The Rules

I’ve decided to articulate The Rules. These are not rules for you, they’re rules for me to follow when dealing with an invitation to “Go for a drink.” What I should do is have these rules tattooed on the inside of my eyelids, but I doubt I could pull that together. So I’m gonna write them in the blog, maybe print them out, and review them as a guideline and a warning whenever I get that dreaded “Let’s have a drink after work” email. Here goes:

1. “Get a drink” means get drunk. Whatever they may say to the contraty, my friends like to drink, and I have no willpower. None whatsoever. And if I did, I have very little common sense to back it up. “Get a drink” means 15 drinks and a taxi ride home at 2 AM.

2. “Get a drink” means drinking for at least 3 hours. Not one second less. And it doesn’t mean have soda water, or drink a glass of water every second beer. It means drinking steadily for at least 3 hours no matter how it impacts other commitments.

3. If you “get a drink” it means you will not get home in time to make dinner, as you promised. If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to reach your boyfriend and apologize while offering to pick up takeout on the way home. But that nice dinner you promised to cook just won’t happen, and you won’t want to eat the takeout you pick up.

4. You can “get a drink” or you can do other things. But if you “get a drink” it will take up your entire evening. The whole evening. You will be useless for anything more involved than passing out in front of the TV, or maybe making a slurring apology to your boyfriend. And you’ll be lucky if you’re home before midnight to do that.

5. If you “get a drink” your entire next day will be shot. You will have difficulty getting out of bed, your mind will be fuzzy at work, you won’t be productive, and you’ll have baseless anxiety attacks until mid-afternoon when the desire to “get a drink” returns to replace the desire to “get a psych eval.”

6. If you “get a drink” then you will want more when you get home. This will involve picking some up, scrounging something nasty out of the back of the liquor cabinet, or the totally humiliating option of slurringly demanding the boyfriend walk to the store. Why will you be out? Because that’s how it works.

7. If you “get a drink” you will hate yourself. And not Princess-Di-bulimia-hate-yourself, but full-blown self-loathing like if Hitler had discovered he was a gay-jewish-communist-gypsy. A burning, searing hate that boils like hot bile out of the depths of your quaking stomach and percolates up to your brain to gnaw at the ends of your raw, exposed nerves. It’s not fun.

8. If you “get a drink” tonight, you’ll want to “get a drink” tomorrow night despite how awful today was. If you don’t “get a drink” tonight you’ll want to “get a drink” less tomorrow night. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is.

9. If you have to decide between staying home and throwing off a cold, or going out to “get a drink,” you should stay home. The cold will get worse, and you will probably have to stay home tomorrow, and maybe the next day as well. Your absenteeism has been gaining attention. That’s not the kind of attention you want.

10. If you “get a drink” you will suffer far more than your friends. For the most part, they are young and have functional livers. Or they are old and don’t have much to lose. You are in between: too old to be this stupid, too young for it to finish you off tonight. They will bitch and moan, but they will have fun without you. You can go home and save yourself. Do it, just this once.

And I could go on and on in that vein, but you get the idea. Wednesday was an entirely boring, typical night of having a few beers at CC’s and then the Full Circle, but it hit me hard. I promised to make dinner for Carlos, and didn't. I promised myself I'd rest and I didn't. I now have a cold, and had to take yesterday off. And no, I didn’t finish the story of New Years but it’s on its way.