Fantasy and Reality

Testify: To profess or proclaim publicly, as one's belief.

I listened to a lead recently given by a friend of mine. As a general rule I'm not a big fan of listening to one person talk for the better part of an hour, unless it's me. I can listen to myself talk for hours and hours so I'm assuming that every one else is just as interested. This is why I talk to myself so much. It's very interesting.

Part of the problem is that most people aren't nearly as interesting to others as they are to themselves. And I'm guessing that given the amount of bullshit and misdirection and exaggeration that I reel out when I'm talking that everyone else does the same thing, which probably isn't true. The main obstacle for me, of course, is that I just don't have a very long attention span any more. All of that Colt 45 must have burned out a lot of crucial circuitry.

That being said it is fascinating to me watching the light come on in some one's eyes when they unravel the entire thread of their drinking before a group of people. I remember the first time I shared "what it was like." I always considered myself a High Bottom Drunk. I liked to tell people stories of my tragic exploits when I was drinking. I dressed them up, made them funny and clever. You can do that with one story. But after 50 or 60 tragic exploits in a row it starts to get depressing. I had a lot of good reasons to stop drinking. What I said to the cop when he was arresting me for a DWI was funny; sitting in a jail cell, sick and frightened, was not funny. No way to make that funny.

I had an image of myself and the world had an image of me. Their image was more accurate. I saw myself as the captain of a big yacht. There I was on the bridge, drink in hand, cigarette dangling from my lips, hat tilted at a jaunty angle, enjoying the company of the supermodels and rock stars partying with me. The world saw an ashen and sickly guy in a ball cap sitting in a row boat which was slowly disappearing beneath the waves. The boat was on fire, pirates were boarding it from the rear, and it was really a slab of waterlogged cardboard and not a boat at all.