Scotch

I walked into my usual liquor store, direct to the coolers. I stood in front of the Guinness, my usual beer. I always buy Guinness, except when I veer right and choose a nice dry red wine, usually perusing the mark-downs. This time I turned left. I grabbed a large bottle of Jameson Scotch Whisky and carried it to the counter. Tonight I’ll be a scotch-drinker, I thought. Tonight I want to be someone else.

“Will this be all for you?”

“A pack of Camels too, please. And this lighter.”

She rang up my purchase and took my debit card from me. I hoped it would not overdraw my account. I wondered if she could tell I was hoping that. I wondered if she could tell I didn’t smoke.

So, this is me as a scotch drinker. Guinness is for drinking in pubs with good friends. I have no friends. Wine is for romantic dinners. I have no romance, and no desire to eat. Scotch is for lone drinkers, for a man to drink alone while smoking and forgetting his past. I’m not a man, but I have a lot of forgetting to do. Right now, I would even forget that I am a woman. I want no emotions, no longings, and no gifts of love that go unwanted. I just want to be a writer who needs no more than a glass, a few ice cubes, a cigarette, and scotch.

As I lean back in my large antique chair, I feel almost numb, removed from myself. I am, now, just a character sketch. I’m just a body, this glass, and this stinking roll of burning leaves between my fingers. I sit here, reflecting and sucking in bits of bitter smoke, holding it, then letting it roll out through my nose like I’m some sort of dragon. I shut my eyes after each drag. Being a novice to tobacco, one puff makes me dizzy. Then I sip the cool scotch. Scotch isn’t a pleasant taste, really, but interesting. The woody tones of each cool sip work with the cigarette. I sit and stare at the window for some time, just going through these slow motions and thinking as little as possible.

Images of my first apartment lay themselves out in my mind. I remember sitting on the shared deck at night with Misty, sipping Glenlivet Scotch and listening to Robert Johnson CD’s. It was a bottle I lucked into for free and I had no money for buying luxuries like beer (or groceries for that matter). I think back to how smooth the night air felt, how calm I felt inside. Things were just perfectly simple. I was broke, but I knew I’d work through it. I lived alone, but I enjoyed it. The future was infinite. I still believed in things back then. I believed in people, at least a little bit… enough. I believed in my art, in books, in the simple pleasures of hard physical work and the joy of being my own person.

What changed? Well, People. They didn’t change; I just gained enough experience to learn that how they are doesn’t change. The history I had still left hope open for a different future, but then things always turned out the same, no matter what I did. I’d let them in, and thing always went haywire. One after another; one form of heartbreak or another. Maybe I met the wrong people. But if so, where were the right people? At home, with the people they already bonded with, no doubt – not out where I’d run into them. I’m not really sure how to act around people anyway.

I swish the golden liquid around the wide-mouth glass, the cubes now taken on random shapes in the wet ore. Well, scotch-drinkers don’t need people. They’re calm, laid back… they read books in large chairs, and they write novels at a desk like this, with a cigarette ashing in the tray. So will I. I will write something, not about the people I miss or losses I’ve known or hopelessness or foolish dreams, but something outside those feelings. Something I would write as this new me, as a scotch-drinker.

So, finally, I open Word, take a final drag off my cigarette and crush it out, filthy grey dust smearing all over the glass dish. Will it be a mystery? The jaded musings of a weathered old man? Some odd tale of eccentric characters in their everyday lives? I take a sip, set down the glass, and type:

“This is me as a scotch-drinker”

I stare at it, looking for more, and take another swig of the Jameson Scotch. Then, leaving the glass on the desk I go downstairs to get the bottle. I wash down a handful of anti-depressants under an up-turned green glass bottle, emptying the rest down my throat for good measure, and I go to bed.

I never cared for scotch.