What's In A Name

We were convinced that drinking highballs would in some way convey that we were not, in fact, alcoholics but rather sophisticated connoisseurs of drink. We bought highball glasses. (Okay, we stole highball glasses from the bar I DJed at but still.) We swiped his mom’s tabletop ice chest and tiny tongs she reserved for parties. We bought square ice cubes so they looked good while floating in the booze and mixer. We bought good whiskey and better gin, Canada Dry and New York seltzer. We were ready to look every bit the spitting image of the well mannered and suave men in suits we would see having liquid lunches at the restaurant he worked at. He even surprised me with a couple cigars. We were ready for the whole spectacle; prepared for everything. Except the repercussions. 

But really what else is new?

“He” was Mike. We had met about a year prior and ended up becoming close friends (and eventually roommates). He was several years my junior and not quite of legal drinking age but to my knowledge that’s never stopped anyone from developing a chemical dependency. If I could pick mine up at before puberty I figured he was already doing better than me. I would drive to his house most days. Drinking at bars cost money we didn’t have and since only I could get in anyway they were out of the question. His parents were also, oddly, always at “work”. They were rather straight laced so I’m sure nothing nefarious was taking place behind the scenes but looking back it is strange. More than that though it was welcome. There was little to no chance of him getting caught and it gave me a place to day drink that didn’t involve a basement or a public park and paper bag. 

We had inadvertently worked out a sort of elaborate, well choreographed set of motions when the decision was made to drink:

1) I call to make sure he is at home.

2) He tells me yes, but he would really like to take a nap.

3) I do my best Ferris Bueller and casually insult him until he emphatically slams the phone down.

4) I get in my car and head over anyway.

5) By the time I make the fifteen minute drive, he has opened the garage door, set up two lawn chairs with a small table between. The bottles of Tanqueray and tonic water glisten in the sun next to the tall expectant glasses brimming with ice. 

6) I park, get out of the car, nod to Mike. Before I’m even to my assigned chair my glass is full (more gin than tonic, as was also customary). 

7) I sit and reach over to the stereo on the workbench. Jazz, usually Dave Brubeck or one of the Marsalis brothers, gently wafts through the air, poetically mingling with the smells of stale exhaust and burnt oil.

8) In an act of prestidigitation I’ve never seen reproduced to this day Mike conjures two perfectly rolled joints. The contents of the joints however was always of questionable quality. Still, dope is dope and addicts can’t be choosers.

9) We sit, slowly letting the pot do its thing as we polish off the first round of G and Ts. (There will be more. Many more.) 

10) We drink too many ‘many more’s. We try to stand and get smacked down hard by the effects of our actions. We act surprised that we let it happen at all, let alone again! How could that possibly be?! Oh well. If we can’t stand we may as well sit and have one more drink. There was just enough ice for two more glasses - it was meant to be. Bottoms up! 

It seems somewhat convoluted but damn it if it didn’t work like a charm.

This particular story picks up right here. We’ve drunk all we could and smoked all we had. The sun had become a weapon the universe was insistent upon using against us. Our eyes burned. Our skin was warm, but that may have been coming at least partly from the inside out; the smoke was distinctly clouding the thoughts we were always certain were as deep and profound as any that would be revealed as we grew to adulthood. Of course we were in no hurry whatsoever to do that. What worse trapan one conceive than growing up? I stared into the sun (because drugs and alcohol up your IQ by fifty points obviously) and almost missed the vibration coming from my pocket. To the distinct relief of my retinas I broke my gaze with the sun and fished for the source of the buzzing.

“Shit bud! My mom just beeped me.”

“You know where the phone is. Go at it.”

I stood up. Well, that’s not quite true. I attempted to stand. The lesson of only one drink before hadn’t sunk in and the immutable laws of physics once again had their way with me. I leaned barely forward and gravity did what gravity does. I blinked, probably swore, and suddenly the driveway was a part of my face. I swallowed. Blood. And not just from my mouth. My nose had already began to leak between my lips.

I realized in that instant there was a large swath of my life where the only thin I had gotten used to more than nursing a healthy buzz was the metallic tang of blood. There was a slasher movie’s worth flowing from my nose and mouth more times than I can legitimately recall. The part I can look back on with the least amount of nostalgia is that I took that as a badge of honor. I was never one to get handovers so a little crusted blood on last night’s shirt was my proof to everyone that I was a drinker too! Look! I have proof! It may be a pathogen and possible biohazard but doesn’t that make it even better? No. No it does not. But luckily for you, dear reader, I didn’t know that at the time. Back to the story…

I got to my feet and went into the house. After stopping in the bathroom to clean up I called home. The ringing went on longer than expected. I sniffed at the rogue trickle of blood trying to escape my nostril. Finally my mom answered.

“Are you crying?”

“No. I, uh, just sneezed. What’s up?”

“Where are you?”

Fuck. She didn’t care if I had been drinking but she wasn’t too fond of Mike.

“I’m at friend’s house,” I said, hoping she’d leave it there. She did not.

“Mike’s, right?” She waited for a response. To this day I swear I heard her eyebrows raise and lower and she prepared herself for the incoming lie. I didn’t bother, probably because I was too drunk to think of a good one. Or too high. Or both. Yeah, probably that.

“Yup.”

She sighed so hard into the phone I thought for a moment we had a bad connection. I hoped we did so I could get off the phone and focus on the important things like where to score more weed and appear sober enough to buy more booze. Alas, she went on.

“Yeah. Well, you have to come home. I take it you forgot about the cookout.”

“Of course not.”

Fuck. Totally and completely forgot. “I thought it started at five.”

“Two. It started at two. I know you’re not a kid anymore but you will always do what your mother tells you to do. Now come home.” She sighed again, softer this time. “Barbara is already here.”

That sobered me up quick. I know it’s not really a thing, that’s it’s just the adrenaline flowing, but it certainly woke me up. Fuck. Barbara. I hadn’t seen her since the funeral.

Barbara was - is - my godmother’s sister. A family friend for longer than I’ve been alive. My godmother Crissie had recently passed away. It wasn’t exactly unexpected but it wasn’t something anyone was prepared for.

To say she was an important person in my life to that point (and beyond, as it turned out) would be the universe’s ultimate understatement. She and her mother, a tiny first generation Italian, adopted my family as an extension of theirs. We would visit their home several times a month, usually with sleepovers for us kids. We were loved by this welcoming and warm family who never asked for anything in return.

Crissie would lavish my sisters and me with vacations to Disney and Canada and take one of us on an Alaskan cruise. She would take one of my sisters and me eery other Saturday for a day of fun, shopping, and relaxation. I never met another kid who had a similar set up. I was insanely lucky to have someone like that in my life, so of course her passing hit me hard. So of course I hit the bottle even harder. And the bottle hit back.

I realized I hadn’t said anything in a minute when my mom, in her own ever helpful way, yelled into the receiver, “Come home now!”

I gently placed the phone down as though she would know if I had slammed it and would yell at me about disrespecting other people’s property later. I stumbled back outside.

“Yeah,” I said. “I gotta go.”

“Ha! We’re both too fucked to go anywhere.” Mike was wasted but always astute.

“Well, fucked up or not I gotta get home. Toss me my keys.” (Yeah, I know. No need to point it out.)

“I’ll come with you,” he said. He unsurprisingly swayed as he stood. “I’ll help cover for you.”

“Shit, dude. The only thing you’ll do is make me look less drunk, not not drunk.”

He shrugged. “Good enough for me.”

We got in my car and drove off without cleaning up or even closing the garage door. To this day I don’t know if he got in trouble for that. I assume not since we would be back to our usual arrangement in short order. I was also in a place where I just didn’t care to ask. In other words, I was a shitty friend. But at least I could blame the booze! (…at least for the moment.)

Let me put your mind at ease (or severely disappoint you): we made it to my house without incident. No bumped curbs. No lane drifting. No DUIs. I found a parking space, pulled in, and tossed the car in park.

“Watch your knees.” I reached over and popped the glove box. I fished out the jar of Jif. I could feel the confusion from Mike. “It’s an old trick my sister taught me. This shit hides the smell of pretty much everything.” I twisted the lid and scooped a lump with my index finger. “Here.” I pushed the jar to him. He mirrored my movements. “All better,” I said, smacking my lips and tongue. Mike just nodded and raised his eyebrows. “Let’s go.”

My parent’s house had a six foot privacy fence. I hated it when I had to help my dad paint it every other summer but now that it was obscuring my pathetic attempts to walk like someone who didn’t just down half a bottle of gin I patted it and whispered thank you as we approached the house. I’ll never know for sure what my gait was like but I’m sure I would have fit in well at the Ministry Of Silly Walks. We stopped at the gate to collect ourselves. We breathed into each other’s faces. We checked each other’s eyes. We mumbled words of encouragement to one another. Obviously none of it actually helped but you couldn’t have told us that at the time. I took a deep breath, immediately aware of the horridness of my scent. Too late to turn back. I pushed open the gate.

To say I was caught off guard would be an understatement. What I thought was just going to be a small get together of my family and few close friends was in fact something more akin to Woodstock. Okay, maybe just Lallapalooza. Regardless, where I had expected to see eight or ten people - tops! - sat thirty people in the backyard alone. I looked past the porch into the kitchen and saw more bodies. I said the only thing I could think of. “Fuck.” And for some reason, yet not exactly apropos of nothing, Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now by The Smiths started playing in my mind. (“I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour/but heaven knows I’m miserable now…”)

I must have stopped short because the next thing I remember Mike rammed into my back. I stumbled, which I instantly appreciated. I now had a reason for my uneven walk: my friend had stepped on my foot. Perfect! Well, maybe not perfect but better.

“Hey, Bobber!”

Bobber. A nickname from childhood I personally feel I outgrew along with UnderRoos. It was out longtime neighbor. Someone who, once upon a time, used to change my diapers. I wonder what she’s thinking right at that moment. And what she’ll think when I start talking. Shit. Shit. Shit. This was stupid. Why did I come? Why didn’t I lie? Fuck.

“Hi,” I finally muster. I did my best to continue past her but she grabbed my arm. To this day I have absolutely no idea what she said or how long we were standing there. It doesn’t really matter, just understand I had already begun misplacing time. Thinking back I probably realized that but actively ignored it. Truth be told I was beginning to have more lucid realizations as to my real state. But all that did was make me what to drink more. Now, I know that as the disease of alcoholism. Then, I just thought of it as being a male in late teens/early twenties. Yet another example of how it’s often the most self-aware people who are also the most lost.

At some point my mom caught my eye and waived me over to her and my dad. Grabbing Mike’s arm I broke away from the neighbor and keeping my eyes as straight ahead as possible “walked” to the porch. I heard Mike say something about the bathroom and he broke past me; a small, half-assed wave to my parents as he went into the house. A flash of the last time I saw my parents repeated in my head. Drunk, high, untethered from reality. Consistency is good, right? I thought. I knew damn well it wasn’t but an uninvited smile crossed my face. Apparently - and thankfully - my mom took it as hers and returned a smile of her own. Could it be? Was it possible? Was I safe?

(Narrator: He was not safe.)

“Bob. Finally. Look, I’m sorry I yelled on the phone. I really shouldn’t have.”

Stupid narrator. I was going to be safe.

(Narrator: Nope.)

“But really?” She went on. “You forgot? I don’t buy that crock of shit for a second.”

(Narrator: As I was saying.)

“Yeah, well-“ An overly enthusiastic pat on my shoulder interrupted my thought - and thank god for that! I don’t think I actually had one to begin with. I swung around to see a friend of my sister’s, a person I didn’t think knew me well enough to be so excited for my arrival. And I thought that because I didn’t know his name. I was and am fairly certain we were never properly introduced. Or we were and I was just drunk. Yea. That was probably it. Either way I greeted him as the savior he was at that moment. I smiled big. I slapped his shoulder harder than he slapped mine. I realized I was probably overselling it so I dialed it back. 

“Hey man!” I said. Still no clue.

“Yo. Remember that girl I was telling you about?”

“Yeah!”

No.

“She’s here. Wants to meet ya.”

“Great!”

Fuck.

“Can I steal ya away?”

My mom cut in before I could answer. “That’s gonna be a no. Not yet. Go and find Mary. Bob will catch up when I’m done with him. Okay, Scott?”

His name was Scott. Thanks mom!

Scott smiled, nodded. As he turned my mom went on.

“So how drunk are you?”

Fight or flight? The choice was mine. And I chose to live. Where my mom was involved there were actually three options: fight, flight, or just cop to what she already knew anyway.

“I’ve been, uh, less drunk.” She raised her eyebrows. “I mean, not really in the day, but still.”

“That’s what I thought. Go inside. Pop is in the fridge. And eat something, for Christ’s sake.” She shook her head. “You know what I want to say.” In lieu of an answer I walked inside.

She was going to say the worst thing she could possible say. Something I’ve heard more than both my sisters combined. A phrase that could kill me before it was even all the way out of her mouth: 

I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed.

I’m sure other parents have said this but I can guarantee none have welded it with such acute precision as my mother.

I was surprised to be smacked by nostalgia when I walked through the front door. Not that it really sobered me up at all, which would have been nice, but memories came to me. The linoleum that screamed “Look at me! I am the 70s!” The poorly stained cabinets (though my dad tried his best). The new kitchen table that only recently replaced the cream and yellow monstrosity from my childhood; the one that held so many bowls of Saturday morning Cap’n Crunch and my yearly birthday cake. It was also where I first heard my mom utter that she “wasn’t mad” at my oldest sister. A distinct shiver ran down my spine. My mom wasn’t mad at me at the moment but she was obviously disappointed. 

I looked past the table to the dining room. Then to the left of the living room. No one was physically there but there was something. Ghosts of my childhood? I guess so, if I want to get poetic about it. In reality they were more like hallucinations. Not entirely unwelcome but hallucinations nonetheless. Mostly happy. Mostly warm. All comforting at that moment. 

Easter dinners and Christmas Eve dinners. Pumpkin carving over weeks worth of local newspapers and grocery store ads. Building forts under the dining room table. Opening Christmas gifts in that living room; so many packages we couldn’t sit down. My mom sat at the dining room table, silently sipping on her almost-Boston-style coffee, a thin smile peeking out as we opened gift after gift she spent the previous twelve months swearing we wouldn’t get.

I blinked. Reality poked at my brain. I took a step forward and another to the right. I was still in the kitchen but I was also in 1984.

The TV was in the same corner of the room. The Cubs game was on. My mom was watching with me on her knee and a Newport burning inches from my four year old scalp. I didn’t yet understand what “winning the pennant” meant but I’m a Cubs fan to this day and it’s all thanks to one memory, a few moments out of billions.

A vague picture began to overlap the one I was trying very hard to hold on to. My godmother - the reason we were all there that day - sitting on the couch. Sitting on the plush armchair. Sitting on the love seat. And always me, sitting with her; climbing up to reassure myself that she had not forgotten the little person in the blue Donald Duck sweatshirt. Of course she never would forget me but I couldn’t take that chance. She had been sitting in the armchair when she surprised my sister and I with a trip to Disney World. And again with another trip to Disney World. And another. And so many kind words and loving embraces and moments that came back to me all at once. It was quick. Too quick. I felt a tear fall and land on the brown carpet at my feet. It was soaked up like so many glasses of RC Cola I never fessed up to spilling. 

Fuck.

I hadn’t cried yet.

She had passed a few weeks before. We knew it was coming. There was a long hospital stint. She would smile and lie and say she’d be just fine. We’d lie and pretend to believe her. Was it more for her benefit or ours? Both. It wasn’t a quick decline but it was long enough to allow for a healthy process of emotion…if you’re one to process emotion. I am not. Not now and less then. I assumed I just didn’t “need to” cry. I had gone to the wake, the mass, the grave, the luncheon, all of it without so much as a quiver in my voice.to me at that

That was nice while it lasted.

The tears flowed. They gushed. They…all the other words for “deluge”. They soaked my cheeks as flashes of Disney World and random shopping trips and time spent relaxing and opening up to my godmother in ways I would never think of opening up to my parents. She was a parent to me. A bonus mom who never shared a last name but very much shared my heart.

The tears continued, silently, punctuated by a ragged breath and shuttering shoulders. No lamenting wail. No dramatic sniffle. Tears and breath. And I welcomed them with all the joy this sort of release could foster. Almost on cue a doorknob rattled and a door flung open. Mike was done which meant I had to be as well. He rounded the corner and saw me crying. He looked at me sympathetically.

“Suck it up, bitch!”

I had to laugh. I didn’t appreciate the toxic masculinity but I did appreciate the distraction. I wiped my face with my palms and looked at my friend. 

“The lady directly to the left on the porch is my godmother’s sister. I don’t think you’ve ever met her but I’m sure my mom will introduce you. Everyone else here, honestly…” I looked out the window. “I have no fucking clue.”

“So we’re good to go?”

“Not in the damn slightest. But let’s go anyway.”

I knew I was screwed before my hand touched the door. If I had known just how screwed I might have made a break for it out the back door and and not stopped running until I saw the Iowa border.

I could feel Mike’s breath on my neck. It mixed with the humidity and sweat already forming under my arms and in the center of my chest. I couldn’t actually feel his breath on my chest from behind me could I? Probably not but reality meant very little to me at that moment. As I recall now I was floating and breathing was optional. The first part of that sentence wasn’t true but the second part was. What good was breathing? It would only prolong my time there and betray my actions with every close quarters exhale. Mike stepped on my heel and I blinked and in front of me was a yard of people I was fairly certain had never stepped foot out of the Chicago and/or Cicero city limits. Some rang a distant and muffled bell. Others were a conglomeration of features my brain refused to arrange in any sort of discernible order. Did I know them? Maybe. Did it matter? To me? No. To my mom? Apparently.

“Honey!”

My mom was standing next to her sister, both with a smoke hanging from their lips. My aunt was a Virginia Slims girl, through and through. My mom’s Newport 100s looked minuscule by comparison. She approached me and her cherry fell, bouncing off my arm and singeing a little arm hair. My aunt didn’t notice. She advanced at me for a hug and seemed to have forgotten she was smoking at all. She leaned it and before I could react her cherry impaled my ear. I don’t know if anyone has ever died of Virginia Slim to the eardrum but I’m here to testify it’s totally possible. I jumped back, knocking into Mike (again) and sending him into the lap of my godmother’s sister. As I did my best to extinguish my brain stem a few bystanders (aunts and uncles?) helped Mike and his human cushion to their feet.

The commotion called. My aunt apologized profusely while she sparked a fresh Slim. The smell of burnt ear hair hung in the air. For a split second I was stone sober. Then someone in my periphery handed my an Old Style. My mom didn’t object (I was always her favorite). So much for that sobriety. 

“Well, I guess you’ve met now, haven’t you?” My mom was already over my trauma and addressing Mike. (I thought I was her favorite.) I squinted at my godmother’s sister. Barbara. A friend of the family as long as my godmother had been and just as loved. Again I froze. But this time I was totally lucid. Not sober, but fully aware of the importance of the moment. (Later, after attending a few AA meetings, I was told there is no such thing as a ‘functioning alcoholic’. I called bullshit immediately and this kind of instance was why.)

My life didn’t exactly flash before my eyes but several random moments did. Moments Barbara was very much involved in. Always there at family gatherings. My eighth grade graduation. My Confirmation. My high school graduation. Her mom’s funeral. Her sister’s funeral. And today, celebrating her sister’s life through tears of sadness and joy in equal measure. But me celebrating through the hazy fog of a hard buzz.

The moments began to slow, then fade, then disappear from my mind altogether. And with them went the name of the person. I realized the name was gone almost as quickly as my mom said, “Bob. Don’t just stand there. Introduce your friend to-“

And she said a name. I’m pretty sure. All I heard was a rush of blood to my head and the wah wah sound of Charlie Brown’s teacher. The blood went on rushing. I knew I had to say something. Words failed me. Breathing did too. Whatever happened to ‘liquid courage’? It seemed all I had was liquid forget-everything-and-look-like-a-dumbass-in-front-of-family-and-friends.

“Bob…” My mom repeated. This was at least enough to coax me back to reality. 

“Oh, yeah. Yeah.” I stumbled over my words like they were my feet after a few drinks, which was apt, all things considered. I went on.

“Yeah, Mike. You fell into our friend.”

“Yup. I sure did!” Mike thought this was the height was comedy. He was alone in this assumption. 

“Mike, that’s Crissie.”

The fuck up hit me immediately. Faster than immediately. The name wasn’t even all the way out of my mouth when my brain screamed You know it’s Barbara, dumbass! Don’t call her the name of her dead sister!

But I had. I had. And I wasn’t quiet about it. I doubt it’s true but I swear I heard every head on that porch whip around to gawk at me. I guess they were better at remembering names than I was. I heard more wah-wah behind me. My mom. 

“Bob,” she started in that tense but smiling voice every mother is handed upon release from the hospital with their first born kid. “Mike. Thanks for coming but I know you have to get going, right? Right, Bob?”

I love my mom. Even though I knew I’d catch hell for this later, I loved her for this out.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah. Right. Come on, Mike.” He hell in line more quickly than he had thus far. I lost count of how many times he stepped on my heels but we were back at the car before I knew it. 

“Fuck, man!” Said Mike. He seemed to be constructing another thought but I cut him off.

“‘Fuck’ is right! I really gotta stop day drinking so much.”

“You really gotta buy a fucking calendar.”

He had a point.

Post Script:

I never did end up catching hell for this. To my knowledge this incident was never spoken of again by anyone involved. That is, until my mom’s memorial service. 

Obviously the moment had been living rent free in my mind the entire time but I was confident no one else recalled one small second several years before. Ah, but nothing is ever really forgotten, is it? All you can hope is for time to soften hearts and add an inkling of humor to the memory. And sometimes time really delivers.

Barbara was saying some words at the lectern next to my mom’s casket. She paid a beautiful tribute then asked for us kids to come up and say some words. My sisters volunteered me. As I approved the podium Barbara pulled me into a gentle hug. Before she let me go she brought her face to my ear and whispered, “Her name was Chris.”

She winked. I smiled. Time delivered a worthy ending.