I started a new job only a few weeks before I decided to stop drinking for a while. Within those few weeks, I was asked by more than one person if I smoked pot or drank alcohol. When I told them I drank, they’d ask what, when or where. This is clearly a move to become friendly outside of work- which is good.
The opportunity to materialize that finally came when I don’t have serious urges to drink. It’s not too awful to say “I’m laying off for a while”, so that’s what I’ll do, but it got me remembering…
Before I had ever had a drink, I typically bounded this gauntlet of questions:
STRANGE YOUTH: Do you smoke… you know… pot?
COBE S NEVER FAILS TO IMPRESS: No.
SY: Cigarettes?
CSNFTI: No.
SY: Do you drink?
CSNFTI: No.
SY: Have you ever done any of those things?
CSNFTI: Nah
SY: Would you ever want to?
CSNFTI: I don’t think so.
Then the Strange youth would stare at me like I was an animal in a zoo, and follow up with:
SY: Wow. Well. Do you go to school?
CSNFTI: No.
SY: Are you going to?
CSNFTI: I don’t think so.
Having exhausted all the possibilities in their mind of what a young man’s activities could ever be, They would either never talk to me about my life again, talk about me like I’m scary, assume I’m religious(unless they ask me) or talk about me like I’ve “got my shit together”(meaning absolutely nothing, fyi).
I’m glad I can at least say “I used to drink heavily” to grease the wheels, even if I don’t currently. Socialization is ridiculous.
1 comment:
its so fucking hip to be a young hedonistic alcoholic.
you don't drink? behold the anti-fun? its deplorable that the newest playground (you know...the one with the shiniest swings) is the bar. why this generation's general definition of fun is to go and spend gratuitous amounts of money on Dionysian fucketry in a bar is beyond me. how can this infatuation continue for longer than a few months shortly following the advent of one's 21st birthday?
trying to not be a drunken fucktard is exhausting. week by week.
sincerely,
allison silver
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