When You're a Fool

In my mid-twenties I went to rehab.  When he was in his mid-twenties my father was part of a regiment of American infantrymen crossing the bridge at Remagen, Germany, helping to save the world from the Nazis.

The Decline of Western Civilization, Part Thirteen. . .

I loved it from the start.  Jack Trimpey, in his book, “Rational Recovery,” says that we problem drinkers drink for pleasure, and pleasure alone.  Not because our childhoods were lousy, not because we didn’t make the team.  Pleasure.  We loved how it felt to get drunk.  Although I don’t agree with everything he says in that book, he makes one or two good points.

Getting drunk for the first time was a rare discovery for me.  I’d drank a can or two of beer or a glass of wine before, wondering where the effect was supposed to be, this vaunted stuff, alcohol.  But the first time I drank a six-pack of beer, my life changed.  I could talk among strangers, I could Have A Good Time.  Getting high on pot was just OK from then on, in my book.

It was time for The Booze Party!

It was summer, 1973; and I had just found out I had Hodgkin’s disease.  And booze, my miracle elixir, came at the same moment.  Seventeen years old, I wondered where were they hiding this stuff for all those years?  I was a late bloomer but quickly made up for lost time. 

My brother, Darrel, who was and is one of my idols, inadvertently re-introduced me to books some years earlier.  He left me his paperbacks.  There was “Johnny Got His Gun,” which turned me into a flaming peacenik.  And Kurt Vonnegut, who became a huge favorite:   “Welcome To the Monkey House,” “Cat’s Cradle,” “Slaughterhouse Five,” “The Sirens of Titan,” “Mother Night,” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.”  I picked up one or two books on my own, the most memorable being “The Godfather,” by Mario Puzo.  That book became something no other book I’d known before ever was.  I could pick it up and open it anywhere and start reading.  Not since Sister Catherine and “Escape From Warsaw” had a book so captivated me.

I had gone to a chiropractor, I couldn’t tell you why, to have this lump checked.  I had a lump near my collarbone on the right side.  It was huge.  He admitted freely that he couldn’t do anything for me.  The words “lymphatic tumor” didn’t sound ominous, for some reason.  Maybe partly because I knew I was going out and getting drunk that night.