Blunt Paradise
A stranger offers a recovering alcoholic an unusual theory about the afterlife.
Content warning: This story contains depictions of alcohol dependency.
There is a man I see every time I show up for an appointment at the clinic by my apartment, an all-day drunk who, despite looking at least as middle-aged as me, always improbably comes off as if he just came back from a scary prom-night scene that ended in floor violence.
The visual vibe of this species of debonair down-and-out, legs crossed and seated on a stone bench, might be brideless-bridegroom in pensive sulk after being left at the altar: tuxedo jacket off his shoulders and folded over his lap, sweat stains along his back, the alarming wound-rope redundancy of those French-cuffed sleeves, the colors and contours of conch shells, rolled up to his elbows, black shoes and Brylcreem baking under the sun.
There was a brown paper bag-sleeved beverage in his right hand.
I had been off the bottle for two months. My post-surgery sobriety came about because belated repairs on a torn tendon that controlled the extension of my left middle finger rendered the combination of pain meds with the hoax of a harmless happy hour a bad idea.
Drink was behind all my accidents, every bad breakup, my academic failures and so many mugshots, but booze—if I care to be generous about the depleting vice—was also how I finally got the proper medical attention, as it took me several servings of cardboard wine to get to an urgent care and have the compacted digit pulled out into a straight fuck-you finger. After five days of medically assisted detox, I was ready to receive that white-coat counsel about what medical procedure might come next.
“I just can’t take it so easy,” I offered as a no-frills explanation to the social worker helping me with discharge from the hospital. The young woman nodded almost preemptively at the utter familiarity of my story, as she’d no doubt heard identical DT-details from all the banana-bag loonies she encountered on the daily.
But this guy I saw on the bench outside the clinic looked like he was taking it very easy, and since I was fifteen minutes from my appointment, I asked him how he was doing.
