Train Wreck

I first tried alcohol in my twenties. My roommates gave me a wine cooler, not realizing that I hadn’t eaten that day, weighed 120 pounds, and had a compulsive personality.

“THIS IS FANTASTIC!” I announced. “I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS!!!”

They took it away after I drank half. 

I didn’t drink again for a long time, but after I started teaching in North County, I wanted to be like everyone else. It’s no fun going out to happy hours on Friday with the rest of the staff if you’re just going to order water. But I didn’t know the “rules” of drinking, so I asked the guy who teaches next to me. He is a 6’4’’ black man covered in tattoos.

“I know you’re not supposed to drive drunk,” I began, “but how do I know when I’m drunk? Is it obvious?”

“Listen, E, here’s what you do. You go home and drink until you pass out. When you wake up, you cut that number in half. That’s your limit.”

That sounded mathematical enough. 

It took six other teachers vehemently refuting this theory to convince me that it was not an accurate way to measure how alcohol would affect me.

But how would I have known that? Not only had I never experimented with booze as a teenager, but most of my friends in college didn’t drink either. My siblings drank plenty, but they always felt they had to protect me from the knowledge of their transgressions. So I never really interacted much with Extremely Drunk People.

Until recently.

A friend called me and asked what I was doing.

“Making salsa,” I said.

“Why would you be making salsa right now?” he demanded. 

“I don’t know. I wanted some, so I decided to make it. What are you doing?” 

“I am calling to tell you that you are f***ing gorgeous. Like, I seriously just broke up with my girlfriend for you! Do you know how f***d up that is?! I woke up this morning and you were the first thing I thought of. You have F***D. ME. UP. Like, you are one of the 3 coolest people I know, and you don’t even know how great you are! But... you just don’t understand LIFE!”

I was nonplussed, horrified, and thrilled all at the same time. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion, except a train wreck I actually cared about. I couldn’t remember having ever talked to a drunk friend before and I didn’t know what to do. Or what not to do. Or how to tell HOW drunk someone actually was.

“Okay,” I said. “Why don’t I understand Life?”

“EXACTLY!!!” he said. “And that is why we will never be together!”

“Okay,” I said again, stupidly.

“Look,” he continued, “I don’t even have central air conditioning in my house. I have one of those little boxes that blows cold air. It’s like… a box. So there’s that. And you would get tired of living where I live. Plus, you just don’t get life!!”

“Wait, is there more to the air conditioner analogy, or was that it?” I asked, trying to follow along.

“I’M PAINTING A PICTURE RIGHT NOW!” he bellowed. “I can’t fly you all over the country and I wouldn’t even if I could! I’m a guy’s guy. I like working in the dirt. And you… you like… Frontenac. You just don’t even know. You don’t get it. It’s like… we’re the same person, but you just don’t get it.”

“What don’t I get?!” I demanded.

He responded, “If you don’t get over here right now, we are THROUGH!” That made me laugh because it was so preposterous. Laughing is apparently the wrong thing to do when someone is drunk. It just made him mad.

“Look,” I finally said. “I’m not really sure what this call is about. You are clearly drunk, and this conversation is going nowhere. If you would like to ask me out on a date when you are sober, I will say yes.” And then I hung up.

A couple hours later, the text messages started, and those were equally as nuts.

That was several days ago. Since I hadn’t heard from the friend, I finally texted, “Are we still friends?”

“What? Why wouldn’t we be?” he replied.

Turns out he was “blackout drunk” that day and deleted his entire text history, as well as his Facebook page (I guess to avoid seeing whatever he had said or done). He said he’s even in the doghouse with his girlfriend over how blitzed he got.

That gave me pause. “Wait. So you didn’t break up with her?” I clarified.

“No, I did. Well…it’s complicated. Look, I can see I must owe you an apology for something I said or did when I was blacked out. I don’t know what it was, but I’m sorry. I don’t apologize often, but I must need to here.”

And that was that. How do you get a friendship back on track after something like that? He has NO memory of any of it. And I can’t erase any the memories I got stuck with!