Читать книгу Get Up - Bucky Sinister - Страница 13

On 16th Street in San Francisco there's a bar called The Kilowatt. This is where I drank on Sunday mornings with The Boys. We watched football and drank like men. Andy, the bartender, made me bourbon and Cokes in pint glasses. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. we watched the brutal ballet that is the National Football League. Outside, Rob grilled the meat, and we were all bonding.

Many were the Sunday afternoons when I'd bid farewell to The Boys and stagger off to the BART station to make my way home, to catch HBO's Sunday night lineup with a nightcap of bourbon. All in all, a good day indeed, spent drinking well over a quart of whiskey.

I thought that if I quit drinking I'd let everyone down. They'd miss me. The bar wouldn't be the same without One of the Boys, would it? I was the literary one of the bar. I imagined myself to be the Frasier of the 16th Street Cheers. I was the hard-drinking, underappreciated-in-his-own-time writer, whose published book had unfortunately been ahead of its time.

There was no way I could let them see me in the bar during football without a drink. It would be much like seeing Barry Bonds limp after a pop fly in his later years, or watching a boxer past his prime step into the ring, or listening to the Aerosmith album they did right after they quit doing cocaine. It wouldn't be right. Luckily for me, I got sober in February, as the Super Bowl was wrapping up the NFL postseason.

I approached the bartender, Andy.

“I'm thinking about getting sober,” I admitted.

“That's a great idea,” he said without hesitation. When your bartender really wants you to quit, it's time.

Further than that, if you don't know who the worst drunk is in your favorite bar, it's you. When you quit, someone else becomes the worst drunk in the bar. They've all been comparing themselves to you, saying, “At least I'm not that guy.” Quitting is threatening to them. Your drinking validates their drinking. You may know a lot of people who drink as much as you do; you also know a lot of other alcoholics.

For you drug types out there, if you don't know someone who hasn't tried cocaine, you're an addict. You've surrounded yourself with a social circle that thinks it's normal to do cocaine, even if it's a now-and-then situation. Most people in this country will never try cocaine or heroin. Most of them will never even have the opportunity. You've created this world for yourself with a reality to which you shouldn't compare yourself.

Drinking during the day, drinking whiskey in the morning didn't seem odd to me, since I knew plenty of other people who did it. Most people I knew did it, because I had created a world of problem drinkers around me. The people I knew drank every single day after work in the same bars.

That fall, I returned to The Kilowatt with about half a year sober. Andy poured me a root beer, and I handed him some poems I'd written since he'd seen me last.

“What are you reading,” one of The Boys asked.

“Some of Bucky's new shit,” Andy told him.

“Who's Bucky?”

“This guy,” Andy said.

He looked right at me. No recognition whatsoever.

“Nice to meet you,” he said.

It hit me. He didn't know me. I looked around the bar at the rest of The Boys. There was Panama Hat, Guy Who Drinks Corona With Lime, Redskins Fan With Ponytail . . . I didn't know these guys. They didn't know me. They weren't my friends at all. They were random jerks at the bar. And I was a more random jerk from off the street.