All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir(56)
In the months after my dad died I knew that my alcoholism was becoming worse, but I was unable to envision a future that did not include substances in some way. My dad was dead, and so I drank wine. A lot of it. That said, I knew that there had to be some safeguards in check, so I wouldn’t go completely off the rails. I developed a plan and wrote it down in my notebook. I would attempt some degree of sobriety, on occasion.
With this new plan in place, I knew I had a couple of challenges to get through over the next few weeks. My college friend Anna was coming to stay, and I desperately wanted to show her a good time. I had emailed her beforehand with a delightful bingo game of New York sights/events that we could take part in. I also told her that I would not be drinking. She had no problem with us not drinking, she wrote back; in fact, she preferred it. The second I saw that in the email, my stomach plummeted. I really didn’t want to go to a burlesque performance and order a seltzer. I wanted tequila, some delish champagne, or a gin and tonic, goddammit.
An avid talker and listener, Anna comes from good Wisconsin stock. She has neat brown hair, cut at her shoulders, and has a penchant for Bob Dylan. I always think of her with an apple in her right hand. She is a real sweetheart, and the last time she’d visited me I’d been a drunken mess. I promised myself it was not going to be the same this time.
We cackled like crones when she arrived at my newly tidied Brooklyn apartment. Yunna welcomed her and we drank coffee with creamer and had scones that I had picked up from the local bakery up the street, like a good adult hostess. I was going to get through this weekend with grace and dignity.
We headed to the Whitney and saw some new exhibits and then ventured to a Spanish restaurant for some tapas. My eyes glanced at the red wine available on the menu and my mouth watered. I found myself ordering a Diet Coke, and Anna was fine with water. Suddenly the bacon-wrapped date that came to the table tasted subpar. I just wanted some wine. And to then relax into the conversation with this lovely woman I hadn’t seen in years. I craved the easy intimacy that came with alcohol.
After dinner we headed to the Strand to peruse the miles of adventures and the books that held them. We separated among the stacks and I started to plot about how to pitch her on the idea of drinking. I practiced the words, all the while completely understanding that this was not normal behavior. On the L train back to my borough, I lied to her that my alcohol issues had been getting better, but that abstinence would not be a workable solution for me. I volunteered to pay for some fancy rosé to help us pregame before our glittering night at the Slipper Room, a notorious playground/burlesque club on the Lower East Side. She looked disappointed, but knew from years of experience that if I was going to drink, no one was going to stop me.
The second my hands gripped the glass bottle out of the chic winery’s mini refrigerator, I felt, in a strange way, calmer: I was going to have access to the medicine I needed. I bought two bottles of wine plus a case of Modelo beer, justifying the purchase by saying we had a couple of nights together and we would want to be stocked. I knew I would be drinking one of those bottles by myself, and I didn’t want to share.
The visit I had so carefully planned turned into an excuse for me to get as drunk as possible, as quickly as possible. Oh, and the meaningful conversation I sought at the tapas restaurant, the fact that I thought booze was the way to unlock some sort of intimacy, was a complete joke. I basically ended up ignoring this woman who had flown nearly a thousand miles to be near me.
After the show, back at the apartment and sufficiently buzzed, I ordered some cocaine. She wanted no part of it. I picked up my laptop and moved into the living room to type until late hours of the night, about absolutely nothing.
I woke up the next morning asleep on the couch, fully dressed, black eyeliner dripping off the sides of my face. I was so fucking hungover. I could barely take a breath without it hurting my head. But wait, we had lunch planned with Jasper at eleven. I groaned as I realized it was ten now. I didn’t want him to think anything was amiss, so I would have to rally and rally hard. I knew what might help. Gingerly, I crept over to the refrigerator and saw the untouched beer glinting at me. Trying to be as quiet as possible, I grabbed two out of the cardboard box and ran into the bathroom and turned the metal lock on the door to the right. I turned on the shower to disguise the sound of the beer opening. I nervously thought that either Yunna or Anna might hear, but I couldn’t worry about that. I opened the first one and sat on the lid of the toilet.
Oh my God, this is why people do this. It felt so nice and reassuring to introduce the alcohol back into my nervous system. I drank the beer in one sitting and stood up to look at myself in the mirror. I knew what had just happened was the next stage of a progressive disease. I was now drinking in the morning and hiding it. My blue eyes stared back at me. It wasn’t so unforgivable, was it? I brought the second beer with me into the shower and drank it while the scalding water beat down at my back. It was so soothing and I felt the internal warmth coming back to me; it was going to be okaaaaay.
I hopped out of the shower and stashed the beer cans in the wooden cabinet behind a giant box of tampons. I walked into my room, and Anna was sitting up and reading a book. She looked irritated, but I wasn’t about to get into it. I informed her that we would take a cab to Astoria, and Jasper would then drive us to an amazing, locals-only dim sum shop. I could tell that she was surprised that I was rallying, but she didn’t remark on it.
My buzz started to wear off the second we got to the dumpling shack. There was no way for me to order a beer. Jasper didn’t drink really, and I had never seen anyone order alcohol at this type of place. I started to panic, but tried to focus on the incredible food in front of me. After a bellyful of porky, doughy pillows, we went to the Museum of the Moving Image, and I felt the suicidal thoughts start to creep in. I had screwed everything up. Here I was in a cool, chic Queens museum, and all I wanted in life was unfettered access to another beer.