Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget

THE BEER THIEF
I grew up in Dallas, Texas, wondering why. In the novels and buttery teen magazines I read, people
of consequence lived in California and the East Coast, the glittering cities where a Jay Gatsby or a
John Stamos might thrive. When I became obsessed with Stephen King books, I nursed fantasies of
moving to Maine. Things happened in Maine, I told myself, never understanding things happened in
Maine because Stephen King made them happen.
My father was an engineer for DuPont Chemical in 1970, but a crisis of conscience changed our
family’s entire trajectory. The environmental movement was getting started, and my dad wanted to be
on the right side of history—cleaning up the planet, not pumping more toxins into it. He took a job
with the burgeoning Environmental Protection Agency, which was opening up branches across the
country, and in 1977, when I was three years old, we moved from a quaint Philadelphia suburb to the
wilds of Dallas, a city so far removed from what we knew it might as well have been Egypt.
I’ve often wondered how much of my life would be different if we’d stayed where we sprouted.
What part of my later troubles, my sense of estrangement could be traced back to this one simple set
change—swapping the leafy and sun-dappled streets surrounding our apartment in Pennsylvania for
the hot cement and swiveling highways of Big D?
My parents rented a small house on a busy street in the neighborhood with the best public school
system in Dallas. The district was notorious for other things, too, though it took us a while to catch
on: $300 Louis Vuitton purses on the shoulders of sixth graders, ski trips to second homes in Aspen or
Vail, a line of BMWs and Mercedes snaking around the school entrance. Meanwhile, we drove a
dented station wagon with a ceiling liner held up by staples and duct tape. We didn’t have a chance.
Parents often try to correct the mistakes of their own past, but they end up introducing new errors.
My father grew up in a public housing project in Detroit. My mother wondered what she might have
achieved if she hadn’t downshifted her intelligence through school. They wanted better opportunities
for their two children. And so they moved into an area where all the kids went to college, an area so
cloistered from the dangers of the big city it was known as the Bubble.
The neighborhood was a real slice of old-fashioned Americana: two-story redbrick homes and
children selling lemonade on the corner. My brother and I rode our bikes to the shopping center a
mile away to buy gummy worms and magic tricks, and we made As on our report cards, and we were
safe. In fact, the only thief I ever knew was me.
I was a small-time crook. In middle school, I slipped lipstick and powder compacts into my
pocket at the Woolworth’s and smiled at the clerk as I passed. Every kid pushes boundaries, but
something else was going on: Surrounded by a land of plenty, I couldn’t shake the notion that what I
had been given was not enough. So I “borrowed” clothes from other people’s closets. I had an
ongoing scam with the Columbia Record & Tape Club that involved changing the spelling of my name
each time I joined. But the first thing I remember stealing was beer.
I was seven when I started sneaking sips of Pearl Light from half-empty cans left in the
refrigerator. I would tiptoe into the kitchen in my cotton nightgown, and I would take two long pulls