Blackouts and Breakdowns (26 page)

“Hi Nancy,” I said to the woman spinning the roulette wheel, as if we had been life long friends.
I put my money down and lost.
I tried again but lost.
After about sixteen times of flat out losing money, I told my brother that I was going to play penny slots with the old ladies and to find me there if he needed me.

I sat down next to a row of old ladies putting coins into machines with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths.
I always had dreams of turning into a slot junkie when I got older, but maybe now was the time. I could live in Atlantic City and just become a professional gambler.
Think of the glamour of it all.
As I sat and put my coins into the machines, I looked at my phone and noticed several texts had come in from Dr. Jake.
Normally, I would have read each one and let whatever he had to say bother me, but instead, I deleted them.
I put my last dollar into the machine and didn’t win anything back.
My luck had run out in Atlantic City and with Dr. Jake.
I sat at the slot machine, smoking a cigarette and realized I had no use for Dr. Jake in my life anymore.
I had no feelings for him and he was not adding anything to my life except aggravation.
I was no longer interested in shedding tears for affairs that I no longer wanted anything to do with.

My brother and I returned to D.C. that night having lost about a thousand dollars between the two of us.
I didn’t really care.
I needed to get away and do something a little crazy, and it felt good to do something out of the norm without drinking.
I spent the car ride home wondering whether or not I could write this excursion off on my tax return.

DAY TWENTY-TWO

“I went to Atlantic City yesterday and lost a shit ton of money,” I said to Luke as we were eating lunch.
“Pretty dumb idea, huh?”

“At least you didn’t drink,” he replied.

“I would have probably lost a lot less money had I been drinking,” I said.

“But you didn’t.”

“Whatever.”

“I am glad, that with everything that happened with Jake, you did not revert back to your old ways.”

“Thanks!” I said.
Luke and I had become fast friends and I really liked having lunch and going to meetings with him.

“I think I should be your sponsor,” he said.
After nearly a month in AA, I still had not had a sponsor.
In AA, sponsor is someone who guides you through the twelve steps.
At this point, I had really not found anyone I was comfortable enough with to share everything that had gone on in my past.
I liked Luke and he didn’t judge me.
I thought it would be a good idea to have him sponsor me.

“That would be awesome,” I said.

“Great.
The first thing I want you to do is make a list of how your life became unmanageable because of alcohol and the things that led up to you coming to AA.
Think back and bring your list to me within the next few days.”

This task seemed rather daunting, but at this point, I really wanted to make this AA thing work. That night, I went home and made a list of how alcohol had made my life unmanageable. It was rather long.

How Alcohol Made My Life Unmanageable:

1. Freshman year of college, I got drunk and watched Britney Spears’ world tour and tried to learn the choreography to every dance instead of doing a term paper.

2. Forgot to return
Little Shop of Horrors
to Blockbuster and never paid the $88 late fee, instead spending that money on booze. Banned from Blockbuster for life.

3. Got drunk at my brother’s Bar Mitzvah rehearsal.
Was not allowed to be in my brother’s Bar Mitzvah.

4. Once ate a homeless man’s sandwich.

5. Got drunk waiting tables at a restaurant in New York and drank a glass of wine that was sitting on a woman’s table that she paid for, then lied about it, while she was sitting right there and saw me do it.

6. Got drunk and promised my niece I would give her a horse.
She is still waiting for it.

7. Passed out in a stranger’s apartment in Atlanta and did not know whose apartment I was in or how to get back to my hotel.

8. Let a fat guy give me a hand job in the bathroom of a club while blacked out.

9. Ruined a white jacket when I was blacked out and making out with a guy against a wall that had just been painted.

10. Got kicked out of a club in New York for getting drunk and stealing the velvet rope.

The list went on and on.
I could not believe that I remembered half of the things that were on it.
As I read the list, I finally realized that my life had become unmanageable because of alcohol. Normal people did not get into the kind of trouble that I found myself getting into on a weekly basis.
It was then I realized that I was doing the right thing for myself.
I made a decision and I needed to have courage in my convictions. I felt that I now had the strength to do this and I was going to make good things happen for myself.

DAY TWENTY-FOUR

I made a wrong turn and ended up going into a Narcotics Anonymous meeting today.
I didn’t even realize I had done it until everyone started talking about shooting heroin.
I was too embarrassed to leave in the middle of it, so I stayed and listened.
I thought I had it bad.
How wrong I was.

DAY TWENTY-FIVE

Life finally seemed to be moving in the right direction for me.
I felt myself becoming a happier person and looking at things and seeing the glass half full.
I was making sober friends, and still trying to keep in contact with my not-so-sober friends.
I was living a healthy lifestyle and smoking more cigarettes than I ever thought possible.

I really appreciated having Luke’s friendship and we continued to bond.
That day in AA, after days of paying attention to what everyone was saying, I began to drift off.
I may have been sober but I was as A.D.D. as ever.
I thought it was time that the members of my AA meeting put on a talent show.
Better yet, we could do on a full on production.
Something everyone likes like
Bye, Bye Birdie
.
Little orphan Annie would totally kill playing Kim McAfee.
The thought passed and I refocused my attention.

I began to like my routine and I was beginning to like AA.
Even the cafe had gotten better. That night a group of fifteen Asian girls came in and sat in my section, taking up most of it.

“Can I get you guys anything to drink?” I asked.

“Water,” the first girl said.

“Water,” the second girl said.

“Water,” the third girl said.

“Water.”

“Water.”

“Water.”

DAMN IT! ONE OF YOU NEEDS TO ORDER A FUCKING DRINK SO I CAN MAKE SOME MONEY!!!
I was thinking evil thoughts but instead of voicing them, I kept them to myself.
Progress.
Asian girls are notorious for not ordering anything in restaurants and sitting all night sipping water or tea.
I got the fifteen girls their water and returned to find that not only were they only drinking water, but they would also be splitting food.
Fifteen girls, drinking water, ordering three things and taking up my whole section on a Saturday night.
Normally, I would have kicked them out, and yelled something racist at them, but instead, I let them stay there for a while and politely asked them to leave when they were finished because I had a table that was going to eat dinner. They got up and left and no one was killed. Small victories.

DAY THIRTY

Finally, I get my first chip! I was so excited about today.
I had made it a full month without drinking and it was not nearly as miserable as I thought it would be.
I went to AA that day and I received my first chip to applause and hugs.
Shortly after I got out of the meeting, I received a call from Dr. Jake.
He had been calling and texting me for several days and I had not answered, so I decided to see what he wanted.

“Mark, I need to tell you something,” he said.

I thought he must have an STD or something awful that he had now given me.

“What is it?” I asked.

He paused and said, “I am still in love with you.”

“No, you are not,” I said.

“I am.”

“No, Jake, you are not.
You need to get over this and move on.”
I could not believe that the words were coming out of my mouth.
I was acting more like a Dorian and less like a Blair every day.
He continued to talk for a while and I let him go.
I have not spoken to him since.

That night after I left work at the cafe, I saw that my friend, who worked at the bar next door, was having a birthday party and I went over to celebrate with her for a while.

“Mark!” she said as I entered.
She had clearly been drinking, but was genuinely excited to see me nonetheless.
We sat around and chatted and at midnight she had a champagne toast to celebrate her birthday.
She raised her glass and put it to her lips then took the glass and put it in my face.

“Just have a sip Mark, no one will know.”
I smelled the champagne and thought how nice it would have been to take a sip of it.
I then remembered everything that had led up to me going to AA in the first place.
Knowing me, a sip of champagne would have lead to a case of champagne and I was feeling better than ever and not willing to give that up.
I suddenly had self-control, something I had never had before.

“I will know,” I responded and walked out the door.
I walked home and thought about everything that had happened in the past month.
It had been a long and emotional journey, but I had made it through a whole month of sobriety.
I felt great and was ready to conquer anything that lay ahead.
I had not changed myself, but I had changed my outlook on life.
I was still the same person I always had been, I just wasn’t drinking any longer.
I had the strength to refrain from drinking and that was reason enough for me to continue to move forward sober, and stronger than ever.

BABY DADDY

A lot can happen in nine months.
The first nine months of my sobriety was a blur.
I had finally moved from Washington D.C. back to New York and moved from yelling at Asian girls at the cafe to yelling at Asian tourists who were looking for tickets to
Mamma Mia!
at my new job. Between meetings and making new friends, I felt I had inadvertently forgotten some of my old drinking buddies.
These were people I had spent a good deal of time with and always had a fabulous story or two to tell.
One of those friends was a colorful straight man who went by the name, Dane.
We worked together at the cafe, and used to get completely trashed together just about every night.
On a trip back to D.C. for a visit, I gave Dane a call and asked him if he would like to meet for lunch at our old favorite Mexican restaurant.
He accepted my invite.

I sat and waited for Dane for what felt like hours.
He was never on time for anything and today was no exception.
While I sat, drinking my iced tea, Dane rolled into the restaurant like a whirling dervish.
He plopped down at my table and we exchanged pleasantries.

“So what’s been going on Dane?” I asked.

“Same shit!” Dane responded.
As Dane was getting himself together, the waiter approached and asked:

“Can I get you something to – .”

“Margarita,” Dane said, interrupting the waiter, “rocks, no salt.”

“I see nothing has changed with you,” I said with a laugh.

“Nope,” he replied.

Dane and I sat and laughed for hours.
I had forgotten that straight people can be really hilarious sometimes.
Dane just had a way with words that was unbounded.
I had never met anyone like him before.
He was well spoken, even after he had downed two and half pitchers of margaritas and always had a ridiculous story to tell.

“What ever happened to Alexandra?” I asked, referring to a girl that Dane and I had gotten wasted with on several occasions.
“She was such a fun girl.”

“Oh, I didn’t tell you?” he replied.

“Tell me what?” I asked.

“I am going to need another drink for this story.”
Dane flagged down the waiter and after he got another drink, he leaned toward and whispered, “If you tell anyone about this I will kill you.”

“Uh, ok,” I said.
This had to be a whopper of a story.

“Well, remember the last night that you drank?
The Miss Adams Morgan Day party?”
I nodded, even though I only had a vague recollection of said event.
“Afterwards, Alex and I went back to my place and fucked.”

“Really?”
I asked.
Alexandra was totally out of Dane’s league so this revelation was quite a surprise.

“Yes, and it was really good until the next morning.
When we woke up, Alex threw up all over the place and got her period.
It was really weird.
I wanted to take care of her, but I wasn’t feeling that great myself so I wasn’t much help.”
As Dane continued his story, his hands, which were wrapped around his margarita glass were beginning to tremble.

“That is never a good way to wake up, especially with someone else is your bed.”

“I know, it was frightening.
She was like, violently ill,” he continued, “but, I didn’t think anything of it.
When I called her a few weeks later, she told me that she had moved to Guatemala.”

“That’s weird, I thought she was Jewish.”
I asked not knowing why any Jew would want to move to Guatemala.
I mean, we may have wondered that desert for forty years, but we really don’t keep well in heat like that.
Especially Jews with frizzy hair.

“I know, apparently, she had some extended family or something down there.
Anyway, when I finally did get in touch with her, she told me that she was pregnant.”

“Holy Shit!”
I replied.
Apparently, Dane’s life had turned into
One Life to Live
in the time I hadn’t seen him.

“Yea, I know,” he said as he sipped his margarita.
“Anyway, she didn’t know if it was mine or not because she had been hooking up with another guy at the same time.”

“Why didn’t you just take a paternity test?” I asked.

“You can do that when the baby isn’t born yet?”

“I don’t fucking know, what do I look like a gynecologist?
They do it on TV all the time though.”
At least they do on
One Life to Live
and that’s as close to real life as it gets as far as I am concerned.

“Whatever,” he continued, “so I was flipping out. I mean, I am really not ready to become a father.
But then, after I thought about it, maybe I was.”
He wasn’t.
The man was like a hippie. Well, more like a hipster.
He could barely dress himself in the morning, let alone a child, but that was beside the point.
“I went back and forth and back and forth, going over all of the different scenarios in my head.
Then a month or so ago, I went to Milwaukee to visit my family and my grandmother was rattling off about what I was supposed to do with my life.
She said, ‘Dane, all you have to do is find a nice girl and settle down with her.
Then you will have a kid and make me a great-grandmother.’
I was totally freaking out because of course, I was thinking, ‘that may be happening sooner than you think grandma.’”

“So what happened?”

“I told Alexandra to call me when the baby was born,” he said.
“I waited and waited for what felt like years to hear from her.
I didn’t know what we were going to do if this baby was mine. She was not going to give it up for adoption so I guess I would have had to like send her money or some shit because I was totally not about to move to Guatemala.”

I could see that Dane was not comfortable any longer.
This poor, free spirited kid was loosing all of his spirit in front of my very eyes.

“Anyway,” Dane continued, “I waited and waited for Alex’s call but I never heard anything. So, I went on her facebook page and saw that she had baby picture’s up.
She must have had the baby and not had enough time to call me but enough time to post pictures on facebook.”

I laughed, not knowing what else to do. Then asked: “Well, was it yours?”

“I couldn’t look at the pictures,” Dane said.
“I asked my roommate to come over and look at the pictures for me because I was too afraid to look.
She looked at the pictures and I asked her if the baby looked like me. She looked at the picture then looked at me and said she was pretty sure that the baby wasn’t mine.”

“How was she so sure that the baby wasn’t yours?” I asked.

“The baby was black,” he said as he laughed out loud.
“The baby was black, and we are both white, so the baby could not possibly have been mine.”
He knocked back the remains of his margarita and continued, “nine months of freaking out for nothing.
Who needs paternity tests when you have facebook?”

I laughed because it was the funniest thing I had ever heard.
As I sat and stared at Dane, I realized I could have bore a child in my sobriety at this point.
That is of course if I was a) a woman; and b) had not chain-smoked a pack and a half of cigarettes a day since I stopped drinking.
It is always a pleasure to see my old drinking buddies because it not only reminds me of the crazy times I had as a drunk but reminds me how difficult it was to get to where I am today and how I would not jeopardize that for anything.