My Drinking Daze

My Drinking Daze
By Michael Cannata

          

           "The more you drink, the better looking I'll get. Hahaha!"

            I used this line on the night I met my future wife. It worked like a charm. Of course, it took me my entire week's budget to buy enough drinks to get her to the point where she agreed with me, but it was worth it.

            My drinks didn't change things much as far as she was concerned. She was already damn good-looking. Drinking just made her a lot more desirable, especially since she had a car. Fortunately, by the time I'd won her heart she was in no condition to drive. I knew she was the one for me as she stood outside the cab barfing delicately. I was thrilled when she called me and said she looked forward to going out again. It meant a lot. Because I had no idea where she lived and had lost her number.

            When we first met, my wife and I couldn't keep our hands off each other. We didn't need to drink to make love. Drinking just added an extra level of unabashed passion to our lovemaking. It also made the act a lot feistier. When it came time to propose, being a man of little self confidence, drinking helped a lot. I still wonder just how much her drinking had to do with her agreeing to marry me.

            I had a few drinks on my wedding day… before the ceremony. Not that I needed them. But the drinks helped steady my frayed nerves. We both continued drinking well into our wedding night. By the time we we're ready to consummate the ritual, we were both too blotto to remember what to do. So, for the first time on a Friday night since the day we met, we did what most newlyweds rarely do. We slept together… deeply. Fortunately, drinking made the snoring much easier to deal with.

            I celebrated the night my son was born by having a few drinks with a dozen friends. Or maybe it was a dozen drinks with a few friends. Whatever! I spent the entire night telling everyone what a beautiful boy, little Seagram, was. No one questioned the name until the next day. To this day, Steven, stills gets a kick out of the story. Knowing he loved to hear it, I told it every time I had some drinks in me.

            I drank a lot more when I was younger. In my 20's, I would finish a beer in half the time I did in my 40's. To make up for that, I drank twice as much as I got older to help keep things in balance.  By that reasoning, I'd only get half as drunk, twice as often. I think. Of course, math had never been a strong point, so I'm not sure it all added up. Doing math always made me want a drink so I can't honestly say it worked.

            I never drank while I was working during the week; like most of my friends I worked on my drinking on the weekends. Don't get me wrong! I'm not the kind of guy who got drunk a lot. Neither was my wife. Drinking was just something we did as a social habit. Perhaps, it's because most people at the functions we attended were drinking too. More likely, it was because drinking made being social when attending those parties a lot easier.

            Like most responsible people, I drank in moderation. I averaged about a beer a day. Unfortunately, most of the 30 beers I drank in a month were consumed over one or two weekends. Football season raised that average a lot. I blamed my friends for that since they were almost always around when the drinks started flowing.

            My wife and her friends loved to sit in the other room, drinking their elegant wine and ridiculing their beer guzzling husbands. They didn't consider wine a drink. To them it was more like a desert. To the guys… beer was the meal.

            As time passed, we slowed our lovemaking down… a lot. Eventually, any time we ended a good night out by frolicking under the sheets, we were usually about 3 sheets to the wind. We always agreed that it was still true. When we drank, we both looked a hell of a lot better.

            As the years went by, drinking became an obstacle that made the athletic element of sex a lot more difficult. Falling off the bed could sober us up in a very rude way. Not to mention that it would wake the kids. We tried our best to avoid any complicated positions. The whole top or bottom decision was resolved when we mastered the face-to-face position. Lying on our side allowed us to make love without either of us having to lift anything off the bed. Drinking also added to the humor. My wife once pointed out that my foreplay wasn't as good, particularly, when I got real tipsy and spent ten minutes feeling her shoulder up.

            I never let my kids see me drink too often when they were growing up, so I tried to avoid hanging out with my kids. Being responsible was pretty hard since I'm a pretty irresponsible guy by nature. My wife is the mature one and she was the one that finally put an end to our drinking. She explained that if I didn't stop drinking I would lose her. It was true. I almost lost her a couple of times at footballs games that year.

            We don't drink much anymore. Life has a way of sobering you up as you get older. For me, it happened when my son announced the name of our first granddaughter. He named her, Morgan. He and his wife giggled as they told us just how much influence, Captain Morgan rum, had on that decision. His drinking days were just starting, while mine were long gone. I envied him a little. I hoped he'd be a lot more responsible than I was. But in today's world, what choice does he have?

            My still beautiful wife and I celebrated the birth of our first grandchild with a bottle of wine that had our heads spinning before it was finished. As we wobbled up the stairs, I got a good look at her rear-end. I remember thinking… damn… it still works!

            I'm not ashamed that I drank. It was what my generation did to have fun. The shame usually comes when I remember some of the crazy stories that happened because of drinking. I was going to write some of the best of them down, and I will.

            Just as soon as I have a few drinks in me.