I don't want to fall so easily

I remembered going hanging out with some girl in college in my first year. It s a little trip to the Ed Sullivan Theatre to see David Letterman. Before we went to the big show, she smelled something. She asked me if I know that she smelled pot. I didn t. I should ve known that was a sign for me to bail out. I do know what she was talking about, but I can t smell this kind of stuff. I should ve dumped her and returned home early.

My boss once told me that not everybody is dating, because she's single. What the hell does that mean!? I'm not black (because she is). I'm one of those losers who looks like I can only be fixed up by my mother. And my boss smokes in front of me. She takes a bit of a drag in the courtyard outside the workplace. I felt like my nose is going to burn when she blew after that drag. I should've just thrown up my arms, and quit a long time ago.

I don't want to be exactly like them, when they smoked and drank. I only want to be somebody, somebody who knows how NOT to be stupid. (I point to a window:) People have told me to be something, be one of those computer guys who can make a hella lot of money out there. I want to do that, but at the cost of my social life!? (I turn away from the window, with the sky turning gray, fading into a storm.)

It was a few weeks ago, when I was in #everything when datagirl was drunk. She said that she was drunk, and she has a gun. I was afraid for her because she might've done something I would've done -- pull the gun out and blast myself to pieces. It's a great thing that ShadowLost talked to her as I was and SpinyNorm. She got tired, and she went to bed. I sighed.

I feel so out of touch with people because I m too young to do everything that normal people can do. I m too young to party, yet everybody can do it in high school. People can hang out with fraternity and sorority types in college, I m too small to do it. For all I care, they can smoke crack and I m too fucking oblivious to it! I m dumb! I'm too fucking stupid!

I don't want to drink alcohol. I don't want to be like that guy who died in MIT because of a frat house drinking spree for the pledges. I don't want to stagger around drunk like an asshole in the middle of the city, puking, slurring my speech, having to be spotted by Karen Ziemba in Central Park and scaring her away. I felt like shit to embarrass her last November, and I'm not going to do it again. I'm not letting down my guard again.

I can hear them. They call me a wuss. They call me a piece of shit for being so... square. I'm at odds with anybody who has told me to down a shot. I'm at odds against anybody who asks me to try a dime bag for the night. I don't want to be like them! I've never seen myself being into anything that everybody liked to do. I'm too unpopular to hang out with a pot smoker, and I look too young to drink. Even if I'm 21, I look like I'm 18, and I will get kicked out by the bouncer.

I'm too bitter tonight. I don't know if I can survive my life like this. Yet, I don't want to just fall in to some bar and asking for twenty screwdrivers to burn my liver. I don't want to make up for my lack of a life with a toe tag. It s been twenty years two months, and 22 days, and I just feel like I should drink for every month of my life. That would be... 46 drinks. It doesn't matter what it is, scotch, kahlua, vodka, whatever. I feel like I am in my own Personal Hell, and I don't want to stay there. I don't want to die alone in a cold, dark box that is my home office. I don't want to be some dumbshit drunk either. I don't want to be a drug addict or an alcoholic. I fear for my life.

Mental note: I have to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous clinic before it's too late.

I never drank. I had like a sip of beer when I was five, and that was all. Even through my first year of college, I had still not drank. Last fall, I was at a party with a ton of my friends. They were all drinking all kinds of everything. At one point during the party I surprised everyone (I'm into shock comedy anyway) and grabbed my roommate's beer and drank it all at once. Everybody had a shit fit. They said everything from "I've never seen anybody drink a cup of beer that fast" to "Oh no, we corrupted you!" (like it was their choice...). Why did I do it? The same reason I didn't. I had no reason. It was fun at the time. It was a completely social thing and made me feel more like part of the party and not so much of a spectator. I don't really like beer, and I didn't then, so I then proceeded to drink a lot of different non-beer things and nothing was happening. Everyone thought I was like immune to the effects of alcohol. It took so much for me to feel anything.

What's weird and kinda different about my drunken state? I don't get stupid. I don't forget anything. I'm perfectly conscious the whole time, and I don't pass out. I have no hangovers. I remember everything that happened. The downfall? I go blind. Like comically. My head spins so much that I can barely see. It's always a big joke now at parties with friends when I say "I can't see!" because they know that I've drank a lot.

Drugs? Fuck no. That's too much of a loss of control (although I used to say the same about alcohol). But don't separate yourself from people that do drugs just because you don't. They're still people. They may or may not be retarded because of the drugs, but they're still people.

My real point here I guess is that you can't really know what the deal is with drinking or drugs. I had no idea that me being drunk meant me being cross-eyed and that I still would have no desire to do drugs after all this time. I accept the existence of both, although I must admit I do sometimes look down on people who do drugs.

Argh! Off subject again. Here is my conclusion for real: Do what you want. If you want to drink, drink. Just don't make it a problem. Don't let it control you. Don't let it make you fall...

Kahlua and Chocolate milk is very sneaky indeed.. the beginning of the end. Taking a breather off your friends stove while everyone is hanging around doing hot knives and watching nonsensical Quebecois humour on the television, laughing for no reason at all. Fun, yet misleading.. your brain is fading and the serum is too boring to take. Not even a networked game of quake. The future is all thats at stake. and then you open another bag, a doorway as it were, cashing in the sour cream & onion chips for concentrated cholesterol.

What little it takes to enthrall... *sigh*

i'm afraid to fall while anyone is looking. i'm the worst, yet safest, alcoholic of all. i drink when nobody is around. i can stay home and drool and sing billy joel songs and node and cry and watch strange days and curse her name and hers and hers and talk to eeyore and write up alcoholic dungeons and dragons characters...

i don't get hang-overs.
when i do look plastered, people assume i was just lamenting the life of a crippled bard so they don't try to condole me....
forgive me for drifting; i'm sober.
point is, altering your mental state is not a fix for not having a life. it's an appology for an ordinary life.

i'll come back to this node and try to make more sense after i satiate the craving Kallen put in me for a mudslide.

ah yes, there is an idea, not to fall, no not to fall. and a drink or two, helping on the way, down the gullet and it is almost half past four in the morning and i am where i should be, busy at work, but not allways, not not allways, sometimes so close to falling.

too much drink and the early hours and the soul feels pain and confused again like i was for so many years. The urge is strong and so i do it, i climb something, not just anyting but something grandios. th type of thing you would be proud of falling to your death from?

what was it two weeks ago? the Cathedral of St John the divine, on the roof, looking over newyork trying to see if the edge of the roof was a ledge or a drop? trying not to fall,

and years before, and unhappy again. not a building but a crane. on top of the world, i hand by my hands from the end. trying not to fall, trying not to open my hands, looking down, so much space.

well i got down from the cranes, i got down from the castles, the banks and buildings. sitting now thinking back, perhaps i have not yet reached a peace with myself, perhaps i need to remember to admit these things. then they can move to the past as i pass the open windows.

I had always thought that drinking was a silly idea. To me, it characterized the superficiality of the lives of the people I went to high school with. Every Monday, without change, I would eavesdrop on their conversations as they discussed the "wild" weekends they had drinking and cavorting like fools. Since I had no desire to be like them in any way I vowed not to do the same thing. Curiosity is only natural I suppose.

My senior year of high school a friend of mine decided to throw an "end of the year" party at his house. Yes, there was going to be alcohol, but I didn't care because it was arranged as a gathering of people I already knew. Around eight o' clock groups of teenagers started showing up- some of which I knew from my elementary school days and hadn't seen in years including one of my main tormentors from days gone by. The party goes on and soon begins to escalate out of control. Things break. People fight. All of my previous notions on drinking were being validated before my eyes. I go outside to be alone for a while and find the aforementioned past tormentor on the lawn breaking my friend's lamppost. What happened next I can only attribute to the fact that I did have a few shots of vodka earlier to know for myself what it was like. I confronted him and asked him his reasons for breaking the lamp. His answer: "cause I hate these fuckin' Arabs." Argh!! I hate stupidity!! My anger escalates as he goes on to remind me of what great friends we are and how "cool" I always was to him. Condescending bastard. I've had enough now. I take out my nifty little boot knife (I don't know why I used to carry this, but I did) and, in the flat voice of a sociopath, tell him how much I hated him for everything he has done and how, if I had a little less self control, I would kill him on the spot. Being drunk as he was, he laughed this off, but I saw him drive away shortly after.

Reeling from the shock of what I had just done, I returned to the party just in time to see one of my good friends collapse in a vomitous heap. I spent the rest of the night in the back of a friend's car with his head in my lap- preventing him from passing out and suffocating. I got home at 5:30 am- freezing and covered in drying vomit.

So that is why I don't drink. I don't necessarily have a problem with others doing it, but I think that moderation is the key.