A Common Pornography: A Memoir

Vodka and Squirt

Even though I seemed immune to pot, I found other ways to alter my consciousness. It took a while though, as I had to get over the ingrained fears of brain damage and eternal damnation from a Catholic God. Sobriety was something I took pride in as a teen. There were other kids in high school who were infamous drunkards and potheads, but I kept a safe distance from them.

The first time I gave in to drink was a couple of nights before my high school graduation. I went over to Deanna and Jim’s apartment after work.

Their place had that uncomfortable decor that happens when an older guy hooks up with a younger girl. Teddy bears and angel imagery mingled with mirrors that had whiskey logos on them. High school yearbooks from the early seventies sitting next to ones from the mid-eighties.

That night we sat in beanbag chairs and drank sweet mixed drinks (like cheap vodka and Squirt) through straws. Jim started telling really crude sexual jokes and I could tell it was making Deanna really uncomfortable. But the more I drank, the more I laughed along with Jim. I drank myself into a spinning night of sleep on their couch and woke up with a furry blanket on top of me. I was hot and felt sick. I looked at the clock and saw that I was late for my graduation rehearsal. I got up and slumped outside.

I looked around for my car and then realized I had left it at Big Momma’s. I had to walk about twenty blocks to my high school. My hangover made me not care so much about being late for the rehearsal. Maurice was probably the only one who would notice I wasn’t there anyway. The heat was getting to me and I did that thing with my T-shirt where you pull the front up over your head but keep the sleeves around your arms. Suddenly I felt the sickness come up and I heaved the sour throw-up next to a tree in someone’s front yard. I wiped my mouth with a leaf and kept walking in the direction of my school. I started to feel self-conscious, speed walking with my shirt up like that, my face melting like a sick drunk’s. People were driving by me on Garfield Avenue, probably wondering why I wasn’t at school. A couple of blocks later, my legs buckled. I rested on one knee and quickly vomited between a STOP sign and a storm drain. Before I reached the school, there was one more retching moment between cars in a church parking lot.

Maurice looked at me harshly when I finally got there toward the end of rehearsal. He could somehow tell that I’d been drinking, but instead of lecturing me he said that he too was going out to get drunk that night. I wasn’t sure if this was some kind of reverse psychology on his part. Maybe he was jealous because I didn’t get drunk with him. Nonetheless, it made our graduation night stressful. Maurice was probably my only true friend in my class and now there was tension.

On graduation night, there was a big Las Vegas–themed party in the high school gym for us, the triumphant Class of 1985. Maurice told me later that it was really fun and it lasted until three in the morning. I went home immediately after throwing my graduation cap into the air. I locked myself in my bedroom and listened to music on my headphones, wondering what to do next. My mind was blank.