in the absence of a hangover

It’s the first time in my life I’m reading Slouching Towards Bethlehem without a hangover. This experience won’t be bookended with bottles of Grenache Syrah or Pinot Noir as it was the last few times.

The Hydra that is my reading list has sprouted another head. I want to read The Ice Storm by Rick Moody next and probably Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh.

My ersatz kid sister made a friend at an NA meeting, an elderly woman sharp as a knife who keeps orchids and even won a few awards in Florida for her ability to keep them. It gives me hope for the orchid my father gave me for my birthday this year. She comes over to our house often, either before she and K go to a meeting, or else for dinner. Sometimes she takes us on errands to the plaza in Boynton Beach.

Christmas came and went without much fanfare, except for a cold front came in over the Atlantic Ocean and everyone’s been complaining of a headache that seems to pass like a virus between parties.

K told her elderly friend she woke up with her headache, her elderly friend told her she was welcome to keep it.

I went to an AA meeting last night and it was good. I actually spoke for the first time in months. My nine month anniversary is nigh. Both my father and I are superstitious about talking about such things, we prefer to take our shared sobriety a day at a time. I wonder how many people can say they went to the same rehab center as their parent. In the past, my father and I would ring in the holidays with Johnnie Walker Black or Lagavulin, or else some Tattinger champagne. But after my mother died, the great golden swell of joy and celebration departed with her.

Sobriety isn’t nearly as one-note or as boring as I thought it would be. The excess of it all rings so hollow and the idea of drinking as I did before gives me a phantom stomach ache.

I can still recall what it was like to wait for the endless delays at Midway Airport with my father on our way down here last spring. How the hangover never seemed to end, how my heart felt like a black hole I might sink into.