Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget

steps, not talking.
As much as my father was there during my childhood, he was also not there. He had an
introversion common to Finns, and to engineers. He avoided eye contact. If he was growing up today,
I’m curious what a psychiatrist would make of him. He had a boyhood habit of stimming, rocking
back and forth to soothe himself. In his 20s, he had a compulsive blinking tic. In his middle age, he
kept a notebook listing every winning Dallas lotto number, recorded in his careful, geometrically
precise block lettering. A futile attempt at charting randomness.
Perhaps these were coping mechanisms of a childhood harsher than mine. His father was sent to a
mental institution when my dad was 15—a breakdown brought on by mental illness, drinking, or both.
But most of my dad’s past, like my dad himself, was a mystery to me. All I knew was that my father
was not like those loud, wisecracking fathers on sitcoms who tousled your hair and tickled you till
you snorted. He communicated in his own rhythms. If I said, “I love you, Daddy,” he would
sometimes pat my head and say, “OK. Thanks.” So I learned that fathers were very loyal and
dependable people who existed behind glass.
My mother was full of passion and conversation. I sometimes marveled these two people ever
came together, but I was charmed by tales of their courtship. In lieu of an engagement ring, my father
gave her money to study in Germany, an act of gentle nonconformity and global discovery that shaped
my worldview. But at night, in our cramped house, their fights curled like smoke underneath their
bedroom door. And as tender as my mother could be, an Irish fire lurked in her, too. I could hear her
voice each night, bitten by frustration. The tone that always made the veins on the side of her neck
stand up like cords. Why can’t you do this right, John? Why can’t you listen, John?
For a while, my brother and I were allies on this battleground. Josh was my hero, a swashbuckling
little boy who could find excitement in any dusty corner. He turned blankets into royal capes and
wicker chairs into spaceships from a galaxy far, far away. He was four and a half years older than
me, with a precocious mind forever solving the Rubik’s Cube of how the world worked. Of course,
he solved his actual Rubik’s Cube. I gave up, and changed the stickers.
I didn’t realize it, but Josh had a rough entry to school, too. A Yankee boy dropped into a part of
the world where kids were still fighting the Civil War. The brainiac skills that wowed his younger
sister were useless on the football field, where Texas boys proved their mettle. And by the time he
entered middle school, our shared excursions had turned into his solo journeys: onto the clunky
personal computer he won in a radio contest, into the J. R. R. Tolkien books crinkled and dog-eared
with devotion. I wanted to follow him into those exotic boylands, but he started closing doors in my
face. Get out. Go away.
I got my own room. Pink walls, red carpet, a Strawberry Shortcake explosion. And in this private
universe, where no one could criticize me, I was the star of every show. My fantasy worlds were
dominated by girls like me, discovering their own power. I was Sandy, in the last scene of Grease,
strutting in hot pants and causing a bulge in every man’s heart. I was plucky Orphan Annie, rescued by
a billionaire she saved right back. I was Coco, fan-kicking her way through the cafeteria in Fame.
Fame. I wanted it more than anything. If you were famous, nothing hurt. If you were famous,
everyone loved you. In fifth grade, I would start plastering my walls with teen pinups—Prince
Charming in the form of a soft boy with a popped collar—and I became fixated on celebrity and
glamour, those twin instruments of escape.
But before that, there was the beer.