The Wagon

Weimar Republic, Berlin, circa 1929

My friend Q has been creating a taxonomy of non-drinkers over at his site.  There are many reasons not to drink but none of them are as good as the lessons we learn from old Falstaff in Henry IV, especially Pt. 2.  I loved Falstaff when I read those plays in college.  I was not fond of Hal, especially when he became Henry.  Repudiation is an ugly thing.  But the physical woes are by far worse.  Why alcohol must be detrimental to one's mental and physical health is the cruel riddle of the cosmos, of course, for anyone who has enjoyed the heightened experiences of an evening imbibing with friends.  It is not the evening, though, but the accumulation of evenings.  It is the totality of them.  I have dated women who drink but who are not drinkers.  They enjoy a glass of wine or two, but by the time I've broken out the whiskey bottle, they are drinking water and preparing for bed.  Whiskey is harder on women than on men, as are most substances.  But everyone loves a hero and if you are inclined to drink heroically. . . etc.

I can't imagine that anyone wants to date a drunk.

So. . . to add to Q's taxonomy: Drinkers and Drunks.  Perhaps they are both subsets of the Alcoholic, but there are differences, I think.  I mean more than simply that one has to go to the meetings.

Either way, I am on Q's wagon with him just now having fallen off ever so slightly over Christmas, but it was only social.  The non-drinking is physical.  I have a couple other friends, too, who are giving up the sauce in order to recuperate, if recuperation is possible.  But it is the only way any of us see to really lose some weight.  We've all begun to get the drinker's apron and though we like drinking, we like some other things as much or more and those things are not as easy to achieve when your equator begins to look like the globe.

And, of course, the money I am saving. . . holy shit!  I won't even suggest to you what that is, but it is significant since I enjoy expensive things.  In a couple months, I'll be able to buy Q all those lenses he wants (but I'll probably be selfish and buy myself that digital Leica first).

Drinking is glamorous until it isn't, and there is nothing more annoying than a drunk.  Most of my friend's parents were.  It was, for me, a source of gross amusement (the pissing in closets and shitting of pants), but for them it was nothing less than trauma.

I love the "Thin Man" series of movies.  They are wonderfully full of drinking.  There is no better portrait of sophisticated drinking than what is presented in those movies.  Drinking can be a sophisticated thing, of course, but then even Noel Coward looked like shit in the end.

Q and I have both drunk enough for now.  You keep going.  You have a long way to go to catch up.  If you have drunk more, you definitely need to be going to the meetings.  There are fates worse than not drinking, of course.  The mirror tells us so.