I'll occasionally have a couple beers at lunch. It is at once a respite from the incredible drollness of the typical workday and a wildly irresponsible risk for a family provider to take. Really, the struggle of this specific decision is a microcosm of the general internal conflict I've been dealing with since I got drunk off my first Smirnoff Ice—what I want to do directly opposes what I also know I shouldn't do. I shouldn't have even one more drink; I want to have three more.
The mirror was held up to my face a few times last weekend—luckily zero damage to account for, more so that it was brought into question why I was drinking the amount I was drinking because it seemed unnecessary to outside parties, and most likely indeed was—so Monday morning, I felt the "shouldn't" more than the "want" for the first time in a while. I'd be fooling no one if I said that this was anything amounting to "change" in my life. If I said I didn't drink this week, that might be true, but then I'm sure I'll have a beer in my hand by the time you are reading this on Friday afternoon. No—the allure is too strong, the spider too hungry to allow itself to starve, the temptation to finish the pitcher and drown is too powerful. I'm just saying that it was one of those weeks that all of this was temporarily put on hold, at least for a few days.
All in all, a great week to revisit "Drunk II."
Like all good songs about being drunk (or a drunk), this one doesn't directly correlate, but it ultimately doesn't matter. When you're jonesing to knock back more than a few, then you find yourself texting the friends in your life who you know will be willing to knock back a few themselves. You need to know that there are people in your life who are willing to feed the spider just like you are; it makes you feel better about your own decisions, more justified in your own recklessness. The key: these friends are not as fucked up as you are. They make healthy decisions. You do not. You are using them to feel better about yourself. Stop it.
But so my point is that maybe I'm using "Drunk II" in the same way. E.g. this song is, at least on the surface, about frontwoman Marisa Dabice's struggles with a breakup, through the lens of booze. To feel a kinship with this song—which I really, really do—I need to ignore the breakup stuff—since, ya know, no breakups in my future that I know about, hopefully—and really home in on the drinking stuff. "I've been drinking everything I can get my hands on" is a line that cuts to the inner layers of my bones. Is she drinking a lot to mask the pain of the split with her former paramour? Sure. But I pretend that it's more than that. I pretend that Dabice is drinking everything she can get her hands on for the same reasons I drink everything I can get my hands on, and that reason is...?
And that's the rub (he says as he violently pulls the camera back to himself). I cannot explain why there is this ancient impulse to drink more beers at any given opportunity, despite the laundry lists of reasons why I shouldn't. "Half pitcher down, I drink to drown." There's some pretty compelling evidence that drowning is dangerous; I still drink to drown anyway.
All apologies to Dabice and the rest of Mannequin Pussy if I'm reading into "Drunk II" way more than they intended. But I need to pretend that Dabice knows how I feel so that I don't feel so alone in the struggle.
To clarify: when I say "alone," I don't mean that there aren't people who care (and to that point, I'm getting a little apprehensive that I'm going too far off the emo deep end and the three people who read this are going to start getting worried—also not my intention!). Of course there are people who care. My wife being the obvious example here. She holds the mirror up, and did last weekend for sure, but she cares enough to still want to be with me, which must be a herculean task sometimes.
I say "alone" because Pam, who is my best friend, could never listen to "Drunk II" and interpret it the way I do, or the way that I believe that Marisa Dabice intends it to be interpreted. Maybe the impulse to "drink everything I can get my hands on" exists within all of us, but if that's true, then Pam's impulse is a intermittent sonar beeping, and mine is a huge bass drum in my skull. The fact that she's probably reading this right now and becoming increasingly uncomfortable is the point—it is normal to be uncomfortable with the idea of drinking to drown, or of not wanting to be strong, or feeling relief in getting swept into emptiness. And the uncomfortable truth is that I do feel those things, and that is not normal. But it's a truth, and an unshakeable one.
And the really important part about "Drunk II" is that there is zero wallowing (which probably means that this blog post is nothing like "Drunk II"). This song doesn't brush all this shit under any type of rug. It's cathartic. "Drunk II" makes it seem like these feelings—the pain, the regret, the endless cycle—are the most important thing in the goddamn world. There are stakes here!
There's probably a temptation to cloak these feelings in half-truths, obliqueness, whatever—because, again, it's uncomfortable—but Dabice puts it all out there. I admire that. This is a "warts and all" song. And so in that way, I'm trying to emulate that here. Who knows, maybe I wouldn't have if there was anything to say about the other nine songs (there really isn't, besides the fact that they are pretty good, and completely painless, and seem to go by much too quickly for there to be anything approaching importance). Also, there's the fact that Dabice has a powerhouse presence, which might be the thing that ultimately convinces you that she cares deeply about this.
I know as well as anyone that there is no real solution to any of this. Death, divorce, complete sobriety... none of those options sound particularly appealing to me. And so I'm choosing this, this thing I have now, whatever it is. I'm choosing to drink whatever I get my hands on, and then feel shame (or be made to feel shame—really, what's the difference?) about it, get sober for a few days, write a truly self-pitying blog post about it in the guise of a record review, then drink some more.
If you are one of those friends who I pretend drinks more than you actually do to make myself feel better about my own drinking, then I hope you take comfort in the fact that I acknowledge it, and that I love you and love hanging out with you, regardless of whether we are drinking or not. If you are my wife and reading this, then I hope you take comfort in the fact that I am self-aware about this lifestyle enough that I promise I will not lose my job over it, or crumble our marriage, or anything more than annoy you enough to occasionally have a heart-to-heart about it deep into a Saturday night.
But most importantly, if you are like me, and you fell in love with "Drunk II," and you're reading this, and you have a drink in your hand right now like I do, then I hope you can raise your glass, and join me in a toast. Cheers to "Drunk II," and cheers to Mannequin Pussy, cheers to drinking to drown, and cheers to having the balls to saying it out loud. May we find comfort in being alone together.
GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5
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