Like eating glass

I was sitting in the front seat of a car when my friend, behind me in the back, spoke about 'impending doom' and how it comes in impossible waves. I leant my head against the seatbelt and made eye contact with myself in the mirror like you do when you're trying to talk someone in or out of something and my face was freezing as the boys blew smoke in and out of their bodies with the windows wide open. 


In my experience the doom is likely to cleansweep you after a couple of drinks. There's something in there that's toxic and unnatural and seeps into us like a disease and makes our heads sick with heavy thinking. So I shrink back on big nights and shouts and rounds and all those things; I don't drink much at all anymore, hyper-aware of how similar its effect on my level head is to slamming a fist down on one side of a set of scales. Everything goes everywhere and what's left is just a big mess, mess that you just have to scrape together and place back carefully into balance again. 


It's not to say I don't like drinking at all, because I do. Also I don't begrudge anyone who drinks more than I do! This is just a funny thing that I have, like my aversion to Burger Rings and the way I like to cross my 'j's when I handwrite them. And in much the same way people ask why I don't eat things or why I wear birds in my hair or why I'm sewing a felt Lady Gaga onto a tie-dyed tablecloth, they ask me, bewildered, why I don't want another beer. I don't ever say 'the impending DOOM' because I do try to maintain acceptable degrees of sanity when with company. But I will laugh it off, just like I'm laughing it off now, because the whole idea of ME in GENERAL is kind of hilarious. If you think about it. 


I'm an 85 year old in a 19 year old's body. It should bother me more than it does.