Then Wham! I Didn’t Fit.
Most people drink to alleviate stress or to be social. They drink to feel good when they are feeling bad. They drink to celebrate when they are feeling good. But I didn’t drink just to feel good. I drank to feel good about who I am.
I wasn’t trying to change my mood. I was trying to change my inner being.
I drank to feel better about the internal part of myself that was always, always, always out of whack. I was never properly aligned with society. I never fit in. I never felt “part of” anything. But when I drank, I could be a part of everything – or so I thought.
Eventually I fit into absolutely nothing, all over again. That took awhile – but somehow happened suddenly.
At first I fit, then – wham! – I didn’t fit because I was a drunk.
An exquisite example of this is my experience with the Rocky Horror Picture Show. For the uninitiated, Rocky Horror is the pinnacle of audience participation movies.
In high school, I went weekly to see Rocky Horror twice weekly at midnight. It was an awesome experience: going to a dark theater, shooting squirt guns and throwing bread at each other, and dancing the Time Warp. Best of all, I knew every line of the movie – which included the hysterical lines that are yelled aloud at the characters. I adored going to Rocky Horror.
I knew every single line to yell at the screen, and even if I drank beforehand, I could spew verbatim the lines needed to make the movie into a phenomenal experience.
Fast forward to college, freshman year: Rocky Horror was playing for one night only on campus! Totally ecstatic, I headed into the theater with – I learned later – about 300 “virgins” who had never seen the movie before.
When it came time to throw something or yell at the screen, I was the only one who did it. And the audience loved me.
I would yell “kick the tire!” and the character in the movie would kick the tire. The other students roared with laughter. They thought I was hysterical!
Of course I’d had several beers before attending, so I got louder as the movie wore on. I yelled out lines for two hours, never missing a beat. It was my starring moment.
Fast forward again: two years later: Rocky Horror was coming back! I could hardly wait to do it all again!
Before the movie, I drank a few beers – and then a few more beers – and by the time the movie started, I was sloshed. My alcoholism had progressed quite a bit in those few years; I’d been drinking daily for awhile.
When I sat down in that movie theater again, my enthusiasm was off the charts. I sang along with the opening song, loudly and poorly. But when it came time to yell lines, I could barely remember what I was supposed to say.
This time, when the guy kicked the tire, I watched him kick it … then yelled: “Kick the tire!” … which was not funny at all. Nor was it appreciated by my peers.
I kept trying, and failing, my humiliation palpable. Eventually I just gave up and shut up. My drinking actually made me stand out – in a bad way – instead of fitting in.
But it didn’t stop me from drinking to crush my inner being. The pain I felt before I drank was still too raw. I didn’t want that person to ever see the light of day again.
I was a Rocky Horror fan before college. I remember seeing one of the showings at Mount. I don’t remember what one, but it must have been our freshman year. I remember one person in the audience new all the lines. I later found out it was you. I don’t remember people throwing stuff at the screen. But now I know why. Most of them had not seen it.
Awwww, you remember my one starring moment! Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it.