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The Days of Cornbread and Kringla: If Only Alcoholism Was As Fun As In The Movies

  Every story has more than two sides, but mine is not fortified by $2.50 Walmart wine. I was told the day we moved into the new house, by the mother of my new roommate, that I was the answer to her prayers to God, because her son would not have been able to live in such a nice place without me.

  Less than six hours later I woke to the house shaking, fiberboard breaking, and metal twisting. Stumbling out of my bedroom, I discovered he had driven his SUV into the garage door. I quickly learned it was the fault of the garage door opener not the shots of Patrón tequila coursing through his bloodstream.  Standing next to his beer frig, that he wanted to own his whole life, I looked at the hole where my garage door used to be, as the cool desert wind blew through it to kiss my face.  I realized one thing. God must hate me. It was day one.  

  The Almighty and I would get to know each other extremely well the next few months. There were the late night theological discussions. I discovered, as I sat under my roommate’s learning tree, that the Rock of Ages welcomed everyone into His heavenly arms… except the gays, of course.  It seems that being in a loving committed relationship is worse, in the eyes of the Lord, than climbing behind the wheel of a two ton killing machine, putting on beer goggles, and risking the lives of innocent human beings like they are the amphibians in a game of Frogger.  Now everyone makes a mistake, but if you have been nailed on three previous occasions, the last time with the police officer waking you up by wrapping his Maglite on your driver side window at a stoplight, the SUV still in drive, your foot on the brake, and your next arrest leading to a year in prison, if St. Peter is any kind of bouncer, he is going to let the stylishly dressed people in before you.

  There was the surreal middle of the night faith-healing religious service for my deaf white boxer puppy. I woke to the speaking of tongues, but I was pretty sure it was a dialect of the western province of the Bud Light region.  Now as much as it would have made my life easier if my dog could hear, she drinks out of the toilet when she has the chance, spends half her waking hours licking the backside of the older dog, and being a general pest to the neighbors, who she thinks should want to be her best friends.  If the Alpha and the Omega is going to do a little restoration, you would think my dog would not be at the top of his priority list.  Maybe, I don’t know, the teenage girl in the wheelchair down the street, her body twisted, her soul imprisoned in a broken vessel from which she cannot express herself, her mother putting her best face on, even though she is exhausted, as she pushes her on their daily walk together.  I give God permission to pass over my house and start there, because, even if my beloved pooch could hear, the highlight of her day is going to be doing her morning business in the backyard. With his hands pressed on her floppy ears, his call, over the sounds of the Cooking Channel on the television, to the heavens for God’s healing touch… shockingly, did not work.

  While friends and coworkers got to tell me their tales of ski weekends, their children’s soccer games, hot chicks they had met, and shows they had seen, I got to regale them on how my low rent Elmer Gantry, baptized in the fount of barley and h2o from land of sky blue water, put on a revival in my house.

  I also got to call on the Son of God myself on several occasions.  There was the night I awoke to two members of his family and him playing with my dog’s expensive shock collar.  The only reason I bought it was to get her attention when she had her back to me, so she did not get in trouble, or hurt herself, and even then had never had it above the lowest setting.   As my dog looked on, each one of them was passing it around, putting it against their Adam’s apple and increasing the current.  The goal was to see who would give up first. I learned two things that evening.  First, that thing could deal out quite a jolt. Second, my dog was the smartest creature in the room. When the Stooges passed out and left the collar where she could get at it, she chewed it to shreds.  They later tried the same experiment with a pellet gun and their naked rear ends, much to the same results. Both times I muttered the Savior’s name under my breath in disbelief, but I am pretty sure I got His middle name wrong.

  There was the night he was going to show me how brightly gun powder burned by spelling my name with it in the middle of the street, in front of our house, and setting it ablaze.  I am pretty sure the homeowners’ association would have sprinkled the Big Guy’s name around as they fined me for the burned TREVOR in the asphalt, as I was the only Trevor on the block, but, thankfully, roomie lost his balance, and fell into the glowing spectacle. As he called out for my help, of course, I did the Christian thing. I left him lying there, quietly turned around, and walked into the house.

   I recall being on my knees, asking the Primary Mover how I was going to keep a roof over my head, when roomie got fired, because the guy who was clocking in for him when he was too drunk to show up for work, got caught. At least I could take comfort, over the next few months, that if thieves broke into the house, they were not going to be able to steal the couch, as his prone body was going to protect it when he was not putting out cigarettes on my grill.  Mmmm, that cool Marlboro taste, as it mixes with the coals and propane, goes so well with steak and particularly chicken.

  I know I shouted God’s name when I opened the frig in the morning to find my $150 bottle of Dom Pérignon opened and sitting there, half drunk, without a cork to be seen, and four or five other dead soldiers from my wine collection scattered around the couch.  While I know that God’s last name is not “It”, and His middle name does not rhyme with a male sheep, it seemed proper to yell as I pushed my empty 36-bottle wine collection into my bedroom closet and locked the door.

  I think my neighbors might have thought religious services were going on at various occasions when I stamped out of the house, stood in the front yard, and screamed into my cell phone for various members of his family to come get him. Surprisingly, it was not their problem at such moments. To be fair, he was probably the best roommate I ever had when he was sober. The problem is I never saw him sober.

  There was the AA meeting where beers were brought in under coat pockets, popped open, and drank in front of people fighting to maintain their sobriety. And the pond in my front yard, with the huge fine, because he was too drunk to screw in a sprinkler head correctly. The call from the local watering hole to come get him, and the discussion between the bartender and myself as to where his pants might be.  He clearly had them on when he entered the establishment, and was not going to sit on my car seat without them. The non-payment of bills for which I had given him money. The con jobs. The lying. I could go on and on with such stories but his family will assure you that such tales could not possibly be true, and I might start yelling God’s name in the process. Surprisingly, when it came to protecting their alcoholic and his reputation, and to help him keep driving, they were a family again.  

  I do not want to talk about the nights I flipped my lid, sternly told him what I thought and then remembered that he had a huge collection of guns in the house. There were evenings I firmly expected to wake up in the eternal embrace of God’s loving arms, but when you live with an alcoholic there are nights that you are just to tired to care anymore. Those stories are not funny.

   Around 18 million Americans are alcoholics and at least 7 million kids, between the ages of 12 and 20, are binge drinkers. Seven million children will be beaten, sexually abused, or tortured, by a drunken caregiver. Over 25 million Americans have died as the result of alcohol related automobile accidents, roughly one every thirty minutes. It cost the taxpayers $130 billion to clean up the problems that result from alcohol.  It is over a $100 billion industry, and might be the only recession proof segment of the economy. Behind each of these statistics, however, is a story we probably do not want to hear. Probably one that if there is a God, even He does not want to hear.