Going Down Easy
Substack-ing about something other than writing, and dropping a link to some of my writing.
On Sobriety As Mild-Mannered Alter Ego
When the days get shorter, abstaining from alcohol gets tougher to do. I say this having just come home from seeing family over Thanksgiving.
I’ve said before that, in a social world full of people drinking, sobriety feels like being Peter Parker. Peter Parker, of course, knows he’s a superhero. He gets to experience the satisfaction of being Spider-Man, but Peter Parker does so privately. To the outside world, Peter Parker is just perpetually a day late and a dollar short. He’s usually late turning in work to the Daily Bugle; he doesn’t get his rent in on time because he’s busy being Spider-Man and being Spider-Man doesn’t pay the rent. If he’s not an outright loser, then he’s at least kind of a schlub; he seems like he’s less because nobody else can see the part of him that’s great.
Without alcohol, I feel a deeper capacity for doing ‘great’ things (getting up in the morning with energy; tolerating disappointment or disagreement) but it comes with a cost: I’m kind of boring and off-putting to a person who’s drinking.
I’m not fun at parties. Talking with strangers at a dinner—even my family at holidays—I feel jolts and discomforts from minor interpersonal sleights like a rock in my shoe. My nights tend to end early. Nobody else gets to see how easy my private mornings are for me, when I can wake up and exercise before work or navigate parenting without flying off the handle.
I imagine that most people just encounter me as a guy who’s not as much fun as he would be if he had a drink in his hand. And this time of year, that feeling hurts like hell more than I’d like to admit.
The Monkey On Your Back; The Monster On Your Wing
I wrote a story about sobriety not too long ago, one of a handful I got published this year. I started with the premise from the old Twilight Zone episode with William Shatner, in an episode called “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.”
If you haven’t seen it, it’s a classic premise: a guy who’s scared of flying is the only person who can spot a monster on the wing of an airplane flying through rough weather. When anyone else looks, the monster isn’t there. Of course, they think he’s crazy.
People think he’s alone with his fear, but he’s not: Shatner’s character is suffering through reality alone.
In the story as I reworked it, our narrator has a 30-day AA chip in her pocket and a head full of reasons to drink during the holidays. And yes, there’s a monster on the wing of her airplane, but for someone who wants to quiet a painful voice in her head and sees a drink cart rattling with airplane liquor bottles, the monster is the least of her worries.
You can read the story, “Going Down Easy" by clicking this link if you want to see where it goes.
33 days until the end of the holiday season. Two short stories I plan to finish by year’s end in an endless quest to distract me from finishing my novel. I won’t start my next trial until January. A band of sunshine just broke through the fog over my kitchen table.
All to say, Happy Holidays.