I almost got drunk yesterday.
For most, this is entirely unremarkable. For me, however, someone well into their mid-twenties who has never been drunk, this is Some Shit. I’ve cleaned vomit off the headboard of my co-editor’s dorm room after he ate too many edibles, watched my friends for side effects as they tried a new designer drug at our house party, brought crossfaded high school classmates water at 4 in the morning, but have spent my own life sober as a rock. As in: I did not drink, and I could not be moved.
One of my best friends from middle school got sent to rehab after eighth grade graduation. She was someone who both awed and repulsed me, the way she was everything my sad, horny, preteen self was or wanted to be, but cranked up to the eights (get it? We were in eighth grade…). She would pass me notes in history class saying she couldn’t come over because her mom caught her taking ecstasy over the weekend. She snuck a boy from the bowling alley into her bedroom to have sex for the first time. She was openly bisexual and suggested we kiss when I came out to her. She wore her hair long and greasy, like her nails, and I would flinch away when she laid her head on my shoulder. She was everything. She could have been my teenage downfall.
I had stumbled, but I didn’t want to fall. I got in a lot of trouble as a kid: I was self-harming, exploring my precocious sexuality, getting suspended—almost expelled—from middle school, making my parents cry. I wanted to get drunk and do drugs; like, I really wanted to. The only thing that stopped me in the beginning was that I thought it was uncool to actually ask someone for substances—I wanted them to be offered to me. But I got really tired of making my parents cry, of disappointing them, and as I fell deeper and deeper into a new kind of sadness, I started to think substances weren’t the best idea for me. Here are the facts I laid out for myself at thirteen:
I already felt the stirrings of an addictive personality, to things people would scoff at—sugar, boys, chapstick—but that I could just not get enough of, even if I wanted to stop. I knew I had depression, and I knew that if there was something I could take to make my sadness go away, I would take that thing until it killed me. I had a messy relationship with control: either I could have a handle on everything, or nothing. I told myself it just wasn’t the right time for me to try drinking or drugs; maybe later, when I felt I could handle them without it getting out of control.
It is high school and it is later. I forget my chapstick one day and pass through my classes with a mild tremor, panicked and incessantly licking my lips. The next day I tally on my left hand how many times I reapply—upwards of 50. It is college and it is later. I follow a boy around from house to house like the trail of smoke always leaking from his hands and mouth, and I would do anything to make him like me, even after he leaves. It is coronavirus and it is later. I eat bags and bags of vegan pastries that make me ill and bloated and disgusted with myself, and I thank my lucky stars I don’t drink. I thank my thirteen-year-old self for never allowing me a coping mechanism that could actually kill me.
I kept telling myself that I would know when it was the right time to get faded or wasted, but what was once a choice just spread into a way of living, and it became hard to find the edges that defined it in order to defy it. A pattern develops and it eventually just becomes a solid color, Escherian. A choice becomes a series of small choices, or a lack of choices altogether. What does it mean when a choice—or an abstention from a choice—goes on for so long that it stands to become part of your identity? What does it mean that I had never been in a serious relationship until the man I almost got drunk with yesterday? That I had never been drunk (and still haven’t)? That I don’t shave my legs, that I don’t eat meat, that I don’t say the word “bitch,” that I’ve never been to Disneyland? (My partner says he wants to take me and at this point I think I’ll let him).
So why did the rock of my sobriety shift a few inches yesterday?
For about a year now I have been dating a really lovely man who is my friend and partner. Throughout that year I have also wanted desperately to actually date him—to go on dates, to interact in the greater world, to spend more time together outside of our work, our rooms, our selves and our screens. I am deeply, unshakably grateful that he cares as much about staying safe as I do. I also wish he cared as much as I do about planning, going on (safe) adventures, uprooting our routine in ways that are challenged by this limited new world.
A co-worker was romanticizing recently about past dates and friend dates where they had just gone to parks with people and a bottle of wine. My partner thought that was cute. “Too bad neither of us drink,” he said, “but I’d be down if you are.” I hemmed and hawed and said I was happy that he suggested something to do, but I didn’t know if I wanted to, so we put it to the side. But as we drew closer to a full year of dating (Monday the 25th mark your calendars y’all!!), I wanted to do something special.
I wanted him to be special. He is, and will always be, special. He is the first man to make me feel like I am not ruined for love. He is the first of many things for me. I wanted to get a little drunk with him this one time, my first time, and then maybe never again (or who knows, maybe now is “later”). Maybe I could no longer use my lifelong sobriety in the adult version of “two truths and a lie,” but I could tell a very warm, nostalgic story at a dinner party: ”Once, with an old boyfriend…”
I started writing the framework for this essay (“essay”) about a week ago because I thought I was going to get like, stupid drunk. I thought it might shift something in the way we were with each other, or the way I was with myself. I thought I also might be completely overthinking it, and absolutely nothing might happen at all other than I might just touch his face a lot more than I already do (he has a very touchable face). When I was writing down ideas, I had just come off a big sugar binge that left me worried that this was a bad idea, worried that I might like the feeling of drunkenness too much, that now was far too soon to be “later;” worried I would say something stupid or embarrass myself in front of my partner. I didn’t know what to expect of myself.
When I was younger, I liked to imagine what kind of drunk I might be. First I thought (feared? hoped?) I would be a slutty drunk. Then I got older and figured I’d probably just get even more sad (not a cute look for parties). Now? I haven’t thought about it in years. After I was done with all of the worrying, I figured I would just be loose, and happy, and tell my partner how handsome he was and how much I liked him, just a lot more than I usually did.
We made mulled wine and packed it in a thermos to take to a park; either the alcohol boiled off on the stove, or I just didn’t drink enough to feel any of it. Either way, I still have no idea what kind of drunk I’ll be. I don’t know if I’ll find out anytime soon, I don’t know if it will make him love me any more or any less; I don’t know if it will make me love me any more or any less.
Maybe we will get drunk the next time the city closes down and there is nowhere to go, and a few weeks later he will make me a steak, and I will shave for him, and after we are vaccinated I will jokingly call one of the princesses at Disneyland a bitch. Who knows. Maybe I will go the rest of my life never being more fucked up than when I got my wisdom teeth out at fifteen. Maybe I will break into the garden of my life choices and pull a wine bottle out of the rock (stone). It’s an adventure to not know. I’ll find out when I find out (and I’ll let you know).