has a convenient scapegoat. I was full of excuses and rationalizations, but the truth is, I think, that I didn't like being sober because I didn't like being trapped in my own head. I still don't, really. I still feel like I'd like to lose myself in something."
"Lose yourself in what?"
"I don't know. I'm not sure I ever figured that out," he says. "I suppose I was trying to avoid the loneliness. I've never been good at being alone. I'm still not good at it."
"Right. I feel the same way. I get cagey, but not like I've got to get out somewhere. It's more of an internal thing, like I want to get away from myself."
"Exactly," he says.
"But you were with someone. You weren't alone. You had Kelly."
"I guess," he says. "But what about you? You have someone too."
"Yeah, but he works a lot, and lately he's not been around at all. But, anyway, we weren't talking about me."
"Yeah, well, Kelly and I had a strange relationship. It was sexual, yes, but I wouldn't call it particularly intimate. We weren't sharing tender moments together. There wasn't too much romance, at least not in the way you might expect from a traditional relationship. We were always more like drinking buddies with benefits."
"But you loved her?"
"Honestly, I don't know. I suppose I did in the way that you love someone whom you depend on, someone that is in your life everyday. It was more of a habitual thing. She was always there, and I grew accustomed to her."
"You grew accustomed to her?"
"That sounds terrible, doesn't it?"
"Yeah, it does. I wonder how she'd feel if she heard you say that?"
"Not good, I'm sure."
"I wouldn't think so," she says.
He looks down at her hands. She's got one hand wrapped up tight around the other, and it's difficult to tell if she's shaking. But she certainly doesn't look like she's struggling. She's not sweating, or shivering, and she hasn't commented about her desire to drink since right after she arrived.
"So, you decided to get sober?"
"Well, not overnight. Things went on about the same way for about five years after graduation. My family was concerned. Her family was concerned. Old friends had sat us both down—together and separately—to tell us that we had a problem, that something had to be done or we weren't going to live to see thirty.
"Some of this probably sounds familiar if you—"
"Oh, it's familiar," she says.
"Well, late last year, everything changed when Kelly told me she was pregnant."
"No."
"Yeah. I immediately realized that everything had to change, and fast. It wasn't as if our drinking could stop gradually, that we could just scale back our lifestyle a little bit at a time. That baby, I knew, would never survive, or at the very least, would never be healthy if we continued drinking the way we were.
"So, I told Kelly that we had to stop, that I would stop with her, that we would help each other stop, and, if necessary, we would go to meetings. At that point, going to a meeting, even saying that I might, was a sheer absurdity.
"But I went around the apartment and emptied every spare bottle I could find. I dumped all the alcohol we had down the sink. Mind you, there wasn't much. It's not as if we were leaving a lot of liquor behind in those bottles. We were routinely running out of the stuff. Still, I got rid of all we had. Except one bottle. The last bottle. I left some gin that was at the bottom of one bottle and hid it at the back of the toilet tank.
"I know, it's pathetic. Worse, I didn't even know until after I read the Big Book how common a hiding spot that was."
"It's a good spot. It keeps stuff cold."
"So, you're familiar?"
"I'm familiar."
"Well, anyway, I went to work that day, and everyday after, determined not to drink. But I started sneaking around, tipping a small bottle in my coffee cup at work, stopping at a bar on my way home, and then trying to mask the smell with coffee or chewing gum during the train ride back to our apartment. Some days, I even stopped off at the liquor store to grab a small bottle of something to conceal in my coat pockets, something I thought I could keep from Kelly.
"And, of course, this whole time, I thought Kelly had stopped. But she hadn't."
"We went on like this for several weeks, lying to each other, hiding our drinking from one another. I don't know how I could be so blind. I suppose I probably just didn't want to see the truth, but I honestly didn't know she was drinking. She was probably as drunk as I was during those weeks, but I was obviously too drunk to notice.
"Then one Saturday morning, after Kelly had gone to her mother's for a visit, I quickly finished off the little bit of juice I had at the apartment. By this time I had tucked several bottles of bourbon away in my coat pockets, and there wasn't a drop left. So, I went to the bathroom and checked the toilet tank. Not only was the bottle of gin gone, but it was replaced with two bottles of vodka. One bottle was empty, and the other was just about gone.
"I was so mad at her, I couldn't think straight. And instead of sitting down, trying to calm myself, and think about how to address the situation—"
"You went to a bar."
"A little after 10:00am on a Saturday morning, I went to a bar and I drank. I drank a lot, even for me.
"By the time I got home that night, it was late, and Kelly was sitting on the couch, obviously drunk. There was a drink in her hand. She wasn't even trying to hide it now. Not only had she lied to me about her drinking, and endangered the life of our baby, but now she was just rubbing my face in it.
"Of course, this just made things worse. I was furious. I started lashing out at her about the pregnancy. This, lecturing her about drinking, was made all the more ironic since I was slurring drunk at the time.
"That's when she told me that the baby was gone. She'd had a miscarriage."
"Oh, God."
"Yeah, it was everything I'd feared would happen if we didn't stop drinking. And I was supposed to be the one to help her stay sober—lead by example. But, of course, there I was, drunk as ever.
"After she told me about the miscarriage, I wasn't interested in looking at myself that night, examining my role in the situation. I was only interested in looking at her, blaming her. And, when I looked at her, I hated her. Really, I just loathed the sight of her. And I just lost it. I yelled, which is not what I do. I'm not a yeller. I get mad, sure, but, usually, my anger is a focussed, contained anger. My kind of angry usually comes off as the smug and self-righteous variety that makes other people angry. But not this time."
"Wait. How did you know that her drinking caused the miscarriage?"
"I didn't. It's hard to know what caused it for sure, but, at the moment, I was in no position to listen to an appeal to reason. I mean, I certainly suspected it was the drinking, particularly because it was what I feared was going to happen from the beginning. The actual miscarriage only confirmed those fears. Honestly, at the time, all I could think was that she killed our baby with booze.
"Besides, there is an undeniable link between heavy drinking and miscarriages. Trust me, I've done the research. That doesn't mean that I was ever certain that her drinking caused the end of the pregnancy. But I was drunk, and nothing makes you more certain than being drunk.
Anyway, I was certain enough to tear into her about it.
"I was so completely out of it that I have no recollection of what I said. But I must've said something that really made her crack because she started to cry. I'd never seen Kelly cry like that before."
"You were with her seven years and you never saw her cry?"
"No, I'd seen her cry, but usually when we were wiped out drunk, and, even then, it was over something silly, over something that I knew she wouldn't cry about under normal circumstances. But I could tell that I had said something that really broke her. I could see it in her eyes. She was broken, and, at the time, I just assumed that I had broken her, and it pleased me. It's sick, I know, but I can't tell you how much I despised her in that mo
ment. It honestly never even occurred to me what toll the miscarriage might have had on her.
"In some ways, I wish I could remember what I said. But once you know someone for as long as I knew Kelly, you learn their vulnerabilities, and know all the terrible things you could say to floor them. Still, there are certain things, certain lines, you'd normally never think about crossing. Well, I must've crossed many lines that night, and I wasn't backing off.
"And this—this terrible thing I'd said—made her so angry, she started throwing things at me: bottles, knick-knacks, books. You name it. If it was near enough for her to grab, she threw it.
"But, even this, didn't stop me. I continued screaming at her. By this point, I think I was just goading her, daring her to hit me."
"Classy," Jessi says, looking down, clearly embarrassed for him.
"I know, it was madness.
"Anyway, I guess all the commotion made one of the neighbors call the police, and it wasn't long before they were banging on the door. And I quickly turned my ire on them."
"Never a good idea."
"Nope," he says. "I don't exactly remember much at that point. I can remember one of them pressing me against a wall, me questioning his sexuality and then—"
"Oh, no. Terrible idea."
"Right, but it was too late. I was shoved into the back of the patrol car and taken to the drunk tank.
"Later that night, after I sobered up a bit, I had this moment of clarity. It was like all of this turmoil—the pregnancy, the pretending we weren't drinking, the miscarriage, the fight, and the police—all of