When Spring Break rolled around during my junior year, Bonnie and I wanted to go somewhere and do something really cool.
“Let’s to South Beach!” she suggested – a hub for college kids seeking the kind of drinking extravagance only Miami in March can provide.
I didn’t know anything about Florida. “If we’re going somewhere warm, let’s go to Los Angeles!” I said. Obviously I didn’t know anything about Los Angeles either. I dreamed of wandering on Venice Beach like Jim Morrison, spouting poetry and dragging my toes through the sand. I had no idea that the Pacific Ocean was cold, and I sure didn’t know about the riff raff at Venice Beach.
We brainstormed ideas, imagining the entire world as a Spring Break option, until we finally decided to discuss our plans with our parents.
“How are you going to pay for this trip?” my parents asked me.
“Well I was hoping you would pay,” I said. I’d made some money at Kennywood and I got an allowance for college expenditures, but I didn’t have any savings.
After much discussion, my parents suggested that we consider going somewhere slightly less exotic. If we did, they said, they would help with costs. Bonnie’s parents said about the same thing. So we regrouped.
“Everybody goes to Florida for Spring Break,” Bonnie said. “We should go somewhere where nobody else goes.”
“I guess we could go to Delaware,” I said, trying to pick a place I’d never seen that wouldn’t be crowded.
“Delaware?!” Bonnie scoffed. Then she brightened. “Hey! My brother lives in Chicago! And he’s the coolest person in the whole world! They have tons of bars and restaurants and nightclubs that stay open all night long! Let’s go to Chicago!”
I didn’t know Bonnie’s brother, but she’d always said good things about him. Best of all, he was gay – so I didn’t have to worry about him ogling me. The drinking age in Illinois was 21, so we had to finagle a way around that. But otherwise, the bright lights and big city were suddenly calling me.
In 1985, while all the other college students flew south, Bonnie and I flew northfor Spring Break.
And it was cold. It was early March in Chicago – bitterly, brutally cold. The wind blew so hard, we literally helped an old woman cross the street. She was standing on the curb, hanging onto a lamp post, unable to step down for fear of having her 98-pound self blown over by the gusting wind.
She could not have crossed the street without us.
But we were helpful and happy and young and eager and excited and thrilled to be somewhere – anywhere – other than our little campus in Ohio.
I remember going to one bar at 3 a.m. – after the bar where we’d been drinking had closed – and it was like being transported into a movie. Lights and colors and sweaty dancers and deafening music filled the warehouse … and we wandered into the crowd, bouncing around but tired. When we wandered outside, it felt like we were in a different universe.
Chicago was different.
Little did we know what a huge effect our Spring Break would have on our psyches.
Drugs weren’t commonplace at college. Unlike today, when free-floating CBD oils and legalized THC gummies boast their own stores, Mount Union students didn’t readily espouse marijuana and cocaine as acceptable forms of recreation.
A big event instead would be a party that offered something in addition to kegs of beer – meaning, shots of tequila or some fancy mixed drink, like rum-and-coke.
To be honest, I preferred drinking beer to “fancy” stuff. There was something to be said for getting drunk at a slow and consistent pace, with an expected and often acquired result. Vomiting and head spins were still optional, but I knew what I was getting with beer.
By my junior year, I was an expert at having a few beers before the party, then deftly finding my way to the keg as soon as I arrived. I considered myself “impressive” because I could put away a ton of beer. (Very few others considered this feat impressive.)
But I realize now that drinking was almost the only thing I did in college. Sure, I went to classes and somehow graduated. But every day – especially after I hit the ripe old age of 20 – my efforts focused on how and when I could – and would – drink.
This is not to be confused with the Harley-Davidson motto “live to ride; ride to live,” which entered my life later.
Here’s a metaphor to explain what happened:
Imagine that you wake up and you have Cheerios for breakfast every day. You eat the Cheerios, then you go off to work. You have a sandwich or salad for lunch, then finish your day – you work, go home, go to the gym, have dinner, watch TV – whatever you do. Then you go to bed.
The next day, you wake up. You have Cheerios for breakfast as always, but you eat the last of the bag. Suddenly you panic because you remember you heard about a shortage of Cheerios. You go to work anyway, but you obsess all morning about cereal. You spend lunchtime hopping from store to store, looking for Cheerios, to no avail. Suddenly there are no more Cheerios anywhere.
You can’t think at work; you spend your entire afternoon looking online for Cheerios. There’s no rest. You can’t go home. There’s no time to relax or watch TV. There’s nothing but the inside of your brain screaming: I MUST HAVE CHEERIOS! And there are zero Cheerios. From this day forward, there will never, ever be enough Cheerios. Worse yet, there is no reasonable alternative.
Addiction is that simple, that stupid, and that incessant. It’s like a flip switched in my brain and I became irreparably obsessed.
During my junior year of college, my life quietly evolved from “collegiate fun” to “maniacally compulsive.” There was no prior thought, no decision made. I didn’t sit down and think, You know, I think I’d like to spend more time drinking and less time doing everything else.
I just … stopped caring about anything except Cheerios – oops, I mean alcohol.
It happened as quickly and as silently as a ball of dust rolling into a corner behind a desk.
I never saw it coming; I didn’t even know it happened. At the time, I didn’t care. My life was glorious, carefree and wonderful. I wanted nothing except … more beer.
I didn’t skip a beat without Scott. As I slunk further and further into my drunken ways, I continued to do whatever I wanted to do, believing I was more alive, more independent, and more free than I’d ever been before.
I didn’t feel the invisible chains. But things started happening that I didn’t want to happen.
Bonnie and I still had our pact that we would never leave a bar with a stranger – unless we left together with two strangers – but sometimes those strangers were not of my choosing.
I remember one night in particular when Bonnie and I were the only two people left in the bar at closing time, with the exception of two guys with really bushy facial hair and bad teeth. They were throwing gutter lines at us like, “Hey ladies, ya wanna get lucky?” They weren’t exploring our intellectual prowess.
At 2 a.m., Bonnie and I – who were broke as usual – had a choice. We could go back to our dorm without any beer, or we could go home with the bushy guys buying a six-pack. And we made the obscene choice to go home with the guys, because that meant more beer.
For the math-challenged, one six-pack for four people equals 1.5 beers per person.
For a beer-and-a-half, we followed two complete jerks to their filthy home where we rolled around on the floor doing things neither of us wanted to do. I was drunk out of my mind before I arrived but I remember very clearly thinking, Why am I doing this?
This was never, ever what I wanted.
To Bonnie’s credit, she grabbed the last two beers – which were warm by then – as we headed out. So technically we got two beers each for selling our souls.
The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous succinctly describes this kind of behavior as “pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.” The pitiful, incomprehensible phase in my life began slowly, simply.
The book then says that over time “… we get worse, never better.”
But I didn’t learn this from a book; I lived it. The more I drank, the more I shifted my moral compass, the more I violated my personal convictions to ensure that I would get another drink.
One night (without Bonnie) I naively went home with Denny, a guy I’d befriended during weeks of drinking at The Hood. Denny wore thick-lensed glasses that made his eyes look much larger than they were, but not in a cute, stuffed-animal way. He looked deformed.
Denny was a teacher, so I deemed him “safe.” Plus he had a twelve-pack of Budweiser.
At his house, I scanned Denny’s album collection. From prior conversations about my childhood, Denny knew I grew up with the Carpenters. Very quickly, he threw on a Carpenters album. He was already half-naked and kissing me before I had a chance to tell him that the album was wildly inappropriate for his sudden and astonishingly brash intentions.
Inspired by a song I never liked and now detest – Touch Me When We’re Dancing – Denny morphed completely. With his bug-eyes three inches from my face, he whispered “touch me… touch me!” while staring into my face, practically drooling on me. Wasted, appalled, and utterly repulsed, I stayed and played Denny’s game.
That beer was never really free.
“Demoralization” is a simplification for what I did. “Degradation” is closer, but barely scratches the surface. Even after 30 years, jagged memories stick like a knife wedged in my gut, twisting and threatening my sanity.
And these relatively harmless incidents were only the beginning; I had years ahead to spiral downward.
After New Year’s Eve, Scott and I saw each other steadily for several more weeks. He still rarely spoke.
Everything we did involved music. We went to bars where bands were playing. We drove into Cleveland several times, hitting the nightclubs there. Everywhere we went, there was a ruckus so we didn’t need to talk.
In the car, we’d listen to tapes and Scott would drive wordlessly. I talked non-stop to make up for the silence between songs. I asked him questions about himself – his life before me – and he’d answer with grunts and two-word answers.
Sometimes I would talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and he wouldn’t even nod. I’m not sure if he cared that I rambled on, but I’m sure he knew I idolized his silence.
I didn’t need him to speak. Cool was my only concern.
Cigarettes, cocaine, and shiny silver beer cans were now a part of my life.
I was sure that my delusion of his coolness was seeping directly into me as I imitated his every move. What happened instead is that I developed two new addictions – cigarettes and cocaine – and believed this made me special.
To this day, it still amazes me that I believed I knew so much; I knew so very, very little.
Since Scott had no interest in hanging out with me on campus, and I had no interest in sleeping at his parents’ house, we stayed in hotels near whatever bar we frequented.
He didn’t talk at the hotels, either.
We’d zonk out at around 3 a.m. and sometime after sunrise, he’d wake me and drive me back to my dorm. There was no breakfast involved, just morning cigarettes to offend my hangover.
When Scott dropped me off, he’d say, “I’ll pick you up Friday at 7.” And that would be our next date.
We certainly did not talk on the phone.
After a couple of months of this deeply quiet relationship, it occurred to me that I might accidentally become pregnant. I hadn’t had a consistent sexual relationship before – not ever – so this was something I considered in depth.
Did I want to have Scott’s baby? No, I did not. As cool as he was, Scott didn’t strike me as great father material.
So one night in a hotel somewhere, I said to Scott: “I’m thinking we might need to start using some kind of birth control.”
He just stared at me. As usual, he said nothing. Then he went to sleep.
I thought this might require further discussion. So the next day as he was dropping me off at the dorm, I mentioned it again: “I really think we ought to start using birth control. I really, really don’t want to get pregnant.”
There may have been a slight sigh, or a grunt, but no words.
He was beautiful.
“Okay, see ya!” I said, hopping out of the car.
And I never saw Scott again.
**********************************************
Epilogue: years later, I found Scott on Facebook. The fingerless gloves were gone, replaced by North Face black fleece. His coal black hair is now silver. His grown daughter looks like a movie star.
Scott gave up leather in favor of patterned shirts and chino shorts. He’s completely obsessed with golf.
Golf!
There’s not a single picture of a raw potato anywhere on his Facebook page, which I don’t fully understand.
But I am sincerely glad he walked away when he did.
Like every family, mine was raised with some dysfunction, but we were raised to know the difference between what’s right and what’s destructive. My entire, enormous extended family comes from the same moral fiber.
There are people in my family who drink, but I’ve never seen any of them drink the way I did. I drank like my grandfather, who died of alcoholism. I have a couple of cousins who, at some point, got sober; I never saw either of them drink. Everyone has demons to battle – but in my gene pool, there just aren’t very many active drunks or drug addicts.
To say that I was raised believing drugs were “wrong” would be a drastic understatement. Not only did I grow up in a drug- and alcohol-free environment, but I took the required health class in school. I knew that heroin would kill me, LSD would make me jump off a bridge, cocaine would make my heart explode, and PCP would land me in an insane asylum.
Even nicotine is hugely frowned upon throughout my extended family – about 115 people at last count, not including my cousins’ grandkids. Smoking and vaping are nearly non-existent. To this day, I can still visualize the poster of a cigarette-smoking old person that hung in the middle school locker room – a horrid creature whose skin was like a sun-dried tomato. “Smoking is glamorous,” said the poster.
I was always very attuned to sarcasm. I never planned to smoke.
But in late 1984, I stepped across a line that I’d drawn for myself in the sand. I didn’t know the line was there until I’d stepped onto the other side, and by then it was too late.
I smoked cigarettes for about six months before I started “trying” to quit. I hated what cigarettes did to my throat, to my lungs, to my soul. But I liked the feeling of having a cigarette in my hand. And if it was in my hand, I smoked it. As a result, I burned through a pack a day pretty easily, through two packs a day within a year, and three packs a day before I was done.
I knew that drugs would kill me. I knew that drinking would cause my liver to disintegrate and that marijuana would ensure that I never worked a full-time job. But by the time that famous commercial announced that my brain resembled a fried egg, I scoffed.
I laughed even. Because I knew better.
Once I started doing drugs, nothing could stop me from doing drugs.
Bonnie had explored drugs more than I had. Maybe a month before my first cocaine, Bonnie described an LSD trip to me: “You would look at a lamp and suddenly it would be the best fucking lamp,” she said. “And you would realize how much you fucking love lamps and then you would laugh because lamps are so fucking awesome.”
I didn’t understand; LSD still scared the crap out of me. I was raised to be terrified of all drugs – and rightfully so.
But on cocaine, I was floating on a cloud, a euphoria right inside my head. There was no pain; my usual feelings of anger and self-hatred disappeared. It was exhilarating.
That feeling lasted approximately 42 seconds.
Then it vanished and the only way to get it back was to do more cocaine, to feel that way for another 42 seconds.
Thank God I had no money to buy it. It was way out of my price range.
If no one had cocaine, I just drank. And smoked. A lot.
When the holidays rolled around, I invited Scott to visit me and my parents in Pittsburgh, but he declined. Instead, he suggested that I go with him to a New Year’s Eve party in Ohio – and I happily accepted.
New Year’s Eve has been notoriously lousy for me. When the days of banging pots and pans with my parents ended and I still wasn’t quite old enough to legally drink, New Year’s Eve celebrations went steadily downhill.
Except for New Year’s Eve With Scott.
When Scott picked me up for the party, he was dressed in different black attire – a black button-down shirt and a diamond in his ear. I wore my usual Forenza sweater and silver pants, and hoped I wasn’t underdressed, although I remember discovering that frat parties had a whole different dress code.
The party was a mass of strangers, all substantially older than me, but I tried to fit in. Scott’s friends were perfectly cordial, although he didn’t talk to them, either. I wondered where he found these friends. They were serious partiers, too, particularly on this wild, celebratory night.
Scott drank Coors, so I drank Coors Light. His can was gold; mine was silver.
Scott smoked Salems, so I smoked Salem Lights. It seemed like the feminine thing to do.
So when Scott pulled me into a side room and whipped out a tiny vial of white powder, I knew instantly I would be trying my first-ever cocaine. It was New Year’s Eve – the biggest night of the year. I was not going to mess up this one!
Scott dispensed the powder onto a little mirror and used a razor blade to swipe it into lines. Where did he find these things? I wondered. Did he pull them out of his pocket?
As he worked, I panicked a little. This is a real drug. What’s going to happen to me?
Then he rolled up a twenty-dollar bill so it became a little tube, and he handed the rolled-up money to me.
“How do I do it?” I asked Scott, completely baffled.
“Want me to show you?”
I nodded – and watched carefully. One end of the bill went in the nose while, somehow, I was expected to inhale a line of powder through the little tube.
“Just don’t breathe through your mouth,” Scott said.
I tried. I got most of it into my nose. It was a learned skill – getting the entire line in one inhaling motion – but I learned quickly.
Immediately my head felt delightful.
Many studies have been done about the effects of cocaine on the brain – particularly about its extremely addictive component. Because cocaine’s “rush” hits so quickly then dissipates at the same rate, it’s a drug that needs to be done over and over and over and over to maintain a “high.”
In rehab years later, I watched a film where monkeys were given cocaine. They chose cocaine over both food and rest … until they dropped dead.
And at that moment, I already understood.
I was hooked instantly. From that night on, if cocaine appeared, I chased it like a cat chasing a laser, a panther chasing a deer, a dog chasing a squirrel. If someone had cocaine, I was interested. Once I knew about it, I never took my eyes off it. I got myself into many, many bad situations by following the cocaine.
But that was ages away.
First, I spent a beautiful champagne- and cocaine-filled evening with Scott until the sun rose and 1985 officially began.
Scott and I became exclusive – I thought – immediately. I had no interest in seeing anyone else, since this guy with the black leather was all I’d ever want or need in life.
It never occurred to me to wonder why Scott never spoke. He just didn’t. He was too cool.
Scott would pick me up in his car. I thought we would always go to The Hood, but Scott wasn’t a one-bar kind of guy.
In spite of his attire, he didn’t drive a motorcycle, or even a particularly cool car. But because he had a vehicle, we could go places.
So that’s what we did. We went places. We saw bands and drank at nightclubs and ate at diners and delis. We drove to Akron and Cleveland and Kent and Canton, just because we could. I thought Kent was particularly exotic, because of the massacre.
Scott could go wherever he wanted, and I felt fortunate to be included. I thought Scott was worldly.
Scott spoke through music – sharing obscure Lou Reed songs with me, which I swallowed whole, then reevaluated for weeks, listening to Street Hasslelike it was the word of God. Later Scott introduced me to Trio, a band that wowed me with its brilliant lyrics (“Uh huh uh huh uh huh” and “Da Da Da”) interspersed with real German. Scott’s musical choices made me believe Scott was brilliant, too.
Scott worked nights at the local grocery store, stocking shelves while the store was closed. This, to me, seemed like the coolest job in the world. He got to stay up all night and get paid for it!
Scott smoked clove cigarettes, which smelled like spicy candy. When he ran out, he smoked Salems.
After a few dates with Scott, I started smoking Salem Lights, so I could smell the way Scott did. I lacked leather and cloves, but I definitely smelled.
Scott had formerly lived on a beach in Florida, eating raw potatoes to survive. I believed this was the ultimate freedom, and aspired to do exactly the same thing.
“You think eating raw potatoes is cool?” Scott said.
“Yes!” I screamed. “You could eat whatever you wanted! Do whatever you wanted! Go wherever you wanted! And you got to sleep on the beach!”
Scott shook his head slowly. He didn’t talk enough to argue with me.
I never considered the fact that Scott had left those Florida beaches to return to Ohio to live with his parents and work night shifts in a grocery store.
One night, Scott took me to his house for dinner so that I could meet his parents. I was scared. The coolest man in the world probably had the coolest parents – and I was not cool. Would they like me?
They did like me.
In fact, they seemed to be just regular parents. We ate regular food at a regular table in a regular house.
Scott didn’t talk at dinner either, so I got to know his parents really well. But I only met them once.
Most of the time we were having our worldly adventures in eastern Ohio.
I dreamed of riding with Scott to a beach, a sack of raw potatoes in the trunk, a case of Coors for him and a case of Coors Light for me, and a whole carton of menthol cigarettes in the glove compartment.
College seemed distant and unimportant.
But as I finished my first semester of my junior year, I had to leave both Bonnie and Scott to go home for Christmas.
The beach and its potatoes seemed far away indeed.
While I spent evening after evening and night after night at The Hood, I remember very little about being inside the bar. I remember the smell of stale beer and the drab, darkened decor, but my memories of what happened there are … foggy.
Mostly I sat at the bar, if crowds were low, and drank beer. On really special occasions, I would get a Hood Burger, but mostly I sat and drank beer. If the bar was crowded, my activities consisted of making my way through the crowd to get another beer, then finding a less crowded place to stand and drink … and then making my way back to the bar to get another beer.
Then one night, when crowds were low, I saw a guy walk in dressed all in black: leather jacket, black leather pants, and black fingerless gloves that he didn’t remove, even when drinking his can of Coors.
I’d never seen fingerless gloves before, so I decided that he was the coolest person ever to walk into that bar. His eyes were as black as his clothes. He sat at the darkest corner table, right next to the door.
Once in awhile, if he turned his head just so, I could see the glint of gold in his left ear. Like the incomparable George Michael, David Bowie and Boy George, this guy had an earring, too.
He was mysterious.
He lit a cigarette which made him even cooler. After only one beer he left, never speaking to anyone, not even looking around. Just sitting quietly and then disappearing.
For weeks afterward, I went to the bar looking for the black-clad man. I wanted to know this guy.
Finally, one night, he returned: same black leather, same fingerless gloves, new can of Coors. I stared from across the bar. He sat at the table next to the door, spoke to no one, and then he was gone again.
I nearly followed him outside – but instead, I just watched him go. Again.
This happened four times over several weeks before my nerve – and my alcohol level – sufficiently pushed me to speak to him. Or maybe it was Bonnie and a dare. I don’t actually recall.
Suddenly I was at his dark table, plopped down next to him, introducing myself and shaking the hand with the fingerless gloves.
“Scott,” he said, his voice low, nearly nonexistent. I was terrified and could barely form a sentence, so I raced into the bathroom to make sure I looked okay.
When I came out, he was gone again.
The next time he walked in, I nearly threw myself into his lap. “Where did you go?” I yakked – then kept yakking until somehow I got his number – before the days of cell phones, so I had to call him. Having this incredibly cool guy call the dorm floor payphone seemed ridiculous.
I waited a couple of days and then I called.
“Hey,” he said. And then I talked for half an hour.
Drinking excessive alcohol started to cause weird, unexpected occurrences in my life.
For one thing, people started asking me about parties. Like everyone else, I picked up printed flyers for frat parties and house parties, and those flyers told me where to go.
But strangers would ask, “Hey! Are there any parties this weekend?” And I would have to think: What flyer do I have? And why the heck are they asking me?
Most of the time, I would mumble, “I think there’s one at ATO…” and trail off, hoping they would be able to figure it out on their own.
One time, I was called into the Dean’s Office for planning a party.
Dean Davis – who already knew me as a “problem drinker” – said, “I want you to rethink whatever you are planning this weekend.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said. I literally had no idea what she was talking about.
“There are to be no parties in any dorm,” she said.
“Okay,” I said. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I believe you are planning a very big event on your floor,” she said.
“I’m not,” I said, completely truthfully. “I don’t know anything about any very big event!”
The dean did not believe me.
Sometimes there were parties on my floor. I remember a kamikaze party where I got very, very sick from an overload of whatever alcohol is in a kamikaze. I never drank kamikazes again.
But the dean blamed me for some figment of her imagination. And mostly the parties happened elsewhere.
Another interesting development happened as college progressed: people started asking me – and Bonnie – if we had any drugs to sell.
At that point, both of us had given up whatever drugs we’d done in high school. We just drank a lot.
“I don’t do drugs,” I would say – meaning it.
“Right,” they’d laugh. “Well if you get any, find me.”
Get any what? I’d wonder. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be selling.
One semester, I was put on something called Social Probation.
“You will remain on Social Probation for one semester,” the letter said. “If there are any infractions during the upcoming semester, you could be suspended or expelled from college.”
“… expelled from college.”
Really?
Sure, there were rules about visitation – but I thought everyone agreed that those rules were stupid. So when someone actually turned me in for having a man in my dorm room, I was appalled. I was an adult! Why was I being treated like a child?
It didn’t matter that I couldn’t tell you the name of the guy who was in my room because, between the parties and the impromptu overnights, there were too many names to consider.
Why couldn’t people just accept my new persona and leave me alone? I’d have to spend an entire semester adhering to the rules … and hoping not to be too drunk to forget.
Right after receiving my threatening Social Probation letter, I received another letter from Mount Union.
“Congratulations!” it said. “Your exemplary GPA and outstanding academic performance have placed you on the Mount Union College Dean’s List!”
I’d made Dean’s List and been put on Social Probation in exactly the same semester.
Two years later, I was back on Social Probation for the same offense. I never made Dean’s List again.
I’ve said that Bonnie gave me “permission” to do things that I wouldn’t otherwise have normally done. But I need to clarify.
Bonnie didn’t sit around determining what I could and couldn’t do. She simply showed by example that things could be done differently than I’d been doing them. Before meeting Bonnie, I tried harder to play by the rules.
When I got a speeding ticket, I sat and listened to the police officer and shook, worried about the legal ramifications and the possibility of jail. Then I drove home and immediately mailed in the fine so I wouldn’t somehow forget.
When Bonnie got a speeding ticket, she swore at the officer under her breath, blasted music in her own car while he was writing out the ticket, and as soon as he was out of eyesight she shredded the ticket and tossed the scraps into the backseat.
I thought this was cool. In fact, I thought everything Bonnie did was cool. So I tried to be like her.
One thing I learned from Bonnie involved going home from parties and bars with men: sometimes Bonnie said no. If she didn’t like the guy, she just said, “No thanks!” and kept chatting and drinking.
Until I saw what Bonnie did, I hadn’t known there was a choice. I thought if a guy asked you, you went. My motto: guys are more important than me, so I have to do what they say.
I wonder how much of my “motto” was due to my age, and how much was due to my overwhelming insecurities.
I asked Bonnie about this the very first time she told a guy “no thanks.”
“Fuck him!” Bonnie said. There was no other explanation. She chose the person with whom she’d depart – they didn’t choose her.
I didn’t really get the concept, though. From that point on, I turned into a predator. I started “choosing” as soon as I walked into a place.
Making a conscious choice to go home with someone specific provided me a delusional feeling of control. With my life slowly spiraling out of control because of my drinking, I thought this was an important step in the right direction.
But both Bonnie and I were putting ourselves in dangerous situations based on our choices.
After one harrowing incident when Bonnie almost didn’t make it home from her 2 a.m. excursion, we made a pact: from now on, we choose two guys, so that whatever we do, we do it in the same place. We made sure they understood that we would not be separated, whether they liked it or not.
We wanted to be safe from being lost in the middle of the night and unable to find our way home, and we wanted to be safe from unwanted advances. Having each other within arm’s reach meant that we wouldn’t be alone, ever.
Of course, we were obliterated by alcohol most of the time, so I’m not sure this rule made a bit of difference. But we felt safer because of it.
