Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

want to remain silent and unknowable. I buffed and polished my revelations, rehearsing them in my
mind: I used to think drinking made me more interesting, but then I realized it made other people
more interesting. I liked to insert a twist when I shared, a surprise ending of sorts. Personal essays
work on this principle of inverted expectations. A writer friend described the arc like this: Let me
tell you why it’s all their fault. Now let me tell you why it’s really mine.
I took my seat in that pretty room, and I spent the first 30 minutes practicing my script and the
second 30 minutes scouring the room for my next boyfriend. You’re not supposed to do this, but I did
it anyway. Fuck you, I was there at 7:30 am, and I could do whatever I wanted. I had been single for
nearly three years—the better part of a presidential term. I’d never been around so many lonely,
haunted men in broad daylight. Any halfway decent one was a candidate for my future spouse. I
listened to the guys share their inner turmoil, and I leaned toward them in my seat, already coming to
terms with their deficiencies. I could date a bald man. Forty-five isn’t that old. But then he would
gesture to show the glint of a wedding ring or mention the girlfriend back home, and I’d sink back into
my chair, defeated.
One morning, a guy I’d never seen before showed up to tell his story. He was thin and lanky, with
a five o’clock shadow, a leather jacket, and boots. He had acne scars on his face, like the bad guy in
Grease, but he had the eloquence of a natural-born speaker. What struck me were not the details of
his story but how he told it. He inhabited his own body. He never raised his voice, but he pulled me
toward him with each word dropped into a room of anticipation. I stopped looking at the clock. The
chaos in my brain was replaced by a tight spotlight containing nothing but him.
On the subway ride to work, I could not let go of that guy. I wondered how he felt about living on
a farm in upstate New York. We could commute into the city during the week, spend weekends
reading books in bed to each other with nothing in the background but the chirping outside. We should
probably date first. There was a new upscale comfort food place I’d been meaning to try.
I realized I was moving fast, but I also knew—I knew—that I was destined to find a boyfriend in
those rooms, and I was not saying it had to be this guy, but there were several qualities to recommend
him. He was sober, for one thing. He did not have a wedding ring, for another. I could love a man
with scars on his face. I would not be embarrassed by his leather jacket and his boots. And he
probably didn’t even realize how verbally gifted he was. I had so much to teach him.
I promised myself I would talk to him should he ever come back. Really enjoyed your story.
Wanted to chat with you more about that thing. A week later, he did come back. Like we were in a
romantic comedy, he came back! And my heart did a triple lutz to find him across from me. The
meeting that morning was a round-robin discussion, and he was at four o’clock and I was at 7, and
when it was his turn, he offered the same effortless poetry I’d heard earlier. Except this time he talked
about his boyfriend.
Wait: His boyfriend? He was gay? The focus on the lens sharpened, and I could see it clearly
now. Of course he was gay. Everyone could see that, except the chubby little lonely heart sitting at
seven o’clock, drawing sparkly rainbows on the page with her glitter crayon. I was still beating
myself up when the round-robin arrived to me, and I sputtered along trying to assemble some phony
epiphany with strong verbs, but tears dripped down my face.
The room fell into silence as people waited for me to explain. But what could I possibly say? That
I had just discovered my future husband was gay? That I was going to live the rest of my days
surrounded by nothing but empty lasagna pans and an overloved cat destined to die before me?