The End of the Line?

I’ve been wondering lately just how seriously diseased my liver – among other vital organs – might be from my something like seven years of hard, continuous drinking. Conventional medical wisdom says that if you drink a lot you will die; hence, drink a lot young and you will die not so old. However, I have plenty of examples of hard drinkers before me who lived well past my present age – decades more, in fact: W.C. Fields is the obvious example. There’s also William Faulkner, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Samuel Peckinpah…shit, I can’t think of anyone’s names right now! Perhaps my mind is really going…

Four years or so ago I was carrying on a drunken conversation with my (sober) wife and in the  middle of it I couldn’t think of the word “dad” or any of the many synonyms. That was scary. Imagine having to talk around “my dad”. I felt pre-infantile, as if a certain key part of my brain had ceased to be.

Ah! Just thought of another name: William Holden. Plus no doubt John Wayne was a big drinker. Plus the writer/director of “Withnail and I” – and as I write that last phrase, the name comes to me: Bruce Robinson. Ernest Hemingway. I’m not sure how long F. Scott Fitzgerald really lasted. He had a long career but one that started when he was only about twenty. For all I know he was only 45 when his body’s vincibility took over.

The thing about alcohol is that, at the same time it kills your organs it also deadens the sensation – the analgesic effect. So whereas this morning I could feel my liver and/or other organs unknown screaming in rebellion against years of abuse, since my return to the bottle this early afternoon I’ve barely felt a thing. I wonder if that’s how that shitty Welsh poet…Dylan Thomas…felt up until the day he keeled over at the White Horse. Probably so. He probably never saw a doctor, either. He most likely hated doctors like I do…true poets…ha ha ha

A Little Explanation

Hello,

If you have stumbled upon this site, congratulations! Or whatever. But in any case, here it is, sitting in its lonely Web oblivion, one of the occasional satellites floating in otherwise infinite space. I have not told anyone about this site, nor do I plan to anytime soon. I have had two blogs previously, and they were both pulled (by me) for the same, essential reason: I felt inhibited. I knew that people were reading them, and so I pulled back from saying what i might have otherwise. On some occasions, in fact, I was censured by my (usually helpful and goodly) wife for posts that she thought were a little too raunchy or extreme politically, or whatever.

Perhaps that was part of the problem as well. I knew that people were reading, and so I most likely wanted to come off as provocative as well. After all, I didn’t want people to think I was boring. The first blog, particularly, was spasmodic in character – jerking from timid to explosive. This is not to say, however, that I am not an extremist in a number of ways. One of my key features, I believe, is my impulsiveness – for good and bad.

Nevertheless, the point is that now that I have this little space all to my self, without fear of anyone examining it, I believe I will express myself most truly. This is the “Theory of Obscurity”, straight up.

One more word (to whoever, if any, may someday read this): I don’t know how regularly I am going to maintain this blog, nor can I be sure that the quality or tone will always stay within a reasonable range. All this will be is myself.

“A Pint of Smirnoff, Please.”

After an extensive and painful withdrawal from alcohol a few days ago, I swore off drinking at home, by myself ever again. I am still recovering from the withdrawal, and sleeping without first having drunk several shots’ worth is painful. Also, the idea of stepping outside, in view of the world, without having first drunk enough to have induced an analgesic effect not only in my body but in my brain and self-image, was a little scary this afternoon as I set out for the first time in days – having been mainly confined to my sickbed – and the first time in months without having drunk first.

And so, as luck would have it, with my fragile, barely-there self-respect eventually propelling me outside and towards my destination, what do you think happens? A Hispanic teenage girl randomly calls out at me, “Hello, white boy.” Mind you, I am well more than a decade her senior and, although I’d like to think on my better days that I like youngish, I’m hardly boyish. Mind you also that my chest still aches from a full day’s worth of a horrendous hiccuping and belching fit. Nevertheless, after a brief and futile exchange I chase after her. She freaks out and starts screaming, almost gets run over by a taxi cab, and races around the nearest corner. Meanwhile, her sister is yelling at me something like, “Why would you do that to my sister? You could have hurt her!” And I yell back, out of breath, that she shouldn’t be so fucking rude.

I was supposed to pick up my parents’-in-law medication, but I still have another day. I realized, though, about five stops down on the train that I was still out of breath and stressed out, sweating my smear-on tan right off. I probably looked like death to some of my fellow passengers – deadly pale and sweating pale orange. So I headed back home, bought a pint of Smirnoff from a local death-dealer, and now here I am in bed, writing this. I can feel the burn.

The meaning, and nothing more

My blog name is an anagram of my full personal name, including middle name. If you can guess who I am successfully, then I will give you an enormous cash prize. Good luck!