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Post-Modern Drunk: Once More, With Feeling
When I moved to the city, just in time for the Iraq War, I was a loser. I'd spent a year or two living with my parents after college, and I'd spent a year in Europe. Spending a year in Europe drinking and avoiding responsibility doesn't make you any less of a loser, it just means that all your stories for a couple of years start off with, "When I was in Sarejevo..." It just makes you an obnoxious place dropper.
I moved to the city on the offer of a friend I went to high school and college left. He said I could come and sleep on his couch for awhile until I got my bearings, found a job, collected a little money, and found a place of my own. I eventually annoyed his roommate enough so that she left, and I eventually took over her room. For that first year or two, I was a remora on the belly of my friend. I lived in his apartment. I got a job where he worked. His friends in the city became my friends in the city. My first girlfriend in the city was even an ex of his.
In that way too long period I spent on the couch, I would stay up way too late playing video games. I surreptitiously smoked out of the living room window, blowing the smoke out in a vain attempt to keep anyone from noticing that I hit a pack a day. And I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer from start to finish. In a rare bit of good luck, Bravo started showing Buffy... in order from the beginning a week or two after I arrived in the city, and from that point on, I watched two episodes a day, five days a week. 144 episodes, all told. It took about three months.
I did so for the standard geek reasons. I identified very heavily with Xander, the smart-ass geek, hapless in love, who eventually develops a drinking problem. I had an intense crush on Willow, which I persisted with even after she became a lesbian. I never much cared for Angel, who seemed a bit of a boring jerk, but until Spike came along, he was the best boyfriend Buffy had.
I don't think it was really all that healthy: I'm not sure what was worse, piggybacking on top of my friend's life, or living vicariously through a TV show. Either way, eventually I struck out on my own, found some of my own friends, developed my own life, fell in love with someone, and started my own life with that someone. Over the past year, as you may be aware of, that's steadily fallen apart. I still have my job, and my friends, but I lost my health, a lot of money, and the woman I love left me. I can't even drink properly anymore. Appropriately to the "Post-Modern Drunkard" title, all my alcohol references have to be meta-, these days.
I don't know what to do with myself, now. I wouldn't trade these last few years for anything. I'd love not to have this scar on my chest, this disease in my joints, or an empty apartment. They say that great art comes out of great pain, but I don't want to create great art anymore. I want to go back to bed, and have someone there waiting for me, someone to wrap myself around, someone who me and the cats can drape themselves over. But that's not going to happen. Maybe next time.
One of the great things about Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the way it takes the pain of being a young person, the pain of faling in love, or being an outsider, or being an addict, or needing something, and turns it into an external force. The characters have something to fight against, something to slay. They have their inner demons, too, but the demons are often quite literal. Buffy sleeps with Angel, as a consequence he loses his soul, and the next morning he doesn't call. In fact, the next morning, he goes out and starts killing her friends and trying to destroy her life. It's monstrous, but it's explainable. It can be fought against, and defeated.
I've got no one to fight against, no demons to slay. It's just me, and her, and uncertainty. So I'm here. And I'm waiting for the future to arrive. I've got no one to piggyback on. I'm back to figuring things out for myself.