The plague is everywhere. It is Stateside, in Australia, the UK. I
meet its survivors among Irish Catholics from Jersey City who refer
jokingly to alcoholism as Morbus Hibernicus. See, they all went to
Marist High School in Bayonne, so they learned Latin too. It hit Jews
too. Morbus Hebraicus? My father didn't drink. This is the only
reason I'm alive. My mother was a dry drunk who had all the
characteristics of an alcoholic but didn't drink because of her precious
control she did not have anyway: the only times I ever saw her happy
were the few occasions she got a bit tipsy on whiskey sours.
Nobody in the extended family was a drunk. That's because Jews don't
become drunks. That's why I go to four or five meetings a week. The
forgot to circumcise me. I am actually the Pope in Rome.
I have heard versions of this before. "I would wake up next to some guy
and not know who he was or how I got there. A month later I'd figure
out I was pregnant." Immaculate conception: you don't remember a damn
thing.
"I would wake up handcuffed to a hospital gurney and find out that while
in uniform and a blackout, I, a cop on duty, drew my service weapon and
killed a guy because I wanted to use the pay phone to call my bookmaker."
I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.
I'm reading a nightmare. Mine, a lot of people's. If you think it's
prosaic, tough shit. Get out more.
Ken
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Kenneth Wolman andreachenier.net rainermaria.typepad.com
Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, face the facts. -- Ruth Gordon
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