Sneaking the car out of the
garage wasn't the hard part.
I was well practiced at
walking across the living room floor with ninja stealth, and unbeknownst to my
parents I kept the hinges on the door which led to the garage well lubricated,
so it would open soundlessly in the sleeping house.
The rest of
"Operation: Sneak Out" was executed with the same strategic precision one might see in the "Mission Impossible" film franchise: Wrap
an old towel (stashed in advance for just this purpose) around the sensor which
beeped when the garage door disconnected from the automated opener, thereby
muffling the alarm, and then pull the cord which disengaged the door from the
device's automated pulley track. S-l-o-w-l-y raise the door manually, to
minimize creaks, squeaks and rumbles. Slide into the driver's seat, put
the car in neutral, hop out and with only the slightest push the natural
incline of the driveway would work to assist me in rolling the car back out of
the garage. Close the garage door, which re-engaged the automatic opener,
stopping the beep and allowing me to re-enter the garage when I got back
(noisier than sneaking out, but an acceptable risk to the mission overall).
Roll the car farther from the house, back into the street, start the engine and
... away.
Once down the street it was
all windows open, radio cranked, rush of adrenaline and into the night.
For my entire 16th year I
performed this operation almost every school night.
Once out, anything could
happen, and that freedom, that possibility, was almost as intoxicating as the
malt liquor I was on my way to buy. That was the first order of
business. Always. In those days, in that city, convenience stores
weren't nearly as particular about the legal drinking age as they are today,
and being tall at 16 made it a simple enough matter to buy what I wanted.
Did I fool those clerks, or did they not care? It doesn't matter now and
it hardly mattered then. As long as I could buy, I was fine. With a
twelve pack of tall-boys on the seat next to me I was back out into another
night of endless opportunity for escape and trouble -- though then I thought of
it as "fun" -- not just something I wanted, but something I actually
believed I was entitled to.
I will never, as long as I
live, forget how it felt to take a long hit on those cold beers, the car racing
down the highway, night air rushing past, singing along with the radio -- all
that music speaking of angry or lonely hearts pouring from the speakers, as if
telling my story, speaking specially to me, urging me to gun it. The engine was an 8 cylinder, and I when I punched the accelerator the car would literally
jump forward -- I'd reach over, turn the radio up even louder, and take another
long hard hit on the beer. I would spend the next ten years drinking,
chasing that feeling I had in those few moments, certain that the right
combination of drink and drugs could freeze that feeling forever -- the
illusion of power and freedom, the heady rush of anything and yes and go faster
and now.
Where was I going?
Anywhere I felt like, and that of course was part of the rush. There was
an Adult Bookstore in the boonies that would let me in. That was ...
educational ... and an early, eye-opening introduction to the intoxication of debauchery.
There was a parking lot behind a bar at the other end of town where guys who
grew up in a different America than I had would laugh behind their hands at the
stupid white kid in his father's car, but still sell me pot, or occasionally what
they said was speed (but was more likely an over the counter, stay-awake
caffeine pill). Under any other circumstances I would have been too
afraid to approach them -- and make no mistake, I didn't find courage those
nights -- I was driven, as surely as a steer moves forward from the pain of the
cattle prod. Or maybe it is more apt to say as surely as a slave moves
under the bite of the whip -- because even then I had no more choice in the
matter than the slave or the steer. Less, even, since I was blind to my
own bondage.
Some young people have a
talent for music, or athletics, or are brilliant scholastically.
Me? I was gifted at getting annihilated. An alcoholism
savant. The only thing I wanted to do was be loaded -- not be in my
head. Not be in my skin. Not be me (even though at 16 no one even
knows who that is anyway). Lots of teenagers rebel, act out, experiment
... this was not that. This was a compulsion. A need. I was
feeding something inside of me which had an endless hunger and only became more
ravenous the more that I fed it: Alcoholism.
There is a line in
Shakespeare's "Antony
and Cleopatra" (better scholars or more motivated bloggers than I could
quote you the Act and Scene): "... she makes hungry where she
most satisfies ... " It is actually Antony's lieutenant Enobarbus describing how Cleopatra both sates and stirs his lust, but I always thought it exactly captured the spirit of what drinking
is like for the alcoholic: It makes thirsty that which it most quenches.
I was so lucky, the
childhood I got, the parents I had. In birth family lotto I got terrific,
winning numbers. There was no real childhood trauma I was acting out
against. There was little in the way of family drama I was
escaping. There was just the monster inside which awoke in my early teens
and forever after always wanted -- and wants today -- two things: Out and
More.
On these illicit nights of
imaginary freedom there was one road in particular I loved to drive -- it had
that kind of winding loopy feel which made you imagine you were a cooler driver,
a cooler person, than you likely were (certainly than I was). Well into
my 12 pack the car would start to drift over the yellow line on this serpentine
course, but for whatever miraculous reason I never hit anyone. I remember
once I passed out for a few seconds and came to with the tires screeching as
the road turned but I hadn't, the car heading straight for a tree.
Somehow I pulled it around. My only thought? A sodden
"Oops."
Another time I remember
driving on the highway, and being rudely awakened as the car drifted up onto
the median and then off again, the BUH-BUMP! of the driver's side tires going
up and down on the median's curb jarring me back to bleary awareness. I
make no comment on any news story of any recent or long past tragedy -- but I
will say that when I read or hear of cars going the wrong way on a road, or
hurtling through store windows or plowing into intersections, my stomach does a
cold, slow roll and I understand exactly how that can happen, and I know in my
bones any one of those stories could be about me.
People like me, when we
drink, should rightly be locked up, as we are a real and present danger to
ourselves and, more damning, to others. Still more freakish and
terrifying than that, of course, is our inability to see it or admit it,
consumed only with ourselves and our own good time.
AA threw me a lifeline --
literally -- and I'll never be entirely sure why I could grab it. Many
others I know who needed it as badly as I did when it came my way have been
unable to.
Someone close to me is in
the midst of hitting their bottom (right on schedule I might add). The
lies are coming undone, the tantrums and manipulations are being exposed for
what they truly are, their own monster inside, their own ravening beast thunderously
beating on the twin drums of Out and More (echoing in rhythm with the Me Me Me
pumping like blood through every addict's heart) is being dragged into the
light.
There may be a lifeline for
them, too.
But I know the hard, hard
truth: No one can grab the lifeline for you, we each must reach for it,
however uncertainly, on our own.
I stand ready to help as I
try to with any alcoholic, but ultimately, all I can really do is pray -- and
the hardest truth of all, as any student of the 12 Steps knows, is that really
all I can pray for is an acceptance of God's Will in this, as in all things.
Most days I am okay with
that -- but it is not always an easy okay.