Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

The production guy passed my desk again on Monday. “Now we’re talking,” he said, giving me
the thumbs-up, and moved on.
I’d always considered myself fluent in pop culture, but the Chronicle was a crash course in
acceptable indie tastes. I kept a mental list of artists I needed to become familiar with, much like the
vocab words I used to memorize in middle school to casually drop into conversation. Jim Jarmusch,
François Truffaut, Albert Maysles. The Velvet Underground, Jeff Buckley, Sonic Youth. The spirit of
an alt weekly, after all, was to be an alternative. Our mandate dictated that the most important stories
lived outside the mainstream. And also: Top 40 sucked.
Every Thursday afternoon, the staff gathered in a cramped meeting room that looked more like a
bomb shelter and lined up stories for the week. Debates were always breaking out, because those
people could argue about anything: the most overrated grunge band, the notion of objective
journalism, black beans or refried. I sat with my hands in my lap and hoped to God the conversation
wouldn’t drift my way. But when the meeting ended, and nobody had called on me, I’d feel weirdly
crestfallen. All that anxious buildup for nothing.
I’ve always been mixed up about attention, enjoying its warmth but not its scrutiny. I swear I’ve
spent half my life hiding behind a couch and the other half wondering why no one was paying
attention to me.
On the weekends, coworkers and I started going to karaoke, which was the perfect end run around
my self-doubt. I would sit in the audience, drinking beer after beer, filling myself up with enough
“fuck it” to take the microphone. Karaoke was a direct line to the parts of our brains unburdened by
aesthetics, the child who once found joy in a Journey song. No singer was bad, no taste was wrong—
which was pretty much the inverse philosophy of the paper, but my coworkers still loved it. I guess
even people who judge others for a living can secretly long for a world with no judgment.
At our holiday karaoke party, I blew out my vocal cords with an over-the-top version of “Total
Eclipse of the Heart.” I was in that sparkling state of inebriation where the chain comes off your
inhibitions and your voice grows so bold.
The following Monday, our cranky editor-in-chief kicked off the staff meeting. “I have one thing to
say about the holiday party.” He turned toward me, and his eyes lit up. “Sarah Fucking Hepola.”
You could’ve seen my glow from space. Before that, I wasn’t even sure he knew my last name.
GROWING UP, I saw journalism as a serious profession. I never anticipated how much damn fun it
would be. Music festivals, interviews with celebrities, parties where Quentin Tarantino showed up.
Dot-com money was pouring into our flophouse hamlet, and the city’s growth made the paper fat with
advertising. We got bonus checks and open-bar celebrations. Coming to the Chronicle a year after
college was like leaving a five-year house party only to plunk down on the ripped couches of nevernever
land.
Swag. That was the name for the promotional items that arrived with alarming abundance. T-
shirts, tote bags, novelty toys. For a year, a beach ball with the words “There’s Something About
Mary” roamed through the hallway like a tumbleweed.
We got free movies and free CDs and free books. Complimentary bottles of Tito’s Vodka lived in
the kitchen. Shiner Bock popped up in the fridge (we paid for that). Each Wednesday night, we put the
paper to bed—and those were the words we used, like the paper was our toddler—and I stayed late