Taking a break

Good start on the midterms. A good batch so far.

One of those gray damp Portland days my protagonist in the novel likes to bitch about. In my younger drinking days, these were perfect times for hiding out in a bar, particularly if any of several writer friends were around to bar hop with, from the Gypsy to Seafood Mama's to Nobby's to Tavern & Pool to Joe's Cellar and back again.

Daytime drinking was always a lot more fun than nighttime drinking. The gainfully employed were at work, and the gainfully employed tended to be more boring than all the unemployed writer misfit artist musician drunk types, who were far better storytellers than accountants and salesmen.

Best of all I liked bar hopping with my soul brother Richard when he was in town, we had so much history together and could communicate something that broke us up into hysterics without a word, just with a look. And when we were on a roll, that's mostly what we did, laugh for what observers would think was no apparent reason. Of course it was life's very absurdity that we were laughing at -- and with.

The great mistake of treatment programs is to try and get the drunken participants to deny such past pleasures. They throw the baby out with the bath water.

Richard ended up being the most miserable sober person on the face of the earth. He died so soon anyway, maybe he should have kept drinking, except he had reached the wino stage, so that wasn't cool either. He just couldn't find happiness once he quit. Interesting what very different responses we had when we quit.

Fond memories today of mellow gray drinking afternoons. Happiness is too hard to find to deny it where it exists. Especially when you survive the experience.