Coke

The first thing you need to learn about anything, the first thing that your parents should teach you is that love isn't real. It's a chemical reaction in your brain. I say that to say this:

A few months ago I met someone.

A girl.

My brain started. My pupils dilated. My palms got sweaty. My breathing became quicker as did my heart rate, all the sure fire signs of love. Love at first sight.

Love is not real. Love is a chemical reaction in your brain.

She was tall. Brunette. Gorgeous. Quiet. We didn't say much. At least not to each other. A few of us were smoking cigarettes in my friend's apartment's sun-room, getting ash all over, well, everything until somewhere close to four o'clock in the morning.

My ride leaves and I'm stranded with this beautiful girl in her bed.

This is not my forte. I'm good at holding hands, paying for dinner, meeting parents. I am not good at this. I didn't sleep with her that night. I kept going over there until we did.

In the process the chemicals in my brain told me I was in love. I tried to ignore it. I was getting laid, but she was quiet. I knew there was more to her than her bird tattoos on her calves or her septum piercing or her long brown hair. I knew there was something beneath her skin.

There were chemicals that regulated her breathing and her heart rate. Chemicals that told her she was not in love with me. I told her I wasn't looking for anything more.

But I was. And I did. My chemicals and her chemicals didn't agree.

This is not a love story because love isn't real. Love is a chemical reaction.

I chased though. I wanted it to be love. I wanted it to be real. I had never been with someone like her. I had been with girls you could bring home to meet your mother. But she was so different.

One night, in that sun-room I came to know so well, I watched her do a line of coke off a silver tray.

And then two lines off a book of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.

 Four through a hundred dollar bill.

A few bumps in the bathroom.

Off her desk when she woke up.

I watched her begin the slow, steady degradation of her life. I tried to distance myself. It didn't work.

We made love while she was high. We went to dinner while she was high. We watched movies while she was high. She met my parents while she was high.

She couldn't do anything without it. She couldn't be around me, or anyone, without it.

She was adding chemicals to parallel mine. Elevated mood. Dilated pupils. Increased heart rate. It was all there. Her chemicals matched up with mine. True love it would seem. Finally.

Love is just a chemical reaction in the brain.

You can't believe it. You can't trust it. Because those chemicals can stop reacting, and those "feelings" can and will pack their bags and leave just as quickly as they arrived. Turns out you can't trust coke either.

Because one day she sobered up and she left.

Beer

On my 21^st birthday, my parents gave me a six-pack of beer. It came out of nowhere. I never would’ve thought they’d buy me beer. You see they were Christian folks, good upstanding citizens, members of the PTA and all that crap. So when they got me beer for my birthday I didn’t have a damn clue what to do. I guess it would’ve been different if they’d gotten it for me as a joke, a gag gift, but that was all they fucking got me. Beer.

            Now, I’d drank before. I didn’t buy into religion and all that bullshit the way they did. Jesus turned water into wine didn’t he? Then why the hell am I not allowed to have a couple brews? So I took it. What was I supposed to do? Not accept the one gift they got me? That would’ve gone over great. My mother is all kinds of strange about gift giving see? So I had to take it. I didn’t have a choice.

            Two months later and now I’m lookin’ at the last goddamned bottle. Having a staring contest with the son of a bitch. I could drink it, but by now I’m half full of gin. Saturday night and I’m sittin alone in my apartment drinking gin and attempting to steal cable from my neighbors. All I can get is Wheel of Fortune. Jesus, who watches this shit anymore? Me, I guess, on a Saturday night, drunk and alone, staring at the last of the beer my parents got me for my birthday.

            I’d gone easy on the first one. I wanted to savor it, the first beer of my 21^st year, all that sappy, romantic bullshit. But the next couple I drank after my girl left me. I’d already had a few but I got two or three out of the pack my parents got me too. I mean what the hell, my girl just walked out on me, might as well drink myself to sleep and forget about her. After this incident I was left with just the one.           

            Since my 21^st I’d been keeping a lot more alcohol around my place. And why shouldn’t I? I’m allowed to, but for some reason I wouldn’t drink the beer my parents got me. After the first one, I probably went through two cases of my own and two pints of scotch before I drank those other three. Well, that was between Mary and myself, but she’s gone now. All I’ve got left is this last bottle.

            She was there when they gave me the beer. My parents took us out to a real fancy restaurant. It was the first time they were meeting her. Big fucking deal and all that. That night was the last time I really remember being happy. All of us dressed up going out on the town. Now that was a way to spend a night. Not like this. Not sitting on my couch staring at a beer while watching fucking Chuck Woolery spin that goddamned wheel on the tube.

            I thought about givin Mary a ring tonight. See if she’d want to come over and have a drink, maybe even take me back. She drives me up the fucking wall, but damn it if I don’t love her. It probably wouldn’t do any good though; she was always stubborn. Probably wouldn’t pick up the goddamned phone. Too busy layin some other guy or painting her toenails. She was always this way.

            I break my staring contest with the last of my beer, feeling as if I’ve come out of some sort of coma. I’m damn near about to pick up the phone when I think, what’s the fucking point? So I light another cigarette, take a couple drags, put it out, and crack open the last of that beer.