Here’s the thing about being a grown ass man in August of his fifty third year; I don’t need an excuse to have a beer for breakfast. I have a few, but I don’t need them. Honestly I was just looking in the fridge for smart water, made cotton mouth smacking noises at the little meals on wheels cartons of milk (no, kids, 53 isn’t old enough or decrepit enough to get meals on wheels, they come for my folks) and various juices, ginger ales, and I spied the Heinekens I picked up last month glowing from within like the god damned holy grail. It’s ten something and I’ve been awake for damn near six hours. Beer looked good, sounded good and Lo and befuckinghold it is good.
My first ex-wife is in recovery, has been since 1989, shows up now and again at twelve step meetings. She used to do a bong hit every so often and have a beer or two. She wanted to have “problems” not the problems she actually has, entitled self righteousness and gross knee jerk white woman’s guilt, but “problems”. My soon to be second ex wife was smoking heroin, and, like every junkie everyone knows, claims not to be any longer and besides it’s just smoking it. If I get married again one of us is going to have to be blinded, deaf, mute and kept in a box, given that I’m the common denominator it should probably be me. Fool myself once, shame on me, fool myself twice shame on I, after that put me in a skinner box and graph my decline.
Yeah, wish I was serious. Cynical romantic is a hard shirt to accessorize. I’m also the sort of optimist that knows it’ll all end in tears and marches on anyhow. Motherfucking Stalin locked up the Russian troops that had fought with the allies because they had been exposed to far too much western decadence. That seems backwards. Seems like you’d want the western decadence locked up, otherwise there is no post-revolutionary hero of the revolution. Sort of like Orthodox Catholicism; what’s the point in absolving sinners if they 1) have no choice about sinning and 2) are just coming back in a week with a fresh raft of sin. Seems to make more sense to absolve the sin than the sinner, know what I mean? Like if sodomy is a sin make it a virtue, that way it’ll only be appealing to real sodomites and not butt tourists. Yeah, I chose that one for crude shock value, and not only did I pull the punch but it had no weight in the first place. I guess all I mean is how do you get to think of yourself as the good guys when the head good guys are always telling you how bad you are?
The only way I can think of myself as a good guy is by not having a head good guy. My heroes are flawed; I’m ok with being flawed. I’m ok with having a beer for breakfast and seemed to be ok with leaving a six pack alone in the fridge, unmolested, for a month. Heh. The home health care people were always finding cigarette butts and the same bottles of Makers Mark and Red Breast on the dining room counter and always asking my demented father about his smoking and drinking habits. He looked to my mom, or so I’m told, to answer that for him. I hid from some of them and some of them knew I was there. I hid because they’d ignore both of my folks for my lucid observation. My mom called them the “home invaders”. It wouldn’t make much sense to have home health care be a dialogue between me and, say, an occupational therapist; that could have been done on the phone. They are medical professionals; if they can’t deal with dementia they should find a better suited gig. As it was half of them gave my mom lists of instructions she obviously couldn’t manage, and, I’m sure, thought she was fronting for my dad’s wayward drinking and smoking ways.
If my dad had a beer for breakfast he’d wake up morning hung over. Part of family Lore is him sabotaging an associate professor interview for Holy Cross, first by starting the interview with “I don’t get the whole divinity of Christ thing” and later by answering whether he smoked or drank with “Not well enough to teach undergrads”. He also didn’t question why at least two of his kids thought that story was still funny; it’s because he doesn’t smoke or drink well enough to teach undergrads and they are motivated to learn. It’s a little funny that an occupational therapist faced with a demented fellow who needs to rest on his way from the living room to the bathroom concerns herself with drinking and smoking and yet doesn’t suggest anabuse and nicotine gum. You’d think they’d have him do stretches or something, right? I don’t know, I’ve been here long enough where I’m no longer sure if the it’s just this area or the whole world that’s gone batshit. Surprizing how much one small breakfast beer diminishs the efficacy of that little 8 bit code of anxiety. Docs should prescribe this.
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