Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

I don’t know how long I sat in that hallway. Ten minutes, ten years.
When I finally stood up, I had a plan.
IN COLLEGE, WE joked about the “walk of shame.” It was the term for the bleary-eyed stagger of
Sunday morning—when you had to pass coeds who raised their eyebrows at your tangled hair and
your one broken heel. The great thing about a term like “walk of shame” is that its cleverness leaches
the embarrassment from the act. To endure a walk of shame was not shameful anymore, because you
were participating in a rite of passage, familiar to any well-lived life. Like so much of our vernacular
—wasted, smashed, obliterated, fucked up—I never thought much about it.
But heading down to the concierge desk in the middle of the night was a true walk of shame. I
swiped a knuckle under each lid as I rode down in the elevator. I straightened my wool skirt. I tried to
look like a woman who had not just emerged from a hole in the ground.
“Bonjour,” I said to the concierge. My voice was chased by those hollow echoes that come in the
wee hours of the night.
“Good evening,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
Above the desk, a series of clocks kept time around the world. It was only 8:30 pm back in New
York, which sounded so safe and far away.
“I left my purse in someone’s room,” I said.
“Not a problem,” he said, and began tapping on the computer. “What room was it?”
I shook my head. I traced a figure eight on the counter with my index finger. “I don’t know.”
“Not a problem,” he said. More tapping. “What was the guest’s name?”
A tear slipped down my cheek, and I watched it splat. “I don’t know.”
He nodded, his mouth an expressionless line. But I could see the pity in his eyes. He felt sorry for
me. And somehow this pebble of sympathy was enough to shatter my fragile reserve. I crumpled into
tears.
“Don’t cry,” he said. He took my hand. His fingers were dry and cold and they swallowed mine.
“It’s going to be OK,” he said.
And I believed him, because I needed to.
People talk about the horrible things strangers do to you when you are drunk, but my experience
has mostly been the opposite. I have been the recipient of so much unsolicited kindness. The
bartender who helps me track down the shoes I threw under a table. The woman who slips the glass
of water under the bathroom stall where my head hangs over a toilet rim with a fishing line of drool
stretching from my lips to the water. Honey, I’ve been there.
And then there were my friends, my actual friends, who would walk me up the stairs to my
bedroom. Who poured me into taxis and texted with me until I was home. They did it for me, and I
would do it for them. The golden rule of a lush’s life. Be kind to drunk people, for every one of them
is fighting an enormous battle.
“Is it possible this gentleman is the one you were talking to at the bar tonight?” the concierge
asked.
And there it was, finally. My first clue.