Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

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I don’t know how long I sat in that hallway. Ten minutes, ten years. When I finally stood up, I had a plan. IN COLLEGE, WE joked about the “walk of shame.” It was the term for the bleary-eyed stagger of Sunday morning—when you had to pass coeds who raised their eyebrows at your tangled hair and your one broken heel. The great thing about a term like “walk of shame” is that its cleverness leaches the embarrassment from the act. To endure a walk of shame was not shameful anymore, because you were participating in a rite of passage, familiar to any well-lived life. Like so much of our vernacular —wasted, smashed, obliterated, fucked up—I never thought much about it. But heading down to the concierge desk in the middle of the night was a true walk of shame. I swiped a knuckle under each lid as I rode down in the elevator. I straightened my wool skirt. I tried to look like a woman who had not just emerged from a hole in the ground. “Bonjour,” I said to the concierge. My voice was chased by those hollow echoes that come in the wee hours of the night. “Good evening,” he said. “What can I do for you?” Above the desk, a series of clocks kept time around the world. It was only 8:30 pm back in New York, which sounded so safe and far away. “I left my purse in someone’s room,” I said. “Not a problem,” he said, and began tapping on the computer. “What room was it?” I shook my head. I traced a figure eight on the counter with my index finger. “I don’t know.” “Not a problem,” he said. More tapping. “What was the guest’s name?” A tear slipped down my cheek, and I watched it splat. “I don’t know.” He nodded, his mouth an expressionless line. But I could see the pity in his eyes. He felt sorry for me. And somehow this pebble of sympathy was enough to shatter my fragile reserve. I crumpled into tears. “Don’t cry,” he said. He took my hand. His fingers were dry and cold and they swallowed mine. “It’s going to be OK,” he said. And I believed him, because I needed to. People talk about the horrible things strangers do to you when you are drunk, but my experience has mostly been the opposite. I have been the recipient of so much unsolicited kindness. The bartender who helps me track down the shoes I threw under a table. The woman who slips the glass of water under the bathroom stall where my head hangs over a toilet rim with a fishing line of drool stretching from my lips to the water. Honey, I’ve been there. And then there were my friends, my actual friends, who would walk me up the stairs to my bedroom. Who poured me into taxis and texted with me until I was home. They did it for me, and I would do it for them. The golden rule of a lush’s life. Be kind to drunk people, for every one of them is fighting an enormous battle. “Is it possible this gentleman is the one you were talking to at the bar tonight?” the concierge asked. And there it was, finally. My first clue.
OF COURSE. OF course I’d gone to the hotel bar. It was located directly off the lobby. Pass the concierge and veer to the right. It’s where I’d gone after my interview on the first night, when I got back to my hotel and wasn’t ready to concede the good times just yet. Did the guy pick me up? Did I pick him up? Was “picking” even the right verb? The bar was small, a few leather booths and a smattering of wooden tables. Striking up a conversation in a place like this would be exceedingly easy. There’s an hour when finding someone in a bar to sleep with doesn’t require a clever line so much as a detectable pulse. HIM: Come here often? ME: You bet. HIM: Wanna fuck? ME: You bet. HIM: Should I tell you my name first? ME: That’s OK. I won’t remember it. I was embarrassed by my aggressive sexuality when I drank. It didn’t feel like me. And after a blackout, I would torture myself thinking of the awful things I might have said or done. My mind became an endless loop of what scared me the most. At the concierge desk, I didn’t have time to indulge in such fantasy. I pretended to remember the guy. Anything to bluff my way out of this mess. “Yes,” I told him, clapping my hands together. “That is definitely the guy. So you saw me with him tonight?” He smiled. “Of course.” Hallelujah. I had a witness. He handed me a new key to my room. He told me he would figure out the guy’s name but that he might need an hour or two. “I don’t want you to worry anymore,” he said. “Go rest.” “Hey, what’s your name?” I asked. “Johnson,” he said. “I’m Sarah,” I told him, and I took his hand with both of mine. A double-decker handshake. “Johnson, you’re the hero of my story tonight.” “Not a problem,” he said, and flashed a smile. As I headed toward the elevator, I felt like a new woman. I had a chance to restore order, to correct the insanity of the night. Johnson would find the guy’s name. I would meet the guy downstairs, suffer the indignity of small talk, then take my stuff and bolt. No, better yet, Johnson would knock on the guy’s door and retrieve the purse himself. I didn’t care how it happened, just that it happened. It was all going to be OK. I walked back into my room. And there, to the left of the entrance, on an otherwise unremarkable shelf, was a sack of vinyl, openmouthed and drooping. Holy shit: my purse. A WOMAN TOLD me a story once about folding her clothes in a blackout. She woke up, and her room was clean. How bizarre is that? But I understood how, even in a state of oblivion, you fight to keep
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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: “This was fun,” I said. He was
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 and 108: Mine was a recipe for unhappiness.
Page 109 and 110: He tugged too hard, then I tugged t
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
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ELEVEN
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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
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THIS IS THE PLACE A few months befo
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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
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Contents COVER TITLE PAGE WELCOME D
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Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

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