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Fred Royall |
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BEHAVING In my late twenties I lost all motive force and all connection to my past, and so I ceased to have a LIFE of any substance and came to consider myself DEAD. Since I was still conscious, however, I told myself further that I had passed on into the AFTERLIFE. This was my new state of being. I had no guide and didn't know what to expect. Mostly it was very dull and routine. Wage labor and sleeping occupied more than two-thirds of my time during the afterlife, but the remainder -- other than hygiene, chores, food, etc. -- was spent in wanton and anarchic drinking and smoking. I consumed between 12 and 20 beers seven nights a week and smoked a pack a day. I came through experience to know the varieties of drunkard. There were the maudlin drunks who bothered you with their bathetic life stories. And there were the violent drunks who were out to fight and commit sadism. There were drunks for whom alcohol was only a primer, to be followed by pot, coke, crack or some other. I had no use for these types of drunks though they were legion and I was often forced into their company. But there was another type of drunk for whom I developed a particular affinity. And this was the affable drunk who lost all social inhibitions and became very friendly with everyone, passing out complements magnanimously and embracing and pecking on the cheek anyone who came within their sphere. I found these people to be poignantly human and endearing. I loved to befriend them, though the next day they wouldn't even remember my name. I thought they recaptured some of the charms of childhood and it was with them that I felt the ancient magic of alcohol, a substance that for millennia was considered sacred. I found a charming blue-collar tap and I frequented the place, meeting many likeable drunks and enjoying hours of stimulating and friendly conversation with people who were total strangers to me. I recall none of their names but can still see their hard and worn faces. I persisted in the afterlife for approximately one decade and then I was abruptly laid off and had to take a job a thousand miles away. When I got to my new home I just by happenstance came to fall in love for the first time in my life. I asked my girlfriend one night if this were really and truly a love affair, and she replied, "Definitely." I was delirious in her arms. Two months passed in bliss and then one night I was standing alone outside my apartment with a glass of whiskey and a cigarette when a young woman sauntered up to me and asked for a smoke. I handed her one and she told me she was drunk and asked if she could have my drink. So I handed it to her and she drained it. Walking up behind her came her sister and she was drunk too. They said, "Why are you so cool? Did you just get laid or something?" I told them that I was in love and had spent the afternoon with my girlfriend. They said, "We don't want to get you in trouble with your girlfriend, but can we come inside and have another drink?" I thought to myself, "These are my kind of drunks. My first in my new home. How delightful to meet them." So I invited them in. I fixed them both a whiskey and gave them an ashtray, then I proceeded to serenade them on the guitar. They wiggled and writhed on the floor, telling me that I was talented and sweet. They said they were both single moms and they met a lot of bad guys. They asked if my girlfriend could introduce them to a couple of guys like me. Then they got up and hugged me and pecked me on the cheek. They were as charming as little girls. After about fifteen minutes their phone rang and they had to go. They drained their drinks and snuffed their butts then said goodbye, telling me again that I was cool while hugging me and pecking me. I thought, "What a great couple of drunks. That was my kind of amusement." On Monday I emailed my girlfriend and shared the story with her, thinking naively that she would find it funny. It took several hours before she replied, but when she did she was steamed and felt hurt and betrayed. I was shocked as there was nothing remotely sexual between me and these sisters who were fifteen years my junior. I wrote back an apology and I called her that night. Later in the week I brought her flowers. And so I suppose this represents the end of the afterlife. It's time for me to rise from the tomb and tell the disciples that I am reborn. No more will I cultivate the company of uninhibited, affable, funny drunks. These I must leave in the underworld. Now that I've returned to the surface I must learn the decorum and the rules of behavior. No more uninhibited strangers allowed in my home. No more whiskey-soaked pecks. Perhaps I will miss these people. I don't know. True love is obviously a much healthier alternative to drunken silliness. This is the first time I've ever been in love in my life, so I have to learn how to play it. I've something to live for and so can no longer cultivate reckless abandon. At age 40 I suppose I actually have to become an adult. This is an occasion that I never divined for myself. God willing. |