Why I Don’t Drink

I write this entry in a dark classroom in a small Japanese town which currently is equally as dark as the room I am in. It is an hour and a half removed from midnight. The events that placed me here could have been avoided but alcohol is hard to negotiate with. I don’t drink…at least, what I mean to say is, though I will have the casual white Russian or glass of wine I can count the amount of times I’ve drank myself into a hazy stupor on one hand. I simply have witnessed the ramifications that often come with such excess and, frankly, I have better things to do then lunging over a toilet as my innards choose to find another living place. You think you know somebody, actually feel that this book is so open that you can turn to any chapter and find no surprises. I’m generally a good judge of character. I riffle through potential friends with a fine tooth comb seeking blights and contrasting blemishes before accepting them into my inner circle. I’m an intense scrutinizer of companionship. Alcohol, lack of control, weakness to the drink…all this has a way of changing a person. What you believed you knew is twisted, turns in, contorted and reshaped until often you are now gazing at the dark face of a stranger. The hidden is born via the booze and in a fraction of a second a moment can become altered, a friend can become a demon and what appeared to be safe and secure has now become a slow walk through a field of landmines. Such was the case this evening.

I’ve really only befriended one or two people since arriving here. Again, I keep my inner circle quite small. Actually, said circle could probably fit as a ring around your baby finger. Of the few one was a man who shared many of my own personal beliefs. We often spoke of spirituality, the downturn of society, environmental issues and our similar feelings of being in a world we feel we don’t fit into. He mentioned a few times of his tendency to drink and though it always was made to sound as though he had a few cans of beer before turning in I understand now that was wrong in that assessment. Only now do I remember him once mentioning in passing of an old relationship that had gone sour due to some drunken incident he choose not to elaborate upon. I didn’t read him as having a serious problem. I’m not as good a judge of character as I believe myself to be. I did discover his paranoia earlier on. He constantly believed people were plotting his ends and this notion was only vindicated by his recent employment termination by the company. I would find myself trying to rationalize things with him and sometimes I got through. Other times I just endured his paranoid rants with a smile and a nod. Until this evening we had only had one major disagreement and would you believe that it was over something as silly as religion? He believed they’re to be proof of Christ’s existence and I believe that scientifically there is nothing really concrete. This all happened on a train ride home and was the first time I witnessed a shift in him. He suddenly became defense, claimed I was insulting him which was not at all true. I was debating him, nothing more. Small barbs were tossed my way by him insulting my chosen lifestyle, despite our similarities, and the remainder of the train ride ended in silence with a mute apology at the end of the line and a point of conversation that would not be resurrected. I guess the signs were there that maybe this wasn’t the type of person I should be fraternizing with but I guess for lack of any other people to have like minded discussions with I pushed onward. He offered me a place to stay for the week I would need one come February and all in all the little differences were not enough to totally put the kibosh on the friendship.

Tonight was to be our last time together indefinitely. He believed to be starting a new job soon and wasn’t sure when he’d have any time for socializing. This was understood. His well being in this country and ability to stay here with a long term girlfriend of his was much more important then shooting the shit over noodles or watching a film every now and then. The night started out rocky. He initially had asked me to call him before he was to set out and meet me at the train station. I called at the predetermined time to find no answer. I would call about ten more times before my phone would be ringing with him on the other end telling me he’d been waiting at the station for a half hour and I’d never showed. I reminded him of our earlier plans and apologized for his wasted time and I was on the next train out. The plan now was that I was to call him when I arrived. I did so. Again no answer except on the second call, just as I was about to hang up the phone, I heard some music playing on the other end. Sounded a bit like acid rock. It was too late, though. My hand was already hanging up the line. I tried again. This time there was no answer. This was starting to become complicated and frustrating. Amazing how things so utterly simple can denigrate so easily. I went and purchased some soup, the only thing I can keep down these last few days, and some orange juice for some much needed vitamins and then tried to call again. Nothing. I just started to head out to our intended meeting spot figuring I’d call again there before calling it a night. I would actually meet him along the way, hardly recognizing him as he was now clean- and had chopped off his long hair. He offered me a ride on the bike. I declined.

His apartment was twenty minutes away from the station. It is clear to me now that he must have had a few before coming to get me. We spoke of the usually, bitched about the company, the world, etc. before settling into his pad where he started to cook up some tasty soup while we listened to bluegrass. We wouldn’t even get halfway into it. I had brought a movie along with me I wanted him to see and so I hooked up the laptop. The first interruption by him to the film came about twenty minutes in when he asked me to pause because he wanted a cigarette. I didn’t realize he smoked. He said he only did so when he drank. By this time, from what I saw, he was on his second can. As he smoked and drank, the film still on pause, he rambled on from topic to topic, his conversation becoming more sporadic with each swig of Japanese beer. At first I was a welcome passenger along on the ride, it was a good chat, but soon I just wanted to watch the film and end this conversation. He had started to ramble, talking of how the race needs to be wiped clean and how he sees no saving grace in humanity. His voice began to tremble. Wait, was that a tear? Passion or madness? Maybe both. As he drank he constantly got up to smoke. At one point he went and made some food which I declined due to being full. He seemed upset by this. I would stop pausing the film during his interruptions hoping that he’d become interested in what he’d missed. That didn’t work. He just slurred and babbled now at a point where I couldn’t understand what he was talking about. There would be broken sentences or just single words. There’s drunk and then there is shitfaced. Shortly after he settled down for the last time in his chair I turned to find his can of beer slowly slipping out of his hands. I debated on whether or not I should grab it before it spilled. Then he started to drool. One long stream of drool. He was out but breathing. There was no doubt there. You could smell it. I stopped the film and woke him up telling him that maybe it was time to turn in. He protested. I mentioned the drool. He protested. I got up to use the bathroom to find that he had pissed all over the place. My socks were damp with urine. I told him that maybe he should mop up the room before the smell got rank and he accused me of insulting him. I guess, in a way, I was but I certainly felt insulted in return. “I invite you here. I feed you,” he slurs as if this gave him an allowance to be a drunken idiot. He made accusations against his own hospitality and again became quite paranoid fabricating sentiment for me. The illusions of the drunkard. “I knew this would happen,” he said. Well, maybe you should have thought of that before drinking a couple of bathtubs, huh? He kept on me that I wanted to go home to which I said I didn’t but he wasn’t satisfied with such simple answers and stumbled into a phonecall with his girlfriend, waking her up. From the sounds of things this was a usual occurrence. He kept apologizing, telling her he’d had an argument. I kept telling him to not bother his girlfriend, things were fine…essentially I was trying to make peace and just end the ordeal, go to bed and wake up to another day and him to his hangover. He pressed on in trying to find me a cab home and I kept thinking if this is how it has to be I can catch the last train home. I tried once again to just bury the hatchet but he would say: “I don’t care. I just want you to go home.” I saw the situation only becoming more volatile if I had stayed. I packed up. I saw him last as I stood in his doorway. He was in shadow, breathing heavy, smelling of beer. I could think of nothing to say. I did feel that this was final, though, and when I opened the door and stepped out into the night I realized that I probably would never see him again. Not a good end…not a good end at all.

As I walked towards the train station I thought of how everything had just turned into a mess and I am not really sure how or way. The drink was definitely the catalyst. Could I have maybe still salvaged things? Should I have said more or did I say too much? I believe that the TRUE friends are the ones that acknowledge whereas the acquaintances just tolerate and ignore. Though I was disappointed in him and more then angry (I mean for a guy who spouted out old hippie rhetoric like an over active geyser he didn’t display an ability to walk the walk this evening) I found myself hoping he could overcome there problem. With his past talk regarding his drinking and my actually witnessing the results tonight it was clear that there WAS a problem. Lost in thought I was soon lost on the streets of the city. I had exited his place the back way and didn’t recognize the streets or landmarks I mentally embedded into my mind. It was dark. It was cold. I was sick. This was just a whole helping of shitty. I don’t know how I found the tracks, I was sure I was walking in the wrong direction, but when I did find them I decided on heading left and doing so lead me to the station. The place was dark now. I had to cross over the tracks, jump a small fence and yank myself up onto the empty platform to get inside. I would find myself walking up a shadowy staircase and into a light hall. This gave me hope that maybe I had not missed the last train out. No such luck. It had left fifteen minutes ago. Well, shit, now what? I thought of maybe going back but that didn’t seem to be a good idea. I thought of walking back home. I was only a few train stops away and the walk couldn’t have been more then two hours. I even tried doing this until I decided that this, too, was a bad idea. The signs were not pointing me in the right direction, it was dark, no streetlamps…all this pointed to me shivering in some ditch somewhere until morning. I then remembered that there was a company classroom in the area. I had once taught there. I backtracked to the station and tried to find the place. For once I was successful on my first attempt. Everything depended on the type of mailbox I would find there. There are a few ways the company has of concealing the spare keys. Luckily this particular school used the way of simply placing it in the mailbox within easy reach of my small, slender hand pushed through the slot. I opened the door and walked over to the heater. After a bit of button mashing I got it up and running. I wouldn’t freeze over night. And so I sit here now after it all saddened by how things ended. Again, I didn’t loose my negotiations with the man…I lost to the drink. The next train out of here is at 6am. I got myself a lot of time to kill…