So, uh, yeah, that’s the way I play it this morning. I finish off the rest of the vodka in the freezer, and immediately warmth and tranquility fill my mind and body, like I’ve swallowed the sun down inside me.
It’s a miracle, really.
And so what if it’s all dependent on a substance? At least with drinking, my life won’t fall apart—not like it did with hard drugs. It’s just a, uh, a minor vice. That’s all.
But, anyway, after finishing the bottle, I go clean up the bathroom so Sue Ellen won’t suspect anything—trying to cover up the smell with a can of hair spray. I’m not really sure how well it works. Still, I figure by the time she gets up, it should’ve all aired out a good bit. I leave it be at that and go make coffee and some toast with strawberry jam and butter. The sun is low and bright, its rays like the coils of an electric oven, the temperature gauge rising to the point of self-combustion.
I mess with the air conditioner a little, but even on its highest setting, the apartment is still strangling hot as the paned glass windows compound the sunlight—trapping the layers of humid, palpable, dirty atmosphere in our own private ecosystem. With no chance of escape. I mean, no way out. All I can do is sit naked on the living-room couch—wrapped in a thin sheet—drinking down glass after glass of cold water—trying to quench my unquenchable thirst.
The heat and alcohol leave me sort of blurred out—half awake, half asleep. I put on this zombie movie we got from Netflix, though I can barely focus on it at all. I mean, I guess I must pass out again, ’cause I wake up to the DVD menu repeating over and over. There’s a note from Sue Ellen on the coffee table next to me. She says she went to work and didn’t want to wake me. She says she loves me.
I get up to go see what time it is, stopping at the refrigerator for a beer—panicking some when I see there are only two left. I’ll have to run to the liquor store really quickly with what little money I have left. I chug the first beer all the way down and then immediately pop the cap off the other, trying to, you know, sip at it more casually.
The digital oven clock says it’s just before noon.
I take a shower and run up the block to the dingy liquor store, where all the bottles are kept behind bulletproof glass. Actually, the whole counter and the cash register and the little old woman who works there are all kept safe behind the glass as well, so our transaction takes place through a metal drawer that slides back and forth from one side to the other. I put in ten dollars, mostly in change, and she passes me back a half-pint of no-brand vodka and a half-pint of no-brand whiskey. The woman’s here every day, looking like a high school librarian, with horn-rimmed glasses, a lot of lipstick, and a dowdy kind of jumpsuit thing. Her face is creased and folded and withered and wrinkled like a dried piece of fruit.
She used to smile at me whenever I came in. Now she just stares at me with something like pity in her golden, black-spotted eyes—shaking her head—reluctant.
Obviously, she doesn’t need to ID me anymore.
I stuff both bottles into my pants pockets, muttering “thank you” and then turning to get the hell out of there. The little bell rigged up to the door jingles behind me.
Fuck.
I guess I gotta start switching up liquor stores. That goddamn woman makes me feel as guilty as hell. And, I mean, who is she to judge?
Christ.
I find myself running back home just so I can drink some of the vodka before Russell comes by. The whiskey bottle I hide in the small space behind the TV so Sue Ellen can’t find it. Doing this kind of shit, it’s hard not to think back on all those twelve-step meetings I used to go to. I remember hearing people talk about how they would do shit like hide bottles around the house or sneak their empties into the neighbors’ trash cans so the garbage people wouldn’t know how much they were drinking. Actually, now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I remember them talking about how they had to keep changing liquor stores ’cause they were too ashamed to face the same employees every day—or multiple times a day. But the difference between me and all those people at the meetings is that I’m aware of the signs, right? And I know how to catch myself before falling down too far. They talk about how their lives had become unmanageable, the way my life did when I was using hard drugs. But for now, drinking and smoking pot, I haven’t had any negative consequences at all. So how could this be a problem? I mean, I keep telling myself it isn’t.
For the first time in my life, I get to act like a normal twenty-something-year-old—carefree, going out to bars and having fun. Hell, even on my twenty-first birthday I was in a goddamn sober living. I’ve been totally robbed of all the experiences most kids my age get to have. Having to be sober was like being a forty-year-old trapped in a young adult’s body. How could I relate to any of my peers? It was like I’d come from a totally
