Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget by Sarah Hepola Page B
Authors: Sarah Hepola
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can be a swap like this. Only a certain number of runners on the track at once.
I threw a hotel party with my new theater companions and invited Jennifer. By the time I got to the La Quinta, she was already wasted. She began spewing compliments in a dangerously slushy state.
You’re so pretty. I miss you.
She stirred up all kinds of drama when she made out with a friend’s boyfriend. The next day I could barely look her in the face.
“What is wrong with you?” I asked her as we drove away from the hotel. “Have you completely lost your mind?”
She didn’t answer, because she couldn’t remember. She had blacked out and—just like we both would in years to come—poured herself into whatever hands wandered her way.
That night fractured our friendship for good. Jennifer graduated a year early. And I got a boyfriend. I belonged to him now.
I WAS A junior in high school when my parents finally busted me. I came home from school to find a half-empty 12-pack of Coors Light sitting in front of my bedroom door, with a note that read:
We’ll talk about this when your dad gets home.
The beer was a gift from my boyfriend, Miles, a funny guy with delicate features and an equal fluency in Monty Python and David Bowie. He gave me the Coors Light for my sixteenth birthday, along with a $25 gift certificate to the Gap, a reflection of my hierarchy of needs at the time. I stored the 12-pack in the back of my closet, underneath dirty clothes, and I would sneak a can out of it from time to time. Three were smuggled in my woven bucket purse and slurped with friends before a dance.Another was shoved between my cleavage underneath a mock turtleneck as I paraded past my father in the middle of the day, just to prove I could. I drank one of them on a lazy Saturday, sipping it in my bedroom, because I liked the casualness of the gesture, a high school girl playing college.
But my clever ruse fell apart when my mother dug through my closet to recover a shirt I’d borrowed. She couldn’t miss the silver glint of contraband in the dim light.
I couldn’t predict how my parents were going to react to this discovery. They were so different than other parents. Half my friends’ folks had divorced by then. Jennifer’s father lived in an undecorated apartment across town. Stephanie’s mother moved the girls into a duplex, while her dad began a slow drift that would take him out of her life completely. All those shiny, happy families, splintered into custody arrangements and second marriages. And yet, somehow, my parents stayed together. My mom was happier, less volatile now—a result of her intensive therapy, four times a week. We used to joke that for the price of a new home, we got a healthy mother. My parents may have argued their way through my elementary school years, but by the time they sat me down in the living room that night, they were united.
“Your father and I would like to know where you got this beer,” my mother said.
I wasn’t sure how to spin this episode. How much reality could they handle? I’d been drinking for years at this point with such assurance that playing dumb would be an insult to my pride. At the same time, my folks were on the naive end, and most of what they knew about underage drinking came from 60
Minutes
–style segments where teenagers wound up in hospitals. Of course, things really did spin out of control at some of our parties, and even I was uncomfortable with the level ofoblivion. A friend had recently crashed his car while driving drunk. I was worried about him—but it gave me an idea.
“I know it’s upsetting to find something like this,” I told my parents. “But what you don’t realize is that I’m holding the beer for a friend, who has a drinking problem.”
I hated lying to them. They were so earnest. I felt like I was kicking a cocker spaniel in the teeth. But the lie was necessary, the same way I had to tell them Miles and I were “just talking” during all those late
I threw a hotel party with my new theater companions and invited Jennifer. By the time I got to the La Quinta, she was already wasted. She began spewing compliments in a dangerously slushy state.
You’re so pretty. I miss you.
She stirred up all kinds of drama when she made out with a friend’s boyfriend. The next day I could barely look her in the face.
“What is wrong with you?” I asked her as we drove away from the hotel. “Have you completely lost your mind?”
She didn’t answer, because she couldn’t remember. She had blacked out and—just like we both would in years to come—poured herself into whatever hands wandered her way.
That night fractured our friendship for good. Jennifer graduated a year early. And I got a boyfriend. I belonged to him now.
I WAS A junior in high school when my parents finally busted me. I came home from school to find a half-empty 12-pack of Coors Light sitting in front of my bedroom door, with a note that read:
We’ll talk about this when your dad gets home.
The beer was a gift from my boyfriend, Miles, a funny guy with delicate features and an equal fluency in Monty Python and David Bowie. He gave me the Coors Light for my sixteenth birthday, along with a $25 gift certificate to the Gap, a reflection of my hierarchy of needs at the time. I stored the 12-pack in the back of my closet, underneath dirty clothes, and I would sneak a can out of it from time to time. Three were smuggled in my woven bucket purse and slurped with friends before a dance.Another was shoved between my cleavage underneath a mock turtleneck as I paraded past my father in the middle of the day, just to prove I could. I drank one of them on a lazy Saturday, sipping it in my bedroom, because I liked the casualness of the gesture, a high school girl playing college.
But my clever ruse fell apart when my mother dug through my closet to recover a shirt I’d borrowed. She couldn’t miss the silver glint of contraband in the dim light.
I couldn’t predict how my parents were going to react to this discovery. They were so different than other parents. Half my friends’ folks had divorced by then. Jennifer’s father lived in an undecorated apartment across town. Stephanie’s mother moved the girls into a duplex, while her dad began a slow drift that would take him out of her life completely. All those shiny, happy families, splintered into custody arrangements and second marriages. And yet, somehow, my parents stayed together. My mom was happier, less volatile now—a result of her intensive therapy, four times a week. We used to joke that for the price of a new home, we got a healthy mother. My parents may have argued their way through my elementary school years, but by the time they sat me down in the living room that night, they were united.
“Your father and I would like to know where you got this beer,” my mother said.
I wasn’t sure how to spin this episode. How much reality could they handle? I’d been drinking for years at this point with such assurance that playing dumb would be an insult to my pride. At the same time, my folks were on the naive end, and most of what they knew about underage drinking came from 60
Minutes
–style segments where teenagers wound up in hospitals. Of course, things really did spin out of control at some of our parties, and even I was uncomfortable with the level ofoblivion. A friend had recently crashed his car while driving drunk. I was worried about him—but it gave me an idea.
“I know it’s upsetting to find something like this,” I told my parents. “But what you don’t realize is that I’m holding the beer for a friend, who has a drinking problem.”
I hated lying to them. They were so earnest. I felt like I was kicking a cocker spaniel in the teeth. But the lie was necessary, the same way I had to tell them Miles and I were “just talking” during all those late
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