Cherry Poppin'

Life is not easy. It is not easy for anyone, it is a constant pursuit of things. I'll spare you a long essay on relativism and get to the meat, because everyone with a sense of real things, likes meat.

For me, I have been pursuing whole days without booze, with varied success. I have always had a hunch that alcoholism was going to be an issue for me, even prior my first drink. My mother used to talk about alcohol in a tone of real sincere caution... with a sprinkle of seething resentment. So from the time I was a boy I knew it was a bit of a forbidden fruit for me. (I recall some story or something about an apple and a garden and some whore that couldn't keep her hands off of it. There may have been a talking snake involved, but whether that was literally a talking snake or not isn't the most interesting part of that story... it's the nudity.) Anyway... my first drink came when I was 12 or 13, it was vodka that a buddy and I took out of my parents liquor cabinet, Popov was the brand, if I remember correctly. It was quite an exhilarating caper, we were like spies in some kind of after school special that was produced and directed by delinquent pre-teens. I remember setting up the TV downstairs so that there was just enough background noise so that it would drown out the socked feet on the floor but quiet enough so that I could hear someone coming. I had the buddy stationed to sound an alarm, it was a complicated plan and this is a portion I was sure he couldn't pull off, so thankfully (or perhaps, regrettably) it wasn't needed. I snuck into the kitchen, opened the cabinet door and locked my vision on the artifact. I had to reach over some bottles to get to it, I snaked my hand in and it found its grip on the neck of the tall glass bottle. As I delicately maneuvered the bottle out, with the intensity and concentration of a bomb diffuser, suddenly *clank*... I froze, the bottle had struck another. Panic is something I had felt in my life... but not here, steely I remained. I cleared the edge of the cabinet with the bottle and carefully handled my prize like a Faberge egg. I closed the door to the cabinet behind its escapee and we scurried off downstairs.

When we cracked it open and smelled it there was a justifiably objectionable recoil. Having been on a steady beverage diet of Mountain Dew and Surge (look it up), retrospectively, it makes sense that it would make us both shudder. We were not adults and for a litany of reasons, were not prepared for an adult beverage, let alone straight up at room temperature. Like most other kids determined to raise a ruckus of some sort we forged ahead. He took a swig and immediately spit it out... the flavor and bouquet did not meet our expectations of what we had assumed was the world's most coveted beverage. I drank from the bottle and felt its burn down my throat and in to my stomach. My lips were pleasantly numbed and my head started to whir in a way I had never experienced in my life. My face flushed slightly and there was a roar building in my ears, a lot like the one that is felt right before an orgasm. My whole awareness was dilated and somehow I just had a sense of well-being, like no matter what happens, I was going to be OK.

It was strange at the time that our reactions were so wildly different, but as I look back across my history of "drinking buddies" it has always been a different experience for me. I always felt at home when I put that bottle to my lips, to others it seemed to be a way to loosen up or get wild, for me it was a way to feel like I fit. I don't mean like, "fit in," in a social sense, more like fit, in this life. The world and all of its scary shit wasn't such a scary place, it was mine. I didn't feel helplessly outcast or strange, I felt like myself and that "myself" wasn't a bad thing anymore.

There was nothing negative about it... an overwhelming contrary was true. I had found something that nothing else could ever give me. I had found booze. I had found, My Home. Even knowing what I know now, I can't say with any measure of sincerity, that I wouldn't do the exact same thing again... except this time, those bottles wouldn't clank.