There are seven letters available to play every turn on
Words With Friends. The other day I was shuffling them to find a word, and it
stopped on VALERIE. Val is Mike Tambornino’s mom, and I realized that it was
the day they would be moving up north, and it would be my last chance
to communicate with them. I called, but got no answer, and there was no machine
on which to leave a message. But I tried. Making amends starts, most
importantly, with being willing, and I have shown my willingness even though it
is now unlikely that I will ever see them again. I don’t know why she never
called me back, but I’m not the most important thing in their lives right now,
and I can accept that and move on.
I had some plans for a road trip to Wisconsin this weekend,
and I have modified them to include more time in Madison, and only the Brewers
game in Milwaukee. I am going to spend some time with an uncle whom I have not
seen in possibly two decades, and his family. I’m branching out more and more
as time moves on and away from those terrible cold, dark days of prison and
addiction.
When I was just a boy, maybe 15, my friend Nathan and I
somehow got invited to a New Year’s Eve celebration at a fraternity house in
River Falls, Wisconsin. We weren’t new to the party scene, but we were used to carousing with people our
own age, with a tolerance to chemicals similar to ours.
I remember very little of that evening except for a few
sketchy details of finding Nathan passed out in a chair in the unfinished
basement, and enlisting the help of some college boys to duct tape him upright
and securely to the chair. He was safe. I continued to drink bottled beer and
if I’m not mistaken, that house is where I first experienced Jägermeister. I
remember liking it because it wasn’t as strong as vodka or any of the other
hefty solutions I had tried before, and I remember pretending not to be sick
before I went to the bathroom to throw up the concoction I had brewed in my
young stomach.
If you’re unfamiliar, throwing up is an important part of
drinking heavily. It makes room for more, because isn’t drinking the best? I made
it until roughly 11pm before I was fated to the same basement where I found
Nathan with one arm free, covered in his own vomit. I laughed, and flopped on
the floor on what I recall to be something of a gym mat. We were woken up at
midnight by somebody telling us it was officially the New Year. I pumped my
fist in the air and squealed out a muffled, “woo hoo.” I was finished.
I don’t remember how I got home, or if my mom was there, or
any other facts. I’m not even sure if what I have written is all fact. But I do
know that I think I had fun, and I knew that someday I would be big and strong
enough to party like those boys did.
Someday I did party like those boys. All of them combined I
think. There were months at a time I would drink myself into blackout twice per
day, even when I was working. Completely incapable of taking care of myself, I
would slide quickly into oblivion, ignoring all of the warnings from my friends
and my body that I was destroying myself inside and out. I would never learn
anything valuable about myself or my problem while I was drinking. I had to
wait until I was done. Even then I had to wait until I was free from chemicals
for about a year before I could seriously look at myself and what I had become.
Now, 23 years after the party in River Falls, I can see what
the attraction of alcohol is: it makes you feel good. I had to fix everything
in my life to know that I can feel good without it, and really I love it this
way. There’s never any hangover. Never do I have to hear what I did the night
before from an irritated friend. And never do I worry that I’m going to lose
everything I have, yet again, because of some stupid mistake I made at work
while high on meth.
And now here are some pictures of sunrises from my front
yard in St. Paul.
