Notes on not drinking

As I enter my third day of voluntary sobriety, I find that the world is stark and boring.

Really, though, it’s not that I feel I have a problem, or am speaking out against alcohol, or seeking help, or even putting any importance on lasting 30 days without a drink.  I’m just screwing around.  It’s either do this or figure out a hobby.

I’m so bored and disappointed with life that I’m going to experiment with my body.  I’m half debating spending 30 days drunk after this.  I probably won’t do that, because I’m an adventurous drunk, so I’d probably wake up somewhere in Paris after eight days.  (Actually, maybe I will do that…)

For years, I’ve admired the idea of the depressive bender.  Back in the early 90’s, I promised myself that I would go on a three day, Leaving Las Vegas-style destructive freak-out when the first family member died.  Since then, three family members have died, and alcohol didn’t play much of a role.  When mom killed herself, there was brief mention of a celebratory drink, but the rest of my family was too fucked up to get on board with that.  When dad died, I certainly planned a celebration, but then his house was haunted and I became consumed with the idea of getting out of Atlanta.  And I was in extraordinary pain.

When my grandmother died, I did go to a crummy little bar by the hotel in Fairmont, WV and have a few drinks, but it was vaguely depressive so I went back to the room and watched HBO.

I’ve decided to include a rider in my will:  After I die, everyone go back to my place, pile all my stuff in the middle of the floor, light it on fire, and drink all of my plentiful booze and get in fistfights with each other.

Death is really stupid.  I don’t know why people keep dying, because it doesn’t seem like it’s enjoyable or particularly interesting.

So the next 27 days will be spent without booze, and maybe I’ll sort of make GS a sort of maybe diary sort of maybe, and we’ll see where I am by September 25th.  Well, the 24th.  The 25th will find me in the system on my way to NOLA.

I truly doubt I’ll last that long, because we have a long weekend coming up.  And September is such a nice time of year in DC – cooler days and comfortable nights out on my balcony, watching the world flow by.  My balcony invites vices – tobacco, pot, booze… There’s something about being out there which corrupts the soul.

Of course, on the other hand, I’m working seven days a week, with the exception of Labor Day, so that helps keep me sober.  I could never do this over the winter, when my weekend job goes on hiatus.

That, of course, is another reason for this month without booze.  It’s been a rough year for stealing booze from my weekend job.  My boss has heavily marketed to local churches, encouraging them to have their wedding receptions at our venue.  She’s hit the fucking filthy Mormons, and the local Muslim types, and the Buddhists.  So no booze at the reception!  I’ve started stealing sodas instead.

The wedding season ends mid November, and doesn’t pick up again till March, and my one drinking rule is that I never pay money for booze.  So I need to have a surplus that’ll float me through four months.  Though I can rely on a few bottles of booze at Christmas.

By the way – the Mormon’s are fucked up.  I don’t mind the Muslims and the Buddhists, but, shit, I don’t want to do another Mormon wedding.  There were big ass pictures of Jesus all over the place, and they’re all wide-eyed white people who can’t seem to function independent of some hive mind, and I got the feeling that they wanted to kill, cook, and eat me.

Let me tell you racists out there – you think the Muslims are crazy bombers?  Guess again, man.  It’s these fucking right-wing Christian nutsos who are going to blow us all up.  We should take up arms and exterminate every branch of Christianity cooked up after 1550 AD.  The Orthodox and Catholics?  We know where they’re coming from.  The populist Protestants – Baptists, Lutherans – okay.  The Anglicans?  That’s a political party, not a religion.  Even the nutball Amish make sense.  But LDS?  And any cult developed in the last 200 years, really.  They should all be rounded up and gassed.

People think I’m a racist.  That might be good disguise.  Then I can join the Mormons and strap bombs to my chest and go to the Temple in Kensington and take it out.