Yer gonna become some street bum, some lunatic loser!

Gettin Weird Chapter 1.

I’m drinkin.’

Yep, you heard me right. I’m gettin’ drunk.

Why?

How about ‘cause I want to? How about ‘cause I like to? How about ‘cause I . . .  ‘just say YES!!’

I can hear every adult in the world bellowing, “Oh no!!! Yer gonna become some street bum, some lunatic loser!” And who knows, maybe someday I’ll have to go on TV when I’m a fat old geek and tell some talk show host, “Yeah, when I was young I used to drink and get weird, but I’ve been clean and sober for twelve years, three months, two weeks, six days, three hours…” and right here, I’ll glance at my big Rolex then slowly add, “…and sixteen minutes.” The audience will cheer, bursting into applause, and I’ll smile and then we’ll do all these big phony hugs.

Or, more likely, I’ll end up on one of those moron realty-shows with a bunch of other losers like myself who’ve just lost their ratty jobs too, and I’ll end up telling all these strangers about how booze and weirdness messed-up my life.

But the truth is that there’s always a good reason to drink. There’s always something coming that’s bad, so you’re gonna want to drown your sorrows. Or something coming that’s great so you want an excuse to jump around and act even crazier and happier than you would if you were just your sober self. There’s always a good reason and usually a great reason to get drunk! But my reason today is a doozy.

When I got back home this afternoon, after scoring this bottle of Bacardi rum, I stopped to grab the mail like I do every day. Mom was still at work, my brother still at school. I leafed through the crap from the mail box: some hospital and medical bills like the ones that come every month, asking for money we don’t have to pay for mom’s cancer treatment she had last year. There was also a flier from a local supermarket, rock bottom prices on cantaloupes and chicken legs. And then, on the bottom of this small stack of envelopes was a letter addressed to me, which almost never happens. This letter had a single, handwritten name in the return address spot in the upper left corner Dan Mender.  Dan Mender is my Dad. He walked out on us without a word five years ago. I thought he was dead. We all did. Getting this letter just froze me, my brain sort of turning to nothing, my hands all shaky.

I walked into the house, dropped the other mail on the entryway table where I always put it and took the letter, and my bottle of Bacardi and went up to my room. I almost opened it, the letter. I DID open the Bacardi and took a huge swig. Did I really want to hear from my dad? Just because he sent a letter did that mean I had to read it? Once I did read it, I couldn’t un-read it, what if it told me a bunch of stuff that I didn’t want to know? I almost tore the letter right in half, held it like I was going to, then I thought, no, I’ll just throw it away. I stood right over the top of my little wastebasket in my room and tried to drop it in, I mean right above it, but somehow the letter bounced off the rim and landed on the floor. I just stared at it for a long time, maybe a minute. It had landed right side up so that dad’s handwritten name; Dan Mender stared back at me. I took another giant slug of rum and picked it up again. I decided, screw him and threw the letter into my middle desk drawer, shoving it way back like it didn’t exist. That’ll teach him. That was a few minutes ago…

This is now, and my phone is ringing.

I pick it up, “Yo”

“Alan?”

It’s my buddy Wally Britton, “Wal-mart, what-up?”

“Nothin’ much man, what’re you doin’?”

“Havin’ a few drinks.”

“Cool! Can I come over?”

“Sure.”

“Whatca drinking?”

“Right now, Bacardi and Diet Pepsi.”

“Diet? Come on, man.”

I laugh, “Well, that’s what was here in the house and it’s mostly rum anyway.”

“I’ll bring some real Coke”

“The real thing huh?”

“I mean Coca-Cola . . . not . . .”

“Shut-up Wally, Jeez you’re lame, like I thought you’d have real, old school nose candy.”

Wally laughs, “All right, I’m there man.”

“Cool, I’m here too.”

Like I said before, I’m gettin’ drunk—I told Wally ‘a few drinks’ but the truth is I’m just gettin’ wasted. I do this a lot, most days to be honest, but the letter from my Dad has made it even more necessary than usual—I can’t get my brain wrapped around the whole situation.

What does drinking every day say about me?

I don’t know what the hell is up with my life but I do know that everybody I know likes to get drunk once in awhile as much as I do. And it turns out that my dad, who I thought was dead, isn’t—unless he’s writing me from the grave.

I love the sound of Bacardi rum splashing into a glass fulla ice cubes.

I can’t wait ‘til my little red-headed drinkin’ buddy gets here with ‘the real thing.’

You know what you call the word for something that tries to make the real word for that thing sound nicer? It’s called a euphemism . .  . ‘nose-candy’ for ‘cocaine’. . . ‘abandonment’ for ‘I-don’t-give-a-damn-about-my kids’ When I was younger, I was a big reader—okay, I admit it, mostly comics and sports, music and car magazines and things that I liked, but I’ve always loved big-hoity thesaurus words that nobody ever really uses . . . euphemism . . .

In my life there’s always a good reason to get drunk. But I’d say a letter from my old man who I thought was dead is as great an excuse I’m ever gonna get.

I look at the ugly scar on my left hand, both on the palm and the top where a bullet ripped through. My dad, even though I hadn’t seen him in years, even though I didn’t know he was still alive, is partly to blame for this scar.