Thursday, 12 January 2006

• Recently a friend of mine was pulled over for driving under the influence of alcohol.  He got lucky and wasn’t arrested, but they did impound his car.  It was bound to happen eventually considering how much often he drinks and drives despite numerous pledges to stop.  One of these days—a day that I predict will be soon—he will die from drinking one way or another.  That’s something I’ve accepted as a plain fact, but I’d prefer it weren’t from a drunk driving accident.  That way he couldn’t take someone innocent along with him.

  Flashback to the time I went on vacation with him last year.  While he was hanging out in the bar at the resort, I was meeting a couple of girls on the beach.  I talked them into having dinner with me and my friend later that night.  When I went off to find my friend to tell him that we had a double date, I found him just where I’d left him a few hours before.  He’d met some people in the bar and was telling them the stories that I’d heard a million times as they listened with great interest.  I told him that I was going back to the hotel to get ready and he told me he’d be back at the hotel at 6:00 so we could meet the girls at 7.

  6:00 came and went. 

  So did 6:15. 

  Then 6:30.

   6:50. 

  Where the fuck was he?

  I decided that I couldn’t wait there any longer for him to show up, as I didn’t want the girls to think that I stood them up.  On my way to the restaurant, I found him in the exact same place where’d I’d left him—still at the bar.  He’d let his business of drinking distract him from the time.  He calmly asked what restaurant we were going to.  Presumably, he was going to accompany me over there right then,  but I simply shrugged and walked off without him.  He was poorly dressed and drunk—I wasn’t going to introduce him to the girls like that.  I met the girls on my own and made excuses for him. 

  Later that night, I brought the girls back to my room only to find my roommate in a drunken stupor and passed out.  The ladies played with his feet, jumped on his bed and touched his face, but they couldn’t revive him from his deep somnambulistic state.  That night, I had to entertain the two women all by my lonesome. 

  Another problem with my friend’s drinking is that he has already had a heart attack at a very young age.  After his angioplasty, he lost a considerable amount of weight.  He looked about 10 years younger, as if the heart attack was his fountain of youth.  He made a new commitment to his health—giving up alcohol (except for wine, which is supposed to be good for the heart) and cigarettes.  Needless to say, he reverted back into his old ways in a matter of months.  The weight and age slowly crept back as well.

  This weekend, I was at a restaurant with some of my other friends and jokingly asked, “I wonder if ****** is at the end of the bar?” since that was one of his favorite spots before his health problems started.  When I craned my neck, I was stunned to actually see him there drinking and smoking like the old days. 

  This guy made alcohol a priority over both sex and his own health.  And you can’t tell him that he’s slowly killing himself; there’s nothing I can say that he hasn’t heard before.  The only real question is: when?

   

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