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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Life Experience
- Published: 07/26/2024
I never understood people’s passion for alcohol until I went to college. The sensation of getting drunk or the pleasure of savoring a fine glass of wine was foreign to me. My only reference for alcohol was the stench of my father Malvin stumbling home late at night after hanging out with his pals. The smell was revolting, like a bowl of cereal left to ferment in the basement for an entire week.
How could anyone possibly love alcohol? That, I failed to comprehend.
If there was anything I hated more than the smell, it was someone roaring drunk. I knew many acquaintances who had been brutally beaten by the alcoholics in their families. Fortunately, Malvin, though he would beat me too, never caused me critical injury since he wasn’t really an alcoholic. In fact, most of the violence happened when he was sober. What terrified me the most was how different and abnormal he became once he got drunk. He could be called a decent man at other times, with a decent job, a decent social status, and a decent understanding of manners. However, things changed once alcohol got the upper hand.
First, you should be grateful if he could still find the right door, as he had a history of knocking on the door on the fourth floor for half an hour, scaring the hell out of the people inside, while he actually lived on the seventh. If he managed to get into the right apartment, the neighbors could breathe a sigh of relief, while I had to be on high alert. I’d either sneak into my room and lock the door or sneak out of the house entirely. Otherwise, he’d be grabbing my arms, slurring, “Your mama doesn’t love me no more. What now?” It should have sounded tearful when a tough man cried that out, except my mother Rojo was often standing just feet away, watching him, after calling all his colleagues she knew to check whether he was alright.
I’d say, “You’d better go and talk to her yourself.”
He’d be furious then. “Oh, so now you're talkin' back, scumbag? Is this how ya show respect? You little…”
By this time, Rojo would join him in lecturing me. Fine, after I’d seen him destroy the wooden shelf with his bare fists and had cleaned up his vomit, I became the one whom their union was against.
I found no point in sorting these things out. To sneak in or to sneak out, that should not be a question. I’d take either, for a peaceful, tranquil night.
Since junior high, I had been living at the school dorm, just as I had wished to. Thanks to this, I almost had not smelt a scent of alcohol during the following six years, until I enter college.
It wasn’t that my new roommates or acquaintances were alcoholics. It was just that I took a part-time job at a bar. To serve cocktails, one had to understand them. Upon turning twenty-one, I underwent training in wine tasting, liquor sampling, and cocktail mixing. Strangely, despite this thorough training and my lack of any personal drinking experience, I never felt tipsy or drunk. This peculiarity made me curious about the experience of intoxication, though I remained reluctant to pursue it. But training is training; there was little time to ponder anything beyond the flavors. Speaking of which, they weren’t bad at all.
“What do you find in this?” asked my mentor, holding out a glass.
“A hint of floral fruitiness, fairly sweet. Quite good,” I replied.
“Of course it’s good,” he said, clearly dissatisfied with my general observation. “It’s Glenlivet 12, Hart. I don’t need you to tell me it’s good.”
This sort of exchange happened a lot at first. Then seemingly, I began to hone my skills and found myself actually enjoying the taste of alcohol. I started to fancy myself a bit of a professional.
How had I missed out on such fine wines before? That, I failed to comprehend.
The truth was, I was far from a connoisseur. My satisfactory answers were merely the result of memorizing the descriptions of various bottles. And when I forgot this fact, things began to go wrong.
There were these pals I met during my early college years coming from another town, and we went to the bar. I was confident. I thought, I even knew how to do the bartender’s job, forgetting that I just passed that tasting test and had not had the experience of being a real bartender.
I approached the bar and said, “A glass of Jameson, please.”
“On the rocks?” the bartender asked without looking up.
You’d never guess my response. I said, “No, in the glass.”
He was momentarily confused, perhaps questioning whether I was underage. “Kid, I meant with ice or without.”
“Oh, with ice, please.”
“Alright, so on the rocks.”
“No, in the glass.”
By then, he must have been questioning my sanity rather than my age.
Nevertheless, he took our orders. After a few drinks, we decided to take a bottle back to the campus to continue the festivities.
That was all while I was still lucid. The rest, I pieced together from the video clip my friends took. After returning to campus, we sneaked into the basement, played cards, and drank. Whether it was a setup prank or not, my memory went blank halfway through the night. The next thing I knew, sunlight was shining on my eyelids, and I was lying on the basement floor.
My friends, sitting nearby, showed me the footage from the night before.
Goodness, what a scene!
I kept losing at cards and ended up drinking roughly 60 cl of the 75. When I reached the bottom of the bottle, I stood up to get some air. I immediately stumbled, fell, and started rolling on the floor. The remaining four, having only drunk a total of 10 cl, tried to help me up. But I was like a bomb exploding with chaos. Their mission to help me failed, and the casualties were severe: two took punches to the nose, one was attacked by my vomit, and the guy recording had his lens swatted away.
The sound of my vomiting was something I never imagined I could produce—a noise akin to a decrepit engine running out of oil.
“Holy, that looked like Malvin.” I thought, frightened.
I was grateful to my friends for not selling my kidneys during my unconscious state and thankful to my liver for surviving the ordeal.
Frankly, the experience was terrible—not so much while I was drunk, but during the hangover. I was awake enough to feel the splitting headache and my churning stomach, but nothing would come up. Unable to sleep due to the discomfort, I had to endure the hangover fully conscious. It was a relentless cycle of misery.
Drinking and Me(Hartwell Y.)
I never understood people’s passion for alcohol until I went to college. The sensation of getting drunk or the pleasure of savoring a fine glass of wine was foreign to me. My only reference for alcohol was the stench of my father Malvin stumbling home late at night after hanging out with his pals. The smell was revolting, like a bowl of cereal left to ferment in the basement for an entire week.
How could anyone possibly love alcohol? That, I failed to comprehend.
If there was anything I hated more than the smell, it was someone roaring drunk. I knew many acquaintances who had been brutally beaten by the alcoholics in their families. Fortunately, Malvin, though he would beat me too, never caused me critical injury since he wasn’t really an alcoholic. In fact, most of the violence happened when he was sober. What terrified me the most was how different and abnormal he became once he got drunk. He could be called a decent man at other times, with a decent job, a decent social status, and a decent understanding of manners. However, things changed once alcohol got the upper hand.
First, you should be grateful if he could still find the right door, as he had a history of knocking on the door on the fourth floor for half an hour, scaring the hell out of the people inside, while he actually lived on the seventh. If he managed to get into the right apartment, the neighbors could breathe a sigh of relief, while I had to be on high alert. I’d either sneak into my room and lock the door or sneak out of the house entirely. Otherwise, he’d be grabbing my arms, slurring, “Your mama doesn’t love me no more. What now?” It should have sounded tearful when a tough man cried that out, except my mother Rojo was often standing just feet away, watching him, after calling all his colleagues she knew to check whether he was alright.
I’d say, “You’d better go and talk to her yourself.”
He’d be furious then. “Oh, so now you're talkin' back, scumbag? Is this how ya show respect? You little…”
By this time, Rojo would join him in lecturing me. Fine, after I’d seen him destroy the wooden shelf with his bare fists and had cleaned up his vomit, I became the one whom their union was against.
I found no point in sorting these things out. To sneak in or to sneak out, that should not be a question. I’d take either, for a peaceful, tranquil night.
Since junior high, I had been living at the school dorm, just as I had wished to. Thanks to this, I almost had not smelt a scent of alcohol during the following six years, until I enter college.
It wasn’t that my new roommates or acquaintances were alcoholics. It was just that I took a part-time job at a bar. To serve cocktails, one had to understand them. Upon turning twenty-one, I underwent training in wine tasting, liquor sampling, and cocktail mixing. Strangely, despite this thorough training and my lack of any personal drinking experience, I never felt tipsy or drunk. This peculiarity made me curious about the experience of intoxication, though I remained reluctant to pursue it. But training is training; there was little time to ponder anything beyond the flavors. Speaking of which, they weren’t bad at all.
“What do you find in this?” asked my mentor, holding out a glass.
“A hint of floral fruitiness, fairly sweet. Quite good,” I replied.
“Of course it’s good,” he said, clearly dissatisfied with my general observation. “It’s Glenlivet 12, Hart. I don’t need you to tell me it’s good.”
This sort of exchange happened a lot at first. Then seemingly, I began to hone my skills and found myself actually enjoying the taste of alcohol. I started to fancy myself a bit of a professional.
How had I missed out on such fine wines before? That, I failed to comprehend.
The truth was, I was far from a connoisseur. My satisfactory answers were merely the result of memorizing the descriptions of various bottles. And when I forgot this fact, things began to go wrong.
There were these pals I met during my early college years coming from another town, and we went to the bar. I was confident. I thought, I even knew how to do the bartender’s job, forgetting that I just passed that tasting test and had not had the experience of being a real bartender.
I approached the bar and said, “A glass of Jameson, please.”
“On the rocks?” the bartender asked without looking up.
You’d never guess my response. I said, “No, in the glass.”
He was momentarily confused, perhaps questioning whether I was underage. “Kid, I meant with ice or without.”
“Oh, with ice, please.”
“Alright, so on the rocks.”
“No, in the glass.”
By then, he must have been questioning my sanity rather than my age.
Nevertheless, he took our orders. After a few drinks, we decided to take a bottle back to the campus to continue the festivities.
That was all while I was still lucid. The rest, I pieced together from the video clip my friends took. After returning to campus, we sneaked into the basement, played cards, and drank. Whether it was a setup prank or not, my memory went blank halfway through the night. The next thing I knew, sunlight was shining on my eyelids, and I was lying on the basement floor.
My friends, sitting nearby, showed me the footage from the night before.
Goodness, what a scene!
I kept losing at cards and ended up drinking roughly 60 cl of the 75. When I reached the bottom of the bottle, I stood up to get some air. I immediately stumbled, fell, and started rolling on the floor. The remaining four, having only drunk a total of 10 cl, tried to help me up. But I was like a bomb exploding with chaos. Their mission to help me failed, and the casualties were severe: two took punches to the nose, one was attacked by my vomit, and the guy recording had his lens swatted away.
The sound of my vomiting was something I never imagined I could produce—a noise akin to a decrepit engine running out of oil.
“Holy, that looked like Malvin.” I thought, frightened.
I was grateful to my friends for not selling my kidneys during my unconscious state and thankful to my liver for surviving the ordeal.
Frankly, the experience was terrible—not so much while I was drunk, but during the hangover. I was awake enough to feel the splitting headache and my churning stomach, but nothing would come up. Unable to sleep due to the discomfort, I had to endure the hangover fully conscious. It was a relentless cycle of misery.
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Denise Arnault
07/31/2024Those sneaky bums! I'm thinking definitely setup. At least you gave them their due. Also, good that you did not seem to fall into the same hole your dad did!
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