2007-05-16

Lost & Found

Halloween, 1991. My bandmate and I went to a party in the parking lot of the Ancient Oaks Motel in Dade City, Florida. I don't remember what I dressed up as, but I remember drinking from a bottle of Malibu Coconut Rum and thinking that this was hilarious....thinking that I was hilarious.

It was my senior year of college. The best year so far. Maybe the best year ever. I lived in a wee house in nearby San Antonio with one of my very best friends. I loved that house, loved my housemate with a fierce mama-tiger kind of love. I loved the giant wooden swing we'd rigged up on one of the massive oak trees growing in our yard. I loved our decrepit screened-in front porch, where we'd sit on Saturdays, drinking Natural Light and listening to polka music on WMNF.

I remember feeling worldly and eccentric as all get out, wearing threadbare fifties cocktail dresses and swilling cheap beer on our cluttered little porch. And I remember that night in the Ancient Oaks parking lot, feeling extremely happy that it was only October, and that I had loads more time left in this year before I would have to graduate, and go back home to Boston and do....something. Shit. Panic. Drink.

Somebody had pitched a semi-exotic tent in the middle of the goings-on. Inside was a local woman reputed to be "psychic." People were going in and out. Happy. Smiling. They were clearly being told what they wanted to hear. My bandmate pushed me toward the tent. I stumbled through, giggling drunkenly, and plopped into the empty lawn chair in front of Madame Ancient Oaks. She glared at me, and after what seemed like an eternity, said: "OK. You want 'happily-ever-after' or do you want me to tell you THE TRUTH?"

"Ummmm, the TRUTH...I....guess..."

She tore into me with a litany of what she perceived to be my faults. I shrank further and further into the lawn chair, not entirely processing it all from sheer horror, but the word that kept popping up throughout her monologue was "potential." I had gifts that were never going to surface. I was never going to get where I thought I was going, and maybe I thought I was real cute now but soon enough I'd hit a dead end and it wouldn't be so funny anymore.

I walked out of there, deeply freaked out, my sticky Malibu buzz utterly harshed. I told my bandmate what had happened, and she was instantly outraged on my behalf. "Stupid bitch is probably a...a...FAILED ACTRESS or something, Lees," she said as she drove me back to my house, "I wouldn't worry about it."

But I got home, and went upstairs into my wee bedroom, where I sat cross-legged on my bed with my nearly-finished bottle of Malibu, and cried. Because somehow I knew that Madame Ancient Oaks, failed actress or no, was right. I sensed that I was going to get mired somehow, somewhere on the way to happy destiny, and that I might not make it out. Shit. Panic. Drink.

In the years to follow I'd make a point to bring that story up, usually at parties, usually drunk. Stupid bitch. What the hell does a woman telling fortunes in a motel parking lot know about potential? I'd get amusingly indignant, then catty, then shrill. And then I'd pass out.

My favorite thing to do, for a good stretch of time, was to pick up a pint of Jack Daniels on the way home from work -- at one of three different liquor stores (I was careful never to hit the same liquor store two days in a row, because I didn't want the people working there to think I had "a problem"). I would then sit on the futon couch in the middle room, and drink, and listen to the same 5 or 6 songs on the same 2 or 3 albums over and over again. And I would make big, big plans for myself...or else I would replay old hurts and perceived slights in my head, and come up with all the things I should've said to the people who'd hurt or slighted me. Thinking myself very clever, indeed, I would then pass out.

In between the drunken pity parties and the ensuing raging hangovers, I would have these very annoying moments of awareness. The witty retorts I was coming up with never made it onto paper. Sometimes I would come home with every intention of getting some writing done, only first I needed a drink to get all the flies going in the same direction, and I needed to listen to this song 5 or 6 times to get me in the "mood." I knew that what needed to get done was not getting done. But I simply couldn't do it. I couldn't do anything until I stopped drinking.

It has taken me nearly five years of sobriety now to realize that, perhaps, the woman in the parking lot of the Ancient Oaks Motel -- while probably not psychic -- was perceptive enough to see what I couldn't see that night: a girl laughing a little too loudly, gripping a little too tightly to that bottle. A girl who was probably very likely going to become rather dependent on that bottle, and on bottles like it, for a good long while, and at the expense of a lot of other things. Potential. I think I'm getting it back.

lisamcc at 10:54 p.m.



2 comments so far
vikkitikkitavi
2007-05-17 15:37:40
What a great story. Thanks for telling it. Although I refuse to rule out that the psychic judged you purely on your taste in alcohol, my friend.
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Spooney
2007-05-17 16:38:24
That is a great story & it sounded a little familiar. I probably heard you tell it at a party. Nicely written.
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