Getting Used To It

Gosh.
It's late.
Two a.m.
I'm just getting home. I'm clean awake, stainless sober and all alone.
I'm in an really good mood, which is something I'm starting to get used to.

I haven't stayed out this late since I quit drinking, which was about nine months ago. It's been difficult adjusting to being sober in public- hard for me and hard for the people who knew me when I was drunk all the time.
Wow. I was drunk all the time, so much so that I'm not quite clear on where the booze stopped and the transfusions and endoscopies began. It's all kinda blurry to me, but in a day or two I'll get another hospital bill that'll remind me of the exact date and time , etc.

Eh, so what? It's only money and fuck it, I'll just have to earn more. I can do that. For now I'm OK, so let's just roll with that instead.



There's this really rare ( for me, anyway) feeling you get at the beginning of a romance, when you look at each other and say, "I could get used to having you around."
Do you know that feeling?
It's sweet, beautiful and so distant to me I can scarcely believe it exists, but it does. It really does.
I have a crush on an emotion. I'm smitten by the idea of being cheerful and loving.

To people who knew me when I was drinking, this is really startling behavior- when I meet someone I've not seen for a long time they invariably do a double-take and then tell me how great I look. This happens to me every time I go out, and I must say I enjoy it a great deal- although it's not so much a matter of me being good -looking now as it was a matter of me looking like thrice-dipped soft-horned shit then.

What's the change, they ask?
No more beer, I reply.

There's a pause while they wait to see if I'm going to start ranting about how I found Jesus and then hand them a Crayola manuscript with my babbling interpretation of Revelations, Various Damnations and Sundry Horrible Secrets , complete with charts, illustrations and diagrams drawn with a Magic Marker and my own blood.
Nope. None of that.

Well. Perhaps I'm going to launch into a lecture about the evils of drink and drugs, forcing my sobriety down their throat with all the delicacy of a stomach pump.
Nope. I don't do that either, although I probably should sometimes... frankly though, I think a little bit of getting fucked-up is good for most people .
I'm not most people.

My big secret is my experimentation with unaltered states of consciousness, such as being in a good mood for hours, even days at a time. It was weird at first, a bit awkward and fumbly, but my mood and I seem to have established a groove. Tentative, but we both want it to work and that is the important thing.

It began as a brief , casual fling with my good mood, and it was so much fun that we had to get back together again. And again. I found myself counting the hours at work, longing for that seemingly unreachable time when my cheer and I might once more be united.
Oh! the longing!
I feel like I'm cheating on my bad mood, making up excuses to slip away and and bask in the warm sunshine of Not Hating Everything.
I feel all bubbly and benevolent and not the slightest bit guilty at leaving Mr. Grumpy to stew in his own briny juices.
My bad mood sits alone at home, watching reruns of bad TV. My bad mood hates all television but he still watches it- my bad mood is an idiot . He's lucky I'm a football fan and Daily Show/Colbert junkie or he wouldn't even get basic cable.


Tonight I took my mood to a gallery opening- a really cool multi-media installation by Alyssa Saloman which features some audio ( a wobbly version of 'Blue Skies" played on an accordion) recorded by me. Lots of people there. Alyssa is beaming- the place is packed. There's am image of Sea Monkeys projected on a flat screen that seems to hover in mid-air. The actual, living Sea Monkeys are part of the sculpture. Beneath the murmur of the crowd I hear "Blue Skies" wheezing in and out of key on the radios Alyssa has placed along the east wall- she's got a pair actual FM transmitters at one end of the gallery- one broadcasting accordion mangling and the other playing a loop of disturbing news soundbites .
It's a beautiful thing.
I am really happy to be part of this.

But I have other business to attend to. A local band has actually sought me out and asked me if I'd be interested in being their soundman- will I come to their show?
Hell yeah!
So I get there and the show is for a PBS production called 'Music Seen' (Palominos is the band name) . This is cool. Look for it- I was told it plays in 13 markets .
I meet the band and they are decent guys who really do need a soundman so it's all looking up when -wham!- it gets even better.
There's a woman who's happy to see me- she's working a PBS camera, but I know her from the radio station. She goes out of her way to hang out with me during her breaks. She's so pretty that normally I'd have to get drunk just to talk to her, but tonight I've got a good mood-on.
Talk is easy tonight.
She knows a lot about music.
She keeps touching my arm as we speak.
I decide I'll ask her out if she touches me again.
She does.
I do.

Her eyes actually light up. Glow, I mean.
I have said a Right Thing.
She rests her hand on mine and suddenly she's sad- not the fright and revulsion that I was accustomed to when I was making loopy drunken passes at all the wrong women ; but sad- and not the slightest bit offended or disgusted.
She's moving to Boston in two weeks- if she was staying, well yes... she likes me but she thought I had a girlfriend... (?) -but she's not staying in town, so it's moot.

That's too bad, but it's OK- she'll do well. I watched her work tonight and I can tell she's good, someone who cares about their work. It's a very sexy trait and it's exceedingly rare.
That a woman of this quality would even entertain the idea of dating me indicates that perhaps I'm not such a wretch after all.

I mean:

a) The opening was a big hit.

b) I found a band as a client - maybe two, as I chatted up one of the other bands that I considered good and they were very receptive. My 18 months at the station has been great for my local rep but I never really noticed it until recently. I assumed everyone hated me, but they don't. Where did that thinking come from?
If I could find three/four steady bands to work with I could quit my shit job and make five times the pay for doing something I love. I used to do music stuff for a living- before my alcoholic break from reality.
Sober, I can do it again.
This is not impossible- not at all.
Keep trying.

c) This is really the most important to me- I can actually attract women- beautiful, smart , and creative women who wouldn't waste five minutes with me if I were drunk. I can be smart and witty and say nice things at the proper moment- and manage to accept 'no' gracefully.
All new skills for me. I am starting to like me.

So nothing is hopeless tonight, except maybe sleep.
I could get used to this.