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.

And Away We Go

“Dude. We’re gonna get caught.”

“Uh, no. We won’t.” Tommy looked me straight in the eye and lied his ass off. “There’s no way they’d even notice. They’re way upstairs and besides there are a lot of people.”

He was right. There was a party going on right above us and there were a lot of people. But that was the extent of his expertise.

We had been debating the finer points of stealing booze for months prior. What is the best way to get a hold it? Where would we store it? Would we even be able to get enough to have any left over to store? How quickly would we get drunk? Would we get drunk at all? Really stupid questions in hindsight but at the time they were of the utmost importance and we were serious as hell. And tonight all our question would be answered thanks to a party, distractions galore, and a fridge full of hootch only feet away from Tommy’s bed.

“I don’t know. I mean your dad always seems to know how much is there-“

“Bull. He doesn’t really know,” Tommy interjects. He always interjected and would go on interjecting until he interjected himself into Iraq and was quickly silenced. But that was years in the future. For now he just had to prove me wrong. “He just drinks and my mom buys more every week at the store. Always been that way.”

The way he said it was enough to make me believe him even though it was the total opposite of how things worked at my house. I know it seems strange to put so much faith in a nine year old but when you’re also a nine year old you require a much lower standard of evidence. And plus I really wanted to know what Miller Lite tasted like. My house was always stocked with Old Style for my mom and a few stale cans of some kind of off brand beer that were slowing fermenting in the basement fridge. I had been sneaking sips from several cans over the years just to see what the appeal was and I distinctly recall being horrified at the bitterness. This? This is what the adults were always so eager to drink after work and on the weekends (and in the case of Tommy’s dad pretty much any time he wasn’t sleeping)? Or maybe it was only Old Style that tasted like stale bath water. Miller Lite had to be better. Right? 

(As a side note: I came to love Old Style and respect its place in Chicago history. A Cubs game wasn’t a Cubs game without a paper cup of overpriced, poorly poured Old Style!)

“Okay,” I finally say. “We’ll take one. Split it. We can  hide that.” I felt so sly. I had seen my first James Bond movie not long before this (Casino Royale, still my favorite) and felt a little like him. And what did he always order? A Coke? A kiddie cocktail? Nope! Booze. I didn’t have anything to stir and you shouldn’t shake a beer but still for all intents and purposes I was a damn secret agent. Only instead of a license to kill I ended up having a license to throw up all over my Denver, The Last Dinosaur sheet set.

The party seemed to be getting louder above us which meant grown ups were streaming through the basement every few minutes to get themselves the same stuff we were impatiently waiting to grab. There seemed to be no end to the parade of ever increasingly tipsy adults traipsing around the doorway and all but throwing themselves down the long and narrow flight of stairs. We decided to play it cool. Pretend we didn’t even want the stupid beer. We were kids, after all. What the hell would kids need with booze? We took a perch at the bottom of the stairs to see if we could catch a break in the flood of drunkards. But we were still kids and still quite yellow so every time we heard footsteps we dove for the Nintendo controllers and continued the game of The Legend of Zelda. Yes, it was a one player game but the grown ups didn’t know that. So like Pavlov’s Little Lushes footsteps would drive us to lunge at the TV and as soon as the coast was clear we would not-quite-whisper in that shitty way only kids trying to hide something do. It was all rasp and breath and I don’t recall being able to really understand anything Tommy said but I kept the ultimate goal in mind that was all that matter.

Several hours went by. A rerun of Love Connection and the monologue of whatever host was on SNL crawled by slower than anything on TV ever had at that point in my life. Why did the adults keep coming down? Why the hell didn’t they just keep the beer in a cooler in the kitchen like normal people who throw parties? Why were they harshing our buzz? (I had recently heard this idiom for the first time and was using it liberally at the time.) Sure, we didn’t have a buzz yet and we wouldn’t until they damn grown ups would stay the hell away.

Then Tommy had an idea. Really it was more of a police report waiting to happen but six of one…

“Why are we waiting in here?” He asked.

“Because this is where you live,” I said slowly, as if Tommy was the dumbest person I had ever met. Later I would meet much, much dumber people, one of whom is typing this now. “And this is where the beer is,” I added, hoping to sound insightful. I failed.

“Okay, yeah. But why are we waiting?”

I stared at him. I blinked. I swear to this day I heard something in his head crack. It was most likely his last nerve and I had finally snapped it. I blinked again.

“Dummy. Think about it. We’re not waiting to get the beer…” He trailed off and raised his eyebrows. Obviously I was supposed to say something intelligent. 

“Right. We’re waiting to drink the beer.”

“Exactly! That’s exactly right!” I had to grab him by the shoulders to stop him from bounding around the room. I silently hoped that everyone who ever got an acceptable answer from me would respond in exactly this manner forever. But I still didn’t get what I said right. Tommy noticed my total lack of self awareness (something I’ve never once pretended to hide).

“We don’t have to drink it here. We can go outside. It’s only eleven. The streetlights reach to behind the bushes and by the electrical box. We can drink it there. I mean, we’ll have to be fast in case my mom comes looking but we can do it. What do you think?”

What did I think? I thought I was in the presence of genius. The smartest human being in the history of civilization was standing mere inches from me. I was face to face with inspiration personified. 

“Huh. Yeah. Okay.” Not exactly what I was in my head but then again what was there rarely ever found its way to my lips. I shrugged and nodded and Tommy made a bee line for the fridge on the other side of the sliding wooden door. When he emerged moments later Weekend Update was starting, Tommy was grinning like The Joker in the new Batman movie we just saw, and both our head shot in the direction of the stairs as we heard Tommy dad yell, “Hey! Bring your old man a beer so I don’t have to walk down all these damn stairs!’

Forgetting my total lack of coordination and sporting technique Tommy tossed me the beer. It grazed the tip of my right middle finger and smacked the cement floor with a whistle I didn’t place for the first half second. By the time a full second elapsed and my foot was soaked in Miller Lite I realized what had happened. My heart sank and Tommy’s dad yelled again for more beer. I was immobile. Eyes wide, frantically shaking my foot. Tommy ran to grab another one, which he held tight tight to his chest as he hurried past me and up the stairs. 

“Here ya go dad.” 

“Yeah. Thanks. Don’t do nothing gay down there.” (The 80s really were the golden age of comedy.)

“Right dad. Have fun.” Tommy came back down, breathing much softer but walking a little funny. He went to his bed and pulled something out of his pants. 

To this day I don’t quite know how he did it but Tommy had managed to shove an entire can of Miller Lite into his pants - but NOT his underpants as he was sure to point out several times - and climb up and then descend sixteen stairs without it slipping out of the leg. I was impressed. How could I not be? But more than impressed I was wet. And I was starting to stink. Or my foot was anyway. I told Tommy to give me a second and I went to wash my leg as best I could in the utility sink in the laundry room.

“Hurry up, will ya?” He moaned it more than spoke it and I knew what that meant. Tommy wasn’t one to take his time with anything and if I didn’t finish up as soon as humanly possible the beer would be gone. I had never seen him drink (I would learn later that it was his first time too) but something I still can’t put my finger on made me certain he would down the whole can before I had to chance to object. I shook my leg harder than a dog finishing a good long pee and heard the now familiar crack of a can opening. I turned quick to run and join my friend, soon to be my drinking buddy. I turned, but I forgot to actually remove my leg from the sink before throwing every one of my hundred pound frame at the laundry room door. 

Did you know laundry room sinks used to be made out of something resembling soapstone? My shin does. And my knees. The ground was just plain concrete as my chin learned moments later. I’m sure I yelled and probably swore - something I had only recently taken up as a hobby but was already quite good at - because Tommy came running into the doorway. 

“What the hell did you do that for, man? My mom is gonna hear you! Do not fucking cry! You’re only bleeding a little bit. Don’t be a bitch!”

But I was a bitch. I was in pain and bleeding and I had never sprained something before but my thigh muscles were burning. If crying over that is being a bitch then I am King Bitch. All hail and kneel before King Bitch. But wait until the snot stop flowing from my nostrils directly into my mouth. Your King demands it. 

I looked up at Tommy as the din of the party filtered back into my ears as the blood rushed from them and out of the gaping holes in my legs and face. No one seemed to be coming down the stairs and Tommy was still holding the beer. In that instant I stopped being a bitch. I was about to become a man. Forget sex - when you’re nine years old girls are still an impediment to jumping your BMX bike off a huge dirt hill. That didn’t matter. What mattered was doing what real men did: drink beer. And scotch, but that was still a year or more away for both of us so beer would have to fill the void.

Speaking of the void…

I jumped to my feet and lunged at the can in Tommy’s hand. He was caught off guard and almost threw it at me. I recall him chuckling. I shrugged, looked at the can, looked at him, back at the can, and tossed it back hard. I hit my nose and flinched, it wasn’t broken but it was close. I tasted blood at the back of my throat the farther back I tilted my head. Tommy was saying something but the rushing sound had retuned to my ears, only louder this time. I didn’t stop my pull until Tommy tugged the can away.

“Holy fuck, man!’ He began. He was already proficient at cursing and could use the word fuck as a noun, adjective, adverb, and verb. Couldn’t do long division but could work a swear word into most any sentence like it belonged there all along. I was proud to call him a friend. “Did you even save any for me?”

I shrugged. And again I winced. I had wrenched more than my legs when I went down. I could already tell it was going to hurt in the morning. Tommy continued to berate my drinking ability. 

“You better not have gotten any snot in here. Gross! You did! And there’s blood on the lip of the can!” He yelled a lot. Usually over nothing. This wasn’t nothing. 

“Yeah. Sorry about that. I guess I kinda, uh, fell.” I looked down. “And sorry about the floor.”

The shower from the opening scene of Carrie had less blood than the floor of the laundry room. I was examining it and Tommy was following my gaze. “We better get this cleaned up. Here.” He handed me the can. “Finish this. I’ll just get another one and blame it on my uncle.” All I could do was nod.

It dawned on me then that I hadn’t really tasted the beer when I took my hasty gulps of it before. What the hell was wrong with me? I had waited all this time and we had been so clever and I had blown it! I had forgotten to pay attention to my first real drink of booze. (If only I had known at the time how many more drinks I would forget to pay attention to over the next eighteen years…)

Tommy disappeared behind a curtain to get some towels to start the clean up and I wiped my shirt across my face to soak up the quickly crusting blood and mucus. I don’t know if IZOD shirts were one hundred percent cotton back then but I can tell you their polos and my Member’s Only jacket were both about as absorbent as a yellow raincoat. But they were great at reminding me in scathing painful detail that my chin was still cut and had yet to scab. Fuck it I thought. Down the hatch!

I’m not going to sugar coat this part. I’m not going to say that the moment was anything it truly wasn’t at the time. I drained the rest of the can - easily eight more ounces - without coming up for air. And here’s the truth: it was fucking amazing!

Did it taste like a shitty light beer mixed with boogers and blood? Yes. But it also tasted like adulthood and independence and adventure and like it was only a matter of time before I was hanging poolside with the dog from the competing beer company’s commercials. It was cold and helped numb my pain, starting at my face and working its way down to my toes. It was cold but it also warmed me at the same time. Holy shit! Alcohol is magic!

Then I threw up.

Abracadabra! I can make a beer disappear and reappear right before your very eyes! AMAZING! 

Lunch, dinner, snacks, pop, blood, snot, and beer were strewn from the doorway to the washing machine. And sitting between the door and washer was the steel tub of ice. And in that ice was the beer. All of it. More than eight dozen easy. And they were ruined. It was at this moment Tommy reenters the scene.

You know that moment in movies and TV where someone is frozen from shock and their jaw drops and the let anything in their hands fall to the floor? Well that wasn’t exactly what happened. A version of it happened but there was obviously more swearing and more than a few declarations of no longer being Tommy’s friend or welcome at his house anymore. I just stared. The snot had stoped flowing, which was nice. Still bleeding. Foot still wet. I was watching Tommy yell but something else was happening too.

I was buzzed. I could hardly believe it. It was new and enchanting and I didn’t want it to end. 

But then I blinked hard as I clocked Tommy’s open hand coming at my head. He made deafening contact and my vision went blurry. I was pleasantly surprised when I slowly opened my eyes and felt somehow even better. Getting smacked in the head makes being drunk better? Noted.

“Fuck you, asshat! Get the hell out! Go! Now!”

I leisurely blinked again. Calmly I bent down, grabbed three of the cleaner cans from the near the rim of the bucket, and ran in long strides to the stairs. I didn’t stop lunging forward until I was already a block away. It’s entirely possible I was asked by several adults where I was going or what the hell I looked like I had just escaped from some kind of weird kid version of a snuff film. I didn’t care about any of that. I didn’t care about the morning or the pain I’d most certainly feel then. I didn’t care that I was three hours past curfew. I didn’t care that it was actually already tomorrow.

I had a buzz, three beers, and no one to tell me no.

The Boy With The Thorn In His Side

My childhood was annoyingly, frustratingly average. Loving even. No harsh realities ever smacked me in the face. I never knew what it was to go hungry. I never wondered where my parents were or if they loved me. In fact there were more times I would push them away so I could run off and do something they didn’t approve of than anything else. It was a great way to grow up for any kid but maybe not so much for a writer. And certainly not for a writer whose life took so many drastic turns and went down roads there was really no reason to go down other than it was where the shiny things were and I was easily distracted. Am easily distracted. Bird!

From my first memories of being a kid though my ninth birthday I can’t say anything of note really happened. Fantastically elaborate Christmases and run of the mill family reunions were almost routine. My parents remained steadfast in their involvement in my life, as well as with my sisters. We were a well adjusted family from all angles - and not in the way you hear about over foreboding music at the beginning of a Netflix documentary about a family found dead at the hands of the patriarch, throats slit and bodies sliced to ribbons by the broken glass of picture frames that once held family photos from vacations to Disney and Wisconsin Dells. We were legitimately happy.

And I was apparently going to do everything I could to fuck that up.

It wasn’t on purpose. No one ever becomes an addict or alcoholic because it sounds like a super fun time. You know why? Because it’s fucking not. And I’m not talking about the more colloquial uses of those words like you might hear at a college kegger or from a few moms getting wine drunk at two in the afternoon on a random Tuesday after they drop Makenzie and Ryleigh or Rylee or, God help us all, yet another Madison at the babysitter’s. I mean taking bumps of blow off the pipe of a urinal at the now defunct Excalibur nightclub in Chicago while the random girl you found on the dance floor guards the door or orders you yet another Grey Goose and Red Bull. It wouldn’t be the first drug of the night, nor the first drink, nor the last girl. That’s a true story. That’s not bragging. And if you think it is there’s nothing I can say to make you less of an asshole.

But as with most things I’m getting ahead of myself. I don’t know exactly where to start with this to be honest. While I’ve maintained a faulty (at best) memory since birth my recollection was further hindered by the use of alcohol and narcotics. In other words to label me an unreliable narrator would be doing a disservice to unreliable narrators. Nick Carraway is a more reliable narrator than I am. My point is that I’m probably not going to give you much of a reason to trust my word regardless of my intent. To that end I’m going to do what has become second nature to me over the last four decades: I’m going to lie.

Not in a malicious way, mind you. I’m not here to make enemies (though I have a sinking feeling that’s going to happen as a matter of course) but rather pepper my truths amongst the fabrications. Not totally fiction but not totally fact. But then that’s how we all live our lives isn’t it? It’s okay. We’re all friends here. You can be honest. You lied today. And yesterday. And you will tomorrow even if you promise you won’t. Every morning is like New Year’s Day when it comes to lies: you have every intention of not doing the bad stuff anymore but dammit you just can’t help yourself. Only instead of cheating on your diet you’re irreparably dismantling decades-long friendships over a conglomeration of little white lies. Because the thing about little white lies is that sooner or later they tarnish and before you realize it you’ve built an ugly wall of distrust around you and no one is near enough to hear you apologize.

Well, this is my apology. And my story. And my truth.

Well, sort of.

I will visit moments in my life that to this day stand out in my memory as important for one reason or another. Maybe it was a life altering interaction with a loved one or that time I threw up on a state trooper’s boot. Maybe it’ll be funny or maybe I’ll look back at what I’ve written and sadly shake my head, hardly believing I was able to live through it all. It’ll most likely be all of this. And it will also be counterfeit. I don’t recall specifics but I know they’re what makes a story great. So I’ll write what I know and play a little bit with names, locations, pill count, and blood alcohol content (though the many hospitals and police departments of several Illinois towns could probably help fact check that last one).

So I guess we should start with the first thing that went wrong. Of course it didn’t go wrong at the time but those seemingly tiny decisions are the ones that have the most lasting impact on us. There’s probably a story in that sentence alone but it’s nothing Bruce Springsteen and Kenny Chesney haven’t already written a song about so I’ll leave it be.

We begin in my friend’s basement. It’s 1989. There’s a party upstairs for some reason I don’t recall. The adults are all there. But the booze is stashed in the fridge in the laundry room. 

And away we go.