MORE TO FOLLOW. STAY TUNED. History of my Alcoholism:

Probably not interesting, I KNOW. Maybe just for me?

I really did not drink a lot as a young person. I remember what may have been the first time I ever got 'drunk', or 'buzzed', or at least it is the first time I was in trouble for drinking too much.

I must have been about 8 or 9 years old, and went to go visit a friend of my mother's for Thanksgiving. (The Ruining of Thanksgiving Theme is a common one in the history of my (and everyone else's?) drinking) As I said, I was 8 or 9 years old, I forget which, but the point is I was not an experienced drinker. I think my mother's friend, or perhaps my mother herself thought it would be cute to have me take part in the toast before or after or during dinner. My mother typically treated me like an adult (at least until I turned 18, at which point she began to treat me like a child), openly discussing such topics as Hunger Strikes, Abortion, Henry Miller, Cinema, fine literature and high art... There was no topic too sensitive or 'adult' to discuss in the car on the way to my piano or swimming lessons. Apparently, by this Thanksgiving in 1978 or 19789, it was time for me to be introduced to the concept of 'A Few Drinks With Dinner'.

I remember very little of the occasion, but I have been reminded dozens of times by my mother of how I 'Embarrassed the shit out of her' when I tried to run through a closed sliding glass door. To be honest, I think she is making it up, or confusing this with another time several years later (during a different Thanksgiving) when I tried, successfully, to run through a closed sliding glass door. YES!, but it was on PURPOSE and not accidentally, I SWEAR TO GOD. Alcohol May Have Played Part In Incident. (Or, AMHPPII, for short. This will be another recurring theme in my drinking life) At any rate, during this Thanksgiving in 1978 (or 1979) I *do* remember feeling very grown up while being served several glasses of Champagne (I believe it was a cheap Asti Brut or Cold Duck, far beneath me, but satisfying at the time) and then talking to someone for a very long time about one of the romantic conquests in my third grade class, STAYCE I believe her name was, the tramp, and I had much to say on the subject - much to the delight of my audience as I recall - who kept my glass full of bubbly every time I would mention my broken heart or how this little hussy would no longer return my phone calls. My glass was filled often enough.

I do not think a sliding glass door was involved during this first drunk, but I may have knocked a baked good on the floor, and then doubled over laughing as the hostess tried to quickly scrape it back onto it's serving platter and back on the table before anyone noticed.

My mother and I had driven four hours to Portland for this Thanksgiving Event, and let me tell you : it was a long drive home. I DO remember that. I remember being accused at that very time of ramming the sliding glass door with my head, which I denied vigorously, and then asked repeatedly how many glasses of champagne I had drank.

"I don't know. Seven? You're my mother, WHERE WERE YOU?" I quizzed the driver of our vessel home.

"WHAT?!" she screamed " Don't make me pull this car over. I'LL SLAP THE SHIT OUT OF YOU RIGHT NOW!" my mother continued "Are you drunk!!?!"

"I don't believe so" I hiccuped and began to fiddle with the wing window mechanism in the ancient Jaguar we were ensconced inside at the time, while my mother began to tap on the speedometer with a forefinger in an attempt to get it to register again. After a moment:

"Stop fucking with that window! ARE YOU DRUNK??!" she asked, for the fifteenth time in twelve miles.

"Bwaaah!" I bellowed, fidgeting even more furiously with the wing window mechanism "MyaaaaarhhhhhhhHH!! Bwah! PPPHHHHHHlllPH!" I chided her.

The car was immediately pulled over. Her hand and my face flashed slowly, strobed in the green light cast from the blinker indicator on the dashboard as sharp smacking sounds ensued, followed by three hours of complete silence except for my muted weeping. (This will be a common theme as well, to be copied by a series of other women over the years)

I was in trouble. I was grounded, or on restriction or something, for a while, and the event passed into history/memory as Christmas approached. New Year's shortly to follow. I was served, secretly, during these occasions.

Not too many years later, I turned eleven and was off of drinking altogether. 'Fuck it!' I thought, 'I have homework to do.'

Ah, yes. Homework To Do. Those Were The Days.

Years passed. We moved to a tiny Hippy town outside of Eugene Oregon, and at thirteen I was FORCED to smoke MARIJUANA by a gaggle of seniors at the local high school, who were entertained apparently by my following behavior enough to make it a habit. "I'm going to go play football!" I would call out to my parents as a decrepit 1970 Chevy Nova would pull up outside our country home, deep threatening idle shaking the panes of glass in our dining area facing the street. I would act enthusiastic while secretly dreading getting in the car as I bounded down the stairs and out the front door - and into the back seat of the car - where I would be FORCED to smoke MARIJUANA or take PILLS of which pedigree I had no concept. We would drive up some forgotten road into the forest, guns would be fired into the air, I would be teased and tormented ("We're going to KILL YOU!!!" was a frequent threat) and made to cry or dance or do some other humiliating act. This was 1983. I would then be deposited back onto the lawn of my parent's Country Home as it was getting dark, hunched over and laughing, eyes red and watery, and as I would try to stand upright and as the front door opened by some parent or other, the Nova would screech violently back onto the country lane, tires spinning, a white cloud of burning rubber hanging thick in the air.

Well, that time too slid into history. The good news is I was off of liquor. The bad news is that I was being secretly fed blotter acid as it was cheap entertainment for the high school seniors in the Nova. Another year or two passed, and then! :

Jason arrived in Lorane, Oregon.

We were... fourteen at the time? Before Sophomore year in high school, shortly after we met we both turned fifteen. I think.

I met Jason, who was obviously insane even at the time, at the end of a Summer
Vacation. My arm was in a cast as I had just had a motorcycle accident a few weeks earlier while with my high school seniors, who had abandoned me on some distant logging access road broken and bleeding. I met Jason weeks later while I was in a neighbor's above-ground swimming pool, keeping my cast elevated and in a plastic bag, and we immediately began to speak in code:

Jason : "Cast"

ME : "Yes. Tostada!"

Jason: "Reuben. Toolbox."

ME: (Laughing, getting it) "Combo Burrito!!!"

Jason: (Now laughing as well, finally echoed) "My throat feels funny. I'm in trouble. I should go to Bi-Mart"

Then we both laughed really hard for fifteen minutes, and then he took a shit in a plastic bag and put it on the neighbor's doorstep accompanied by a rose he picked off of their own bush. We have been best friends ever since.

We were sober together for - a year? - or so. But, by Junior year? I would beg him to steal his father's whiskey and bring it to school. Jason happily obliged. He would get off of his bus (we had to ride different buses usually for the 18-mile trip to school. ) and shuffle over to where I was waiting, and produce a jelly jar full of the tea-brown liquid, hidden under his trench coat. We would stroll back behind the school near the dumpsters and divvy up, drinking, chatting about how our respective parents knew nothing, about what girls were cute, about what teachers were AWFUL. By the time the first bell rang, we were wasted. We would go to our separate classes (By this time our teachers had us permanently separated, our combination too much for them to handle) and weave and bob in our desks, me in the front row loud and defiant , Jason in the back row of some other classroom trying to become invisible. When called upon, he would invariably use the words 'Fuck' or 'Shit' or 'Asshole' so to guarantee a trip to the Principal's Office and maybe earn him an expulsion if he were really lucky.

High School passed.


College! Beer Bongs, Liquor, stolen this-or-that - RIGHT? Right. WRONG. I had shit to do. Shit to do = Draw pictures of the back of girl's heads from my various classes. Write stories about who did not like me. I had shit to do. I had to sleep in. I was NOT drinking though! I was only nineteen or twenty years old.

Other shit happened. Check my other shit for details.

I turned twenty-one one day though! Bar-aged! YES!

My father showed up, as did my new friend the Jew, Edward Fine. His friend too, the pervert, someone-somebody. I got drunk at a bar with MY DAD and these other people. It was timid.

After I turned twenty-one, I had NO INTEREST in going out to bars or drinking, now that it was legal. A few more years passed in which alcohol was not really present in my life, there were no incidents in which it may have played a part.