Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

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IN THE EVENINGS, I pulled out a leash for Bubba so we could walk outside in the buzzing summer night. The cat had been sick for a while. He was 15 years old. I didn’t know how much longer he had, and if I wasn’t careful, I could spend a whole day freaking out about this. When I met Bubba, he was an outdoor cat. But one day he came back to my ex-boyfriend’s apartment with incisor bites in the side of his cheek, like two toothpicks through raw dough. There was a series of expensive surgeries. A long stretch of recovery time. He became an indoor cat after that. It was a miserable power struggle to break him. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to win an argument with a cat, but good luck with that. He would slip out when we weren’t looking, settle scores in some back alley near midnight, and return two days later like Don Draper crashing through the front door after a bender. What? What are you looking at? I loved him for all of this. I, too, was drawn to places that would destroy me. I, too, came home with bruises, and it never stopped me. The cat was an appealing mix of strapping adventurer and cuddle bug. People say cats are aloof, but they are just very, very discerning about whom they trust. I liked caring for that cranky little guy. Women can be very good at ladling their love into the unsmiling mouth of a creature who nonetheless needs them. I come from a long line of nurses on both sides of my family. We give gentle strokes and change bedpans and wipe up vomit splashed on the floor while cracking vaguely inappropriate jokes. When I think about my own failure to take care of myself, I wonder sometimes if I wasn’t unconsciously waiting for someone like me to come along. Pay off my credit cards, clean up my oopsies. Other people’s messes can be so much more interesting than our own. Maybe that’s why I needed the cat so much. This may sound absurd, but cats are caretakers. They will kill your mice and curl up at your side when you’re ill. One night in Brooklyn, I became fluish and had to lie on the cold tile floor of the bathroom with my pillow and a duvet. It was one of those moments when my loneliness ached like a broken bone. And the cat padded into the bathroom and lay down beside me, and we slept like this, both of us curled against the warm side of the other. Now it was my turn to take care of him. The sickness required pills, popped into his mouth twice a day. X-rays, constant experimentation with his food. Jennifer was a veterinarian now; the child who once saved wounded birds had grown up to be a woman who saved people’s pets. When Bubba got sick, she was the person we both needed. My new house was mere blocks from where Bubba had once prowled, and when he started meowing at the door again—after years of remaining silent on the issue—I wanted to do something for him. Let him roam his home turf again, before he died. I wanted to find some compromise where he could venture into the lusty outdoors that called to him—but stay tethered to me. The leash was my big idea. Jennifer swore up and down it wouldn’t work. Leashes were against a cat’s nature, she insisted, and for a long time, she was right. Then one day, I put on his harness—blue vinyl ropes along his haunches, like he was about to jump out of an airplane—and he discovered this simple act of surrender led to the outside world. He inched through the doorway with his nose twitching. When his paws touched the familiar dirt, his whole body went electric. This. All of this. The breeze in his fur. Those feral smells. A blade of grass dragged along the side of his mouth. He rolled around in the dirt. He sniffed the grille of my car like it contained all the decadence of the world.
He tugged too hard, then I tugged too hard, but eventually we found our rhythm. We got so good at this nightly routine, we could stay out there for an hour at a time, exploring grassy corners and wandering into the undiscovered country of the driveway. He lay with his fur against the cool gravel, and I stared up at the sky, two animals finding their way into the wild on a short leash now.
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Begin Reading Table of Contents New
Page 5 and 6:
PRELUDE
Page 7 and 8:
The guy isn’t bad-looking. Slight
Page 9 and 10:
WOMEN WHO DRINK I was 33, and lying
Page 11 and 12:
she did not get—but I’ve never
Page 13 and 14:
In my 20s, friends called with that
Page 15 and 16:
I discussed roofies with Aaron Whit
Page 17 and 18:
a while, a columnist would come alo
Page 19 and 20:
ONE
Page 21 and 22:
when no one was looking, and I woul
Page 23 and 24:
steps, not talking. As much as my f
Page 25 and 26:
Our home was on a major artery thro
Page 27 and 28:
She’d transformed, like Olivia Ne
Page 29 and 30:
I threw up seven times. Hunched ove
Page 31 and 32:
STARVED One of the curious aspects
Page 33 and 34:
more successful her eating disorder
Page 35 and 36:
orrowed. She couldn’t miss the si
Page 37 and 38:
To make it more confounding, Miles
Page 39 and 40:
efused to be won. I drank cup after
Page 41 and 42:
DRESSING IN MEN’S CLOTHES I start
Page 43 and 44:
coffee. But that seemed like a very
Page 45 and 46:
you to imperil our amazing friendsh
Page 47 and 48:
I FINALLY GOT a boyfriend near the
Page 49 and 50:
FOUR
Page 51 and 52:
The production guy passed my desk a
Page 53 and 54:
drank myself to the place where I w
Page 55 and 56:
ehind me, and told him I was moving
Page 57 and 58: my Harp as soon I walked in the doo
Page 59 and 60: FIVE
Page 61 and 62: “Your key, mademoiselle,” said
Page 63 and 64: My friend Meredith lived in an apar
Page 65 and 66: “This was fun,” I said. He was
Page 67 and 68: OF COURSE. OF course I’d gone to
Page 69 and 70: like you should not be crying,” h
Page 71 and 72: SIX
Page 73 and 74: When the bottle was drained, I’d
Page 75 and 76: But no, really, I had it this time.
Page 77 and 78: off a gargantuan diamond. I thought
Page 79 and 80: INTERLUDE
Page 81 and 82: ain, which allowed his body to deve
Page 83 and 84: SEVEN
Page 85 and 86: But his once-sallow cheeks were ros
Page 87 and 88: announcing their baby. Nobody wants
Page 89 and 90: want to remain silent and unknowabl
Page 91 and 92: Bubba curled up alongside me when I
Page 93 and 94: EIGHT
Page 95 and 96: for me? My friends didn’t necessa
Page 97 and 98: ecause otherwise you have to go int
Page 99 and 100: said, and she was right. The next w
Page 101 and 102: fill-in-the-blank letter of apology
Page 103 and 104: NINE
Page 105 and 106: the tastes of a frat boy, or a grum
Page 107: Mine was a recipe for unhappiness.
Page 111 and 112: SEX My first date in sobriety was w
Page 113 and 114: 30s to stare down a personal profil
Page 115 and 116: and said, “Look, I dressed up for
Page 117 and 118: “I’m thinking: Well, that was f
Page 119 and 120: he’s impotent or not, I don’t k
Page 121 and 122: ELEVEN
Page 123 and 124: the scorn of strangers. They skip t
Page 125 and 126: Addiction was the inverse of honest
Page 127 and 128: I worshipped alcohol, and it consum
Page 129 and 130: THIS IS THE PLACE A few months befo
Page 131 and 132: Anna and I have had 20 years of the
Page 133 and 134: saying in midsentence. My dad loses
Page 135 and 136: from here, I told myself. There wil
Page 137 and 138: ABOUT THE AUTHOR SARAH HEPOLA’S w
Page 139: Contents COVER TITLE PAGE WELCOME D
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Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

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