I’m Drinking Your Vodka Tonight

I had found it under your bathroom sink again. I found it behind your printer once. I found it in your file cabinet. I hated that you hid booze in the house. Once you poured it out. Once you let me put it in the cabinet. Once it killed you.

I put the last four bottles I found under the bathroom cabinet in the back closet. Then I cleaned that closet out and put the Vodka in the kitchen cabinet. It has been there a couple months. Tonight I am having a cocktail. A Pineapple/Vodka drunk. An ode to your life. A time to take you away from this world and out into the universe. Unfortunately the crash back to earth is not worth it. I don’t like the payback but you didn’t seem to mind.

It took me all this time to buy some Pineapple juice. Today at Walmart I found some cheap and that is just what I wanted. You and I had wonderful fun with our Pineapple Cocktails. We added a red cherry to mine and you switched to Grapefruit Juice because you were that kind of guy. We loved our cocktail hour. We loved to play but you had to have more. You had to have a pint of this Vodka a day. A pint. You wanted to transcend. So tonight I am transcending in your honor. Tonight I am remembering the joys of alcohol.

I am floating now. I know you liked to float. We floated together many times until you were too sick. I wanted you to stop floating. I wanted you to give up this high. I wanted you to quit poisoning yourself. You couldn’t do that. You were somewhere that I could not reach. But tonight I am there. Tonight I am as high as a kite and I know what you craved. You wanted to be beyond judgment, beyond your Mother’s control, beyond time. I know what that feels like.

So tonight I miss you. I understand that you had to drink to make it all seem pleasurable. In a world of suffering and chaos you liked to be above it all. You liked to float in a Vodka haze. Who can blame you? When your mother abuses you the rest of your life is misery. You wanted to be loved. I loved you. I didn’t trust you because of this dam vodka haze but I did care for you. I understand that there was a lack in your life. I could not fill that void. Vodka could not fill it. Overeating could not come close to filling in for that love.

I understand that release. I understand that you wanted to be free. But vodka destroyed your liver. I can still see the ICU doctors telling me that your heart and liver were weak and couldn’t sustain you through your lung collapse. It was a house of cards coming down and you died.

There’s a reason there is such a thing as help for alcoholics these days.  Liquor  poison. It is toxic. You died. You killed yourself. You are missed tonight. I will not become addicted to this substance that takes my soul for a flight to the universe and might or might not come back. Vodka is so pure and clear and potent. You loved it more than me. I understand that and I forgive you. Tonight I drink in your honor and I love you and miss you.

……………

I wrote those words a few months after my friend died. I had found four bottles of vodka under the bathroom sink and they are now in the kitchen under the stove. I have two and a half bottles left. Today I decided that I wanted to get high. I wanted to escape from the fact that I miss your money helping me out every month. I wanted to get relief from the anxiety and guilt in caring for my mother and wishing I had her money. I wanted to get out of the deep dark that life can kill you with.

So I went to the store and got a little pineapple juice. I mixed it with some ice and grenadine to make it a beautiful cocktail like we used to have when we were in love and so happy. Every evening we had our drinks. I didn’t know that you couldn’t stop. I didn’t realize that you wanted to always be high. You never wanted to come down and face the agony of not being loved. I can’t blame you but I miss you. And today I toast your ghostly presence.

The funny thing is that I went out into the backyard to drink a second drink. Vowing to get so fucked up I couldn’t walk and for sure couldn’t drive. How did you ever think you could drive drunk? When they took you away for the DUI your alcohol level was four times the legal limit. Four times!!! and that was at 10am in the morning.

But the funny thing is that I forgot to put the vodka in the second drink. I was involved in an art project and thinking about a new love and dealing with paperwork and I forgot that I was going to get totally drunk in your honor. I forgot that I am not an alcoholic. I like sugar and snacks and I like to be easy but I do not crave that clear liquid poison like you did. I am in no danger of dying like you did. The alcohol that you left behind will not kill me like it killed you. There are still two and a half bottles here and I have no craving for them. I am fine. Just fine.