Not to Finish Your Drink

I need a shower.

I wanted to wake up early and take a shower. Lord did I need one, but I slept like a baby instead. I awoke late, around Eight O'clock, and I still didn't want to move. I just laid in the bed staring out at nothing. Soon Igor entered my field of vision. "Hey..." he still not knowing my name. "...are you going to the coffee shop?" NO. He is gone. I rise and look about. The dorm is nearly empty. Angel is getting ready in the far corner, John is asleep, everyone else is gone.

I rise and head to the bathroom. I look fatter in the mirror, more tired, more red faced. Is drinking working out for me or not? I return to my bed and pack. I'm running out of time. I'm to meet J at the Whitney Museum at Eleven this morning, so I pack my gear and sling it on my back. I'm out the door in minutes, heading up the block to the Astor Place Starbucks, where I sit in the Eye of God, and check mail and blog. I check the bus routes, how to get up to the Museum and back down. I check for email from my brother and friends. I eat up time quickly and before I know it, I'm running late again. I grab my gear once more, snag the M1 bus and ride that puppy all the way up to the front door of the museum. My stomach kicks on the bus, so I decide to put something in it. My leanover leans further to a hang. I stop off at a coffee kiosk and buy a bean and bagel.

I head to the Museum, finding it closed and it's entranceway abandoned. I need to rest my Joe and bagel so I go to the side of the building, find a concrete parapet across from the entranceway and prop my breakfast and a New York Times magazine on top of it. I ate and read an interesting article by David Carr called My Years of Living Dangerously. I finish breakfast and look up from the article and there is J, standing in front of the entrance to the museum along with a few others. I head over and join her. She is on countdown status now. Her flight leaves today.

We go through the museum, looking at exhibits by Buck- minster Fuller and Robert Mapple- thorpe. I find Mr. Fuller highly interesting with his designs and engineering that took into account the future. He was really a man before his time. He called himself a "Comprehensive anticipatory design scientist" and man was he that. This sonovabitch had plans to link together the entire world in the Nineteen Twenties. He was literally amazing with his designs. If many of his visions became reality, this would be a sincerely different world today. When it comes down to his plans for housing the many in the future, I can relate. His real world planning could have done New York well, and housing would have been had for all today. Instead of this premium shit we have now. Good minds sometimes are wasted by bureaucracy.

Afterward we head to Grand Central where J hops a bus to La Guardia airport. We say goodbye and I am sincerely sad to see her go. I watch the bus pull off, go on to make a right in the intersection and move into traffic, vanishing down the avenue. I hope she catches her flight.

Suddenly alone, and feeling such, I head to the library where Electra is, watching my seat and waiting for me to set up my laptop. She will use it when I'm gone to therapy. I meet my brother and we talk for a short period. He has a reading down deep in the heart of Brooklyn, and although I would have liked to go, I was already on 'contract' for my AWOL at the box. All I need to be now is late coming back from a poetry reading and my ass would really be in a sling.

I tell Dr. L that I took a portable with me to see a movie last night. "Have you ever seen a movie in the park?" She asks. Yeah, hundreds of times in Bryant Park. "Do you take portables there with you?" All the time...every time. People always carry alcohol into Bryant Park when they have movies because that's the only time that you can consume alcoholic beverages there. Any other time and you'd get a summons. She nods, she didn't know this and it derails her point. I help out. I don't carry any portables when I'm watching some movies on television though. "Yes," she returns. "You CAN watch a movie without drinking, so what is it that you think drives you to carry alcohol with you when you go to movies now?" Oh it's a force of habit. I've been doing that since I was young. It's just a custom that I can't break. I love taking some alcohol with me when I watch a movie. It just works for me. Although I didn't finish it. "Well, did you take it back to the Box with you?" She asks.

I think about that. No I didn't. "Because you took the last one back with you and drank it in the Box if I remember correctly." That's right, I did. I wonder. "What made you leave half of it behind?" I don't know. I just didn't want to drink anymore. "But you would never willingly throw away alcohol." Well I drank a beer after that. Maybe I was making up for what I left behind. "Maybe. Do you feel some internal conflict?" Maybe.

Could I be trying to stop drinking for some reason? Good question. "You could decide to have an unhealthy relationship with Alcohol," she says. "You don't know where the line could be drawn. You need to think about the healthy, unhealthy relationship with alcohol this week."

Think about my relationship with alcohol. As Chef said in Apocalypse Now, I'm out here trying to have a relationship with my ass, and she wants me to think about our relationship.

I get to the Box. Just another night, right? Wrong. There has been word that someone is selling pills on the Second Floor. So there has been a sweep. Everyone was piss tested today. Including Igor. I walk in and miss it all. Paul the Stooge was caught with dirty urine. So was Mike Murder. But only Paul went down to DETOX. Mike Murder....well, that's why we call him Mike Murder. He got away with it again. The Dorm is livid. The sweep has probably caught many more. Word has it that there was another sweep upstairs.

Mike Murder soon comes up to me. He is hammered beyond all recognition and tries to tell me he has had a bad day. Something about ambulances looking for him to take him back to the sanitarium. John ignores Mike's calls for attention and then it comes out. John thinks that Mike Murder told the administrators at the Box that someone was selling pills. Because of this 'ratting' out the Box, the sweeps and the searches will begin. My turn is around the corner somewhere. I am proud. My bloodstream is clear of dope. My lungs might not be so from alcohol though.

Mike Murder is now a pariah in the Box. No one will speak to him, or address his questions. He walks off, heading to his bed with a long, drunken face.

I feel for him.
I blog about him.

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