Silly Sally Fourth

On July 4 I saw two Polish men chase down another Polish man and throw him to the ground. Once on the ground this poor guy got, yes, repeatedly slapped in the face. Is this a sort of Polish martial arts? I watched in disbelief and wondered if I was really seeing what I was seeing. Then an old lady yelled out, "Hey, no fair! One is okay, two is too many!" referring to the two men slap-attacking the floored Pole. I quickly pulled myself away from this obscene display with cartoon question marks floating above my head.

Likewise, the rest of my fourth of July followed this pattern. I didn't do much that day: reading, puttering, wandering here and there, cooking, cleaning, unpacking from the recent move. AA meeting at 7 where I saw my sponsor's sponsor speak. Afterward I called up a pal I used to troll around with and we went to a party.

No big deal, I was well-armed with enough repulsion/fear/distaste toward drinking. I was confident with my giant bottle of Orangina. I get to this place and it's a new-fangled building in the middle of abandoned industrial-land, around 9pm. I notice the building is insanely huge and brand new, with about as much charm as a stack of shipping containers made into a multi-level wal mart. My pal buzzes me in and I go to the roof. Within about ten seconds I wanted to leave. Not only was there a jam band, but the jam band was playing ON TOP of Bob Marley. That marjiwanny-smell was everywhere. All these dudes wearing flip-flops and button down shirts were flirting with or making out with girls so hyper-feminized that they may as well have been transexuals.

I start gnam-gnaming on pretzels and chugging my sody, when my friend introduces me to some guy who is disgustingly inebriated. I do what I planned on doing when finding myself in this situation: I messed with him. "So, you're a rich kid, eh?" I said as I got in his face. My rationale behind this was that the guy would...well, I had no rationale; I was just being cocky and egotistical, flaunting my sobriety the same way douchebags flaunt their shiny automobiles. In the space of three seconds I went from feeling bored to angry, and I went downstairs to pee.

I spent the next TWO HOURS hanging out with my friend who said we're leaving in a minute, we're leaving in a minute, we're leaving soon. As sucky as I felt, it never occurred to me to just leave. Nobody would have cared, and I could have gone somewhere else less insane. Instead of stepping back and trying to do something, I just endured this horrific tableau; a cross between a dentist's waiting room with no magazines and the L train on Saturday night.

If you asked me five years ago, or even one year ago, what my idea of a great party would be, I would respond thusly: shitty garage punk bands playing in a disgusting warehouse in the ghetto, pounding 40 oz's and making out with girls who looked like the hipster grifter. It wouldn't have been awesome, but there was a time I would run the falicy of what historian E.P. Thompson calls "the enormous condescention of posterity." I would idealize such parties, neglecting the funlessness, puking, waste of cash, and general ass-making of myself. In other words, there probably was a time when that was the pinacle of fun, but that stopped being true years and years ago. Without AA I would be not unlike those unfortunate 40 year-old women who dress like it's 1987 because that's when they peaked.

Getting back to this time, I finally left the party and met up with my lady friend and drank some water at a bar (no big deal) and tried to forget the party; nothing terrible happened there, it was just boring. So I thought. I woke up the next day with what I can only describe as a "hate-hangover." I was in such a crappy mood so I called up a fellow alcoholic and said, "hey, what's this?" He said it's probably that I had resentment at the party animals and I didn't know how to properly diffuse it. How right that dude was! I owe him a fist bump when I see him.

AA suggests we avoid people, places, and things that are associated with our drinking. When I first heard this I thought, fair enough, don't go to any place or hang out with any people you used to drink with because you may wanna pick up a tipple. But musing on that, the reasoning behind this suggestion is more subtle: being around those places and people you may have a surge of emotion that you won't properly know how to handle. That was definately my case. Being tempted to drink wasn't an issue for me, since my belly was full of coffee (and the only beer left at that place was high life, which I always thought was revolting). The bigger issue was resentments, hate, etc., and not knowing how to properly express emotions like a grown up.

The moral of the story is, my friend as awful taste in people. Just kidding. The moral of the story is, getting cocky makes you think too much.