The Clumsy Interloper

“Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you’re allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It’s like killing yourself, and then you’re reborn. I guess I’ve lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.” -Charles Bukowski

I had a typewriter in my room in college. I was that guy. On weekends I would finish up a night by banging out poetry with empty Heineken bottles encircling my feet.

In my early twenties I went to Chicago bars at 2pm by myself to read something like Journey to the End of the Night by Celine while never talking to a soul.

At age 23 I would ride the bus in San Francisco with no destination in mind and write physical character descriptions of the riders. If they stayed on long enough, they got a back story. When I got tired of this exercise, I would get off and wander into the first bar I found to sketch out a short story.

This was all psychotic behavior in retrospect.

*

I spent my college career saturated in the preoccupation that befit the setting. Alcohol was the social drum beat and I was either acquiring it, anticipating it, consuming it or recovering from it. Drinking held the eternal potential for fireworks and nobody kept their powder dry on Rugby Road. Just five years removed from the summer of ‘98, I deactivated from Delta Upsilon as I was becoming unrecognizable to myself. The promise of a college awakening had instead become a waking nightmare.

I stumbled from UVa into the real world with no direction, self-esteem or prospects. While my drinking habits became more curated – ordering White Russians, Ramos Gin Fizzes and Old Fashions – the hollowness of my pursuit remained. I ballooned to 255 pounds and I kept my friends who showed concern at a safe distance. Remaining underemployed, I lived like a pauper off a graduation seed fund from my parents and I cobbled together an existence that felt like Groundhog Day meets Barfly.

On my 26^th birthday, I broke down to my parents that I needed help. I moved back to Charlottesville where they took me in and I dried out for the first time in 10 years. I got a job working at an off-Grounds student leasing company and quickly rose to a managerial position in a few short years. Once established I still drank socially, and on occasion to excess, but I felt much more in control. From my new position as a maintenance and leasing manager, I interfaced with undergraduates everyday and saw my past follies replayed on loop. However, the capricious hubris of a 19-year old on his fifth Mickey’s Big Mouth is less amusing when you are the one responsible for fixing and billing back the property damage.

By age 30 I had turned the corner from rudderless drifter to confident professional. I was engaged and looking to start a family. Drinking was a regular companion, and sometimes nuisance, but no longer the bane of my existence. However, when it comes to alcohol, the happiness curve eventually has a way of running out.

Next: Sober Curious: The Insidious Creep (Part III)