Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

to exotic locales. But drinking is also the center of everyday life. “Let’s get a drink,” we say to each
other, when what we mean is “Let’s spend time together.” It’s almost as if, in absence of alcohol, we
have no idea what to do. “Let’s take a walk in the park” would be met with some very confused
glances.
My old Dallas gang was a group of salty male colleagues who gathered at the bar after work. Not
a bar, mind you, but the bar. “The bar” was a complete sentence. It was both a question and a
command. (The bar? The bar. The bar!) I had missed those guys, and I flattered myself they might
miss me, too.
“I’d love to hang out sometime,” I emailed one of the guys.
“Totally,” he responded. “You know where to find us.”
Well, shit. I suppose it was wrong to be hurt by this indifference to the script I’d written in my
mind—the one where he and I went to lunch and talked about real things that mattered.
Once upon a time, we’d gathered around that long wooden table and gulped down whatever was
being served. We laughed and drank while the sun sank in the sky, and I got a high being the lone
female in the foamy man cave. Those guys were all married, but that didn’t matter (to me, at least),
and I never quite knew whether we were flirting, or not flirting, and I told myself both stories, as
suited my needs.
I wondered if I threatened them now that I was sober. The first person to stop drinking in any
group can cast a pall—like the first couple to get divorced, or the first person to lose a parent. I also
wondered if they threatened me now. I watched their Facebook feeds a bit too carefully, judging them
for every babbling 2 am status update, every picture of a whiskey glass hoisted into the lens. How
dare they stay on Pleasure Island after I had moved away. I wondered: How long could they possibly
keep this up? One of them had just won the National Magazine award for profile writing, so
apparently the answer was: As long as they wanted.
It took a long time to accept that other people’s drinking was not my business. It took a long time
to admit I’m the one who left the bar, not the other way around. You can’t move away for six years
and come home to find all the furniture in the same place. Those guys had different lives now. New
kids, new jobs. Two of them were divorced and dating 25-year-olds, which must have taken up a
great deal of texting time.
Sobriety has a way of sorting out your friendships. They begin to fall into two categories: people
you feel comfortable being yourself with—and everyone else.
Allison was in the former category. We had met years ago on a garden patio in Brooklyn, where
we got drunk and declared ourselves great friends. But months went by between visits. Some
friendships are like that. They lack an escape velocity.
She lived in Dallas now, and we met one night at a Mexican restaurant. She didn’t drink much
anymore, a quality I was starting to value in a person. She also looked looser, freer than the striving
girl I’d met in New York.
“I love it here,” she said, and I kept waiting for her to circle back and revise that statement. Tell
me the real truth. But that was the real truth. She was happy.
“When was the last time we saw each other?” I asked her as we scanned the menu. And then I
smacked the table like it was a buzzer. “I know. Your thirty-sixth birthday party.”
“You’re right!” she said. “Oh my God. Do you remember that night?”
Dammit. How many more times was I going to get torpedoed by this question? It’s like I needed a