One of the reasons I don't drink anymore is that, in my experience, alcohol has significantly lower standards than I for a whole slew of things like what stuff is okay to eat, which places are good to lie down and take a little nap, or where to plant my flag. (Now, I don't want to brag, but back in the day I took more than my share of naps!) Another reason I gave up alcohol is that when I drank I used to lose things; things like friends and consciousness.
Once, while at a late night beach party in Western Australia, I got into a confrontation with a guy who seemed pissed off that I wanted to borrow his bottle opener. (In the early eighties, Australia was only just getting around to adopting color TV; technological breakthroughs like the screw-top beer were still years away.) When I pressed Mr. Bottle-opener-guy for an explanation for his open hostility, he informed me that he was still angry about the last fistfight we'd had. This struck me as odd, since I barely knew the guy and certainly had no recollection of mixing it up with him. "When was that?" I slurred. "About an hour ago!" was his reply.
I probably should have taken a moment right then to consider the deeper ramifications of the knowledge that I had been in a fight only an hour earlier and had no memory of it whatsoever. I should have taken a step back and said, "Whoa, I clearly have some stuff to sort out. Sorry to have troubled you." I should have; but, being drunk, I did not. Instead, I responded that he and I probably got into a fight in the first place because he was such a dick about letting people use his fucking bottle opener, at which point we started throwing punches again*.
But that's not what I wanted to share with you all today. I only mention it because when I look back now I can see that my body had been trying to tell me that booze and I simply weren't working out and that I ought to consider letting alcohol see other people. I guess when you're in the middle of something like that, it can be hard to see the vomit on the wall. I bring it up, because my body is trying to get my attention right now. It's been doing so for a while, but I realize that I've been doing my best to ignore it. When I make an effort to tune into it, I can just hear it screaming at the top of its lungs, "YOU'RE IN YOUR FORTIES! SLOW THE FUCK DOWN!"
"But I don't want to slow down!" whines my inner teenager, giving my body the su-fi**, trying to be both defiant and simultaneously hip, and pretty much failing at both.
I realized this at the emergency room the other night, where I received a handful of Percocet, a slew of stitches, and an update from my wife on how many times she's taken me to the emergency room since we met. (I'm averaging a visit every two years, which doesn't seem so bad to me, though I suspect it's a bit above the national average. Besides, one more punch on my card and the next visit is free.)
Yes, at 40-something I realize that my adolescent brain is writing checks my body can't cash, but I just don't care. I can just about guarantee that I'd never see the inside of an emergency room again if I just refused to leave my couch, but then I'd miss a lot more than a few stitches or class 4 shoulder separations. That latter, by the way, is one mountain of gasp-for-breath pain I highly suggest you avoid. In fact, I'd give up just about anything to ensure that I never, ever, hurt like that again. Anything except going out there and attacking things like I'm still fourteen. (Because the thing is, deep down inside--starting about a millimeter beneath the skin--I still am.)
*(What's fascinating to me is that I didn't remember the first fight right after it happened, but that I remember the rest of the evening in such detail almost 20 years hence. Oh the vagaries of the human mind... especially when pickled.)
**(Super-finger. Click here if you don't know what it is, and then stop giving people that lame-ass old-school finger! Give 'em the su-fi!)
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