guilt and it never created spontaneous joy.

But I thought it would. I thought if I tried hard enough, did the right things, drank the right drinks, went to the right places, hung with the right people, then all that fun I’d discovered during my freshman year of college would come charging back, full-force, and I’d feel joy again.

Somehow, instead, the world was letting me down. All the good things were tainted by … something. I didn’t know what was flattening me, graying out my future.

I felt my future as a bright, sparkly thing that had been dropped in a mud puddle.

It never occurred to me that I’d singlehandedly created the mud puddle – and dropped that sparkly thing right in its midst. Then I’d stepped on it and rolled it around to make sure it was completely destroyed.

When it came to the surface – like it did when I got my new job – I doused it in mud again. Then I blamed the world for being too muddy.

I didn’t know I was making choices about my life. I didn’t consider that my drinking played any part in my inability to smile, my dead eyes, my severely compromised future. I thought life was just happening to me, one agonizing minute at a time, and that I had no choices about how it went.

I was 24 years old and my life felt over.

At least, I thought, I’ve been spared from all the really awful things like death and jail and mental institutions.

I had no idea how close I was to all of that.