Commentary

Requiem for a Drunk

For most of us, that long-awaited coming of age turns out to be a spectacular anti-climax. Veteran booze hound Brian Boone reminisces on old times, and wonders why there's no fun in drinking when there's no chance of getting busted for it.

At the precocious age of 17, at those summer night parties after the Orange Julius closing shifts, there could certainly be no finer inebriant than a half-rack of Henry's purchased by my friend's friend who used his brother's driver's license. Weinhards: the good stuff, and positively better than mass-produced swill like Budweiser or Coors', two beers I had not actually sampled but was sure were inferior simply because I wasn't drinking them, but instead, drinking something out of a dark bottle, which instantly signified it was somehow better.

Drinking was good and casual and seemed to hold my future in its damp, hops-enriched arms. Instead, the worst has happened. I recall jokingly predicting the following in front of my fellow beer intolerant recent high school graduates that summer on the lawn outside of Craig's cheap apartment: drinking is a lot of fun now, so fun that I will do it a lot. So fun that I will do it too much. So fun that I will outgrow it and grow weary of all varieties of drunken debauchery by the time I am legally allowed to do so at age 21.

Grow weary of swirling rooms? Grow weary of slurred proclamations of love and admiration for my friends? Grow weary of the giddy chants of encouragement as I down my eighth shot of tequila in as many minutes? Surely not I. Alcohol is an integral and greatly important part of me. I am Irish. I am a journalist. I think Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is the best American play of the twentieth century. Alcohol is as much a part of my personal history as it is a part of this country as a whole. All the great American heroes were drunks: Washington. Fitzgerald. McCarthy. And I thought one day "Boone" would be added to that exemplary list. But I can't become a legend on talent, luck and perseverance alone. I can't do it without booze. But alas, I have lost my taste for the sweet, sweet fire water, ever since my ill-fated 21st birthday.

Before the proliferation of fake IDs, sneaking nips from your parents' stash and getting someone old enough to buy it for you, the 21st birthday festivities were the first night most people ever tried booze. It was a night for testing tolerances and metabolisms and establishing drinking tastes that would last a lifetime. For me, I would finally be truly and fully Irish. Now, the special day is perfunctory and done for show. By the time you hit 21, you've likely been drunk plenty of times already, especially if you're in college. Rather than it being a first night of drinking, it's more of a last hurrah - the time for one, last spectacular binge. The recall of my party is fuzzy, but there are two pictures of me, a) gagging on a shot of Cuervo and thus spitting it into my own eye, and b) simultaneously smoking four cigarettes.

The 21st is the final night of drinking with a sense of rebellion and danger. Since you're really just a day past 20, it doesn't feel like you're old enough to legally drink. It feels like you're getting away with something, even as the bartenders shake your hand and give you free beers.

Drinking just isn't as fun after 21. Sure, all the symptoms of inebriation are there, but the visceral experience, the side show if you will, ends abruptly. You no longer have to sneak around to get the booze or hide in your parents' basement to drink it. There is no longer the fear of getting caught and dealing with the consequences, unless of course you're drunk driving, which only Oregon Voice staffers do (see OV, 11/11/00). Nevertheless, the first few days of majority age are enjoyable: I actually liked getting carded because of that proud rush of being a surefire, card-carrying Adult. But I was cheated out of even this. My first time in a bar: Hi, how are you. Pitcher of Widmer please. Would you like to see my ID? No...are you even going to ask? Nope. This bar was too busy to indulge a giddy future-drunk on his landmark birthday. I wanted them to check, I was proud. Now, almost a year later, I get weary when I am carded while buying the occasional pint as the clerk suspiciously looks back and forth between my driver's license and my person because I have a different haircut now than I did when I was 16.

Hence, the seeds of indifference were planted and have since bloomed into willowy flowers of malaise. My prediction had come true: I'd outgrown drinking by 21. Sure, there've been relapses. But these were born not so much out of the desire to get plastered, but more of attempts to recapture the heyday of my youth which I fear may have peaked in high school. But this year I've drank maybe five times. Hell, I've only been to Rennie's once. And my friend Jeremy keeps talking about dollar-well night at Old Doc's, but this is yet to happen.

Maybe I can't enjoy boozing it up as of late because nothing beats drinking in the dorms. It's fun to give the finger to Housing prove their incompetence at rule enforcement by repeatedly getting hammered not ten feet away from an RA. Sure, they try to bust you, but their rules are loose.

RA: Hi, are you guys drinking in here? We heard bottles.
ROOMMATE: What, that clinking noise? No, we're just making orange juice. And...watching TV.
RA: Hmm. I've got my eye on you. (goes away)
ME: Gee that was close. We almost got busted. Maybe this underage drinking thing is a bad idea.
ROOMMATE: Yeah, let's go to Mike's and drink.
ME: Okay.

The point is, when you're underage and under strict scrutiny, you feel indestructible when you get away with it and that's a great buzz unto itself. But when you're legal, have your own place and you can go buy a fifth from an OC staffer at a state-sanctioned liquor store, it's a nice burst of independence, maturity and self-sufficiency. However it‚'s just not the same without the thrill of getting caught.

But I am 21 now and thus possess a certain level of maturity, as well as the desire to embrace more refined and somber adult tastes. I feel a certain responsibility to grow up a little. Most Friday nights I'm studying or watching The Breakfast Club on WGN. And if you're still doing it, even drinking tastes change. A few years of dorm/basement drinking should school one in the libational arts enough to know that you avoid The Beast and only use HRD for mixed drinks. Plus, I've got my own apartment this year, so money is tight and if I want to drink I am forced to make do on what I have and invent spirituous concoctions. A recent invention is the Five-Dollar Jamaican Whore, which consists of guava-passion fruit juice and Cook's champagne. These sorry, ghetto, immature recipes have left a bad taste in my mouth both literally and metaphorically. So don't get me wrong, I haven't rejected booze entirely. I am obviously trying, but it's just not working out. Once, I dreamed of the day I'd invent a drink, but instead the drink I invented directly led to the cessation of my booze consumption.

Maybe I'm just one of those people who thinks things were always better in the past, when they were young. It looks like I'm going to be like those Baby Boomers who instantly get wispy eyed and wax sentimental at the mere mention of Bob Dylan. This is a bad way to live life, fearful that my life peaked in high school and that I didn't realize it. Nah, I'm just a lost drunk with no desire to drink. I am reminded of the common story about the workaholic who keels over with a heart attack a week into retirement because without something to do, he has no purpose. It was fun while it lasted. Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, Mr. McNaughton: you all be my bitches and as I spill you in the gutter in honor of my oldest friend, Drunkenness, I hope that there is still a chance I will one day be laying in this gutter with as well, my bloodstream consisting mainly of you.

Brian Boone, a senior majoring in something other than Professional Drinking, is an Associate Editor for the Oregon Commentator