that they only had twelve-ounce glasses; I mean, who the hell drank from a twelve-ounce glass unless it was to do a shot of something? I never went for anything below sixteen ounces, even when I was drinking wine. Yeah, I was that kind of classy drunk; I drank my white zinfandel from a sixteen-ounce beer stein. I was hot—not!
We started hitting booths like kids at Halloween, going from booth to booth and sucking down beer, barely tasting the bitter microbrews we were slurping down. After all, we weren’t connoisseurs there to savor the aroma and taste; we were there to get drunk quickly and cheaply. The booths were set up in a circle, with about twenty different breweries present. Intermixed with the breweries were traditional German food vendors serving bratwursts and sausages. That meant for a vegetarian like me there was nothing to eat, which was just as well because I was filling up on beer quickly and the yeast was beginning to bloat my stomach.
In the middle of the food and beer, a makeshift stage featured several bands playing throughout the day. By 1:00 p.m., Kathy and I had hit every booth and were dancing our drunken asses off in the middle of the festival to a cover band belting out “Sweet Caroline.” Kathy and I were infamous for getting extremely loaded at clubs, pushing our way to the front of the stage like mad groupies and dancing around like absolute fools. We were bouncing off people all around us, but most of them were just as loaded as we were so they didn’t mind. We began our own mini-mosh pit while singing at the top of our lungs: “Sweet Caroline, badda dum, good times never seemed so good. So good! So good!” The band ended its set after the song, and Kathy and I collapsed onto the stage with our arms around one another in fits of laughter.
The crowd began to disperse back to the various booths around us. The band’s crew was pulling equipment off the stage, and I was shamelessly flirting with a stage crew dude when I heard Kathy’s drunken voice boom out of the speaker next to my head. She sang, “Sweet Caroline, badda dum, Kathy is feeling mighty fine, badda dum, and Storm’s right behind, badda dum.” Kathy had a gift for twisting song lyrics to fit the situation we were in. These lyrical rants always sent me into hysterics, and this time was no different. I was drunk on my ass, lying on the stage, holding my stomach, rolling around, and laughing so hard that tears were streaming out of my eyes. After a verse or two, one of the band crew came up to us and politely removed the microphone from Kathy, who slurred a couple of choice swear words at him before finally giving up and collapsing down next to me.
That was typical of our friendship—we were always hammered and always making asses out of ourselves. We spent countless hours in front of the mirror at home making sure each strand of hair was in place and our makeup was done to perfection, and we were always dressed to the nines; but no matter how hard we tried to keep it together, every night we would end up total messes—drunk and falling around, getting as dirty as kindergartners on a playground at recess. The next day we would call one another and compare beer-induced wounds. Kathy was fond of wearing skirts with stockings and would always wind up with a big blowout in her knee from stumbling to the ground. We would often sit in the car outside nightclubs burning a big bowl before entering the club. When we got out of the car, I would look over and she would be gone. I would hear giggling coming from her side of the car and stumble over only to find her lying on the ground after busting her ass on the way out of the vehicle.
She was a riot, and I loved hanging out with her. She was crazy, and she didn’t hold back at all. She loved her booze and loved her pot, which gave us incredible but shaky common ground to stand on. Kathy never did coke and wasn’t into that scene at all, so that was where we differed a lot. I never told her about how much coke I did. Even when I was high around her, she never knew because she was always just as fucked up on beer or pot. At the nightclubs we went to, I sneaked off and did lines of coke off the toilet in the bathroom and then rejoined Kathy at the bar just in time to slam back another lemon drop, her favorite shot. She was never the wiser, and after she left the bar to head home at closing time, I left to hang out with a different crowd. While Kathy got up to go to work the next day, I was still out partying and blowing off work.
I tried to maintain my friendship with her after I moved to State College. She came to see me in the hospital before I left for rehab, and I knew she couldn’t put words together to explain how weird she felt as she saw my bandages on my wrists, but she never judged me. She just wished me luck and said, “Do whatever you gotta do to get better, kid.”
I would see Kathy on my frequent weekend trips to Allentown, but things were weird because she was still out partying. Although I would meet up with her at the local hangouts, it just didn’t quite fit me anymore. I really tried to go to bars and pretend I was having fun with everyone. I would have moments of good conversation or a couple good laughs, but they were always followed by my friends reaching the point of intoxication, and then something in the room would change for me. It was as though with each shot and beer they drank, my friends’ souls and spirits would slowly leave their bodies. They would appear strange to me, slurring their speech and saying random things that made no sense, yet they expected that I would laugh or respond. But I just couldn’t “get it up” for them to laugh on cue. There was no verbal connection whatsoever. I was left feeling blank and hollowed in their presence.
The worst was when people would stumble up to me and ramble on and on about how proud they were of me for being able to be there and not drink. In their own drunken stupors, they would gush over me about how noble and amazing it was that I wasn’t drinking. It always made me feel completely uncomfortable and speechless. I usually just nodded, gave a big smile, and said, “Thanks,” while I was screaming inside.
That happens still to this day every time I attempt to masquerade out in the land of drunks, which I have done less and less as the years of recovery have piled up in my life. But when I do, it always strikes me as the most hypocritical of all compliments.
Sometimes I wanted to blend in so badly, to just be what the world defines as “normal,” that I did some stupid shit that could have gotten me in serious trouble.
I WALKED INTO THE KITCHEN TO THE GLORIOUS SMELL of coffee, which is one of my favorite smells in the world. As I slowly poured the dark energy into my mug, I felt Matthew’s hands slip around my waist and my body immediately stiffened. He grabbed me close to his body and nuzzled his face into the nape of my neck. My entire insides recoiled as every fiber of my being rejected his touch. I remained stiff and muttered, “Good morning,” as I swiftly slipped out of his grasp and moved around the breakfast bar onto the stool facing him.
I stared blankly down at my coffee. I was so incredibly confused by what I was doing with him. I was trying to fill that infamous void—the one I used to pour drugs and alcohol into—with people, more specifically, with Matthew. It was becoming clear to me that we were both just kind of using each other to avoid dealing with reality in its entirety. That had seemed okay while I was in treatment, because I had already given up so much and our relationship served as a nice distraction. We barely knew each other; we’d only had glimmers of stolen conversations while in rehab together. I didn’t know his middle name, what his childhood was like, who his family was, where he went to school. All I knew was that he was going through a similar situation to mine, and we both craved love and attention as though it were air. It felt good to have someone adore me the way he claimed he did. He really acted as though he loved me, even though he barely knew me.
When Matthew got out of rehab, he went directly home instead of going to a halfway house like I did, so he was used to being back in the world and working. He wrote me these long, impassioned letters while I was in the halfway house; it was like he was a soldier off at war and I was his great love. He would send me photos of himself, which his father would take for him, holding
