Turn Away

The strangest thing about becoming an alcoholic is that I just about completely fill the stereotype. The label. And I don't particularly care. I'm walking around keeping a stereotype alive. I don't see a star on my sleeve or marks on my left hand. But I was never one for labels. They were always exceptions.

You walk into an Applebee's in Killingsworth, PA at 10 am and order 24 oz of cold draft bliss, and you get funny looks. A fat 40 something woman will frown but booze will keep coming so long as you pay and tip well. She's got at least one kid, its obvious by the lack of any chimerical grin on the tired face. Here, kids are a sign of poverty. A relative unknown, I just want to turn away from everything. I'm just glad if everyone leaves me alone, except maybe the bar tender.

In the Czech Republic, you can walk by a bar at any time of the day and it's filled with people not all that different from yourself. Except they're skinny and smoking cigarettes. A thin forty something year old girl will smile and pour you a cold one, then come to the other side of the bar and smoke a cigarette beside you. She looks tired also, but in a jovial way. As though she has walked a long way to get here. To join you. If alcoholism only exists in America, I'm very patriotic.

Staying local can become hazardous. One downside of constantly drinking is that after a time you begin to run out of local places to drink. People start to recognize you in that slightly unpleasant way, as though you met them through a car accident. They come up and make small talk about trivial shit neither of you really cares about, just attempts to be pleasant while constantly shielding any dismal factors which may explain why they're always here drinking whenever I walk into the door.

In hip, young cultural tumors like Portland and such, this is okay. Because even if you do recognize someone, if you do become a 'regular', it is understood that we're all fighting the same good fight. Everyone is young but slightly older, idealistic but realists, we're all vibrant as we pour depressants down our throats while fighting the good fight by hiding in dark bars, turning away. You're a 'friend', a 'brother', a member not a victim of a disease. Rather just another ant in the colony, similar to Europe, except there's more fat people around you.

My friend laughs as I try to justify our habits. He's a fat American, but we're both young and our livers are strong. We have no qualms or quarrels over the tempest of our mortality, as we speed through red lights and pass slow minivans on the right, laughing at the terrified slobs inside. We press on, pushing and bending envelopes; we thoroughly live in the present as we search for a place to drink away the next few hours. A place where we may one day become regulars and fight the good fight. But until then, we search for a place where we can turn away from everything.

Regards, Esortnom