Read Online Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood by Koren Zailckas - Free Book Online
Authors: Koren Zailckas
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taught to be fearful when you’re alone. In the park or at the drugstore, you’re a target. You can be abducted, scooped up by any number of unforeseen dan-gers, molested, tortured, left for dead. But in a group, you are taught to feel stronger, like the sum of your parts. Gradually, you forget your anxieties and reservations. You practice the buddy system. You falsely believe that tragedy cannot single you out.
Drinking brandy with Billie and the boys feels like booking a passage on the Titanic. The thought that we are all going down together consoles me.
Somebody comes up with the drinking game Have You Ever, which basically involves the boys shouting out offensive ques-tions like “Have you ever seen one?” and Billie and me sipping brandy if we have. In my case, this game is perversely embarrassing; which is to say, I’m not embarrassed by what I’ve done, but by how little.
Phil asks, “Have you ever smoked pot?” He and Mac drink.
Billie asks, “Have you ever done it?” Mac and Phil drink.
Billie says, “Yeah, right, on both accounts.”
Mac asks, “Have you ever given anyone a hickey?” He and Phil and Billie drink.
Phil asks me, “Have you ever done anything?”
Mac hands me the bottle and says, “Just drink already.” I avert my eyes when I take it.
All night, I have been afraid to look directly at the boys, and I don’t know why. It’s not because they’re handsome. They have scarred skin and sneering lips, and their eyes are small and
44 INITIATION | First Waste
squinty. It must be something else that’s intimidating me, something in Phil’s broad shoulders that reminds me of his strength, or in the stubble on Mac’s chin that reminds me of his age. I’m startled by the way they both lean in to light my cigarette, as though the Zippo were too unwieldy for me. When I glance into either boy’s eyes, I feel a jolt like static electricity.
Apple brandy rolls over my tongue and past my tonsils, and doesn’t leave me time to process the taste. After one sip, all I can think about is a movie I saw once, in which a man torched a house that was the site of a murder. I’m imagining the film frame by frame: the striking of the match, its slow-motion drop onto the gasoline-soaked floorboards, the line of fire that creeps up the stairs and down the hall until the house is one big fireball with blown-out windows.
That’s what apple brandy does. One gulp of the plum-colored stuff kindles my tonsils, starting a fire that knocks down my esophagus like a trail of dominoes. The fumes fill my sinuses. I feel flammable. I’ll combust if Phil lights another cigarette.
A new sensation follows this drink. After the brandy’s initial blaze, I feel dead calm, like a shot of novocaine to my chest has set numbness spreading. I feel like it’s in preparation for something, as though a tooth is about to be pulled. I take a few more sips while Mac looks me dead in the eyes. I suddenly don’t care if he’s watching.
The anesthetic is in my brain. All my worries fall over and die like canaries in a mine shaft. I put both hands on my hat to make sure my head is still there.
Five sips later, I start to feel like I’m watching a home movie. The camera is moving too quickly, panning from one person to the next with amateur dexterity and minimal focus. I have to
close my eyes every few minutes, when the rapid motion makes me woozy. My life, at this moment, feels like The Blair Witch Project.
Billie is standing on the steps that lead up to somebody’s hulking, granite tomb. She uses her hands to make a mega-phone around her lips and screams, “Rest in peace, Salem!”
Phil is wearing her Garth glasses and crooning the Billie Holiday lyrics, “A kiss that is never tasted forever and ever is wasted.”
And I am accidentally snapping my lit cigarette in half and then trying to smoke the filterless stub, while Mac talks about the band Crash Test Dummies and the plight of the human
Drinking brandy with Billie and the boys feels like booking a passage on the Titanic. The thought that we are all going down together consoles me.
Somebody comes up with the drinking game Have You Ever, which basically involves the boys shouting out offensive ques-tions like “Have you ever seen one?” and Billie and me sipping brandy if we have. In my case, this game is perversely embarrassing; which is to say, I’m not embarrassed by what I’ve done, but by how little.
Phil asks, “Have you ever smoked pot?” He and Mac drink.
Billie asks, “Have you ever done it?” Mac and Phil drink.
Billie says, “Yeah, right, on both accounts.”
Mac asks, “Have you ever given anyone a hickey?” He and Phil and Billie drink.
Phil asks me, “Have you ever done anything?”
Mac hands me the bottle and says, “Just drink already.” I avert my eyes when I take it.
All night, I have been afraid to look directly at the boys, and I don’t know why. It’s not because they’re handsome. They have scarred skin and sneering lips, and their eyes are small and
44 INITIATION | First Waste
squinty. It must be something else that’s intimidating me, something in Phil’s broad shoulders that reminds me of his strength, or in the stubble on Mac’s chin that reminds me of his age. I’m startled by the way they both lean in to light my cigarette, as though the Zippo were too unwieldy for me. When I glance into either boy’s eyes, I feel a jolt like static electricity.
Apple brandy rolls over my tongue and past my tonsils, and doesn’t leave me time to process the taste. After one sip, all I can think about is a movie I saw once, in which a man torched a house that was the site of a murder. I’m imagining the film frame by frame: the striking of the match, its slow-motion drop onto the gasoline-soaked floorboards, the line of fire that creeps up the stairs and down the hall until the house is one big fireball with blown-out windows.
That’s what apple brandy does. One gulp of the plum-colored stuff kindles my tonsils, starting a fire that knocks down my esophagus like a trail of dominoes. The fumes fill my sinuses. I feel flammable. I’ll combust if Phil lights another cigarette.
A new sensation follows this drink. After the brandy’s initial blaze, I feel dead calm, like a shot of novocaine to my chest has set numbness spreading. I feel like it’s in preparation for something, as though a tooth is about to be pulled. I take a few more sips while Mac looks me dead in the eyes. I suddenly don’t care if he’s watching.
The anesthetic is in my brain. All my worries fall over and die like canaries in a mine shaft. I put both hands on my hat to make sure my head is still there.
Five sips later, I start to feel like I’m watching a home movie. The camera is moving too quickly, panning from one person to the next with amateur dexterity and minimal focus. I have to
close my eyes every few minutes, when the rapid motion makes me woozy. My life, at this moment, feels like The Blair Witch Project.
Billie is standing on the steps that lead up to somebody’s hulking, granite tomb. She uses her hands to make a mega-phone around her lips and screams, “Rest in peace, Salem!”
Phil is wearing her Garth glasses and crooning the Billie Holiday lyrics, “A kiss that is never tasted forever and ever is wasted.”
And I am accidentally snapping my lit cigarette in half and then trying to smoke the filterless stub, while Mac talks about the band Crash Test Dummies and the plight of the human
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