Beer for breakfast

While I was having an early breakfast at Nobby's today, a fellow came in, sat at the bar and ordered a beer. Beer for breakfast, I remember it well. A quarter century ago, my favorite drinking time was morning when circumstances permitted, as they often did when I was supporting myself on grants and deadline-defined projects. My preference was red beer, beer and tomato juice. (There was a bar in Bend where Dick and I often ordered their morning specialty, beer and clamato juice.)

There were, and probably still are, bars in Portland that were more lively at 8 a.m. then at night. One was a bar close to the main station of the post office, home to the midnight shift getting off, who came in ready to party. Two more were Kelly's downtown and the Gypsy in NW, though both have been gentrified and no longer welcome the early morning alcoholics whose presence defines the lively morning bar. In fact, I'm not sure they're even open in the mornings any more.

Morning drinking was attractive in part, I think, because it was a way to give the finger to the 9-to-5 rhythm of the majority. Hadn't yet occurred to me that one prison is as good as another. I found much more interesting folks in bars in the mornings than at nights, and a part of me was always a spy, getting people to talk, stealing stories for my work. This goal deteriorated along the way, of course, as drinking became its own justification -- but at least I had the good fortune to find myself with a doctor who gave me a ton of shit and scared me into realizing what I was doing to myself. As the Japanese saying goes, first the man takes the drink, then the drink takes the drink, then the drink takes the man. I quit in the second stage, probably in the nick of time.

Although it's not fashionable or politically correct to say so, I don't regret my drinking days. I regret singular moments of bad behavior but not the broad spectrum of behavior. I learned things I never would have learned without the experience. I also had some amazing experiences and some incredibly fun times. Of course, I have the usual list of bad behavior as well -- it's a zero sum universe -- but if you are summing to zero, there's something to be said for +100 and -100 versus +1 and -1 in energy of life experiences. There's not too much in my life I would change, and having a beer for breakfast isn't one of them.