Sunday, September 9, 2012


Functional

I’ve always liked the tinkling sound when a bottle of bourbon taps on the edge of a low glass, and the gurgling the warm, brown liquid makes as it leaves the comfort of that black-labeled bottle. I never fought it. I never tried to quiet the desire in me for the demon liquor. I never wanted to. I was once told “You’re not an alcoholic, you’re a drunk. Alcoholics go to meetings. Drunks go to parties”

Can there be a “party of one?”

I don’t remember the exact date where drinking alone became normal for me, but it must have been sometime after my 40th birthday. I had been an amateur athlete until then. I’d always been one to tie one on every now and again, but it had usually been a social sort of drinking, always with other people.

I don’t know when than changed, but it most certainly did and I found myself drinking, as a character in a Joseph Wambaugh novel I once read stated, “to kill the pain of being alive.” I don’t think there was one day or one instant when self-medication with booze started, I think it was a gradual, downward spiral.

It probably started innocently enough, with a glass of wine after a long shift on the street, you know, “to relax.” The one glass became two, and then three, and so it went until I got to where I am now, polishing off a bottle at 8 am without a second thought, as a matter of course. “It helps me sleep,” I tell myself, and it does. There are probably better methods.

When you work graveyard shift, you never really get good sleep. Evolution is a bitch and humans just aren’t made to be up all night and sleep all day. After a decade working the nights, I’m still not accustomed to it and routinely violate policy when I find myself nodding by finding a dark spot behind a church somewhere to catch a few winks. Every graveyard cop I know does this. It’s one of those dirty, little secrets we don’t tell the public, that those guys you see in their uniforms with their guns, sipping coffee at 3 am in some brightly lit convenience store, are as drowsy and dangerous as a driver who’s had too much to drink. Fatigue exists for most cops, and then in my case it was compounded by insomnia. If I got 4 solid hours, I considered it to be “a good night’s sleep.”

And, like a lot of cops, I learned that “3 fingers” of bourbon might just do the trick. Alcohol induced sleep isn’t really very good sleep, but it beats the hell out no sleep at all.

But there’s a fine line, and it’s hard to judge, when you drink just a little too much, and you feel it. You notice when you wake up, later than normal, with itchy eyes and a fluttering stomach, and you know you drank “a little too much.” There are cures for that, too, of course. I can drink Pepto-Bismol straight out of the bottle and eating 600mg of Ibuprofen and chugging a couple of liters of Coke Zero every single day I wake up helps stop what the Danes call “Den tømmermænd” in my head. Loosely translated as “The Hammer Man,” tømmermænd is the Danes' term for hangover.

I remember my very first, real hangover. Most people do. One of those horrible afternoons when even lying on the ground can’t keep the world from spinning. It was when I was in college the morning after a yearly event sponsored by our dormitory called “The Tyus Hall T-Party.” I met a couple of guys from Pennsylvania, who had come down to visit one of my classmates and those boys could drink. Unfortunately, I thought I could, too. I’d grown up a typical white boy from the suburban south whose idea of “drink” was Budweiser and a bottle of Dickel. These guys had brought a bottle of tequila.

I learned the hard way Jose Cuervo is not a friend mine. I am sure I swore I was never going to drink again, but even in the throes of vomiting up whatever greasy food it was I ate the night before, I knew I was lying to myself. Even more unfortunate than my sorry condition was I had to go to work that night. I loaded trucks to pay my way through school. It was September. In Georgia. Loading trucks when you’re hungover and it’s nearly 95F and 90% humidity is Not Fun. I’d load for a few minutes, go puke off the loading dock, then go back at it. I told myself I deserved it. I told myself it would teach me not to be so reckless with my drinking.

I was wrong. Of course, I haven’t drunk any tequila since, but I replaced it with other spirits.

What I eventually discovered is you develop a tolerance, and Hank Williams, Jr. was lying to me when he sang “…and the hangovers hurt more than they used to.” Actually, they don’t. Even the hangover following the night I ended up puking blood into a basket of freshly laundered towels wasn’t as bad as that day heaving chunks out the ass end of a tractor-trailer on a hot summer day.

Now, “Den tømmermænd” greets me on most days like an unwelcome neighbor. One of those people you don’t really like, but circumstances of geography require you to put up with. Sometimes, he doesn’t even show up at all. It’s a subtle dance with the bottle to drink just the right amount to make the sleep come without too many side effects. I have learned what it meant to be a “functioning alcoholic.” And so it goes, until you find yourself sipping bourbon at 8 am.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Letter to a friend


Dear Christian,
It's early here, a little after 6:00 am, and I've been wide awake since a little after 3:00.  I am very nearly on the verge of quitting trying to maintain some semblance of a normal sleep schedule.  It's Wednesday, the third of my "five days off" week that I get once a month and I'm at a loss as to what to do with the time.  3:00 am is a bad time to be awake.   It's really too early to begin the day, and it's a bit too late to crack open a bottle of wine to try to induce slumber.

I've not heard from you in a bit, and my assumption is you are still living your enviable life of glamour and travel, interspersed with hefting boxes of wine on The Rock.

Anyway, I thought I'd fire off a short missive this morning, mostly because 
Facebook crashed on me a couple hours ago and so I have been pissing away the morning surfing various RV and sailing blogs and sites.

I envy those people who have stepped away from the rat race and travel about, either by land or sea, in mobile penury.  I've also been surfing Craigslist and day-dreaming about selling off all my shit and buying a small trailer and hitting the road myself.  Alas, I've still about 1950 more days until I can attempt such a feat.  

On September 1, 2017, I shall retire from the employ of the ACSO with a small, but (if I can learn to live frugally) adequate retirement income of about $1600 a month, which I can supplement doing small odd jobs and such.  I'm also pondering a more adventurous action and moving somewhere more tropical and less first-world, with Belize at the top of the list, followed by Costa Rica, Brazil and Peru.  My Spanish is passable and I'm sure $1600 would go a lot farther there.  Baja has an appeal, but Mexico proper seems to be a quagmire of corruption and crime.  

Of course, I am not sure Stine is truly on board with the concept.  As you are aware, the goal is to travel for a few years, then find a hunk of remote land where we can build a tiny efficient cottage, have a garden, raise some critters and enjoy some clean, country living.  Stine wants horses.

I'm contemplating starting breakfast and then maybe getting around to cleaning the garage...again.  After my fiasco doing squats a few weeks ago, it has fallen into disrepair, but Stine and the dogs are still in bed and I don't want to make noise and disturb her sleep.

As for work, it is there and I am learning to just treat it as what I must do to put food on the table and wine in the fridge.  I am slated to go to SLC in June to help some guy I know set up a machine gun shoot for some rich guys.  That should be pretty fun.  Other than that, I have no plans or schemes to take any trips.  I am up for anything, assuming I can work out the financial aspects of it, so let me know.  My passport is valid and my feet are itchy.    

I hope things are going well for you as we rush headlong into summer.  It was fucking 90F here yesterday.  In April!

Let's start a war.
-mark

Sunday, April 1, 2012

On reading, thinking, drinking and the decline of modern society.

Oh, to have been young in the 1920's.

I could have gone to Paris. I could have written the great American novel.

Growing up when I did, everything was pre-packaged for me. There is no adventure left, save maybe for warfare, and even that's not available to me "at my age."

Re-reading books from Thompson and Fitzgerald, I realize how small our world has become, how circumscribed, and I weep at the thought there's nothing left worth doing.

damn.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

The Flashbang Story

The Flashbang Story
Mark Williamson
July 2011
732 words

We raided a meth lab one Friday night.

In case you don't know me, I'm a a cop. I used to be a narcotics detective. "Narc" for short. No, it's not considered derogatory, unless by narc you mean "Not A Real Cop."

Anyway, the narcs didn't get to do the entry at the raid, our SWAT team did. SWATTIES like to call themselves "operators." We sometimes call them "SWATZIS." My sergeant, a real gung-ho former Marine, is both a narc -and- on the SWAT team.

After all the fun stuff was done and all the bad guys were wearing bracelets, he asked me to get him a piece gear from his truck. He was stuck in the "hot zone," which means on the other side of yellow tape that reads "Crime Scene."

The piece of gear he sent me to get: A pair of pants.

It seems one of the other SWAT guys (real smart, those "operators") did not wear -any pants- underneath his raid coveralls.

See, when you go into a meth lab, you have to strip off the top layer of clothes to decontaminate because of all the chemicals and OSHA regulations. Since I did not enter, I was tasked with the mundane chores in the "cold zone." Like getting pants.

Exciting work, being a detective. I feel just like Serpico.

Anyway, while retrieving said pair of pants from the rear of his 4Runner, I heard -something- hit the road next to my right foot. It sounded solid, like a flashlight or a radio. Unfortunately, I didn't know what fell out, but, as a natural reaction, I turned around and bent over at the waist to pick up whatever it was. Only to realize it was a live flash-bang grenade.

Because meth labs have all those flammable chemicals about, the SWAT guys don't take the flash-bangs in with them, lest "something bad" happen. My sergeant, being the conscientious SWAT Operator that he is, dutifully took his off.

And put them in the back of his 4Runner.
Under his spare uniform.

In a what I believe (since I am an atheist) to be -An Act Of God-, the "spoon" on the thing broke off when it hit the road. I had just enough time to realize "hey, that ain't right...." and get my hands in front of my face before having what I can only describe as "a unique experience."

In addition to the real bright light, flash-bang grenades also produce a concussion (or so the tactical-medical guy on scene said) of about 5X normal pressure. So, my ears, being about 3 feet from the blast, immediately got overloaded with a sound so loud and intense that I do not remember even hearing it. I am assured I caused several people to pee their pants.

My ears instantly began that high-pitched whine we've all experienced when something loud happens near us.

It should be noted here I did not fall down, nor did I soil myself.

Of course, given my unique perspective and proximity to the damn thing, I was the only one within a mile radius that was aware "something bad" was about to happen. Even if my awareness was only a split-second or so. I'm told "shots heard" calls came into dispatch.

After the hand-shaped soot prints were wiped off my face and my vision returned and the big blobs of color were no longer fogging up my sight, I went to the ER. The doc there checked and said I had no physical damage and the whining "should" go away and my hearing "should" come back in about four or five days.

I hope so. It's getting on my nerves. I went to my personal doctor the following Monday and asked him if I would regain my hearing. In his expert, medical opinion he said, with no irony at all after me telling him just how lucky I am to be the one to be sent to get the pants, "keep your fingers crossed."

In an even more unfortunate circumstance, there was a video crew from the Idaho Meth Project on scene. They assure me they caught the whole thing on tape. I'm expecting to see it on youtube within the week.

I'm glad I like my job.

It could be worse, of course. I could be a lawyer.

And yes, that ringing is still fucking there.