95

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95th Post

Posted 30 June 2016 at 06:57:06 UTC

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> Outside, the midday light and the heat are mind-bending, like some kind of goddamn UFO ray zapping me. Sweat rolls down my burning face. Squinting makes my cheeks ache. The wheels of my suitcase rumble over the gritty sidewalk. I have no fucking idea where I am or where I'm going. Some street. Some fucking neighborhood.
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> I desperately want a drink from the bottle of liquor I'm carrying in a grocery bag, but I'm afraid somebody will see and report me. All the internal alarms in my mind and body are ringing at once. Each passing car seems like it will pull over. Each one seems to slow and veer toward the curb. Each one is surely filled with gang members or undercover cops, ready to beat me down. Each one passes, sending a wave of warm air and panic past me.
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> I am insane. I do not belong in normal society. I must be isolated. I must keep moving. The sidewalk ends. Shit. Fuck. The road is turning into some kind of freeway. Can I walk along it? Is it allowed? I don't know. I don't know. Why don't I know things? Everybody knows things. Here I am wandering tits-out. No fucking clue. This wet bottle of liquor is showing right through the plastic bag. I've got to get somewhere. I've got to get this liquor inside me.
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> I trudge through an abandoned lot, trying to get away from the road, dragging the rebellious suitcase over rocks and weeds. There's a bunch of high grass and some kind of sloping concrete drainage thing behind it. I don't even know what the fuck it is or how to describe it. I'm not a novelist. Never was. I plop down on the concrete so that the weeds shield me from the passing cars on the road, and I spin the cap off the bottle.
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> My stomach cringes when the cold liquor hits it. Relief begins to flow almost immediately into my brain. Merely psychological, I'm sure, but psychological is exactly what I need right now. I breathe deep and shudder and take more sips, shaping my tongue into a sluice to send it right down my throat with no fuss. The panic slackens. Perfect. Perfect. Relief.
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> All the nightmarish feelings are still inside me, but now there is just a bit of distance between me and them. They are at bay. Pretty soon I've taken down a quarter of the bottle. Wow. Fuck. Look at me. Just a few days out of the sober house and I'm literally lying in the ditch with a bottle of liquor. At least it's a concrete, man-made ditch. No déclassé dirt ditches for me. I snicker at the thought. My panic of just moments ago seems ridiculous. Underneath it, though, the awful horror is still there. I know my snickering is just an empty little show of bravery.
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> What to do now? Usually, at this point, I would do forensics. We have to find out what happened over the past few days. For example, who beat me up? But it could be anybody. Who even cares. I used to get punched out all the time. Whoever did this really had it in for me, though. I must have unleashed a few of my delightful bon mots on an unamused stranger.
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> I check my phone. All my cringe-sensors are on full alert, ready to fire when I see what nonsense texts and 3 AM calls I've made. But it's just a few ordinary texts from my new "landlord." He says he won't be back until Monday. That's today. I left the sober house on -- when was it? Wednesday? Fuck, a five day bender. And only a handful of memories from it all. Scary. At least the owner was out of town for most of it. I take a sip to my good fortune.
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> It occurs to me to check reddit. I have a vague memory of being on there, chortling at some outrageous comment I made. Let's see... It turns out I posted the piece I had been working on. And the title was "CHODE OR CHOAD??? LET'S SETTLE THE DEBATE" Jesus. How stupid. It certainly undermines my claims of possessing otherworldly knowledge. "Hey, some guy possesses the power to see into alternate timelines, and he's using it to make chode jokes on the internet!" Right.
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> The wave of ethanol relief is fully washing over me, caressing me, easing my worries. I can feel the euphoria of the booze, but I can also feel the dread of the withdrawal at the same time, and I know that both feelings are lies. Soon the euphoria will be gone, and the dread will reign again. It will be like this for 3 days -- or more if I keep getting drunk and this turns into just another day in the bender. I have to try to taper down, but tapering means always drinking less than you want to, always remaining in barely tolerable misery.
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> I groan and my babyish instincts tell me to take another drink, but I don't. I shouldn't drink for another hour. Then one shot every hour, until it's time for sleep, then 6 shots to speed me through the nightmare realms. God. The math. The fucking math. 17 drinks in a fifth. 9 hours until alcohol sales stop. The body processes a drink an hour. For all those months, I didn't have to do the drinking math. Now I'm back in it.
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> I groan and lie back against the concrete drainage whatever. I know I look like the very picture of a drunk, but I don't care. I wallow in the feeling. Good. Good, I say!
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> One of the lies that leads you down the road of addiction is that you are "just visiting." The first time you end up in the drunk tank or the trap house (as the kids call it) or the rehab, you look at all the other guys and shake your head at how sad their lives are, because they are regulars. But you -- you are just visiting. You're here because of a crazy fuck-up, but you'll go back to your normal life. Heck, it'll be a funny story. Even when it happens for the second or third time, you're still just visiting. You're just a tourist in the land of misery, not a resident.
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> Well, no more lies for me. I am not visiting. I am returning home.
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> And everything is just where I left it.
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