Saturday at the yob. Nearing one year since “Date of Hire,” a milestone the significance of which eludes me. I don’t remember the exact date of hire but start date when work actually commenced was January 14, 2022. I remember smearing around lower Manhattan for the month previous to January 14, doing nothing and letting nothing be done. Nothing much, at least. That’s around the time I was able to have an easily-clearable calendar whence I could meet up with the burlesque stripper who somehow infiltrated my PBX and made me a very brief, shooting star in the late-quarantine firmament.
The second night without booze proved a little weirder than the first. Skirting along meaningless dreams that nevertheless forced my attention. I sweated, but not because the landlord provides heat as required by law. He does not. I had a space heater running and about 18 inches of blankets and sheets (shankets and bleaks), including a “Heavy Blanket” upon which you’re not supposed to pile other bleats or shankets but I do anyway. Underneath I sweat, whatever the cold.
But the dreams were steady, and calm. There may have been a childhood-era moccasin come yapping at my face but mostly the hypnic jerks kept at bay. Just a couple of jolts early on, and they were seriously like lightning. In the early days of these episodes where I try to quit drinking the hypnic jerks concerned me. They felt like seizures, or “episodes”, or something you hear about from people who quit cold turkey after 30 years of hard drinking every day of their life.
My drinking isn’t like that. It is steady but it’s not what you read about where people’s lives are ruined or flushed down the drain. When you get to the brass tacks of those stories you find that they are housebound, social recluses, no contact with the outside world, and even when they do have some modicum of human contact (usually family) the real signal is how they drink from the moment they wake up to the moment they pass out, however long that takes.
I’m reminded of Paul Harvey, the oft-times condescending demagogue of yore who could make you feel so righteous and in just one breath make you feel ashamed.
One memorable (to me) bit involved someone who drunk 40 beers a day for his entire adult life. “He died blind, of old age. He was 39.” I may be paraphrasing that quote but that’s the substance of it. You’re lifted up with a possible scenario of living a long, drunk, debaucherous life; only for Paul Harvey to drop it that the dude was 39, not 99.
I’ve never been able to find that Paul Harvey clip but I know I looked it up on the newswires and corroborated that the person in question was who Paul Harvey said he was, and the circumstances aligned.
My aunt was an all-day/every-day drunk. I’d never been around anything like that so I didn’t understand what was going on at first. She’d wake up sunny and sweet, happy to greet the day. Then, just a whiff of bourbon, not even a swallow, and she became a fucking invalid; a nasty, insulting, bitter woman whose pain I never came close to understanding.
I would never deny my gratitude for her and my uncle setting me up at their house for those first 3 weeks I lived in Atlanta to work at CNN. But I’d never go back to that house, ever.
Today I took one BP med, on Betablocker, and 1mg of the storied Lorazapam, which has held such a potent position in my life these past few years. I’m aiming to go without it altogether, as I used to be able to do just 4 or 5 months ago. Something about this job made taking it every single day seem like the safer route. I may be kidding to myself, or lying, but the job matters enough to me that I can’t risk days with 3-4 hours spent waiting for anxiety and panic ro buildup so that I can spend the third of that four hour span waiting for the anxiety and bp meds to take effect. I like the job and don’t want to lose it over anxiety and pulmonary flash concerts.
With the extra few hours of clarity last night I was able to straighten out some technical glitches that I’d been too tired or too drunk to figure out. Now I get my WSBJ.com email on my phone. Whoop do doo. I purged sorabji.com of its decades of spam sent to addresses fabricated by spammers in the 1990s. Seems like little things but email remains a stubbornly vital currency in this year 2022 so I think it’s good to keep the decks clear as possible.
I still take my past life seriously, do I not? I spend 50 hours a week at this money-losing gig and yet I still see a future in my past infrastructure and the potentialities it offered.
