Uncoupling from Alcohol

The Summer I Got Good at Drinking

In June, Regina Spekter plays at the Rady Shell by the sea in San Diego. Regina’s quirky mezzo soprano voice sprinkled its buoyant notes through the soundtrack of Karli’s childhood, so for Mother’s Day, she bought us both tickets. As we approach the folding chairs where we will sit and share a bottle of rosé, Regina’s voice hits us both in the heart.

Come and pull up your folding chair next to me.

My feet are buried in the sand and there’s a breeze.

There’s a shadow, you can’t see my eyes.

and the sea is just a wetter version of the sky

It’s golden hour on a grassy knoll on a perfect day. Regina wears red lipstick and sits at her piano. Our eyes already sting with connection of music and memories and a lifetime of love. Sometimes we hold hands. Sometimes we sing along and cry. By the time her set is over, the day has faded to night. We listen to a few by Norah Jones, but we are both antsy. Everyone around us has become reverent for the headliner, but our headliner is done.

I murmur to Karli, “You wanna leave?”

We steal out of the venue like truant adolescents. Karli is a couple of weeks away from 21, so it’s not quite legal for her to drink, but I try to smuggle her into a bar anyways. She’s tall for her age. She’s always been tall for her age, but the bouncer doesn’t fall for it, and we end up drinking Modelos at a taco shop with two booths and bright fluorescent lights. Afterwards, we smoke cigarettes with a German tourist in the dark outside of our hostel. It’s on the kind of street that smells like beer and ashes are caked in layers atop the asphalt. The German tells us his shock at the homelessness he sees everywhere. 

“This would not happen in Germany,” he says with a kind of disbelief. He looks like a typical 80s high school movie villain with his pale eyes and military-cropped blonde hair. I’ve never crossed the Atlantic and am intrigued. What does it mean to not have people living on the street? Why is this kid who looks like he’s going to stuff a nerd in the dumpster of an 80s movie more travelled than me?

I ask about his tax rate. 

In July, we go to Cancun where we celebrate the ten year wedding anniversary of my sister and her husband and Karli turns 21. I drink the perfect amount which is to say that I drink enough to have fun but never so much that I lose time or do something embarrassing. I run around the resort with my daughter and her friends. I wade through the ocean with my sister, beer in hand, order nachos to our beach chairs, share a gallon of Corona on the excursion shuttle, change into dinner dresses, declare myself the winner of vacation. I’m drinking, charging, smoking, getting tan, and feeling like the American dream. I am an amalgamation of every beer commercial. I’ve made it. 

I drink my last beers in August at the fair. I know this night is my sweet farewell to booze. It’s a conscious uncoupling. This is not the kind of story people expect to hear about the last time someone drank before giving up alcohol for good. I didn’t get in a fistfight with my sister because I didn’t want to leave the bar. I didn’t wake up in Summerland with a tall, dark, handsome and nameless Argentinian polo player with no purse, no shoes, and no car. I didn’t walk in the wrong direction on the freeway thinking I was on my way home. I haven’t done any of that in years. I found my drinking stride, Baby. I am normal in just the way I have always wanted to be.  

I want to be on the Ferris wheel with my boyfriend for sunset. The fair even happening marks life being back to the old ways, like 2019, before the dark times. We say goodbye to the day as we rise and fall in the swinging baskets, circling like the hands of a clock. Time has started again. I’ve never been in a basket with Henry before. It’s either five or seven tickets, but the expense is fine because this is the only ride I want to go on. The hot months don’t really hit Ventura until fall, so you always need a sweater on the Ferris wheel at sunset. The Pacific air conditioner reflects the radiance of the light show on the horizon. There’s an eternal strip of mist that flirts with the mountain rising above Emma Wood beach adding drama to the celestial spectacle. At the top of the wheel there’s a panoramic view of the ocean, the pier, the Channel Islands, and if you pop your head out the side of the basket you can watch the crowds meander through the flashing midway spending hundreds of dollars on games and food and rides that will all be gone in a couple of days. That the same rides have made their annual appearance out of nowhere for decades is both terrifying and comforting. The traditions of summer from Memorial day to Labor Day feel desperately American.

We walk through the gemstone displays, landscape design, and photography exhibit. My boyfriend buys me a purse made of cork from one of the booths in the hangar-sized building labelled Commercial Exhibits. They’re calling it “vegan leather.” Sipping foam-topped beers from plastic cups, we eat giant corn dogs and stroll through the crowd. The whole thing is a cascade of sensory input. Invisible kettle-corn scented clouds waft from the booth on the left while the savory scents of barbecue trail us. In the distance, the sound of the drums from tonight’s concert reverberates into the darkening sky. I think it’s a country singer we don’t care about. There are more cowboy boots at the fair than usual, but that could also be because of the popularity of the show, Yellowstone. 

We walk home along the beach, stopping at the liquor store for tall cans, a little bottle of whiskey, and cigarettes. The path along the promenade is never lit which is odd since it has been an area of gang violence, stabbings, and other nefarious activities. I would never walk alone here at this time of night, but I feel a sense of safety arm in arm with Henry. He carries a knife and a wallet, and I carry a purse in a purse. It’s peaceful except for the sound of the waves crashing on one side and the freeway traffic on the other.  We sip our tall cans in brown bags like hobos. We cross paths with two police officers on the way up Vista Del Mar road and nod our hellos as we continue drinking our beers on the public street, too white and middle-aged to be bothered.  

I wake up the next day with what I’m pretty sure is my last hangover. We break what’s left of the cigarettes and throw them in the trash. I don’t ask him to, but Henry often tries to go along with my quitting of things. He is not as practiced at it as me. He seems to be in on this one for himself this time though, so maybe it’ll stick without any resentment. He talks about how he wants to quit everything and get six pack abs before his next birthday. This is a goal that we both agree on. It’s not fashionable to strive for such things during this era of body positivity, but we grew up in the 80s and 90s. We will probably always want washboard abs. 

I have spent the summer as the best drinker I can be, but the pervasive feeling I am left with is fatigue. The alcohol tires me, thinking about the alcohol tires me. Laying in bed the day after having a few too many, talking to people with my brain half-powered and laced with a neurotoxin is dull. It has been a shit goal to want to become a more “normal” drinker. It took all the power out of everything else. My drinking life feels complete. I have done it in every way that I can, but there is a promise of joy in it that will never come to fruition. A lifetime of consuming and creating images of the good life with a glass of wine or a bottle of beer, are just that, just images. It’s all imaginary. I feel like I am seeing what a big fat fucking lie it all is. 

I’m not scared of not drinking. I’ve done it before. I’ve been in “the rooms” where the words “I am an alcoholic” rolled off my tongue like a dry napkin. Yes, there was a problem, but I didn’t see it reflected back to me in the faces of addicts. I’ve sat and listened to stories of neglected children, abused spouses, psychosis. I wanted to hear my story, but I didn’t want to tell it. I wanted salvation but the despair was almost but not quite ever enough for me to leave my life and regularly commune with the kind people who were creating sobriety. I didn’t lose my job, crash my car, get a DUI, or lose my kid. She grew up with under the illusion that I was sober, just more tired some mornings, especially the mornings after she had been at her dad’s.

This time, performing the cigarette-breaking ritual feels like a reward. I get to stop the slow poisoning for good. I know it. I feel it in my bones that I am out of love with substances. I’m out of love with smelly fingers and wondering if it’s okay to drink with my daughter. Wondering why I quit everything for her developing fetus but not for her developing life. I’ve come to the point where I look around and think why am I doing this? What is the point? If I drink one I feel a little tired but I know two will get me past tired and a little buzzed like I’m floating. If I get past that to three, I might head into the danger zone where I may or may not hurry forward to five, but regardless if I do that or not, I will surely have a hangover or at least be a little tired the next day. It’s not just a beverage it’s a fucking algebra equation. I’m switching to water. I’m not afraid of being left out because instead of thinking of myself as flawed because I have to make all these rules about when and how much and how often I’m allowed to drink, I see how boring it is. I see that I’m not giving anything up so much as finding everything that else that my life is meant for.