(Or, ‘A
Reckless Drunk!’’) July 25, 1984
At thirty-six, I looked closely at him, if
he’d only come to realize his
second awareness, what it was telling him—
His complaint!
His eyes appeared to burn with an insane
recklessness, I noticed—
The white face, leaner, the skin drawn
tightly from check to jaw, to check—
Crisscrossing the whole cheekbone, and then
some!
I looked a long time in the bathroom mirror
in the Chalet Bar,
That last night! I confronted the drunk
inside of me!
A slight twist had come to my mouth I
noticed: I think it was bitterness,
Frozen anger, for being me, a drunk.
“Tomorrow you’ll be back here,” that second
mind, that other awareness
told me, “and all those other tomorrows thereafter….”
The very carriage of my body, the way my
clothes hung on me, my hygiene,
all an advertisement to my intense recklessness with booze…
I thought about those far-off days, when I
was not vexed with the
compulsion to drink—
There was such a period, but I was so damn
young then, I had nearly
forgotten that once I was not a drunk.
I suppose you could call those days,
self-sufficing, in lack of a better
term— (thus, life in itself
was enough)
Why was it that people had to live this way?
Why was it necessary?
That was the night of my last drunk!
No: 4557
(11:59 p.m.) 9-21-2014
