Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget by Sarah Hepola Page A
Authors: Sarah Hepola
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glided down the streets of her neighborhood in that gray boat, our hearts booming louder than the radio, and then coaxed it back into her driveway. I could not have cared less about driving a car. But I played accomplice to her minor crime, same as she did for me,because we were good girlfriends like that. Always taking care of the other one’s needs.
I WAS A sophomore when the whispers began.
Did you know so-and-so drinks? Did you know so-and-so can buy?
Nobody needed to explain what the person was drinking and which substance they could buy. It was like the teenage version of the mafia. You just knew.
Ours was a conservative religious community. At pep rallies, a “prayer warrior” spoke before the big game. Youth ministers from the behemoth Presbyterian Church milled around the cafeteria at lunch. Popular girls wore silver cross necklaces and signed their notes “In His Grip.” But these kids were destined for the sanctioned debauch of fraternities and sororities, so high school was a slow seduction from one team to the other. I kept a running list in my head—who had gone to the devil’s side.
For a while, drinking was an underground society. I would show up to a fancy house on the old-money side of town, where the parents had gone on vacation (Aspen? Vail?), and I’d end up in some deep conversation with a stoner from my Racquet Sports class. When people asked later how we’d become friends, I had to remain vague.
Oh, you know, some thing.
Drinking forged unlikely connections. It dissolved the social hierarchies that had tyrannized us for so long. Like a play-at-home version of
The Breakfast Club
.
Jennifer had started to drink, too. Grape wine coolers and sugary concoctions. Girlie drinks. She had taken up with an older crowd, the ones who smoked on the corner across from the school. I hung out with the drama kids and slipped my best friend’s ring in a drawer; that was baby stuff now.
Theater was my new love. My energy shifted from academics to performance. I appeared in every play. I joined not one but two choirs. I had to keep my weight down for the stage, which meant at parties, I never allowed myself more than three Coors Lights, 102 calories each. My body obsession was not pretty, but at least it kept my drinking in check.
My new companion was Stephanie, a fellow drama geek. She and I took long aerobic walks after school. Afterward, we smoked Marlboro Lights at the Black-Eyed Pea while picking at our vegetable plates and talking about our future fabulous selves in New York. God, we had to get out of this town.
Stephanie was blond, poised, and gorgeous. She was also five nine. She actually glided down the hallway, her full lips in a pout, the indifferent stare of the runway on her face. I’d known Stephanie since sixth grade, when she was a sweet and bookish beanpole, but in our sophomore year, her body announced its exceptional status: boobs, graceful arms, legs to forever. Guys came up to me in class to ask if I knew her, as though she were already famous.
So much of high school is a competition for resources—attention from boys, praise from peers and teachers, roles in the school play—and it’s a dicey gamble to position yourself alongside one of the most breathtaking girls in the class. I’m not sure if this shows masochism on my part, or grandiosity, or both. I’ve never been devoured by envy like I was with Stephanie. To watch her enter a room in knee-high leather boots, her long, straight hair trailing behind her was to practically taste my peasant status. But I also saw her as my kind. I wrote my notes to her now. They were in the form of Top Ten lists, because we worshipped David Letterman and needed to hone our joke-writing skills. The path seemed obvious. Go to college, then join the cast of
Saturday Night Live
.
I never meant to leave Jennifer behind. There was never a ceremony in which Jennifer handed a baton to Stephanie for the next leg of the relay, but female friendships
I WAS A sophomore when the whispers began.
Did you know so-and-so drinks? Did you know so-and-so can buy?
Nobody needed to explain what the person was drinking and which substance they could buy. It was like the teenage version of the mafia. You just knew.
Ours was a conservative religious community. At pep rallies, a “prayer warrior” spoke before the big game. Youth ministers from the behemoth Presbyterian Church milled around the cafeteria at lunch. Popular girls wore silver cross necklaces and signed their notes “In His Grip.” But these kids were destined for the sanctioned debauch of fraternities and sororities, so high school was a slow seduction from one team to the other. I kept a running list in my head—who had gone to the devil’s side.
For a while, drinking was an underground society. I would show up to a fancy house on the old-money side of town, where the parents had gone on vacation (Aspen? Vail?), and I’d end up in some deep conversation with a stoner from my Racquet Sports class. When people asked later how we’d become friends, I had to remain vague.
Oh, you know, some thing.
Drinking forged unlikely connections. It dissolved the social hierarchies that had tyrannized us for so long. Like a play-at-home version of
The Breakfast Club
.
Jennifer had started to drink, too. Grape wine coolers and sugary concoctions. Girlie drinks. She had taken up with an older crowd, the ones who smoked on the corner across from the school. I hung out with the drama kids and slipped my best friend’s ring in a drawer; that was baby stuff now.
Theater was my new love. My energy shifted from academics to performance. I appeared in every play. I joined not one but two choirs. I had to keep my weight down for the stage, which meant at parties, I never allowed myself more than three Coors Lights, 102 calories each. My body obsession was not pretty, but at least it kept my drinking in check.
My new companion was Stephanie, a fellow drama geek. She and I took long aerobic walks after school. Afterward, we smoked Marlboro Lights at the Black-Eyed Pea while picking at our vegetable plates and talking about our future fabulous selves in New York. God, we had to get out of this town.
Stephanie was blond, poised, and gorgeous. She was also five nine. She actually glided down the hallway, her full lips in a pout, the indifferent stare of the runway on her face. I’d known Stephanie since sixth grade, when she was a sweet and bookish beanpole, but in our sophomore year, her body announced its exceptional status: boobs, graceful arms, legs to forever. Guys came up to me in class to ask if I knew her, as though she were already famous.
So much of high school is a competition for resources—attention from boys, praise from peers and teachers, roles in the school play—and it’s a dicey gamble to position yourself alongside one of the most breathtaking girls in the class. I’m not sure if this shows masochism on my part, or grandiosity, or both. I’ve never been devoured by envy like I was with Stephanie. To watch her enter a room in knee-high leather boots, her long, straight hair trailing behind her was to practically taste my peasant status. But I also saw her as my kind. I wrote my notes to her now. They were in the form of Top Ten lists, because we worshipped David Letterman and needed to hone our joke-writing skills. The path seemed obvious. Go to college, then join the cast of
Saturday Night Live
.
I never meant to leave Jennifer behind. There was never a ceremony in which Jennifer handed a baton to Stephanie for the next leg of the relay, but female friendships
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