I don’t drink alone.  I have a cat that sits with me. 

    I feel more embarrassed going to the liquor store than I ever did visiting the porno movie shop.  They portray themselves as upstanding businesses in the community.  Why then can I not stand up a few hours after going there?

     I only started drinking a year ago.  Because I was bored.  Once I start I cannot stop until it’s all gone or I’m all gone.  I don’t even remember calling that girl ten times in one hour.  I don’t blame the alcohol, though.  I blame the damn re-dial button.  Now I have a breath-a-lyzer hooked up to the damn phone.  The money I saved on legal fees the first week it was installed I used to buy more alcohol.  Just testing the thing, right?

     I hate it when I lose my glasses after a long hard night of boozing.  I have only one pair, and am extremely near-sighted.  I have to crawl around the house on hands and knees looking for them.  I found them once in the cat litter box.  How’d they get in there? I wondered, a few hours later on my return trip to the liquor store.  “Have a nice day,” the clerk told me.  Oh, right, I thought.  Where will I find them tomorrow?  In the cat’s ass?

     I do like drinking a lot, a lot.  It’s fun for the first hour.  Then I get pissed-off and start calling people who (I perceive) have wronged me.  Or I call my accountant and make a pathetic pass at her.  Or profess my devotion to a twenty-year old customer (at midnight).  Yeah, drinking’s been real good for business.

     But I finally got rid of my coke habit.  Now I just drink it straight.

     You know you have a drinking problem when you think ice takes up too much space in the glass.  And when nothing less than a half-liter will do.  And when your girlfriend is six feet tall and made of cardboard.

     And she’s the only one who understands.  And her name’s Britney.  And you still haven’t gotten that stain out.

     It’s also a bad sign when you alternate between different liquor stores, because you don’t want the clerks to know you drink too much.  How’s that for caring about your fellow man?

     My cats don’t like it when I drink.  Because I forget to feed them.  There’s no time for dinner with a bottle of hundred proof on the counter.  They avoid me when I’m drinking, for good cause (see: “Do Not Punch Cat In Face”).  Smart little bastards.  Healthier for all of us that way.

     That reminds me of the guy who was teaching his cat not to eat, but it died just before training was completed.

     I have met some really nice people this year because of my hard drinking.  My attorney, my county prosecuter, my judge, my psychiatrist, my therapist, the list goes on.

     I tell them, “Finally stopped drinking.  ‘Round midnight last night.” That one always gets a laugh from the construction guys, but they’re not being paid two-hundred fifty dollars an hour.  And they kinda got a weird odor.  But they know what beer-thirty is.  So it’s a toss-up.

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