Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

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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
efused to be won. I drank cup after cup as I sat on the lower bunk and retreated into myself so far I could almost see us from space. I could see that Miles and I would not get back together, and this was a good thing. I could see I was not the only girl for him. In fact, his life would be rich with women—smart, interesting women who might actually like Star Trek. These women would not apply mascara each morning, might not even shave their armpits, but he would dig that about them, the way he dug the girl from Venezuela, who wasn’t even thin. She was full-bodied and foulmouthed, but he liked her because she was original and comfortable being something other than conventionally beautiful. Because she would suck a bong with him in rooms that were wisely unlit, while I stood in front of a magnifying mirror, adding sparkle shimmer to my eyes. I left the room without saying good-bye. By the time I got back to my dorm, the wine had taken charge. I fell into the bushes outside the front entrance and spent a while digging around, trying to find the front door. My last sustained memory is Anna, floating like an angel in a Cure T-shirt down the bright hallway. She held my hair as I threw up into her small sink, the one that kept moving. She changed me into a baggy T-shirt like she was putting a onesie on a limp baby. Thank you, Anna. I’m so sorry, Anna. I love you, Anna. “It’s OK,” she said with a gentle shush. “You’re OK.” Over the years, I would become reliant on friends for the most basic information. How did we get home last night? Do you have any idea what happened to my jeans? Why is there a corn dog in my bed? After a while, I had to get more subtle—dig but not look like I was digging. “I had so much fun last night. What was the name of that bar again?” People repeated my antics back to me, and if I stayed still and laughed in the right spots, I could often complete the field report on my own behavior. I have a picture of myself from that night. Taken after I blacked out. I’m sitting on the bed, my eyes so narrowed they nearly disappear when I smile. I don’t know exactly why Anna took the photo. We were always documenting our lives back then, complimenting ourselves on how well we were living them. But this photo wasn’t going to be tacked up in my work space. She later told me that after she snapped it, I began crying harder than she’d ever seen me cry. I became unreachable. A void in me had opened, and she had no idea how to fix me. I kept saying the same thing, over and over. No one will ever love me. No one will ever love me. When Anna told me what happened, I was shaken. And I wasn’t sure which worried me more: that I had blacked out again, or that when the deepest and truest part of me was cracked open, the only thing that poured out was need.
Page 3 and 4: Begin Reading Table of Contents New
Page 5 and 6: PRELUDE
Page 7 and 8: The guy isn’t bad-looking. Slight
Page 9 and 10: WOMEN WHO DRINK I was 33, and lying
Page 11 and 12: she did not get—but I’ve never
Page 13 and 14: In my 20s, friends called with that
Page 15 and 16: I discussed roofies with Aaron Whit
Page 17 and 18: a while, a columnist would come alo
Page 19 and 20: ONE
Page 21 and 22: when no one was looking, and I woul
Page 23 and 24: steps, not talking. As much as my f
Page 25 and 26: Our home was on a major artery thro
Page 27 and 28: She’d transformed, like Olivia Ne
Page 29 and 30: I threw up seven times. Hunched ove
Page 31 and 32: STARVED One of the curious aspects
Page 33 and 34: more successful her eating disorder
Page 35 and 36: orrowed. She couldn’t miss the si
Page 37: To make it more confounding, Miles
Page 41 and 42: DRESSING IN MEN’S CLOTHES I start
Page 43 and 44: coffee. But that seemed like a very
Page 45 and 46: you to imperil our amazing friendsh
Page 47 and 48: I FINALLY GOT a boyfriend near the
Page 49 and 50: FOUR
Page 51 and 52: The production guy passed my desk a
Page 53 and 54: drank myself to the place where I w
Page 55 and 56: ehind me, and told him I was moving
Page 57 and 58: my Harp as soon I walked in the doo
Page 59 and 60: FIVE
Page 61 and 62: “Your key, mademoiselle,” said
Page 63 and 64: My friend Meredith lived in an apar
Page 65 and 66: “This was fun,” I said. He was
Page 67 and 68: OF COURSE. OF course I’d gone to
Page 69 and 70: like you should not be crying,” h
Page 71 and 72: SIX
Page 73 and 74: When the bottle was drained, I’d
Page 75 and 76: But no, really, I had it this time.
Page 77 and 78: off a gargantuan diamond. I thought
Page 79 and 80: INTERLUDE
Page 81 and 82: ain, which allowed his body to deve
Page 83 and 84: SEVEN
Page 85 and 86: But his once-sallow cheeks were ros
Page 87 and 88: announcing their baby. Nobody wants
Page 89 and 90:
want to remain silent and unknowabl
Page 91 and 92:
Bubba curled up alongside me when I
Page 93 and 94:
EIGHT
Page 95 and 96:
for me? My friends didn’t necessa
Page 97 and 98:
ecause otherwise you have to go int
Page 99 and 100:
said, and she was right. The next w
Page 101 and 102:
fill-in-the-blank letter of apology
Page 103 and 104:
NINE
Page 105 and 106:
the tastes of a frat boy, or a grum
Page 107 and 108:
Mine was a recipe for unhappiness.
Page 109 and 110:
He tugged too hard, then I tugged t
Page 111 and 112:
SEX My first date in sobriety was w
Page 113 and 114:
30s to stare down a personal profil
Page 115 and 116:
and said, “Look, I dressed up for
Page 117 and 118:
“I’m thinking: Well, that was f
Page 119 and 120:
he’s impotent or not, I don’t k
Page 121 and 122:
ELEVEN
Page 123 and 124:
the scorn of strangers. They skip t
Page 125 and 126:
Addiction was the inverse of honest
Page 127 and 128:
I worshipped alcohol, and it consum
Page 129 and 130:
THIS IS THE PLACE A few months befo
Page 131 and 132:
Anna and I have had 20 years of the
Page 133 and 134:
saying in midsentence. My dad loses
Page 135 and 136:
from here, I told myself. There wil
Page 137 and 138:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR SARAH HEPOLA’S w
Page 139:
Contents COVER TITLE PAGE WELCOME D
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Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

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