BikeLizard's Open Salon Blog

So I'm a Drunk

Thu, 12 May 2011 21:05:28 -0400

I’m 25, and I started drinking when I was 15. My best friend Jenny and I would steal 4 shots each of her mom’s Jim Beam, drink them as fast as possible, and then consume no more for the night. This continued throughout high school, with forays into mixed drinks, beer, basically whatever I could lay my hands on. I got arrested for under aged drinking a few times, but once I blew a 0.06 (under the legal limit) so my parents weren’t upset. The other time, I was quite drunk and deserved to be arrested.

Then in my first ill fated semester of college, I got a fake ID. That was when alcohol started to interfere with my school work and personal relationships. I can function without slurring in a black out, and I embarrassed myself on countless occasions, missed class, and basically withdrew from classes before the college could expel me.
I moved in with my boyfriend, and we loved drinking to excess. Soon enough we found a store that would sell to underage kids (I had since lost my fake ID), and we started getting drunk whenever we could. I nearly lost a job due to coming in hungover every day, but I cleaned up my act during the week. Eventually, the boyfriend started drinking until he got sick nearly every day, and we broke up. At this point he’d consume an entire fifth of Jim Beam, then spend the night puking and cursing god. During this period, he got into a fatal drunk driving accident.
A few days before he died, I was arrested for drunk and disorderly, as well as under aged drinking. I was in a total blackout and had no clue where I was when I woke up, though I figured it out pretty quickly. The jail staff was very kind to me, they let me drink as much water as I wanted and take a 45 minute high pressure shower so I could look semi presentable for the judge.
A normal person would look at those events and decide that alcohol was not for them. I was not one of those people. I continued to drink, mostly without ill effects, sometimes to vast excess, for four years. The tipping point was getting thrown out of my favorite bar for arguing ten days ago. I haven’t had a drink since.
Most of my experiances with alcohol have been fun. However, I’ve had horrendous shaking, puking hangovers, and lately, even a few drinks blunts my mind the next day. Also, alcohol consumption seems to trigger anxiety and shame even when I’ve done nothing wrong.
Obviously, I have a complicated relationship to alcohol that I think falls somewhere between abuse and addiction. Most of the time, I can drink responsibly, but when I don’t, it ends in crying jags, jail, physical fights, and once, death. I think I will remain sober for the immediate future, but as Scarlett O’Hara says, ‘Tomorrow is another day.’

I Know a Pedophile-You do Too

Wed, 9 Jun 2010 19:06:51 -0400

A former coworker of mine is in treatment for his sexual attraction to children. I thought I knew this man. I thought that his interest in children was healthy and sweet. I cannot stop thinking about the kids he babysat, the children he buys candy, the lives he has ruined. He seemed to be a kind and generous gay man, who struggled with HIV, and wanted to work with kids due to his own horrific childhood. He had adult sexual partners, and his interest children never sent up any red flags.

He likes kids. I am sickened. We all know a pedophile, we just don't know that we know a pedophile. That is all.

Life Under a Slumlord

Mon, 7 Jun 2010 19:06:15 -0400

"The relationship that you and I have is that we pay the rent, and you maintain the property. Only half of us are living up to that."

Not the most eloquent statement, but how many renters can relate? I currently live in a house of horrors: Every wall and ceiling has at least one crack in it, the basement is full of the neighbors' sewage, the back door has large cracks and no knob, just a 2x4 and some rungs for a lock, the windows are 150 years old, the gutters are stagnant yet squirming with mosquito larvae, and yesterday the ceiling in a bedroom collapsed.

I've lived here six months. Every time I see LandLord, I politely remind him of the ongoing problems, the missing tiles, smashed windows, the persistent bedbug infestation. And he does nothing.

After the ceiling fell (knocking over my finches water dish, but luckily they are too dumb to be scared) I called the Health Department. BikeHusband called his lawyer mom, and they drafted a legally worded letter to Landlord. Roommates and I stopped payment on our checks. Then I gave the Landlord an informational phone call.

Today contractors and ceilings appeared. Cracks were caulked. Poison was sprayed. It is depressing that asking for these things was not enough, I had to withhold money and invoke the authorities. Are landlord tenant relations normally this fraught?

In the landlord's defense, the house is lovely and cheap. In my defense, I always pay the rent on time.

Genderqueer, Closeted, And Pissed at the Day of Silence

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 11:04:47 -0400

I've written about being genderqueer before. Due to societal pressure (really sick of being called faggot and dyke, really sick of being denied oppurtunities because people can't figure out if I'm a boy, really needing unbiased letters of reccomendation from professors) I'm in the closet.

I still dress like a boy most days, but I grew my hair out, try to remember to shake my ass when I walk, and present myself as female in everything but my ID. I gesture more, stare down strangers in the street less, make sure I don't cup my hand over my cigarette in the rain, and always examine the bottoms of my shoes by turning my head backwards and raising my foot, instead of bring the foot up to face me. (A little triumph was having my sex listed as male on my ID. It should be anyway.) I hate it. I hate having to conform so that I can get ahead. I hate when my psych professor says that transsexuals are mentally ill, and I can't speak up without outing myself. I hate when my lit professor laughed at the notion of genderqueer people, and I can't speak up without outing myself. If I do so, I may possibly earn scorn and poorer assesment that my cis peers, and due to the prof's prejudices, I don't think that's unlikely.

So to all of you who silenced yourselves for one day, I wish you had spent that day talking about people like me, trying to get some acceptance for us. You have no idea, you one day of silence people, what it feels like to deny yourself every fucking second because you have to, if you want to get ahead in this society.

When I was out, the only jobs I ever got were as clerks without benefits. I just wasn't a 'good fit' anywhere else, even Denny's. So I ran a little cost benefit analysis, and decided that I had to default to female, just so that others could be comfortable. The only person I can truly relax around is my husband, who has no problem being married to a man.

So please, can we have a day of talk? Of informing the populace that being gay or genderqueer is all right so I can get out of this closet all ready?

10 Books that Changed My Life- Open Call

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 13:03:16 -0400

In the order I read them:

1. The Little House on the Prairie Books. This is where I feel in love with reading, and learned how to make a door without nails. A lovely story with lots of practical advice.

2. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith. Beautifully written tale of the pain of growing up from a sensitive young girl's perspective. Deals with religion and poverty in a very unaffected way.

3. The Honeymooner's by Chuck Kinder. I read this when I first started smoking pot, and this tale of deciet and drug and alchol filled heartbreak kept me on the straight and narrow. And it's a story of a friendship between two men that cannot be broken.

4. On the Geneology of Morals, by Nietzche. Defies easy explanation, just pick the damn thing up.

5. The Republic. Plato. See above.

6. The Word, The Line, The Way. Charles Bukowski. This is later Bukowski, when he quit womanizing and writes layman sociology in poem form. Lovely.

7. The Early Stories. John Updike. A master at work. Each of these stories is like a precious gift of syntax.

8. On Beauty. Zadie Smith. A family story with drama and comedy in real life measures.

9. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Wittgenstein. Ever wondered where those deconstructionists get off, and how the world appears to humans? Dust off that symbolic logic, read this book, and be enlightened. Of course, he recants at the end of his life, but so did Macnamara.

10. A Suitable Boy. Vikram Seth. The longest book ever published in English, a love song to the novella and novel form, and a great way to be exposed to foreign poetry. Worth every one of it's 1400 pages, nothing is extraneous.

Enjoy.