XII.
at court with Justin
So suggestive, how he softly touched the small of my back with his fingertips, urging me gently down the line to pay my court fees and pick up my referral to the Safety Education Center. He seemed impressed that I had enough money to pay the entire fine at once; everyone else was barely able to scrape up the minimum down payment and had to haggle with the public employee over a monthly payment schedule. He didn’t know it was just a lucky coincidence I got my student aid check a couple weeks back.
As we waited in line, I asked him if it it’d be okay that I call him from time to time to do research on the character modeled after him for my story (this story). He smiled, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Yeah, sure. Anytime. Absolutely!”
It was not much earlier, when we were sitting on the bench waiting for the judge, that in hushed tones he told me he’ll be going to Amsterdam this summer with that good buddy he talks to almost every day. “Amsterdam for one week, then we’ll drive down to France for a week of wine tasting. My dad doesn’t know about the Amsterdam part of the trip,” he said, his father a reference to that legal giant whose shadow poor Justin will never step from under. “My dad thinks we’ll be in France the whole two weeks.” He gave me a sly smile, leaned a little closer, and said, “But I knew I could tell you about Amsterdam because in that draft you gave me I read about your own fungi adventure in the Netherlands.”
Cute young lawyer. Sagittarius. I wonder what his rising sign is.
XIII.
Note to self: don’t drunk-dial your lawyer on a Friday night or any other time ever again, you idiot.
XIV.
Wednesday
This not-drinking thing isn’t as fun as they make it look on the commercials.
Maybe instead of quitting cold turkey, I’ll start slowly: every Thursday could be alcohol-free, and then once I get used to that, every Tuesday and Thursday, and so on until I turn into a downright teetotaler.
XV.
Thursday
Groceries
- Cat food
- Patrón
- Tampons
- Ruffino
- Weight Watchers
XVI.
XVII.
Telephone call with Justin re: background data for this story
In comparison to many cases out there, yours is a pretty tame story, Allie; a typical first-offense DUI. BEAT One thing I’ll say about your case that is a bit different is that you’re a fine, upstanding citizen of this community. You’re smart, well-educated. A professional. I tell you, eighty to ninety percent of the clients I’ve handled aren’t professionals, so in this way, you are unique. BEAT Another thing about you that stands out in my mind is your high BAC on the day of your arrest. Your condition is more serious: you were a few levels above most the cases I’ve handled. BEAT Not the highest, though. This guy, uh, my former client, blew a .33. When I took his statement, you know, when I had him write his narrative just like I had you do, he wrote that he blacked out the whole afternoon, didn’t remember getting pulled over, didn’t remember the arrest. He actually wrote that he had the “shit knocked out of him” when he woke up at three-thirty in the morning and found himself in jail, had no idea why or how he got there. BEAT Okay, and you don’t stand out as a client so much as in that I can think of several cases much worse. BEAT As far as the DUI, this wasn’t my client but my buddy’s, the one I told you about. He handled the case where the guy had five outstanding DUI cases. He just kept evading, didn’t show up to court, didn’t pay his fines or go to AA or alcohol classes before they finally found him hiding out at a relative’s house and arrested him. BEAT That’s an automatic felony and he went away to federal—not state—prison for a few years. BEAT I saw a child molestation case once. A couple spousal abuse cases. Then there were a few theft and drug cases. Those guys were all a bunch of weirdos. BEAT There’s this one case, back when I was a public defender, I had to defend a guy accused of stabbing his dog. BEAT It was real sick. BEAT He swore he didn’t do it, but I think he did. He was a real creepy, low-life kind of guy, and I just had the strongest feeling. I just—you know, I’m still to this day convinced he stabbed his own dog.
XVIII.
This afternoon, as I swung a leg over my old purple bicycle, Grant called, “Let me know what direction you’re headed on your bike in case you disappear, and I have to talk to your family and the cops. I can, if not care, at least pretend to.”
He wants me to keep drinking, doesn’t care about my failing kidney (its failed twin removed years ago), doesn’t care as long as I don’t embarrass him or lose my job. He wants me to keep drinking so I stay below his level, so he can keep me here.
Today, when I returned home, Grant greeted me with a bottle of Ruffino, my favorite (affordable) Chianti and a twelve-pack bottle of Bohemia. He said, “I think it’s best you drink the less-alcoholic liquors instead” (instead of the shots of Patrón, I guess).
I said “I think you’re just trying to fatten me up. You know I’ll drink until I’m drunk anyway and you want to keep me at your level.”
He smiled and said “Okay, you got me. You’re right.” I wish I could believe he was joking.
XIX.
XX.
XXI.
XXII.
AA
30-day sobriety chip
If I can do 30 days, I can do 60
If I can do 60 days, I can do 90
If I can do 90 days…
XXIII.
One noon at an AA share, I told the crowded room that my family is not supporting my sobriety, that my husband and my lunatic father are both overgrown kids who want me as a drinking buddy, that my husband thinks I just need to get a grip and train myself to drink less.
I told them that when I was a kid, Judy Arlington convinced me I was going to burn in Hell for eternity because I wasn’t baptized and my parents were atheists. She and her family took me in as a part-time foster child, thinking they’d save my soul by bringing me to church with them every Sunday, get me to believe in something. However, the preacher said God put animals on Earth for Adam and Eve, but in school we learned of evidence called dinosaur bones, which clearly challenges the notion that man was on the planet before animals were.
What I didn’t share was that Judy decided on nights I stayed at her house that she would baptize me in the bathtub. She’d have me lie on my back, hair floating in the water, and she’d pour cups of water over my forehead while chanting some children’s prayer half-remembered from Sunday school. I did not tell the sea of staring faces that after our baths, we pre-pubescent girls would lick and suckle each other down there “as long as we’re already clean and all,” Judy would justify.
XXIV.
God grant me
the serenity to accept
what cannot be changed,
the courage to change
what should be, and
the wisdom to know the difference
XXV.
Why do I seem incapable of believing in God?
***
For all installments of “Self-Destruction,” click here.
Previous installments:
Ikhnaton Skypeople writes experimental work that is too gritty to publish under her own name. She has a conservative job and her public profile is watched closely. She would be much more successful, financially and socially, if she would instead write the boring peer-reviewed publications expected of a fledgling academic like herself. However, she decided she’d rather write what she wants, rather than what they want her to. So she chooses obscurity, to write under an assumed name, to hide her true identity. Her work has also been published in Red Fez.
