Blackouts and Breakdowns (20 page)

“Well, keep at it and let me know if you need anything,” he said.

“Goodnight,” I said and hung up the phone.
Was I going to have to give up Nyquil as well?
I was having a bitch of a time getting to bed that night.
I mean, I wasn’t about to pull a Kitty Dukakis or anything, but I wasn’t sure of what the rules regarding sleep aides were.

DAY TWO

I went back to the meeting the next day and found that I had little trouble getting up the stairs this time.
I had already been there once, so I figured that I didn’t look like a complete douche bag sitting in a room filled with strangers talking about drinking.
I sat and watched everyone come in and noticed that a pretty girl, who was definitely a lesbian, took the big seat in the middle.
Her name was Laura and she was to be leading the group today.
She was exactly how I liked my lesbians.
She was tattooed and pierced everywhere imaginable and also looked like she had a really awful attitude. I thought I would have to talk to her later, as she looked like someone who was perfect to make fun of others with. Laura sat down and told her story.
Although she was a lesbian, she was once married to a man named Luke.

“How perfect!” I thought.
“Just like Luke and Laura on
General Hospital
.”
Except the Laura on TV was not a lesbian and the Laura who sat before me had probably not gone around the world looking for the Ice Princess.
Nevertheless, it guaranteed that I would at least remember her name. Laura began her story and told the group that she had began drinking when she was a teenager.
She had always known that she was a lesbian but got married to a man because she thought it was the right thing to do.
All I could think of was Dr. Jake.
He had done pretty much the same thing and was now kind of dating me.
Funny how that works out, the whole
I’m-gay-but-I-am-going-to-marry-someone-from-the-opposite-sex
thing.
As Laura continued her story, I realized how similar we were.
She said that she drank to make herself feel better, which was something I had down to an art form.
She drank to celebrate.
She drank when she was depressed.
She drank when she was alone.
She drank when people were around her.
She drank because it was there.
I was enthralled by her story because it was as if she was telling my story.
After the meeting, I needed to know more about this woman.

“Hey girl!” I said.
It’s a good thing I know the lesbian lingo. “I really liked what you had to say.”

“Thank you,” she replied.

“It was almost as if you were telling my story.
You and I are like the same person.
Except, you are a lesbian, and I of course, I am not.”

She laughed. “Well, if you hang around here long enough, you will see that we all have the same story.”

“Really?”
I asked. I looked around the room at the faces that stood before me.
There was a guy with dreadlocks who sat in the corner staring at the floor while twitching. I had not been in the group for very long, but I was there long enough to know that I was going to be calling that guy “Twitch.”
There was no way that Twitch and I had the same story.
We’re so different - I flat iron my hair.

Laura could see the confusion in my eyes.
“Yeah!” she yelled.
“We’re all a bunch of fucking drunks!”
She laughed.
I didn’t think that this remark was all that funny but I gave her an awkward half smile anyway.
Lesbians are notoriously unfunny so I thought I would throw her a bone.
“Here’s my number if you need anything,” she said as she handed me her card.
“Please, feel free to call anytime.”

“Thanks,” I said. I was certainly confused as to why this nice lesbian was giving me her number so I replied, “I have a lesbian sister.”
She smiled and walked away.

I felt a lot better after leaving my second AA meeting.
If Laura could get sober, and her story was just about the same as mine, maybe I could do this after all.
I went to the cafe right after the meeting.
I was told by my uncle that working at a place that served alcohol was not a good idea especially during your first month of sobriety.
I told him that unless he wanted to support me through this tough economic time, I didn’t really have much of a choice.
But I hated waiting tables.
It felt like I had done it for so long and the only thing that made it bearable was the fact that I could get shit faced drunk for free.
Now that option no longer existed so it just became something I had to do in order to survive.
At the very least, I had made a few good friends during my time there and it was always good to see them.
I walked into the cafe feeling relieved and really good about my new endeavor.

“Hey Mark,” my boss said as I walked in. “How’s rehab?”

“Excuse me?” I replied.

“I thought you went to rehab?”

“Um, no.
Had I gone to rehab, I would have been gone for at least a month.
I just didn’t work yesterday so maybe you got confused. I am in AA now.”

“Right,” he said.
“I am very proud of you,” he continued as he knocked back the remains of his vodka cranberry at four in the afternoon on a Tuesday.
“You really needed it.”

I breezed past him and walked in the coatroom to gather myself.
How could my boss, a man never seen without a cocktail in his hand possibly tell me that I needed to go to AA?
He needed to go to AA.
I went on a whim and I am only there for the duration of the week to see if I actually can do it.

I went about the rest of my day on a pink cloud.
As I served my customers their drinks and they proceeded to get drunker and drunker, I realized how obnoxious I must have been while I was drinking.
I flashed back to a few years earlier when I was out drinking with my roommates.
We had been drinking all night at our favorite local bar and I pulled my usual
leave-without-saying-goodbye
move. The good old Irish goodbye.
About an hour later, they found me asleep in a vegetable stand across the street from our apartment.
My roommates had to literally pick me up and carry me home.
Every time I would get drunk, my life warped into
Weekend at Bernie’s
.
My friends would have to carry my seemingly lifeless body from the bar back home.
We all know
Weekend at Bernie’s
was fun for no one.
I was glad that I wouldn’t have to go through that again – at least not this week.
I went to bed that night feeling much better. Maybe I could do this after all.

DAY THREE

This morning Dr. Jake called and told me that he was going to New York that weekend and asked me if I wanted to go. He said he was going up on business and if I wanted to come, he would have some time to see shows and go out for dinner and such.
I declined but thanked him for the invitation.
I was really feeling good about this AA thing and told him I thought it was best if I stayed in D.C. for the time being, but I told him to be good.
It was true that Dr. Jake and I were no longer dating, but I told him that I thought it was best for him to not sleep with anyone while I was going through my first days of sobriety.

In typical Mark fashion, my problem was quickly becoming everyone else’s. True, Dr. Jake and I were no longer dating, but we were acting as if we were and it would really piss me off if he slept with someone else at this point.
There was still a glimmer of hope of getting back together, even though he set his alarm to break up with me.
I told him that it would be best for my recovery if he didn’t sleep with anyone else and he agreed not to.

The fact that he was going to New York without me annoyed me nonetheless.
I knew that he would be going out and having fun without me, and the thought of that made me want to scream.
I still could not understand why everyone else seemed to be having fun but me.
I was coming to terms with the fact that I did have a problem, but why did this have to be so boring? Everyone from the cafe had gone out the night before and I knew they were going to have amazing stories to tell me.
Tuesday Booze days were always memorable evenings and I had just missed one. I felt sorry for myself so I went to an AA meeting and thought maybe someone else would feel sorry for me there.

I found it very hard to listen to anything that anyone had to say that day.
Instead I once again took a look around the room at the faces that stared back. I noticed the old man in the blue jacket was back.
I also noticed that an elderly gay man, who bared a shocking resemblance to Palmer Courtlandt from
All My Children
, joined him today.
I decided I would refer to him as Palmer Courtlandt forever. I saw that the older well-dressed woman was back.
Today she was wearing a pillbox hat. I decided that I would refer to her from then on as Bunny McDougall.
She did, after all, look like Charlotte’s mother-in-law from
Sex and the City
. Finally, I saw a little red haired girl in the corner who would heretofore be referred to as little orphan Annie.
I could not pay attention to anything because of the cast of characters that surrounded me.

After the meeting, little orphan Annie came up to me.

“Hey, are you new here?” Annie asked.

“Yep,” I said.

“Wow. We are like the youngest ones here,” she said.

“Yea, right?”

“My name is sjkdhaskjdfh,” she said. I still to this day do not remember her name.
I have since spoken to her on several different occasions. I know what street she lives on and what her major in college is, but can’t for the life of me remember her name.
I just got so used to calling her Annie, that it became all I could remember her by.
“Today has been really troubling for me,” Annie said.
“I have finals and I am really flipping out.”
She continued to talk but I really wasn’t listening. Why on earth did this girl come over and start talking to me?
I really was not interested in anything she had to say.
All I wanted to do was ask her where the hell Bernadette Peters was and whatever happened to that frigging dog of hers.
She finally said goodbye and gave me her number and told me to call her if I needed anything.
I put her in my phone under L.O. Annie.
Why on earth were so many people giving me their numbers?
I had no idea, but all I could think of as I left my meeting that day was
WE GOT ANNIE!!!

DAY FOUR

Today I woke up feeling like shit.
It was as if the hangover from the Miss Adams Morgan Day event had not gone away.
I didn’t want to get out of bed.
I knew I had to go to work eventually, but I did not have to be there until 6 pm so essentially I could sleep all day then roll into work.
But something inside of me was telling me to get up, go to a meeting, go to the gym, eat a healthy lunch and get on with my day.
My body was telling me to lie in bed all day and watch my stories, but my head was telling me to get up and have a productive day.
After all, I could watch my stories on the treadmill, which killed two birds with one stone.

I did end up going to an AA meeting that day.
I told myself upon entering the room that I was going to pay attention to what everyone was saying and not cast a musical in my head.
I looked around the room once I sat down.
I saw Twitch was there.
Sitting a few seats down with him was Bunny McDougall.
She was talking to Palmer Courtlandt.
I wondered if they were friends.
Maybe they went to Happy Hour together after the meetings.
I tried focusing on AA.
Today was the day that I was going to finally get something out of what all of these people were talking about.
As the meeting was getting started, a big, 50-something homosexual sat down in the chair in the middle.

“Hi everyone.
My name is Michael and I am an alcoholic,” the man said.
I could see myself turning into Michael in about twenty-five years.
He seemed fairly successful by the clothes he was wearing and extremely outgoing.
But he also seemed like he had a really bad attitude, something I could appreciate even more.

“Actually,” Michael continued, “I am a huge fucking drunk!”

This was amazing.
Now we’re getting down to the nitty-gritty. Michael told his story and I was utterly fascinated by it.
He was from New York, just like me.
He had been a very successful doctor up there, but something had always bothered him.
He, like Laura Lesbian and Dr. Jake, had married someone of the opposite sex knowing he was a homosexual.
He was a twin and felt as if his parents always had favored his twin brother over him.
I felt his pain.
I was one of five children and at this point, I felt as if my parents had all but given up on me.
I had completed college, but I had not accomplished much more than that.
My brothers and sisters all had careers and families and I really didn’t have much besides some really good drinking buddies and an incredible knowledge of show-tunes.
Michael continued his story and told the group how he would order a case of scotch every month and drink each and every bottle in the case.
He began drinking all of the time and almost lost his medical license.
But something inside of him told him that he needed to get help and he did.
He had been sober for over twenty years now and I found myself really respecting him.
He had dragged himself up by his coat tails and made a much better life for himself.
He told the group that every day that we did not drink was a great day because we hadn’t taken a drink.
I was inspired by what he had to say and hung on every word that came out of his mouth.
I think had I paid attention to what anyone was saying in the first four days, I would have learned something but I was too busy making up ridiculous nicknames for people.