We were in Germany with the band, maybe opening for Steve Earle/maybe not; I don’t remember the specifics. It was Germany: that much I recall. Germany because they had a bar in the breakfast room and at 3am when no one was around except the people I was with who were people I must have known, probably even played in the same band as them, but I don’t remember them now/ it could have been anyone, I guess, but like I was saying: Germany/bar/middle of the night/just us/ and guess what.
The taps were still on.
So we did what any self-respecting American whose Pop-Pops had fought in the War would probably do in those wee small hours. We went back behind that bar and we started pouring our own.
Pint after pint after pint. Pounding them. Laughing. Toasting the Euro-darkness outside the breakfast room/the darkness that could look in and see us when we couldn’t see it. Out there, maybe in some courtyard where you could smoke in the morning and listen to German birds warble a slightly different tune while you ate your sweet pancake thing or your breakfast meatball or whatever/ now it was all just the darkness looking in and stretching back across the land…over the towns and villages/over the lit-up cities and the riverbanks and the fields/ over the sleeping granddaughters of Nazi criminals who had managed to seep back into the system/the flow/the days being washed away, over the barking dogs stood upon dirt stood upon holes filled in with the bones of so many kids, so many young women and old men and school teachers and doctors, oh Christ, they killed them all and now there they are/ down in the dirt underneath the late night dogs and me: pouring my own pints until my teeth hurt from drinking. Until I couldn’t see anything except slits and flashes of the real world continuing on as I stumbled backwards into the path of the same old train I’d fallen under last night. And the night before.
And the night before that. Berlin. Hamburg. Dresden. Cologne. I’d seen them all out the window of the van. I’d walked their streets, turned strange corners and walked into their gothic squares, ordered tiny fine coffees from their Fräuleins/ imagined falling in love with them/oh the complications of all this history and all this distance but you can’t go by any of that, dude…you have to love who you love. None of them even saw me though.
I’d enter these cities where once the world was Hell and unforgivable and strange like the columns of smoke rising up from the bombed-out rubble, and I would ponder all of that and then ponder the gig last night and the people with their smiles and their accents and their kind words:
“Rock and Roll”. They raise their beer. “Rock and roll, motherfucker,” I raise mine back.
And then I would slowly disappear into the gathering fog of my own inebriation.
There I am stumbling to my room door. You see me? Look. I’m fumbling with my wallet, digging down into my backpack, fishing out the key. I’m so good at it, at being wasted. I’m a pro. I never lose my key. I never can’t get back into my room.
I open the door.
I go in the bathroom.
I’m alone.
I’m hammered on pilsners/white wines.
I might have been married at that point or I might not. I can’t remember. It’s all a blur.
But look at me smiling in the mirror/ my eyes a mess/ rolling in my skull/ popping round my sockets.
I loved it, man.
But you end up wondering what might have been.
At least I do.
——————-
I’m 75 days sober today. It’s nothing in the grand scheme of things and I don’t know how else to throw it at you, really. I’m not looking for applause, but then again: why else would I write that shit down and feed it to you right here right now, you know?
On Christmas Eve I uncorked this bottle of wine a friend had given me. I poured a glass while I showed the kids the personalized videos that Santa had sent them. He talks right to them too. It’s a good deal for a few bucks.
“Hell-Oh VI-O-LET! I’m so happy to get to talk to you!”
Stuff like that.
In the background it’s Elves running around talking jive/ reindeer in the snow. I don’t know where they shoot that stuff. Probably in some suburban California parking lot, a truck full of fake snow, rent-a-deers, the works.
The wine was sweet and it made me gag. I was so disappointed inside, pissed off, if I’m being straight with you…I had looked forward to this all day, this drink. (These drinks, as it would end up being.) Red wine was my thing. You know how it all goes. Red wine is ‘grown-up’. It’s sophisticated. I’d come with a civilized excuse to kick off my work shoes and lay that burden down in the evening and once you train your mind to walk that particular plank night after night, you can go on that way ‘til you die. And people do. Lots of them. Wine is excused too. Parents love wine because they have corrupted it and kidnapped it and keep it in the over-lit basement where no one could ever possibly call it sneaky or scheming or even naughty.
You can brainwash the wine. Or the wine can brainwash you. Beers these days/ same thing. When I was growing up, the construction dads sitting next to my dad at Fayette Grill: they all smelled like plywood and Pabst. The old veterans propped up next to Pop-Pop at the VFW: they were pork farts and Genesee.
But the beers nowadays/ you could crawl up inside their crafty names and logos. A mom and dad can unwrap the day from around their back and stand there in the kitchen and let the warm $12 a sixer IPA breezes wrap them up and it’s beautiful. It feels so good. And it’s legit as fuck.
Rock/Roll band guy transitioning into working ‘PRESENT’ Dad…..I never had to think twice about any of this stuff. The drinks were my right, my entitlement. As long as you can avoid the DUIs, keep away from missing work, and steer clear of violence and fighting (or too much of it), no one has any right to say a goddamn thing to someone like me.
I do my shit, man. I earn my keep. I pay my way. I teach my kids.
I drink my booze.
Just like my dad did.
Well, except he was bad news.
Okay, just like my grandfather then.
Except, well he was drunk more often than not too.
My dad and my Pop-Pop. Drunk and mean to their wives.
But that was back in the old days. Back before you could even dream of buying a perfectly quaint fake wood sign that says:
Her Day Starts with a Coffee and Ends with a Wine.
The old days.
Jesus.
—————————————
That last wine, that candy-flavored horse piss I drank on Christmas Eve, that’s when I knew something was up. Years have been chasing me for years now. Eventually they had to grab me/ I ain’t that fast. Depression and anxiety, my god, I have lived with them for so long, smeared my shit all over so many other people, and let them smear theirs all over me.
I think the drinking never helped me at all.
I guess that’s the realization you come to if you stop. My mind cleared up. My meds, I think maybe they started doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Evenings come now and the sun starts sinking low and I feel the gates inside of me unlock, the old caretaker peering out from behind the iron bars.
“It’s wine, son. It’s as old as the hills. You don’t have to worry about it. You’re not a drunk, are ya?! Hahaha! Drink some goddamn wine, Daddy-O!”
And I look at him, his folksy face, he’s so familiar to me, this guy. My oldest friend/ care-taking me through decades of adult life without close friendships, across many miles and years of being true to my own isolated nature, but settling in at sunset for a toast to my own insecurities and endless searching.
I don’t know what the regular evening drinkers look for or want. I spent so much of my life marching with that army and I still don’t know jack shit about their cause, about where their heart hangs.
I only know that you can swallow that setting sun with one first sip once each day. The golden embers of paradise shoot through your sagging veins and you can almost hear the hissing of the live long day as it steams out your valves.
Then you have that next sip and it ain’t the same. I always knew that too. I always knew that the first sip was everything and then everything started rolling out towards lies and sadness.
I wasted so many nights wasted.
I don’t know what comes next.
You probably read this and feel so awkward about it, huh?
I don’t care.
Good.
I chug seltzers, try and do my burpees, buy books about the Battle of Gettysburg.
I lay on the bed in the dark of the morning, feel her feet laying on mine, 5 kids asleep in the next rooms, I’m up before all of ‘em. I can feel my chest rising and falling. I can tell my head is clear and that I’m ready for my oatmeal and my half a grapefruit. For my coffee, buddy, I am ready.
Sitting up, I reach blind for the floor and my body feels good. Clean. No grog. No shooting bolts of blues first thing in the morning. I find my Vans in the dark right where I left them and I slip them on. I still get down. Down on me, down on my mistakes, down on my coming up short, down on my misses/so many misses/ I got so close or at least it always felt that way, but close to what?
I don’t even know.
Probably nothing at all.
I slip into the bathroom, take my pill, look at myself in the nightlight mirror. It’s 5 in the morning. Over in Germany they’re all at work, or sitting in traffic, maybe riding on the trains. A Fräulein pours the hot good coffee for some American guitar player far from home. The birds sing in the trees along the streets that I once walked down/ never to walk down again.
I hit the top steps/ they’re creaky as hell/I try not to wake the kids/ slip down into the downstairs, into the kitchen/ hit the coffeemaker/ say good morning to the dog/ no glasses in the sink.
No one knows I’m here and that feels good to me right now.