Given I’m living overseas at the moment, I wasn’t aware it was Dry July until I read Richard Glover’s SMH opinion piece, but the only reason I read the piece in the first place is because my friend Natalie and I are trying to dry up our livers at the moment too.
This seems particularly ridiculous since I live in a mostly dry country (Bangladesh), where buying liquor is expensive, difficult, and in Chittagong, near impossible on a volunteer’s allowance. You’d think all this means I’d have no need to dry out.
But, no. It seems that by living in a constant state of alcohol scarcity, the minute I can get on the sauce, I get that glint in my eye. You know the one. It starts right around lunch time and by the afternoon it’s well on to sparkling. It’s the kind of glint that says ‘I was never any good at maths anyway, so why bother counting?’
It’s also the kind of glint that had me scraping my head off the pillow after three hours sleep on a school night, and dragging my sorry arse into the office where I spent eight hours dreaming up escapes. Leaping out the window from the 13th floor was seriously starting to look like a more appealing alternative to my 2 o’clock meeting.
That was last week, and since then I am pleased to report I’ve stayed very much on the wagon. In celebration of my (temporary) sobriety, I watched The Lost Weekend, a 1945 film about an alcoholic on a bender praised by movie critics, for very good reason it turns out. The script is superb.
As I watched Don explain between shots of rye whiskey why it is he drinks, however, I squirmed.
It shrinks my liver, doesn't it, Nat? It pickles my kidneys, yeah. But what it does to the mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly I'm above the ordinary. I'm competent. I'm walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. I'm one of the great ones. I'm Michaelangelo, molding the beard of Moses. I'm Van Gogh painting pure sunlight. I'm Horowitz, playing the Emperor Concerto. I'm John Barrymore before movies got him by the throat. I'm Jesse James and his two brothers, all three of them. I'm W. Shakespeare. And out there it's not Third Avenue any longer, it's the Nile. Nat, it's the Nile and down it moves the barge of Cleopatra.
While I am no alcoholic, and I personally wouldn't go quite this far, I do know what he's getting at. It’s the very reason why I suspect when I reach the end of my self-enforced sobriety, I’m likely to attempt a reenactment of my very own Lost Weekend.
In an effort to stave off the inevitable, I’m not only banning the booze, but also all things that Make Me Want. Top of the list are: anything by Hunter S Thompson, The Dresden Dolls, Tom Waits, Arab Strap, Fat Freddy’s Drop, Amy Whinehouse, Friday afternoons with friends, hmmm… but 'these are a few of my favourite things…'
1 comment:
Fishing for a good time starts with throwing in your line LJ. Would like to add a little Irish to my coffee...at 9:11am.
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