A Talent for Drinking Alone

(Or, Fracking)

I’m so funny. I make my friends cackle, rupture, burst, without even meaning to. I tell her earnestly over the phone that I could do a blind taste test of any of the nasty little beverages in the first cooler by the door of the liquor store and identify it in seconds; she throws her head back in my peripheral vision, states away.

I haven’t been going to parties. The issue isn’t that it stops being fun once you’re of age, not even that I can look around now of age and see freshmen being taken advantage of in any combination of the ways I used to be and it’s something I have found too disgusting to bear. If I said it was that, though, would it make me the good guy? Because I wish it was that and I wish that I was some moral feature but at the end of the day, I drank illegally until a month ago and I’m not going to parties solely because I’m vain enough to think I’m too ugly for the whole occasion.

Have you ever noticed in the media that the hero is always beautiful? They’re angelic, or at least they don’t have to pay eight hundred dollars per year to remain blonde. I was an angel for Halloween: biblically accurate, three sets of wings, eyes tattooed all over my face, roots already coming in. I didn’t even straighten my hair. I wasn’t a pretty angel. I didn’t want to try. And not to make it all into too much of a tragicomedy, but I ate eight hundred calories a day the entire week before anyway, threw up each night from the sheer fear of being seen at my own party, at my own apartment, and still felt the need to do the damn thing, the damn thing namely being supplying alcohol to minors. So laugh with me. Scream to me over the bass boom in a dark room I don’t want to be in but can’t leave. Feed me a punch line and tell me it’s no wonder. Because it isn’t one.

Now instead of parties, I buy something strong and sit in the alley connecting my building to the liquor store on the perpendicular street. I sit there against the wall facing away from my bedroom and down it. Streetlights turn on, I numb and think, this is what’s real. This is the party. It’s huge. And I want to leave. And I don’t want to go home. I want to lay down here in this alley and ascend.

In Heaven, I am my former self, running through big nights and coming out: “I’m gay. I have something to tell you. I’m gay,” but everyone already knows. I haven’t been going to parties. Sometimes I think I hate them until I realize if I could be there, I would. For a while I tried to make excuses: I can’t! So much stress over homework, stress over the election, some sort of stress. Maybe it is stress. Maybe I’m jealous. Maybe I’ve just got a talent for drinking alone. Maybe I just want to stay in and write.

I say that like I do write drunk. I think of writing while I’m drunk in the way that deep down, some part of me is always thinking of writing, but I rarely actually write drunk. Honestly, I’ve barely written in months.

Chapter Two: The morning after the election, my mom called me an hour before class and told me he won and asked what was I going to do. I said I had school and then yoga, so probably that. I’ve been working on my thigh gap. Sometimes I like sitting in the hard school chairs, looking down at my legs and seeing progress.

“No, what are you going to do?”

I regret coming out to my mom. No I don’t. She voted blue, not that it changed anything. It is likely I’ll get drunk at Christmas and come out again, and she won’t cry and I won’t either but we’ll want to. She had an older daughter and younger daughter, now she has a younger daughter and a homosexual daughter. She called younger daughter her angel baby even before knowing the truth about me and sometimes I think of that and cackle.

Often, I pray to be straight. I only pray drunk. Maybe that’s why it hasn’t worked yet.

The morning after the election I went to class. The morning after, I did not. I woke up and saw my legs and decided I couldn’t bear for anyone else to see them. I applied for my passport in case I have to leave the country, sitting under a blanket in men’s sweatpants. I made green tea with two shots of whiskey and did one hundred squats: twenty in the kitchen, and, increasingly insecure of being walked in on, the last eighty in the bathroom, that narrow stretch between the shower and the door. I received an email about passport pictures and wondered how much face fat I could lose in a couple weeks. A groupchat rings. Someone wants to plan an open mic. They want the open mic to be political. Okay. I plan a political open mic. They want to make it a party. Okay. I haven’t been going to parties. I’ll plan a party. Okay. My friends say they need an excuse to get drunk. Okay. Okay.

Someone says to me that night, “You should speak about lesbianism. You should speak about the LGBT experience. You should give an address.” The second cohost is trans. I want to scream, Is this a joke? Ask her. Ask yourself. Ask anyone but me. I don’t want to be seen. Why do I always have to be seen?

I’m not the experience, or not any good version of it. I’m hardly living it. I ate six hundred calories per day the week leading up to this event. I threw up the whole night before. I took vodka shots in a mall bathroom a few hours ago just so I could stomach setup. But no, you’re right, I’ll fucking speak.

I decide not to drink until after I read, an act not for me but those watching warily–the “it’s good you’ve decided to do something outside your apartment” turns into “it's good that you’re practicing restraint.” Honestly, I could read drunk. I would probably read better drunk. I’d be less nervous at least, but still I force words out, stomach churning, voice shot, every word shit. Always the same shit, and everyone expects me to be funny so they chuckle in places while I’m standing there rupturing, bursting. Yeah, I know, with the wordplay. I’m fucking hilarious.

An hour later, the cycle: let it fill me up, pull trig and flush until I’m empty. I’m running the damn event so I have to stay. I dream about my alley, about sitting there wearing anything but this, doing anything but this, drinking anything but shitty Natty Lite. I'll be sent the videos of myself tomorrow, see my legs and stay inside all day.

Chapter Three: People are always saying “I like your poem.” Sometimes I think I should tell them it isn’t one. It’s creative nonfiction. Sometimes I peel those syllables through my teeth like a clementine wrapper and hurl them at the wall as I practice. Cre. A. Tive. Non. Fic. Tion. I don’t get offended though, in the moment, when people compliment me because a compliment is a compliment and I used to write poems anyway and I’m too drunk at that point to be clever–not drinking until after I read turns into grabbing a beer as I leave the stage–and besides, poem is such an easier word to say than “I liked your creative nonfiction.” “Your creative nonfiction was real pretty.” I wonder often, selfishly, if they listened to the whole thing or tuned out in the middle, because why else would anyone tell me it was fucking beautiful? Why haven’t I doubled over yet? I want to scream, You want it to be easy? Fine. Let’s make it easy. This piece was about politics.

I don’t care enough to care. That’s the whole thing, that’s the point, drink it down. You think I’m funny? You like this fucking poem? You think my words are nice? That’s all anyone’s ever telling me anyway.