Aquarium
It's four-thirty, but if I don't do something, I won't get back to sleep.
Thom and I got drunk together for the first time in a long time tonight. We are house-sitting for our landlord and landlady, and earlier, Thom made himself two rum and diet cokes out of their liquor cabinet. I guess I should preface by saying that Thom has not been drunk, and he's had very little to drink, over the past eight months. He's a smaller guy, but usually, if he's used to it, he can party people twice his size and half his age under the table. After the rum, which, a year ago would not have affected him very much, he was a little drunk. Later, we went down to the tea house, our favorite resturant in town, where pretty much everyone knows our names, where they don't really serve anything liquid-wise but tea and alcohol. We got there at 9:30 and everyone was already drinking. Usually, if Thom is tempted by a beer or something, I act as his will power. However, he was already drunk and this was a safe place with some of his best friends, so we simply had an unspoken agreement that it would be OK for him to get smashed.
Neither of us got smashed, but we did have a beer a piece (which is enough to get me pretty drunk) and he had two shots of whiskey. We stayed until 11:15 when, again by unspoken agreement, we knew it was time to go home. I drove, Dear god, did I ever think I would be driving drunk?, and we made it home OK, it being only a few blocks. I think I was less drunk than I thought, since I handled the car perfectly. I'd never had an entire beer before, and I think I just felt bad, as opposed to being drunk.
We got in, got to bed, and I slept until about an hour ago. Right before I fell asleep, however, I began to think about the possiblity of Thom dying. I guess this was triggered by our visit to one of his good friends in the hospital earlier in the day. His friend Alan, only 50 years old, is in the hospital because of advanced heart failure. Our hearts are supposed to be working at 50% or 60% and his is working at 20%, probably brought on by years and years of drinking the cheapest beer around, smoking the cheapest ciggarettes, and eating nothing but pizza and other junk. The only options left for him now are a bypass or a transplant. The doctors don't know yet if there's even enough good tissue left in his heart to warrant fixing it (bypass) instead of replacing it. If his condition doesn't get treated, he will probably be dead within a year. He'll just wake up dead.
That's how it was with Thom's dad, too. He wasn't as rough on his body, but he ate a crappy diet, and when he was in his 70's, the doctor told him that he should probably have heart surgery, but he declined to have it done, and about 6 months later, Thom's mom found him dead in bed.
Thom, however, is in excellent health. He's always taken great care of his body, and probably has the body of a person 10 or 15 years younger than he is, even outwardly. I met him when he was 48, and I thought he was 35 or so. At any rate, I began to think about what it would be like if I woke up with him next to me, dead. Alcohol doesn't give you greater access to thought, but it does give you greater access to emotion than you would normally have.
So what if Thom vomited a little in his sleep when I was asleep and drowned in it? I began to feel what it would feel like for me, knowing that, if Thom died so suddenly, whenever the reality hit me, whether it was before I even called 911, or six months later, it would cause me to faint. Now, I've never fainted in my life, especially not over anything not purely physical, but I do know that the reality would be too much, and I would have no choice but to pass out.
While I was certainly feeling pain thinking about this, I realized that my pain was only speculative, but that I still had a good view of the pain that could only be brought into being by reality. It was like I was a visitor at an aquarium. Looking in, I felt sharky, eely, wet and 68 degrees, but realized that, if the glass broke, it would be a completely different thing. It would be like the time I got pounded by a wave onto the beach, and I felt some part of my body scraping against the sand, but because of how chaotic things were, I could not tell what part until later, out of the water, I noticed a scratch on my face. I would be pounded against the wall, the floor, and feel something flat, even, alive knock into me: a shark.
I fell asleep, woke back up 4 hours later, to Thom, snoring, curled up, and pretty much passed out. The snoring is annoying, but, at least by paranoid middle-of-the-night standards, I'm assured that he's alive. When he stops I put my ear against his back and hear his lungs and his heart at once.
Thom and I got drunk together for the first time in a long time tonight. We are house-sitting for our landlord and landlady, and earlier, Thom made himself two rum and diet cokes out of their liquor cabinet. I guess I should preface by saying that Thom has not been drunk, and he's had very little to drink, over the past eight months. He's a smaller guy, but usually, if he's used to it, he can party people twice his size and half his age under the table. After the rum, which, a year ago would not have affected him very much, he was a little drunk. Later, we went down to the tea house, our favorite resturant in town, where pretty much everyone knows our names, where they don't really serve anything liquid-wise but tea and alcohol. We got there at 9:30 and everyone was already drinking. Usually, if Thom is tempted by a beer or something, I act as his will power. However, he was already drunk and this was a safe place with some of his best friends, so we simply had an unspoken agreement that it would be OK for him to get smashed.
Neither of us got smashed, but we did have a beer a piece (which is enough to get me pretty drunk) and he had two shots of whiskey. We stayed until 11:15 when, again by unspoken agreement, we knew it was time to go home. I drove, Dear god, did I ever think I would be driving drunk?, and we made it home OK, it being only a few blocks. I think I was less drunk than I thought, since I handled the car perfectly. I'd never had an entire beer before, and I think I just felt bad, as opposed to being drunk.
We got in, got to bed, and I slept until about an hour ago. Right before I fell asleep, however, I began to think about the possiblity of Thom dying. I guess this was triggered by our visit to one of his good friends in the hospital earlier in the day. His friend Alan, only 50 years old, is in the hospital because of advanced heart failure. Our hearts are supposed to be working at 50% or 60% and his is working at 20%, probably brought on by years and years of drinking the cheapest beer around, smoking the cheapest ciggarettes, and eating nothing but pizza and other junk. The only options left for him now are a bypass or a transplant. The doctors don't know yet if there's even enough good tissue left in his heart to warrant fixing it (bypass) instead of replacing it. If his condition doesn't get treated, he will probably be dead within a year. He'll just wake up dead.
That's how it was with Thom's dad, too. He wasn't as rough on his body, but he ate a crappy diet, and when he was in his 70's, the doctor told him that he should probably have heart surgery, but he declined to have it done, and about 6 months later, Thom's mom found him dead in bed.
Thom, however, is in excellent health. He's always taken great care of his body, and probably has the body of a person 10 or 15 years younger than he is, even outwardly. I met him when he was 48, and I thought he was 35 or so. At any rate, I began to think about what it would be like if I woke up with him next to me, dead. Alcohol doesn't give you greater access to thought, but it does give you greater access to emotion than you would normally have.
So what if Thom vomited a little in his sleep when I was asleep and drowned in it? I began to feel what it would feel like for me, knowing that, if Thom died so suddenly, whenever the reality hit me, whether it was before I even called 911, or six months later, it would cause me to faint. Now, I've never fainted in my life, especially not over anything not purely physical, but I do know that the reality would be too much, and I would have no choice but to pass out.
While I was certainly feeling pain thinking about this, I realized that my pain was only speculative, but that I still had a good view of the pain that could only be brought into being by reality. It was like I was a visitor at an aquarium. Looking in, I felt sharky, eely, wet and 68 degrees, but realized that, if the glass broke, it would be a completely different thing. It would be like the time I got pounded by a wave onto the beach, and I felt some part of my body scraping against the sand, but because of how chaotic things were, I could not tell what part until later, out of the water, I noticed a scratch on my face. I would be pounded against the wall, the floor, and feel something flat, even, alive knock into me: a shark.
I fell asleep, woke back up 4 hours later, to Thom, snoring, curled up, and pretty much passed out. The snoring is annoying, but, at least by paranoid middle-of-the-night standards, I'm assured that he's alive. When he stops I put my ear against his back and hear his lungs and his heart at once.
posted by Emily @ 3:23 AM
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