The more I drink the less patience I have for sloppy drunks (myself and others). There is a fine art to dancing on that thin tightrope between exuberantly, loudly, flushed-face buzzed and gesticulating so wildly that you continuously propel red cups from people’s hands (and your own). When skin starts to get sticky, that’s when we know enough is enough.
It is one thing to drink in the company of others, drinking in others’ and their company and enjoying the warmth of fellow intoxicants; but it’s another thing to abandon composure or the ability to lift one’s leg high enough to scale three steps back into your apartment, sloshing into your compatriots who may or may not be able to steady you. The mornings of shame aren’t worth the nights of free-flowing speech, movement, and, potentially, eventually, vomit. I look better in photos when I’m buzzed because I lack the same self-consciousness that keeps me from dancing when I’m completely sober. But when I’m obliterated, the camera refuses to lie and tell me otherwise.
I missed the part of high school (or college) where to be this drunk, this belligerent, this sloppy, was not a burden to friends. Now I live in a place where we have to drive everywhere, which means that there’s always a designated driver, someone who can tolerate and potentially even enjoy the loose lips and clumsy jokes of tipsy friends, but who has no patience for nausea and an inability to stand upright. And I’m of an age where we should be past this; we should be able to hold our liquor and our pain, so that neither gets us into trouble in the middle of a crowded room.
As someone with many inhibitions, insecurities, ineffable social awkwardness, the use of liquor as a lubricant has come to me as an inspiration, but one that must be used sparingly. Every time I drink too much, I say, “Never again.” I’m grateful that slowly the space between those utterances is approaching closer to never. I will always love the taste of cheese with wine, of brats with beer, of flecks of lime in my vodka and cranberry. But I’m finding it easier and easier to mix my liquor with the intoxication of the people around me, and the comfort of my own skin.
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