Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

Didn’t realize I knew who sat beside you in philosophy, did you? My shelves were filled with books
I could not finish and textbooks I never cracked. But I was always cramming for the test about Anna’s
past. I paid lavish attention to every word she spoke. Until then, it had not occurred to me what an act
of love this was: to remember another person’s life.
I STARTED SPENDING more time with Miles in our spring semester. We were trying to be “friends,”
which is another way of saying I wanted to get back together, and he wanted to sleep with me. It was
working out pretty well.
I ditched the dining hall for evenings in his dorm watching old Star Trek episodes with the guys
from down the hall. I was bored by Star Trek, but I liked being the only girl surrounded by that boy
stink. They passed around a bong, letting their minds expand, while I settled in a beanbag and drank
my Carlo Rossi wine (one jug for $5.99).
Miles loved pot. It fixed him, the way booze fixed me. I smoked with him twice, and both times I
forgot simple words. Like “chair” and “desk.” Pot did the opposite of what I wanted from an illicit
substance. It shut me down, turned me paranoid. I’d also read pot affected your long-term memory,
and I worried what might happen to Miles if he continued to use. Back in high school, he was quickwitted,
sharp, but now his voice could acquire such a thick syrup. Heeeeey, duuuuude.
I was scared of drugs. I never told Miles this, because I wanted to be close again, but I thought
drugs were dirty and wrong and destructive. People often complain the “Just Say No to Drugs”
campaign of the ’80s was ineffective, but it worked on one person. I was afraid to touch any of that
shit. A line of cocaine made you drop dead. Heroin was a gun in your mouth. As I sat there
watching Miles load a pipe or tap out a flaky trail along a piece of thin and crinkly rolling paper, all I
could think was: Why can’t you drink like normal people?
But I kept hanging around him. I loved him—at least, I kept saying I did. And I knew if I stayed in
his orbit long enough, his better judgment would drift out the window with his pot smoke and there
was a good chance we’d end up in his bottom bunk once more.
“What does this mean?” I asked one morning, head on his chest.
He stared at the wooden plank above us. “It means we just slept together.”
I didn’t get it. I kept expecting him to revert to the role of high school boyfriend, snuggling in a
booth built for two. But he was a college boy now, who wanted to live with all his doors and
windows open. A few weeks later, I cleaned up his dorm room. Like a fucking den mother. I soaked
the bowls crusted with cereal. Rinsed off and recycled the crumpled beer cans crawling with ants. I
found two empty condom wrappers underneath his pillow, one more than we’d ever used, and I told
myself: Surely someone else borrowed his bed. Nights got wild in his dorm, so it was possible.
Maybe a condom fell down from his roommate’s bunk. What an idiot. But a person can invent any
stupid story to keep herself from uncomfortable truths.
A few nights later, I was hanging out in Miles’s dorm room, but this time I wasn’t the only girl. A
pretty redhead shared her ideas about string theory. The girl with the combat boots and the motorcycle
jacket dropped by. She was from Venezuela. And she said it with an accent— Ven-ezz-waaay-luh—
like she was rubbing it in.
I took long slugs from my jug wine. I didn’t care anymore. I was tired of counting calories,
measuring each glass for its pleasure, trying to lose five pounds so I could win back the boy who