Hey, Ya Want a Beer?
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.