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I drink alone, yeah, with nobody else
I drink alone, yeah, with nobody else
Yeah, you know when I drink alone, I prefer to be by myself.
- George Thorogood.
I hate that song. I hate George Thorogood, too. His catalog is chock full of self-calls, he can’t really sing, and I’m pretty sure he spells his own last name incorrectly. But that song, the one about drinking alone, is especially awful. First of all, it’s redundant. Second of all, it sucks. Third of all, it’s redundant and it sucks. But most of all, it’s depressing.
I’ve always thought that drinking alone, with nobody else, by one’s self, represents the THUNK of hitting rock bottom. Like most opinions I have, this one was manufactured, packaged, and delivered to me by Hollywood. You know the movie scenes I’m talking about... when the guy is alone in his apartment getting drunk by himself while sitting on his La-Z-Boy and watching professional wrestling on television. You never watch these scenes and think, "Hey! Here’s a guy who’s got it all figured out! He’s doing all RIGHT!" Or at least you’re not supposed to.
This man’s solitary binge drinking has always been wrought by some horrible, life-altering event. Usually he’s depressed because:
A) His wife left him for a safari hunter
B) His wife died in a safari accident
C) His wife left him for a safari hunter, came back, then died of something totally unrelated to safaris, which is ironic because safaris are so inherently dangerous
D) The man he loves, a safari hunter, was recently eaten by a lion
E) All of the above
Number E, “All of the above,” is the reason The Ghost and the Darkness was so depressing (Editor’s Note: Adam clearly hasn’t seen this movie in a long, long time). It’s also the reason that Ernest Hemingway killed himself (Editor’s note: Actually, that might be kind of true).
George Thorogood never sang about getting drunk by himself, then killing a man-eating lion (at least, not that I know of), so in short, what the hell am I talking about?
Well, I’m talking about this: last night I went to a bar by myself and had a beer.
No big deal, right? Lots of people go to bars alone. But isn’t this the beginning of the lubricious descent toward alcoholism? If pot can be a gateway drug that leads to coke, meth, crack, you name it… then why can’t having one beer in a bar by one’s self be the gateway drink that leads to ALWAYS drinking alone, and ALWAYS having more than one beer, and ALWAYS falling off your bar stool as you lunge to grab the cocktail waitress’s ass?
Let’s face it – I’m not in college anymore. In college, there are no alcoholics. There are only those who “drink a lot,” and this is always a good thing (unless you’re a girl, in which case, you’re probably considered a slut). But once you leave the cocoon of an undergraduate campus, you’re no longer immune to alcoholism. Drinking everyday in college was what made you the opposite of a nerd, in other words – revered. Now drinking everyday is what makes you have a red nose full of potholes, a divorce, and a tab at O’Callahan’s that’s always getting paid next week.
To be fair to myself, this bar was not O’Callahan’s – it was The Stadium. O’Callahan’s, if it exists, which I’m sure it does somewhere in Southie, is probably the kind of dark, claustrophobic dive where the regulars all know the exact whereabouts of Whitey Bulger. The Stadium, on the other hand, is the kind of bar that keeps Best Buy in business. Flat screen televisions are everywhere and you can even play video Texas Hold ‘Em while perched on a bar stool.
I was only at The Stadium because I was returning a movie to Blockbuster (specifically, I was returning Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and picking up Pride and Prejudice, which may be the first time in the history of Blockbuster that this particular exchange has occurred), and I was listening to the Sox-Yankees game, and Ortiz was coming to the plate in the eighth inning representing the tying run, and I wanted to watch the final inning and a half. Also, a beer sounded pretty good.
So I sat on the far side of the bar, where I could watch both the Sox and the NHL Playoffs, and ordered a Magic Hat #9. Almost immediately, the guy sitting next to me, a bald guy with a huge beard, struck up a conversation.
“I don’t know much about hockey,” he said, “but why are they playing in late May?”
Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because through miraculous developments in technology, hockey can now be played “indoors,” and the ice can be frozen using “pipes,” and the building can be kept cool using “air conditioning.”
I explained this to the guy.
He looked away, stared at the Red Sox game, loudly informed the television that Jeter sucked, turned back to me, and said, “What are you? Canadian?”
“No. I’m from Maine.”
This was obviously the perfect occasion for the bald guy with the big beard to whip out his Tim Sample Maine accent, blessing me with an “Aye-YUH,” followed by a “You can’t get they-ah, from hee-ah.” Uttering these phrases, for future reference, is probably the best way to turn a Mainer into a serial killer. I’m sure native Bostonians feel the same way when they’re told to "Pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd," and I’m sure native Kazakhs feel the same way when they’re told (in a Borat-style accent) that their sister was voted by Almaty Chamber of Commerce as best sex in mouth.
A waitress, somewhere between the ages of sixteen and seventeen, wreaking of cigarettes, walked by and told me that the bald guy with a big beard would continue talking to me until I moved. I knew this. But I wanted to watch the hockey game. Probably because I’m Canadian.
Eventually Dustin Mohr struck out to end the Red Sox game, my beer was gone, and it was time to leave The Stadium. The bald guy with a big beard was probably disappointed. In me he must have seen someone who, like him, enjoyed drinking alone, which oxymoronically, made us comrades of a sort. He probably thought I was the kind of guy, even if I was from a far-off state that may or may not be a part of Nova Scotia, that would want to share a twelve-pack and listen to some old George Thorogood cassettes.
Well, not me, pal. I’m a one-beer guy.
And I HATE George Thorogood.
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