About the drinking, Part I

About the drinking.
Part I
I entered high school in 1977. Across the nation it was a time of bell-bottoms and tie-dye. At my Uptown New Orleans private school, it was the age of the preppy. The cool girls wore LaCoste shirts and straight leg corduroy pants. The cool boys wore the same thing.
One of my first dates was with a boy named Mike. I really wanted to hang out with the straight-leg crowd. Mike had a lot of feathered black hair, a huge Italian nose, and ... bell-bottoms. And polyester shirts. But he was so darn nice, and he adored me.
I was 16 years old, it was summer, and on Wednesdays it was 50 cent hi-ball night at a bar called The Boot, which is where lots of Tulane University frat boys hung out. Mike took me there. I went up to the bar and ordered a hi-ball. “I’d like a hi-ball,” I said. The bartender just looked at me. “Uh, what kind of hi-ball?”
The question stumped me. That’s how young I was. I thought the hi-ball was a drink. I eventually ordered a screwdriver, and then I got really drunk and ended up with a hickey on my neck that my mother noticed before I did. Which was awkward.
I often think of that night as the beginning of my formal relationship with alcohol. The high school years were a blur of bars and “open parties” by kids whose parents were out of town and to which everyone was invited. We all knew the drill regarding area bars: Shanahan’s checked IDs but nearly always took fake ones; Fat Harry’s never checked; Nick’s was nothing more than a long stretch of plywood - you could stand in the parking lot while someone else bought you a drink; ATIIs was pretty strict, but if you had a date who knew the bouncer you could get in. Nick’s, incidentally, had the most amazing concoctions. My sister’s favorite was the Wedding Cake, which I swear to you tasted just like wedding cake.
We drank astounding amounts for teenagers. And most of us could drive - the drinking age in Louisiana back then was 15. Designated drivers were - well, what were they exactly?
The only hard part was acting sober upon returning home, though usually my parents were asleep and I could sneak to my room. But when that got too taxing, there was always Leesa’s house. Remember Leesa, who stole my date at my prom? (See Prom in New Orleans, June 8). Leesa’s mother and father were bona-fide artist hippies, and seemed to think Leesa could make her own decisions, which was not true, but that wasn’t my problem. Anyway, we often told our parents we were spending the night at Leesa’s house because Leesa didn’t have a curfew. We didn’t exactly spend the night there, since we usually didn’t get home until 4 or 5 in the morning. But we did spend the morning there, and nursed our hangovers with Tab and donuts.
Frankly it was exhausting. I think my mother thought college would calm me down. But Irish Catholic schools with enormous football traditions aren’t known for their staid atmospheres. At Notre Dame, our freshman year resident assistant gave us sage advice: All men are shits, and don’t drink the Flanner punch.
Of course I drank the Flanner punch, and (re)-discovered for myself that all men are shits. And that was just the first semester.
By sophomore year, I had been appointed chair of the Tailgating Committee, and was in charge of securing kegs before every home game to raise money for our dorm. My aunt has a great picture of me sitting on a keg handing out cups with dozens of guys handing me dollar bills. It gave me some solid retail experience.
By the time I graduated from college, I had been grossly, awfully drunk more times than I can count. There are dozens of legendary stories -- the time I was making out in the dorm’s common room with some guy, but kept running upstairs to throw up and brush my teeth before returning to make out some more. The fist-fight with a guy in the parking lot. The spontaneous midnight road trip to the Kentucky Derby with -- um, is who I went with even important?
I thought about how much I drank, particularly on Sunday mornings when I felt near death. I occasionally looked at literature about how to tell if you were an alcoholic. Inevitably, the pamphlet would ask 10 questions, starting with, “Do you ever have a drink before noon?” I never drank before noon, so I always told myself I was fine.
I was an expert at nearly all drinking games. Quarters was my specialty because I have a particularly perfect nose; a quarter rolls off of it at just the right angle to bounce into a shot glass.
I never wanted college to end, but thank goodness it did. After college, I held several years worth of jobs conducive to partying. I traveled in Europe and worked in a London pub; was a tour guide in the Louisiana swamps (partied after the tours, not during); and then, I worked for two years on the Mississippi Queen steamboat.
On the MQ, we worked 12-hour shifts. The remaining 12 hours were spent drinking, either in the crew rooms or on shore when the boat was docked. My favorite party boy was Thomas the chef; during one shore outing in Greenville, Mississippi, we found a juke joint way outside the city. My clearest memory of the excursion starts with us dancing on the bar and ends with us hitchhiking back to the dock and leaping to the deck after the lines had already been untied.
In 1988 I was accepted to the Masters in Journalism program at Boston University, and re-acquainted myself with people who actually read books. My seminal moment came during a discussion about that year’s presidential campaign pitting Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis against the first George Bush. Kitty Dukakis, the governor’s wife, had just admitted to being an alcoholic because she had “blacked out” a couple of times after drinking.
I remember making fun of her for claiming to be alcoholic. “Really. Who hasn’t ever had a blackout?”
There was a pregnant pause. “I haven’t,” said one friend.
“Me, neither,” said the other.
I still can see the light bulb that appeared in my brain at that moment, with the words, “Hmm. You should think about this.”
I’ve thought about it ever since.
I realize much of this story has entertainment value, but I don’t recall these chapters of my life proudly, or even fondly. To paraphrase modern lexicon, it simply is what it is, and for better or for worse has become a part of me.
More about that in Part II.