She asks about drinking strategically, and that’s what concerns me more than anything else. Her first party a couple of years ago, ages ago, I had advised her. I had said, I know it’s inevitable, follow these rules: don’t take any drink offer to you, don’t leave your drink unattended, don’t hesitate to call.

Simple. But she never drank. she tried it and didn’t like it and avoided it, basing her reluctance on science and brain development and the goals of her life. but now, she is contemplating it. she says, I’m going off to college, it’s not realistic that I won’t have a drink. I want to try it at this party that is coming up. What are your thoughts.

And I sat with her. I asked her what her goals were, what was she expecting. And she said she wanted to be prepared. It was strategic. It’s a fact-finding mission. To know who she was and how to be and adjust accordingly given this type of situation. She’s always prepared. So I told her my story. I told her how I had my first drink at 13, 14, gin that made me vomit because I drank it like water. How, even now, I drink like it’s water and I am a man in the desert.

I warned her: you have a genetic propensity to like it too much, my biological father was an alcoholic. That I considered myself an alcoholic and avoid it as much as possible. I told her, your grandfather was a mean drunk. That I was a happy drunk. That I liked myself when I was drunk. That I loved everyone when I was drunk. That I got most of drinking out of the way before I even turned 21.

I then got up and grabbed a fruity “hard” lemonade from the fridge. Set it before her. Let’s find out what type of drunk you are. Let’s see.

And, of course, she wouldn’t. this wasn’t the point, she said.

Have I lost it, as opposed to finding it. I find myself every day. Suddenly there, always there, a knowing and unknowing, a curling and staggered breath. it’s not supposed to amount to anything, just get it down. There’s so much garbage here. So much refuse. Words you barely know how to use but use them anyway because they sound cool. Make you sound cool. Like a coolatta. What the fuck is wrong with you? “coolatta” but hack at it. that’s the point, to drudge through the misery, get it out, dig around, hope you don’t get poked by a stray needle.

I was never ever really worried about random metal cuts. I was never worried about my hand in the heap and the pin prick of something rusty and jagged and filthy. Always thought myself invincible. Running down alleyways playing poor man’s football without equipment, too much traffic on the side streets to play a scrimmage properly, and there I was: husky kid barreling down the alleyway close to the wall, too close, gaining an ungodly momentum on the return and my hand holding the ball scraped against brick and mortar. And I feel the gentle tug of romance in that thought, in that memory of bleeding as I scored a touchdown, outpacing the boys that I wanted to be accepted by, the friends I never truly had. But that’s another story for another time if I ever get all the bits and bytes in the right order.

And it’s the order of things that bother me. How they get lost, or mis-shaped. You never really remember the thing itself: the thing itself is long gone. Even worse, the thing itself was never there. You were never there. Just the impression of a world you thought you were in but left little evidence on you and you on it.