Game On

Sneaking drinks at a hockey game is easier than you might think. It’s even easier when you have help. And it’s easier still if that help is your oldest sister. It was transcendent. Guys[ This is too stark of a tone/focus change!] were getting smashed on the ice and I was getting smashed on Bud Ice in the stands. I got to cheer on my team while steadily nursing my little buzz through the first and second periods. By the time the third started I could barely remember what sport I was there to watch. And it didn’t matter. The cup said Pepsi but the pungent and unmistakable scent screamed hops and barley. Twenty minutes later the game was over, someone won (maybe, probably), and I had to be helped to the car. There was a drive back home unless my sister mastered her skills of teleportation and for all I can recall she did just that. My memory begins to flash in coherent bursts of seconds and minutes at a time after we arrived home.

The first goal was to get out of the car. My sister drove a Beretta. It was a tiny and forgettable car when it was new and thus all but forgotten today. But I’ll never forget it. The flocked deep maroon interior still reminds me of wine. At the time I had only recently discovered wine and, while I was far from picky, I preferred red. I didn’t know anything about wine to be honest but if it was red, which is my favorite color as it happens, I would drink the hell out of it.[ Probably don’t need this sentence.] A few years later she would teach me to drive in that car. I would often hit a curb - hard - having had a few secret sips of vodka before the drive. This would come to be something of a theme. 

The smallness of the car fooled anyone in the passenger seat into thinking that the door would be light and easy to maneuver. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. Stone cold sober it was a door that weighed roughly the same as the Statue of Liberty. When drunk it was still that heavy but was also now just as immovable. Luckily my sister wasn’t exactly drunk so she attempted to help. She got the door open and I fell out of the car. Literally. Smacked my head into the arm rest, scraped it down the rest of the door panel, bounced off her shoe, and bounced my melon off the yellow curb. I didn’t register the pain - nor the blood that had started trickling at some point - but I clocked the yellow curb. I tried to warn her that she was parked illegally. I’m certain my warning was meticulously worded and clear as crystal. To me, at least. To her it probably sounded something like however njdikfhjiehfownjehnvniejdkcvnkdwo would sound if a vocalized by a screaming Muppet. Yeah, her car was in an impound lot before dawn.

But she helped me up and dragged me to the porch stairs. There was walking done at some point but it was all her. I barely remember my feet hitting the pavement. Maybe they didn’t and she just carried me, which is totally possible. She was and remains stronger than me. She slipped her arm off of my shoulders and walked up the stairs. She turned back and offered me a hand. To both our surprises I took all three in one long stride. I celebrated by letting out a very impressive belch. I didn’t throw up. Things were going better than expected. I was starting to sober up (just a little; very little) and reached for the screen door handle when my sister nearly broke my wrist smacking my hand away. It was a good thing she had.

My parents kept a strap of Christmas sleigh bells on our front door for the entirety of my childhood. They claimed at first it was because my mom wanted a little Christmas around all year long but later changed it to a rather transparent excuse of it being an added layer of protection against burglars. My oldest sister knew before I did that it was really just there to catch us. We were the criminals against whom the bells would work, alerting our parents to every late night misdeed we were stupid enough to attempt. I say attempt because the bells weren’t even needed most of the time. We kids were as dumb as any other kids but had the added handicap of not realizing it. Or we were just in denial. Whichever it was it worked against us. Hard. And the bells did too. That is to say they worked against me and my other sister. 

You see my oldest sister knew a trick. By that point I couldn’t count the times I heard her stumble up the three stairs to the porch well after midnight, meaning several hours past her curfew. She was anything but stealthy outside and yet she would never get caught. She would come in, quiet as a monk wearing a ball gag, avoid every creaky floorboard and squeaky hinge. And magically she would silence the bells. In all my years of listening to her stumble and whisper-swear as she approached the door I wouldn’t hear her again until the morning. There were many reasons she was my favorite but her wizard ways of transporting her whole self from the kitchen to her bed in the basement was certainly up on the list.

The question of the moment was: would that wizardry translate to me? I didn’t have to wait long for an answer. I stood back - of my own accord…or rather my inner ear’s accord since I couldn’t seem to steady myself - as she deftly opened the screen door and locked the pneumatic closer in place. I blinked. Before I opened my eyes again she had not only gained access to the kitchen but she was shoving the damn bells in her shirt and wrapping as much of it around the muffled tinking as quickly as possible. It was a sight to behold for sure. Even in my state I knew it was something I should note and keep in my mind for future use.

But of course I didn’t. I just belched again. She shot me a death glare. I followed her inside. She motioned for me to take off my shoes. I couldn’t tell what the hell she was getting at. She punched me in the thigh and smacked my feet. I understood. No I didn’t. I was still drunk. I wasn’t even going to try bending over. I mean I already knew how well being vertical was working for me so I wasn’t going to give gravity the opportunity to screw me over again. My sister gave us and whispered that she needed to close the door. I nodded and walked past her and straight up to my room. She was frantically whispering something as I was walking away but I didn’t really hear it. There was more booze in my room so that seemed a better place to be. I was halfway up the fourteen stairs before I realized I had forgotten one extremely pertinent detail: my dad slept on the couch. 

That thought will sober a guy up quick! My brain was still doing backstrokes in the Olympic swimming pool that was my skull but I was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that he was in fact on the couch, wrapped in his usual scratchy Army blanket he brought back from Nam (along with night terrors). I could see him from where I stood on the landing. His hair had only just begun to show signs of silver and my eyes were open so wide I easily could have counted every last one of them. I was living The Tell Tale Heart only instead of running at the old man I needed to get away to the safety of my own room. I stood for a moment or two longer, probably more. Then my sister finally rounded the corner slowly, oh, so slowly, as not to disturb the slumber of the last hurdle of a classic sneak in!

Wait. He was the last hurdle, right? Right?

Not exactly. 

My parents bedroom was at the top of the stairs. The door was never closed. My only saving grace was that my mom slept like the dead. If it wasn’t for the snore of a woman who had been smoking for more than 3/4 of her life you wouldn’t know if she had bought the farm or not. The light from the TV she slept to was flickering and making me more queasy. I could hear Trapper John, MD reruns with snorting gasps for air sprinkled on top in lieu of a laugh track. In other words, it was a totally normal night. 

My sister motioned wildly to get my attention and nudge me up the rest of the way to my room. I summoned the drive that propelled me up the porch stairs and was in my room in no more than eight long strides. Admittedly I didn’t count and I distinctly recall waking up in the morning with a nasty rug burn cascading from my knee down to my ankle on both legs so it’s possible I wasn’t as suave as I like to recall.

I turned on the light and heard my sister coming up behind me. She closed the door and swiftly smacked me in the back of the head.

“Be drunk but don’t be stupid,” she said. Wise words I would continue to ignore for a decade and a half. 

It was the first time she had been in my room in several months. She took a moment to survey the new additions: a Toni Braxton poster, a new 13 inch color TV, a stack of books, and a mini fridge. Of course it was the latter that caught her eye. She smacked me again.

“How the hell did you get that? Does mom know?”

“Of course she does. She’s fine with it I guess. She hasn’t said anything anyway.”

“You have booze in there, don’t you?”

Guilty as charged.

“I mean, yeah. But not only booze.” I cracked the door to show her. “See? Pepsi, too.”

“Must be nice being the youngest. Get away with everything.” Her head shaking was making me dizzy. “Okay. So do you have any food in here?”

I reached into the top drawer of my dresser and pulled out a handful of Twizzlers and tossed them at her. I went back in for a jar of peanut butter. At that her eyes lit up.

“Perfect! Peanut butter. Now you’re talking!” I had no idea what the hell was so great about it. “This is going to save your ass tonight and - well, you can thank me when you’re older and still alive because mom didn’t kill you.”

“Oh, uh, yeah. Thanks.” Still no clue what she was going on about. She sensed my confusion, which she did often. I was confused most of the time between birth and…right now.

“Peanut butter will overpower pretty much any smell. You can eat anything else before peanut butter and all anyone is going to smell is the peanut butter.” She was nodding like she was laying down some primo details. I was still in the dark. “You idiot. It always works for stuff you drink.” She gave me a second for the words to work their way into my brain, take root, and register. Slowly I nodded and as I began to smile she said, “There ya go. Better late than never. Here,” she handed me the jar. “Take a bit of it. And don’t brush your teeth. Just eat some of this and then go to bed. I’ll check on you in the morning.”

I tried to reply but my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth like a dog so all I was able to muster was a mooohkay and nod. She gave me yet another smack on the head, but playfully this time. She smiled, nodded to the fridge, and said, “Don’t drink that whole bottle of Tanqueray all at once. It smells like Christmas and there’s no way in hell mom isn’t going to notice that on you unless you have a fuckton more Jif. Good night.”

She slipped out of my room and I heard her lightly padding down the four flights of stairs to the basement. I considered what had happened that night. I got drunk in public and was coached by a blood relative on how to hide it not only now but in the future.

Spoiler alert for future Bob: the long term takeaways from that night that really stuck were: 1) peanut butter is fucking magic and 2) mom may know more than I thought so I had better watch myself.

Bigger spoiler alert: peanut butter is NOT fucking magic and I did not watch myself.

But at least I was drunk that night. And that was all that mattered.