The Absent Drinker

My foot was numb. The thunder was loud. I’d left my umbrella on the station platform and I was trying to organize my thoughts. Today I’d do it. I’d gather the addresses and send out copies of my book. You never knew. I certainly never did. For example I didn’t know what I wanted. This makes it hard to target an audience. Trying to do so was the crux of my problem, or was it? I’d never had that fixity of vision, that clear sense of how to proceed, toward which goal, by what date. I was a carthorse who couldn’t see the road ahead. I needed blinkers or I’d end up at the knacker’s yard. Forget Janus. My head was constantly turning 360º but the end result was an infinite short sightedness. I’d see everything briefly in sharp focus before losing sight of it. I could never settle long enough to make sense of what I was seeing. I admire renaissance abilities, Jack of Skill sets but without the focus of long sight those skills cannot be put to work. Focus, business acumen, marketing abilities, the ability to organize, all these stand higher up the ladder of my regard than mere vision or talent. I have the latter. So do tons of people I know. And, like me, they all too often lack the wherewithal to act on them.

So it was that I became an Absent Drinker. I wouldn’t go to a bar and I’d just sit there not drinking the drink I didn’t have. The drink would sit staring back at me, mocking me, untouchable because I wasn’t in my cups. Whilst the rest of me was at home cuddling on the sofa with my kids, chatting with my wife and playing Sorry, this extension of me served a remarkable function. He didn’t go for a drink, and did so with gusto. He didn’t emerge from the pub cussing at the Universe and wagging his fist at mocking youths. He didn’t shoot up and find himself lying in the gutter at three in the morning, or in a strange bedsit next to a woman equally damaged. He was the accumulation of repressed urges, suppressed desire, and like an earnest activist stood up for them, gave them a voice. He would lobby for their well being. He held things in a fragile tensity that kept the electricity in hope alive.

The Absent Drinker didn’t wake up the next morning and go for coffee. Only I did that. That was my drink. If the counter in the coffee shop shone I’d stare into the reflective surface and talk to him–ask how things were going. Crude as always the answer was always the same: Get off your fat arse and do something with your life. I was supposed to take it personally but never did instead persisting with my questions: Did I need money? Did I need help? Was there anything I could do? Then the reception would sour. The Absent Drinker wasn’t drinking again.

But today is a different day. Today I clean up my act. Heavy summer rains wash the senses. There are women everywhere wearing spotty Wellington boots. I’ll tidy up my mind and start fresh. I dry my hair with a paper towel in the men’s bathroom. I think about finding a twelve step program for my alter self. I look in the mirror and try to wipe the ego off my face. I’m staring at a morning after face, a hurried breakfast smeared all over it face. Poor fellow. I’ll get him into a detox or AA. We’d get him back on his feet. We’d deal his cravings for another absent drink one serious, mighty blow.

I was concerned of course as to how this would all affect me. Instead of relaxing in front of yet another old Hitchcock episode with my eldest would I find myself roaming the streets handing out literature on the nature of addiction, leaflets that engaged with despair? Honestly I didn’t know if I had it in me, had the gumption. Would I hit the drink albeit coffee? Would I drink more and more of the stuff just to keep me awake? My work would no doubt suffer. My wife would find herself staring at the red, red eyes of an alien being. But who knew? Maybe the Absent Drinker, his act cleaned up, would instead reach out his hand to me, help me back on my feet saying: Come on. Let’s go home and tie up some loose ends. Sorry if I was rude. When I don’t have a drink I get kind of cranky.