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Raising the Bar

Continued from page 4

And loaded you get, on hurricanes, the archetypal Mardi Gras mixers, which, unfortunately, have changed since they were first concocted in New Orleans nigh a century ago. Then, they consisted of Cognac, absinthe and Polish vodka (this tidbit and a few others within courtesy of Dale DeGroff's landmark cocktail book of a few years back, The Craft of the Cocktail). Does that not sound delicious? These, though, are made with rum, more rum, lime and a host of juices.

One of the sadder sights of this joyous day: a grown man, lying face down on the sidewalk, heaving, weeping. Heartless and debilitated, you step over him and continue on your way.

Then, the body revolts, the stomach collapses in on itself. What was once an invisible receptacle, a gaping maw blindly accepting anything and everything. Then this sensation -- you know the one -- the queasy greasy uh-oh, barrels up to your head, which struggles to maintain balance. It will not, but luckily you are a few blocks from home. You stagger with the departing masses, refugees on the Trail of Tears.

Home, Alone

Let's say your father's drink was vodka, at least judging by the bottles you occasionally found hidden about the house -- in the bin of an antique school desk, behind files in a drawer; behind the antique brass cash registers he adored. At fourteen, you found such discoveries confusing. Why would he be hiding vodka? There was a whole bottle in the liquor cabinet. You and your sister had some inkling; a few years prior, he had a mysterious illness that required an extended stay at Barnes, followed by an explanation that Dad couldn't ever have anymore alcohol -- not even Chablis mixed into white sauce -- or he would die.

A few years later, he started drinking again, which is when you started finding bottles, the first clue that something was amiss. Plus, the usually hilarious and kind man turned grumpy. He took a lot of naps. But he was seldom drunk, and never mean. He was just a closet, ashamed drinker. You don't remember him ever slurring or stumbling. He just went out on Saturday afternoons, and many weeknights, then came home and went to bed.

When you were fifteen, Mom and Dad caught you drunk for the first time. They tripped over you on the front porch; when you're drunk, keys can be difficult to maneuver. The next day Dad took you on a drive, but he had to pull over when he started crying too hard to steer. He explained that he understood that you were experimenting, and that you'd have to learn on your own about alcohol. But, he said, he had a drinking problem, and had always had a drinking problem.

A couple years later his liver started showing signs of giving out, and you and your mom and sister drove him as a family to rehab.

He was in that place that David Foster Wallace, in his novel Infinite Jest, describes in great detail: "... then, finally, no relief available anywhere at all; finally it's impossible to get high enough to freeze what you feel like, being this way; and now you hate the substance, hate it, but you still find yourself unable to stop doing it, the Substance, you find you finally want to stop more than anything on earth and it's no fun doing it anymore and you can't believe you ever liked doing it and but you still can't stop, it's like you're totally fucking bats, it's like there's two yous...."

When he returned from rehab, he seemed even more lost. He probably knew his days were numbered. His legs and face were skinny, but his belly was huge, and as tight as a balloon.

Then it got ugly. His complexion yellowed, so did the whites of his eyes, as fluids normally excreted by the liver seeped into his bloodstream. His belly continued to inflate as fluid once processed was now too much for his liver to handle. Mom had a tape measure, which she'd wrap around his belly every day to see if his stomach was receding, a sign that his liver was recovering. Good news, a quarter-inch down today. Bad news, a half-inch up the next day. His liver was dying. His skin got yellower, and his eyes grew sadder, more lost, more I'm-so-sorry. He died a few weeks later, in a morphine delirium.

Roxy's, 210 Madison Avenue, Brooklyn, Illinois

Why are titty bars so dark? To hide the boners, the wrinkled faces, the strippers' stretch marks? Why are you here? Did you not stoop low enough yesterday? Do you not want to vomit at the mere thought of alcohol?

It is 2 p.m. on a Sunday, and you should be swimming laps at the pool. You should be frolicking in Tower Grove Park, reading, or napping, or doing anything else but planting your much-fatter-than-a-week-ago ass in a chair and drinking a rum and Coke at Roxy's watching Sunday afternoon strippers titillate the six men in this Brooklyn club.

Luckily, your ladyfriend has made the supreme sacrifice and joined you in this little afternoon safari. She's your protection. You can stare at booty to your heart's content without feeling the least bit Neanderthal. Suck another shot of rum and Coke; it's a good drink for a headache. And the rum, so sweet, even if it is the cheap stuff, clouds your increasingly acute sense of impending doom. Drink more, loser.

Drink because...because why? Because tomorrow is another day. And tomorrow -- maybe tomorrow you won't drink?

Hope springs eternal, mi amigo. Hope springs into your mouth, that's for sure. Hope springs straight past your gullet, where gravity and a few esopho-muscles drive it down into your tummy, where, depending on your mood and your built-up tolerance to tequila, to rum, to vodka, to beer, it lands either in a swan dive or an explosive belly flop.

Later you lie down for another nap. It is 4 p.m. In your head, skyscrapers are collapsing in slow motion. The weeping man face down on the sidewalk at Mardi Gras could be you. You're not that far removed from him, after all. In a split second, life can turn ugly, can turn pathetic even if you're home at last and your darling is right there next to you. Your body's not used to this anymore, drinking this much. That much, you know. Sleep it off.

The next morning dawns beautiful, and the song in your head is by a band called the Silver Jews: "In 27 years, I've drunk 50,000 beers, and they just wash against me like the sea into a pier."

The birdies are starting to get pumped. Winter's turning to spring. Chipmunks are poking their heads from their underground burrows, sniffing the air, hoping that the warmth is finally returning, and with it, a sense that a week of drink was not in vain.

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