The End: A Beginning

I have resolution, but first.

This is a look back on the beginning of the New Year.  This is the end of the trip with the girls. 

There was a night in Christchruch where I had to decide what to do.  Imagine.  

It is December 30^th.  Chester is in Gisborne with friends.  He has a return ticket for the second.  Simon and Anna will be ringing in the New Year with Anna’s family—the Sintenies—in Geraldine.  Marky is headed to Castle Hill with Jordy the Belgian flat-mate, the two of them.  And the girls are on their way to Wellington early tomorrow morning. 

What to do?  What to do?

And is there even a choice?  The logistics of getting to and from Gisborne hold too many variables.  That’s out.  I’m not invited to the Sintenie family New Year, and it would be weird if I was.  O.K.  I don’t particularly want to spend New Years by myself.  That’s out.  So this leaves Castle Hill and Wellington. 

Castle Hill would be easier.  It would be a shit-show.  Lonely.  Marky and I guzzling beer and liquor and yelling at the moon.  Jordy horrified and wondering what’s wrong.  Jordy hiding in the bushes.  Jordy wishing to disappear.  But will I regret the decision when the clock strikes 12 and the only lips available are the chapped smackers of Mark William Daniel?  Yes.

So?  So I go with the girls.  Book a return ticket.  Wellington to Picton on the five a.m. January 2^nd ferry.  I hope to hitch from there—from Picton—to Christchurch in a reasonable time frame.  To meet Chester and Carl at the flat.  Click Enter and the deal is done.  The ticket purchased.  The decision made.  O.K.

So.  On an hour of sleep I put petal to medal.  Speed north to Kaikoura in the early morning light of the last day of the year.  Through Kaikoura and the beach-batch memories.  Up the coast while the girls sleep in the glass-filtered light.

Then we are in Picton.  Then I am a stowaway on a ship bound North.  Stuffed into the crevice between the front and back seats of the Mazda.  Covered over with blankets and bags and boxes.  I am a stowaway on a ship bound north.  On the ferry from Picton to Wellington and north for the New Year.

Get in and get drunk.  The consensus.  But beers pounded on an empty stomach and an exhausted body lead to the land of nowhere good.  And I should know this.  But instead I reason that drinking now will save money later.  Instead I get swept away in the dramatic swig of sending off the old year.  Bottle after bottle, and I am thinking only of sweet lips at the end of the countdown.

So inevitably… 

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have in this corner the welterweight waste of one Nathan Bradford Dixon.  Knocked flat on his ass by any number of liquid opponents during his long and histrionic history in the Sop-sippers ring.  The sultan of slur.  The king of the glassy-eyed lip-sag.  Yes, Mr. Stumbles himself, ladies and gentlemen.  T.K.O’d more times then anyone would care to remember.  And destined tonight to once again lose in the mundane and much too often repeated battle of the bottle.

Well.  I’m over it.  And so is everyone else.

Wake up and argue on the first of the year.  This is not what I wanted.  But that’s not the point.  I didn’t mean for this to happen.  But that’s not the point.  This is not what I wanted.  But that’s not the point.  It happened, and that is the point.  That it happened.

I’m sorry.  I’m sorry first muttered.  I’m sorry first muttered and then said in earnest.  And then repeated throughout the day.  I’m sorry.  And I am.  I’m sorry.  And there is nothing I can do to make it better.  Sit and sit quiet in the living room.  In she shadow of the babysitter’s club.  Eva, Brittany, Caroline.  Sit-com re-runs on the television.  And there is nothing I can do to make it better.  Make promises that ring hollow in the aftermath of last night.  That ring hollow on the morning of the first day of the year.

It was an accident.

And the joke, the joke of the whole thing, is that I don’t feel any attachment at all to the alcohol.  I could drink none, or drink some, or drink a whole whole lot.  I don’t care.  I really don’t.  (I can hear the skeptics scoffing.  And that’s fine.  Because I have given them reason to scoff.  But the tables have turned so the corny cunts sing.  Yes the tables have turned, flipped, and burned)

And in this table-turning turn-around.  In this sprinkling of New Year spirit.  I have a resolution.

I have a resolution.  Not between myself and the girls.  But between myself and myself.  Between myself and the notorious Mr. Stumbles.  A resolution to eradicate this blithering fool.  To push him into the background of my life.  Into old memories where he and his doddering friends black-out together and sing songs in the hung-over mornings of glory.

When the desire is gone, why perpetuate the cycle?  The cycle remembered only by those who were there—by those who were there and who were not as fucked up.  Because who knows how many nights I have lost?  How many nights I have lost sight of through the fuzzy lenses of drunk goggles?  Through the fog of glazed eyes?  How many nights have I sunk to the bottom of the bottle and drowned myself in booze?  How many?

Teardrop.  Nights lost.  Teardrop.  Apologies rendered.  Teardrop.  And fuck.  I sound like a sorry case. 

Let’s put a stop to this dribble right here.  Right now.  But first let’s give each other hugs.  All of us.  Let’s give each other hugs and have a good cry.  Yes?  Let’s pack up the newly resolved alcoholic.  Off to AA after a New Years intervention.  Bye bye everybody.  Thanks for the love.  On the way.  And call it a day.  But forget it.

I am not done drinking.

I have crawled through the minefields of excess.  The minefields treacherous spread far and wide for every underage imbiber.  For every undergrad going off to college.  For every graduate wracked over decisions that must be made.

I have crawled through, and I have made it to the other side.  Sure there are the scars literal.  The scars figurative.  The debts paid to friends and family in apologies and IOUs.  The fines paid to police officers and clerks of court.  The nights spent in jail and the nights spent in the hospital.

And now I am over it.  And I am over it all. 

But don’t get me wrong, no, don’t get me wrong.

I am not above sipping on sweet alcohol.

No.  It is just this: that I tend to take things too far.  A fact.  And a fact that I cannot deny.  And a fact that I do not want to deny.  I tend to take things too far.  And the resolution is that alcohol will no longer be one of these things.  Why?  When the desire is not there, why?

So let me say this.  A new apology.  I am sorry.  I am sorry to all of you who still yearn for me to piss on your belongings.  I am sorry to all of you who wish to re-live the glory days of retching in Max Kirschling’s cul-de-sac.  I am sorry.  I am sorry to all of you who wanted a chance to lead me around by the hand when I am past the point of talking.  When I am past the point of no return.  I am sorry.

But I’m over it.

Plant the flag in the proverbial new-found paradise.  Because “a change is gonna come.”  Like Sam Cook always sang “a change is gonna come.”  And it already has.

Lift your bottles, boys and girls.  Your glasses, ladies and gentlemen.  Lift them up to the light.  Because: here is to alcohol.  A best friend one night, and a worst enemy the next.  Here is to alcohol and the belief that it doesn’t need to be abused.  Here is to alcohol.  A farewell to Mr. Stumbles in all his wretched forms.   And a breath of fresh air for the New Year.

Cheers.