When Thanksgiving rolled around, my parents invited a slew of people to their house – all family – all very loving and Christian.
They also invited me. And Larry.
In the prior three years, mostly thanks to alcohol, I had transformed from a church-going missionary into a road-warrior biker chick. I was still a believer in some form of God, but I didn’t know what to do with my immediate family, let alone a room full of God-fearing Christians.
I didn’t want to go to the Thanksgiving dinner, and I sure didn’t want to take Larry with me. But I really, really loved my mom’s stuffing, and that only came around once a year.
So I decided it would be worth it to spend a few agonizing hours with my peace-loving, non-drinking extended family.
Larry tried to reassure me that it would be fine. “I’ll take my guitar!” he said in his normal, upbeat way. As if having a 37-year-old chain-clad sinning performer in the midst of my family reunion would be a positive thing.
So Larry, his guitar and I showed up – all of us sober. We arrived just late enough that I hoped I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone before we ate. But I talked to everyone before and during dinner, too.
After dinner, we hung around longer than I would have liked. I was itching to get to a bottle of some kind but Barry’s Bar was closed.
That’s when Larry pulled out his guitar and started taking requests. I can’t remember how many songs he played, but I do remember when someone asked him to play Amazing Grace.
Surprising everyone and especially me, Larry started strumming the tune immediately, and singing:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me …
Within seconds, as if we were standing in the pews on a Sunday morning, my entire extended family sang:
I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see …
The tone was pitch-perfect and beautiful. Everyone in my family could sing. They joined together in worshipping the heavens with voices of angels, not a croak in the house. They even knew how to harmonize.
They sang the first verse, which was all I knew. Then with Larry still strumming, they sang the second verse. And the third verse. And then they sang the first verse again. With harmonies. Without hymnals. I felt like I was listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
I stood there, jaw to the floor, incredulous. They sang and sang and sang. Larry smiled and smiled, playing for as long as they needed him to play.
It was the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard, before or since.
If I hadn’t been so dead inside, I would have wept.
Instead I felt guilty and angry and mournful. I didn’t want to think about beauty. I didn’t want to think about my loving family. I didn’t want to think about songs or harmonies or God.
I was far too lost.
I wanted to be found. But I didn’t know how that worked.
So as soon as Larry put the guitar away, I started making my way toward the door – him feeling happy and loved, and me feeling like a traitor and a fraud. I begged Larry to take me to a bar – quick – where I force-fed myself multiple beers, trying to get drunk.
But – after all the stuffing – I succeeded only in making myself more sick.
Larry and I did not attend Thanksgiving dinner again.
After frequenting The Rose biker bar with Larry on weekends, Bonnie had an idea.
“Let’s go to The Rose!” It was a Tuesday.
“Without Larry?”
“Sure! Why not?”
We had a truck, after all. So we went.
The Rose had darts and I loved darts, although I rarely got to play because someone else was always playing. I was hopeful for a Tuesday that there’d be no one there, but the place was packed. Bikers drink all the time.
We sat at the bar drinking draft after draft. As I stared straight ahead, I noticed that one of the rough, tough, bearded bikers across the bar was using sign language with his friend. I had taken sign language with my mom when I was 12, and I still remembered the alphabet.
I had only used this skill once. It was the night Bonnie and I had to tell The Firm we couldn’t go to Massachusetts with them.
On our way back to the Civic Arena, the town was completely dead and Bonnie and I were lost. So I jumped out of my car at a red light and asked the people in the car in front of us: “Do you know how to get to the Civic Arena?”
The driver looked at me, puzzled, and pointed to his ears, indicating that he couldn’t hear my blathering.
“Oh!” I said. And then I signed – very carefully “C-I-V-I-C …” and he understood. He tried to sign back but I only knew the alphabet, so he held up two fingers and pointed – so, two blocks that way – and then, he motioned, turn left.
I spelled “T-H-A-N-K Y-O-U” and we got to the arena, no problem.
And now, in The Rose, I had another opportunity.
But The Rose was a biker bar. Most of the guys wore colors, as did a few brawny women. A handful of drinkers, like us, braved the waters in spite of their depth. Speaking to hard core bikers – who mostly pleasantly ignored us – seemed somewhat ill-advised.
I’d been a biker chick for a couple of months, though, and I was getting drunk enough to try anything.
The deaf biker stepped up to the bar for a beer and waited for the bartender. Meanwhile, I waited to catch his eye. When he finally glanced my way, I quickly spelled “H-I” – but he missed it entirely.
I spent the rest of the evening trying to get his attention so I could say hi. It had nothing to do with wanting to talk to him and everything to do with wanting to show him that I knew how to spell things with my fingers.
Eventually, he looked my way; I spelled out “H-I” again.
He beamed and waved “hi” at me (like a normal person would). Then he looked at his friend and pointed at me, smiling.
While I had his attention, I spelled “H-O-W A-R-E Y-O-U?” He smiled and signed something back.
Then I had to spell “I O-N-L-Y K-N-O-W T-H-E A-L-P-H-A-B-E-T” (which took forever).
He spelled “O-K, G-O-O-D” at me. Then he smiled, waved again, and went back to his friend.
From then on, I wanted to go to The Rose all the time.
I walked into The Rose just looking for the guy across the bar. We had dozens of alphabet conversations, and he never once came to my side of the bar, nor I to his. He was sweet and seemed to really enjoy our chats.
If he wasn’t at The Rose when I went, I’d go somewhere else.
I adored him and I don’t even remember his name.
“I bought us a truck,” Larry said.
“A what?” I was on the payphone in the dorm hall and didn’t think I’d heard him correctly.
“A pickup truck!” There was pride in his voice. “It needs a little work to get it runnin’, but it’ll run.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, it just needs a blah blah for the blah so it can blah blah and it’ll be fine.” (Coincidentally, my current husband uses this phrase a lot.)
A few weeks later, I had my first ride in a very old black Ford F150 pickup truck. It was creaky and loud and smelled like gasoline and oil. I loved it instantly.
“Ya just gotta keep dumping oil in,” Larry explained. A permanent oil stain magically appeared everywhere we parked.
Best of all, I had to climb up to reach the cab. Disintegrating running boards graced each side so I could push off mightily while climbing. Every time I landed in the seat, I felt like I’d just conquered a mountain. I was the coolest, toughest chick on the planet.
Before heading back to Ohio, Larry gave me the keys – as if this were normal. For a 37-year-old, maybe it was – but I was 21.
I climbed up into the pickup with a feeling of invincibility I’d never had before.
Not only did someone hand me a vehicle, but it was a truck. A big ol’ dirt-hauling, oil-leaking beater that I could drive however I wanted to anywhere I pleased.
I immediately drove to Mount Union.
“You have a truck?” Bonnie squealed.
“We have a truck!” I answered. “Where do you wanna go?”
“Who fuckin’ cares?!?” she screamed, running outside. We hopped in the truck and headed out.
This went on for the rest of the year.
Bonnie and I went to Dairy Queen a lot. Blizzards had just been invented and we wanted them all the time. We went to Burger King a lot. We went to the drive-thru beer place a lot. We’d been walking to these places previously but now that we had a quick way to get there, we could be gone and back in way less time than it took to get subs and beer delivered.
We always had beer, except in the mornings when we’d finished it all.
One day as we completed our visit to the Burger King drive-thru, the truck stopped. It just conked out, right in the middle of the road in front of Burger King. I tried to restart it but it just made a coughing sound and didn’t move.
The truck was diagonally parked across the road, blocking traffic on both sides.
“Oh well,” Bonnie said. “Let’s eat!”
“Burger!” I agreed.
We opened our bags and ate our food, right there in the center of the street. I remember shoving fries in my mouth and laughing hysterically at the cars who were honking at us, begging us to get out of the way.
Mouths full, we screamed “we’re in a fuckin’ truck!” at everyone who passed.
After our burgers, we got out and stood there, staring at the pickup. An older man in another pickup finally stopped to help.
“What’s wrong with it?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It just stopped.”
The man tried the ignition to no avail. “Did you have gas?”
“I don’t know,” I said, quite honestly.
“I’ve got a gas can in the back; let’s see if that works.” He went away, came back with gas, and dumped it into the tank.
“Try it now,” he said.
The truck started right up.
When it started to get cold outside, which happened in early fall, Larry and I got cold, too.
We had no choice. We had no car.
Once we were riding in the middle of nowhere and passed an old stone pub off the side of the highway. We were so cold, Larry actually pulled over. I thought we were there for heat but Larry wanted a drink.
“Brandy warms ya up!” he taught me. It was my first taste of blackberry brandy.
While there was probably one heat vent in our apartment, there was no way to get warm during the hundred-mile motorcycle ride between my two homes. I had my thin leather jacket and Larry bought me a pair of thin leather gloves. There is nothing warm about leather. It may look cool, but it’s cold.
If I’d been drinking (which was always) my body temperature dropped below a respectable level even before I got on the bike. I rarely wore socks so my feet were like ice cubes; I’m lucky I didn’t lose a toe. My hands were so cold they regularly turned blue. Every time I rode the motorcycle I froze.
Larry froze, too. Of course he was used to it, having grown up in Pitcairn.
Larry actually had a home in Florida – something he had not forgotten – and he was only supposed to be in Pittsburgh for the summer. Then he met me, and I was still in college, so he got a job and he stayed.
This wasn’t really what he’d planned to do. He’d come with a week’s worth of clothes and a pack of cigarettes. He’d planned to go back to Florida when it got cold. But that didn’t happen.
As time passed, it got colder and colder and colder. In the mornings, it was brutal.
“Fuck this shit,” he said regularly, stepping into the under-40-degree weather and rubbing his hands together. “Fuck this fuckin’ shit!”
Sometimes I would try to re-create songs in my head using my teeth as they chattered rhythmically while we puttered down the highway. Sometimes I would suck on a cigarette, my hands barely able to hold on, believing I had conquered some kind of primal beast. Sometimes tears sprouted without sadness, in response to the cold air. Sometimes I would actually cry, I was so cold.
“We’re fuckin’ moving to Florida,” Larry would say. “We’re fuckin’ movin’ as soon as you’re fuckin’ done with college.”
“Okay,” I would say.
“Okay,” he’d agree.
Then he’d start up the bike, wait for the sputter to turn into a roar, pat me on the knee, and we’d freeze our way to wherever we were going.
We were always going somewhere. There was nothing in our apartment. If we weren’t riding the bike to buy a case of beer, we were walking three doors down to Barry’s Bar for a burger and a draft.
I preferred the latter, since walking was warmer and “a draft” usually meant two drafts, or 12 or 35. If we didn’t have anywhere to be, I could drink until I fell off the bar stool.
On cold days, there was no reason to leave Barry’s Bar. It was substantially warmer than our shoebox apartment. Sometimes Larry would disappear to the gas station down the street to buy cigarettes, but only for the six minutes it took to walk there and back.
As the semester went on, I didn’t want to see Larry on weekends any more. It was too cold.
Larry didn’t care for that idea so he hatched a plan.
As a Communications major, I had an important decision to make during my senior year: what would I do for my internship?
I enjoyed everything about media. Radio was my favorite thing, but after my disastrous attempt at being a Sunday morning disc jockey, unable to pronounce even one classical music legend’s name, I thought I should consider television – behind-the-scenes.
I’d have been happy doing anything and everything in television. But Mount Union didn’t have a TV station – even though the department head told me they would soon and “might even have one before you graduate!” … that didn’t happen. From my research, Mount Union didn’t start broadcasting student shows until this year.
Fortunately creative writing really sparked my interest, but I thought journalism was the only way to go to start a “career.” I’d thoroughly enjoyed election night at the radio station, and I loved working on the campus newspaper. So I considered working for a newspaper.
Everyone knows – now especially – that internships are vital to having a successful career right after graduation. It’s got something to do with having experience on the resume, instead of no experience. People hiring employees generally appreciate some form of experience.
But I was a biker chick. My experience was three weeks at The Gap and two summers at Kennywood. I’d had three years’ worth of classes providing me with virtually zero practical knowledge, and I certainly wasn’t using the wisdom of my elders to help me build a career path.
While other Communications majors were building their portfolios, working campus jobs in marketing and admissions, talking about careers with their professors, and interviewing and interning at local media outlets, I was drinking myself into oblivion every single day.
I was a drunk. I’d transformed from being Dean Davis’ problem drinker two years prior into a full-fledged alcoholic. I’d stepped over that invisible line. I was a daily drinker with no interest in doing anything, let alone work. I wanted to drink, get drunk, fall down, pass out, wake up and do it again. That was the extent of my ambition.
Fortunately for me, Mount Union College did not care if I did an internship. The college “encouraged” it by saying (probably frequently): “Everyone should do an internship!”
But they gave me an option, and that option was by far the easier, softer way.
In order to graduate, we needed to do an internship … or take a special class.
So I took the special class. I don’t remember the name of the class, nor do I know the subject matter that was covered. I don’t know when that class took place, or for how many hours of my week. I just know that the class was taught by Chuck Morford, the Communications chair and the man who had once promised me a TV station.
And while I hate to speak ill of the dead, all of Chuck Morford’s courses bored me. Listening to him instead of working actually made interning seem fun, even for a student who didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning.
I had a friend in that non-internship class, Marti, who was very, very, very funny. As she’d done in most of the classes we had together, Marti helped keep me awake and made those hours bearable. Sometimes I think Marti is the reason I stuck with Communications. It certainly wasn’t Chuck Morford.
That class was dreadful. I just dragged my butt into a seat, sat there, and then left. I learned nothing; I did nothing.
And that was just what I wanted.
A lot of people want to know: why didn’t you just say no? If you didn’t want to do it, why would you consent? Why wouldn’t you speak up? Why did you say nothing?
This is a question that took years of therapy to unravel but the short answer is: I thought sex was love.
My confusion between sex and love may have started when my “friend” had sex with my “boyfriend.”
I wanted to save myself for marriage and my boyfriend was a normal 16-year-old boy. He had no interest in saving himself for anything. So when I repeatedly refused him, he had sex with my friend, ending both my “relationship” and my “friendship.” She got pregnant at 17 by another guy, so I figured that was karma.
After 40+ years, she found me on Facebook and I was still furious – but she was flabbergasted.
“You never said anything,” she said.
I never said anything…?
To be fair, any human with a functioning brain knows not to have sex with someone else’s boyfriend. But maybe I really never told her how I felt.
Maybe I said nothing because I had learned this: boys don’t like me as a friend or a girlfriend. Boys only want to have sex with me.
This added to my belief that something was inherently wrong with me. I believed in my soul that I was weird and unlovable. I thought I needed to be someone entirely different. It never once occurred to me to be self-respecting or to love myself as me.
I believed men were responsible for all the love. (No pressure for them, right?)
What I wanted more than anything in the world was a man to save me, to make me cool and smart and funny and attractive. I wanted a man to make me the person I wanted to become.
I expected this as if it were a reality, as if young men weren’t human at all, but unnamed Disney princes just waiting for me to hop onto their white horses and ride away. In the castle, I’d be transformed.
I believed The One was my one and only true prince. We dated for a month. He didn’t want me, but I obsessed for decades believing he could have made me the person I’d imagined I could be.
I didn’t know that having that kind of relationship wouldn’t save me from myself.
Also I had a few truly wonderful boyfriends who fit into my dream, who treated me well, who gave me everything I thought I needed. But when I didn’t get whisked away on that white horse, when I realized that those guys were mere humans, I moved on to keep searching for that one who would magically transform me into … something better.
The guys who got to know me didn’t change me into the lovable, un-weird person I thought I needed to become.
And most guys preferred to have sex with me rather than get to know me.
So with my head down, my eyes closed, and my teeth clenched, I chugged a ton of beer and had sex with guys who didn’t know me because I thought that’s what men wanted. And having some male attention was better than having no male attention. I did as they asked and waited for them to go away.
I believed that sex with strangers was the best substitute for self-love that I could ever have.
Physically and biologically, I was quite capable of saying no. But to do so would have left me, emotionally, with no love at all.
The guy wearing the Bruce Springsteen sweatshirt was good looking in a macho-dude sort of way. He and his friends, who were all Springsteen fans, had stopped at The Hood on their way through Alliance.
That’s where they found me and some of my friends, all willing to visit their hotel room after the bar closed.
I don’t remember the guys’ names; they were young like us. Their hotel room was huge with at least three beds. The night seemed full of possibility.
I should have known better when the cans of beer were doled out only to those who agreed to play strip poker.
My friends and I joined, not everyone willing to fully undress, and we played until people randomly started passing out on various beds.
I wasn’t willing to give up, though, since there was still beer left to be drunk.
As the others slipped into oblivion, I started making out with the guy with the Bruce Springsteen sweatshirt, which had been tossed aside during the poker game.
By then I’d realized “Bruce” was kind of a jerk, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t yet passed out, so this was the logical next step. It didn’t matter that it was creeping up on 4 a.m. and that almost everyone else was snoring.
Bruce and I were rolling around in a bed when he noticed that one of his friends was still awake. The guy was sitting on the edge of another bed, staring at us and masturbating. It was beyond creepy.
“Hey Bud,” said Bruce, nudging me slightly. “Ya want some of this? C’mon over!”
This was not okay with me.
But “Bud” took a big swig of beer and sashayed up to our bed. He stank of booze and sweat.
This was the kind of “not okay” that still haunts me in nightmares – the kind of “not okay” that violently churns in my gut decades later. This is in my Top 10 list of “not okay” life stories.
The guys were bigger than me, stronger than me. They were rough and smiling, and the combination terrified me.
I didn’t want to wake my friends. I didn’t consider screaming. I didn’t even shake my head. In fact, I silently consented to this thing that I never, ever wanted to do.
To say that Bruce and Bud had their way with me would be an understatement. I was twisted and prodded and squeezed and shoved in gag-worthy, unimaginable ways.
Eventually everyone passed out.
Chilled and coming down, I donned that navy Born in the USA Tour shirt and, momentarily, I treasured it.
I was quite cold.
But that night was so scary and humiliating and horrible that I never told anyone about it. If no one knew what had happened, I reasoned, then it just didn’t happen.
Someone woke me in the morning at checkout time, which felt like ten minutes after I’d fallen asleep. I don’t remember how we got back to the dorm but I’d never been so happy to leave a hotel.
At the dorm, I took off the Springsteen sweatshirt and threw it on the floor. Then I crawled into my own bed, trying to forget. When the sun was almost down, I got out of bed, ate something from the school cafeteria, and started drinking again.
Since it represented a phenomenal worldwide event, the sweatshirt was probably quite expensive but I hated it with every ounce of my being. Still I was glad I’d taken it from him, even after I tossed it into a dumpster.
It almost made me feel like I had some power.
Football is a huge deal at many colleges, and Mount Union is no exception. In my first two years of college, I went to many games, screaming and clapping and stomping along with my friends. I didn’t understand football then, but I enjoyed being part of the crowd.
By junior year, I skipped football games because I’d started drinking all night long. I would sleep until afternoon, missing out on most daytime occurrences on campus, including breakfast and lunch.
So when it came time to go to one last football game – the last game played during my college career – I really wanted to go. I felt like I’d missed way too many games already, and I didn’t want to miss this one.
I woke up parched and heaving, as always. I crawled to the refrigerator, opened the two-liter bottle, and drank as much Diet Coke as I could. This did very little to quench my thirst, so I crawled to the water fountain down the hall and drank until I could barely breathe. Still, my head hurt, my body ached and the dryness would not cease.
But I was going to that football game. In fact, everyone was going to the football game. My friend Micki offered me a ride, which I gladly accepted.
The football stadium was approximately a three-minute walk from our dorm, and I needed a ride.
When the car stopped, though, no one got out. Micki’s friend pulled something out of his pocket. I’d never seen anything like it – a black chunk of wet grass, maybe.
“What is it?” I whispered.
Micki laughed loudly. “Haven’t you ever done opium before?”
“Nope,” I said. The only thing I knew about opium was that Edgar Allen Poe did it, and I’m not even sure that’s true.
“It’s incredible,” she said. “You’ll love it.”
I didn’t want to get high; I had no idea what I was doing. But my head hurt, my throat hurt, my hair hurt. Sitting in that parking space barely able to function, I assumed anything would make me feel better so that I could enjoy the football game.
So I tried opium. There was foil involved, and a lighter and smoke. I was told to inhale the smoke as the opium burned.
It smelled bad but I did it.
Then we all piled out of the car and walked into the football stadium, where I immediately and consistently wanted to die.
It was a glorious day outside – perfect weather for football – but I was suffocated by people.
Opium made me feel like a pea floating in the ocean. Small and dark and lost, I could do nothing but sit, feeling the ruckus of fans like waves trying to drown me.
There was no game for me; there was no screaming and joy. I wanted to sleep but I was in a state of oblivion. I had no interest in the game, the people, the world around me. I felt like I’d become a chunk of that black, wet grass.
I hated myself for wasting this day, this weather, this event, this moment. There was nothing I could do to regain this time, to rejoin the excitement and fun with my friends.
My day – maybe my life – was over.
At some point I got up, pushed my way through the people, and dragged myself back to my dorm and bed where I slept until nightfall, missing everything.
When I woke up, it was Saturday night. I was missing a party somewhere, so I rolled out of bed and went to find some beer.
I was at The Hood one day when I noticed her: a woman who wasn’t a college student, who didn’t work at the bar, and who sat in the corner from before my arrival until after I left.
I can’t remember what year I noticed her. I can’t remember how many years she stayed.
I only remember the day I saw her – really saw her – and could never look away again.
Her name may have been Diana or Sharon or Cindy; I can’t recall. I’ll call her Grace, even though I’m certain that wasn’t her name.
Grace had a short, boyish haircut and a round face that belied her age. She looked young, but not young enough to be in college. She looked old, but not old enough to be a grandparent.
Grace was always sitting on the same bar stool, in the same corner where I’d once kissed Sam, the one furthest away from the front door, the one near a wall that doubled as a place she could lean.
Sometimes Grace smiled; other times she frowned or cried. Sometimes she chatted with Karen, the bartender; sometimes she sang along loudly with the jukebox. Sometimes she was so quiet, I thought someone in her family had died.
It was when I realized that she might have a family that my perspective suddenly changed.
It was then that I really saw Grace, there on that bar stool, quiet or singing, smiling or frowning. I saw her and I thought quite suddenly: That could be me.
This thought was followed immediately by another thought: I don’t want that to be me.
Grace was at The Hood a lot. She was there, drinking, during the daylight hours. She was there during the evening hours. She was there on weekdays and weekends. She was there all the time.
I know when she was there because I was there all the time, too.
I don’t want to become like her, I thought. I don’t want to spend my life sitting in a dark bar after college, growing old with no windows. I don’t want to spend my life chatting with bartenders and singing with the jukebox. I don’t want to be her. I don’t want to be anything like her.
And as I thought these thoughts, I knew in the exact same second: I am going to become her.
I didn’t know, when I was in college, why I was going to become her; I didn’t understand that it had anything to do with my drinking. I thought bars were fun, that people at bars were fun. Hanging out at bars was my favorite thing to do in the whole world.
I didn’t know that my only reason for being there was to drink. I liked to drink, sure, but I could drink anywhere. I could go to parties. I could go to concerts. I wasn’t going to stay stuck in bars for the rest of my life.
But there I was, in the bar, sitting on a bar stool, playing songs on the jukebox, playing darts when it was a wild night out. All I wanted to do was be in that bar – any bar – so I could drink non-stop.
And I knew I was doomed to spend my life in a dark corner of a bar if something didn’t change, but I didn’t know yet what that “something” might be.
So I watched her, and detested her, believing deep-down that Grace was my destiny.
I never liked the taste of alcohol. As a serious alcoholic, I had to work around that.
My first drink was at the age of 8, after a brewery tour. Kids got root beer, which was delicious, but my dad’s friend, Fred, offered me a sip of his beer. So I tried it.
The rancid smell that permeated the entire building filled the foamy glass, and I hated that smell. The fact that I remember that tiny sip of beer should have been some sort of clue.
The alcohol inventors knew all about people like me, though.
Blackberry brandy tasted awesome. I had my first shot to “warm me up” when it was freezing cold outside. I’d just walked into a bar, practically frostbitten from the motorcycle. If I were ever forced to drink alcohol now (as if someone might do that to me), I would choose blackberry brandy.
As a sober person, I realize my favoritism is because I really like blackberries.
I loved rum mostly because it mixed with Coke. If I could have gotten drunk on cola, I would have done it.
Sometimes I used peppermint schnapps in place of toothpaste. I loved the way I could combine the taste of chewing gum with the ability to get roaringly drunk in mere minutes. Spearmint schnapps was equally delicious.
Sloe gin was so sweet, it actually made my stomach hurt. Even though it’s made simply from a plum-like fruit, I had to give it up.
Ken, my summer love from Kennywood, introduced me to a wine that tasted just like strawberries. I loved it and yes, I also love strawberries.
Bonnie introduced me to kahlua; it was like a teeny chocolate milkshake. I loved the creaminess and chocolate aftertaste but I rarely drank kahlua because, like chocolate milk, I often got sick from drinking it before I got drunk enough for my liking.
What I really wanted from alcohol was candy and fruit.
I drank tequila because I wanted to prove I was tough. I drank whiskey because I knew I was tough. And I drank gin, scotch, vodka, sake, grain alcohol, wine, wine coolers, vermouth, sherry and champagne because if there was nothing else around, it would have to do.
Beer was the absolute worst. I hated the taste of beer with every ounce of my being. And I drank it nearly every day for almost a decade.
I almost never drank “fancy” drinks – not shots nor beer – and I had no bar at home. Cases of canned beer were cheap. Draft beers at the bar were cheap. I was very, very poor since it takes a ton of money to stay drunk 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
So I drank beer – the cheaper the better.
I drank Busch, Schlitz, Miller and Miller Light, Budweiser and Bud Light. I drank Rolling Rock, Iron City and IC Light. I drank Natural Light because they’d deliver it to my dorm room. I drank Coors Light because it had a pretty silver can. I drank Pabst because of its blue ribbon and I drank Lone Star because it made me believe I was in Urban Cowboy. I drank Old Milwaukee and Olympia. I even drank Schaefer – many times – and I swear, it tasted exactly like someone had pissed in the can.
I drank whatever was on tap and rarely asked what brand I was drinking. But I was a beer drinker because it was cheap, and it got me drunk at the perfect pace.
This made me proud.
Thank God I don’t have to drink anymore.
