Читать книгу Happy, Joyous & Free - Группа авторов - Страница 14

November 1953

One thing really distinguishes the alkie … and that is his sense of humor. It is a particular sense of humor, a nice sense of humor in which he himself is the source, the butt, and the main theme of the fun. He sustains himself—and alkies—with the anecdotes of his alcoholic insanity. He finds no shame in telling of the hidden bottle, and how he ran out of hiding places. Yes, it’s true. We all recall the desperate search for a new hideout, how we explored and exhausted the woodshed, the hydrangeas, the old coats at the back of the cupboard, the unsuspected privacy of the water meter, the cistern. We were so brilliant at times we figured we should have taken up chess; we knew so many moves. We’d trick ‘em by leaving the bottle in an obvious place this time, behind the settee or the couch, behind the books. Brilliant, until we were confronted with the damn thing.

More desperate, however, was hiding too cleverly; hiding it and forgetting where we put it. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could ask the members of the family about. And you couldn’t afford to look as if you were looking either. It was really a desperate business. No sport in the world carried so many hazards, anxieties, memory tests, pitfalls, rewards and failures as “Hunting the Bottle.” Remember how you’d plant a choice bottle of old low grade tawny in the bush, no cork, you were even afraid of the cork squeaking. Remember going to it like a homing pigeon in the morning and finding it fallen over ... drained! Sunday morning it was, too. The outlook was bleak … desperate … the eyes were hot, Mum was cold, your hands were trembling, Mum was solid … you were suicidal. But never forget finding the bottle; never was the reward of inner exultation so great. Remember how we’d grasp the bottle, trembling with cold hands, talk to it, almost sing a paean of praise … mumble … joy … a friend at last … the bottle … the gulp … the splutter … and how lovely when it was inside, giving a momentary glow of comfort—our only friend in the world. All this we can laugh at now, so comical it is … too rich for any stage.

We were the clowns in one of life’s greatest tragi-comedies. Together we take these things, of which we were once so ashamed, and we hold them against the shabby tapestry of our alcoholic lives, laughing almost hysterically at our insanity. But the beauty of all this … is that we laugh only at ourselves.

Not anyone else!

JIM

Sydney, Australia