I'm walking through the main artery of Ann Arbor, the U of M campus diag, towards the house of a friend who has promised me a piece of his latest score, a case of Cuban liqueur. It's still an hour before last call, so the streets are mostly empty – just me, the hobos, and the street vendors packing up. As I pass the Union, I see a a couple on the steps sharing a beer. The boy watches me studiously, squinting as if he is trying to place me.
I'm not very good with names or faces, so I'm not sure if he's someone I ought to recognize. To avoid a potential social faux pas, I stop and ask him if we've met. The girl he's sitting beside has great pan-asian features – tanned skin, dark hair, smoky eyes, small-boned. I study her for a clue, but neither of them ring the proverbial bell.
The boy shakes his head. “No, I don't know you. You're just really beautiful.”
It takes me aback. “Thanks,” I stutter. “Er, your friend here is lovely, too.” Wow, I think – Stupid and condescending and awkward all at the same time. Reach for the stars, Katie.
I feel moronic -- as if I've just offered tiramisu to a diabetic. Two random connections made on an empty street, and the only tie we have is entirely superficial. I stick out my hand like I'm doing the robot. “I sort of feel like I ought to know your names. I'm Katie.” They both shake my hand with laidback smiles. The girl is Alessandra. The boy's name is John. “Sorry,” John says. “It's just, you're really beautiful.”
I fold my hands and then pull them apart and stuff them in my pockets. “Well, thank you,” I say again. It feels less awkward now that they aren't strangers. I keep walking. I'm probably not ever going to see Alessandra or John again, but if I ever do run into one of them on the street, I'll greet them by name. I'll remember them better than some of the people I've seen in lecture every day for the past six months.
Part of it is ego. No one else has ever stopped me on the street to tell me I'm beautiful. Occassionally one gets a “looking great” from a congenial acquaintance, but pretty soon “looking great” starts to feel like looking “good enough”. In the world of breast implants and night clubs, “good enough” doesn't do much for one's self-esteem. “Really beautiful”, on the other hand. To John, at least, I'm really beautiful – and that is a foreign and memorable phrase.
Now, let's take a moment to clarify: I am aware that it is probably not a good sign that I feel mildly validated over compliments on my physical appearance. I am in accordance with those of you who are saying to yourselves, "That Monty is one shallow bastard." But please remember, you are talking to the same girl goes to the diner down the street in her stained bathrobe at the breakfast rush-hour. I maintain that there is a distinction, however small and petty, between needing the superficial validation and feeling flattered by it on occassion.
This incident with John and Alessandra stays with me through half a case of Cuban liqueur, all the way home, and climbs into bed with me as I retire. I realize, right around 2 a.m., that this is not going to stop bothering me until I analyze it. (The obsessive-compulsive desire to analyze is something I may either have picked up from my father or watching too much Law & Order. I never really decided which.) I have to know what it is exactly that made John remarkable; I have to understand that brief, frank, outlandish exchange.
What it is that makes John and I turn to one another that evening? Am I wearing a certain sweater? Is the moon reflecting a certain type of beam right into my blue eyes? Or is it, I wonder with chagrin at 2:12 a.m., the type of beer John is drinking when I pass by?
The next night, at a local bar, I get into an argument with a friend. I'm trying to tell her that alcohol makes people honest. I'm probably clinging to the hope that if it was the beer, at least John's observation had some basis in reality. I theorize that we need that honesty slightly more than we fear it, and that that's why we drink.
My psych-major friend pounces. “Disinhibition,” she says.
“Who?” I ask.
“You're talking about disinhibition, not honesty.”
“Wait, who's disinhibition again?”
She says, “Sober, we tune out unacceptable thoughts or desires. All alcohol does, is make every thought and desire acceptable.”
I gulp my cocktail. “Yeah, and?”
“Honesty is a total lack of deception. An inclination towards truth.” She obviously expects me to make the logical jump, here.
I speak around my straw as I dive into my Malibu. Again. “Um ... Yeah. And?”
My friend lifts her glass and smiles. “So, honesty keeps us from lying. It is, of itself, an inhibition. When we're drunk, we lie if we so desire it, because in that state, it's acceptable.”
I suck on my straw for a moment in surrender. “Whoops.” Here I am waving big, grand flags like “emotional freedom” and “honesty” for what could clinically be termed “lawlessness.”
If I advocate disinhibition, am I just a drug pusher selling Nirvana for 50 bucks a hit? Am I that guy in the tie-dye T-Shirt exchanging bong-hits for reality? I ponder this horrifying thought for a long time – but I don't dare put down my own drink.
Now, of course, I had to examine the possibilty that John had simply found it easier to lie and flatter me than to say, in all truth, “Well, I was staring in your direction because you profile reminds me somewhat of Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man.” I mention this to my friend, distressed.
“I asked him if I knew him and he probably said that to save face,” I whined as I motioned for another Malibu.
“Why would he do that?” she asks me. “All he had to do is answer, 'No, I don't know you'.”
I wrap my stupefied lips around another Rum & Coke, asking myself as I did, Why on earth do we drink?
There was something extraordinary about the ease with which John expressed his thoughts. Was it the beer? And if it was, does it negate what he said? Alcohol can make people honest, often cruelly so. We crave the honesty of dancing like we mean it, kissing when we want to, yelling at the TV, crying when we stub a toe. The sober have a tendency to condemn the inebriated as being too blunt, loud, and stupid – but the illusion of control comes at the price of our emotional freedom. Without some disinhibition in our lives, however humble it makes us, we lose sight of ourselves.
I know of one man in my age bracket, and one man only, who condemns others for drinking. He's a bright, ambitious young man with a promising future and an Achilles Heel: he reads way too much Ayn Rand. At any provocation, he will announce that selfishness is a state of grace. He does not believe in Communist enterprises like Social Security, MediCare, Welfare, or, in fact, the government as we know it. He believes in every-man-for-himself-and-screw-the-ladies. To him, all the world is a sinking vessel. He lugs around his 9-pound laptop in a dry-cleaned suit, scattering the pages of his Greek translation of Harry Potter as he screams, “Abandon Ship!!”
This one man, who condemns those who set mouth to bottle, has also pulled a knife on two unarmed friends in a Tim Hortons parking lot. This leads me to believe that my so-called control-variable has as much capacity for evil as ever I had when, in a drunken stupor, I stole my first orange traffic cone. One can substitute the disinhibition of alcohol with stress, with extreme emotion, or with deprivation – my control, for instance, attributed his violence to lack of sleep.
Me? I'll take odds on Clark Kent over Nietzsche's Ubermensch any day. He's proven himself. Mr. Smallville, although wholesome, is a guy with needs. Even Clark Kent, the toughest Ubermensch of all, has selfish desires. It must seem to him that the whole world is a sinking ship, what with all the natural disasters and general wickedness he has to thwart daily. But instead of setting himself up as a god or picking up and flying away to a quiet moon-beach, he takes Lois Lane by the hand and escorts her to the nearest lifeboat. And that, friends, is why, although Clark Kent and the Ubermensch may be physical equals, only one of them is going to get laid.
Let's rewind to that fateful evening. I mused my way past the Union, down into the bowels of the student ghetto. When I got to my friend's place he and his crew had already cracked open their taste of Cuba and were well on their way to Retardton. A fellow latecomer had reportedly downed close to an entire fifth of vodka before arriving, and he was in a very bad way. He fought to stay lucid despite his condition, and refused to let me guide him up the porch steps and onto the living room couch, although he tripped repeatedly. On the way, he got into a fight with the neighbors and attempted to kung-fu chop the beer pong table in half (unsuccessfully). Before he passed out on the couch (yes, we did finally make it), he mumbled that he was fine, thanks, and he would deal with his own mess if I didn't mind.
Disinhibiton has a price – dependency. It's impossible to trust in your senses, and impossible to maintain your state of autonomy once the bottle does its work. What's left is a baby with no capacity for pretense. In my eyes, there is nothing uglier or more illogical than a stuck-up drunk. I should know – I am one myself. The stuck-up drunk would prefer that the world would ignore her change in state, and treat her as if she were sober. We want the high, and we are fully aware of the consequences. Pain, sickness, even broken ping-pong tables don't scare us – but we are terrified of being beholden.
After my prideful friend had passed out on the couch, a small ring of us formed in the living room, sipping that Cuban liqueur and listening to music. Most of us had known the said unconscious for a while. One of the girls confided that he had once asked her why he had such trouble finding romance, when other friends of ours seemed to receive more than their fair share. I asked her what she'd told him, and she giggled, “I told him it was because he knew his own strengths a little too well.”
Okay, so Superman wears his underwear on the outside – exhibionist, I admit. But he never flies around Metropolis expressly to show the ladies his glorious pecks, and at the end of the day he folds his cape up and puts it away. It is his secret identity and his mild manner as Clark Kent that make him sexy. Discovering potential is a whole lot more fun than having it thrust on you like salmon at a fish market.
The boy on that couch was not Clark Kent, not Nietzsche, and sure as hell not Mother Theresa. Awake or asleep, he is not entirely selfish, not entirely saintly, and definitely not impervious to bullets. Why pretend? Why does the Stuck-Up Drunk drink? I ask myself. Maybe he drinks for the same reason he's stuck-up.
... Which brings us back to ego. When John stroked my pride I felt an extra shot of adrenaline, but pride can also be the ultimate buzz-killer. It whispers to us that we are above this, better than this. What are we above, exactly? Are we above looking stupid? Are we above being selfish, above taking advantage of the kindness of others? Of course not. No one is. Even saints take alms when they are offered. You don't have to be Nietzsche to realize that selfishness is an essential element of interaction. If you occassionally lend an arm, what's the harm in taking another's when you stumble? Well, for one thing, you're better than that. Better than your collegues, and less human. Too bad you can't seem to plunge your own toilet.
That's right, Stuck-Up Drunk – as long as we're all being intoxicated and honest, let's admit it – the truth is, you're flawed, and your biggest flaw is that you believe you aren't. Now you're arm-deep in shitty water and you can't seem to remember what you were supposed to be doing ... oh yes, plunging that toilet. Ridding yourself of guilt, of evidence – struggling to hide the truth you drank down on yourself.
Thank goodness for small miracles like John and Alessandra. Alessandra shook my hand warmly and smiled while she told me her name. No sign of wounded esteem, no cold shoulder for the potential competition – Alessandra was not better than me and I was not better than her. We were three people taking joy in one another, briefly and quietly.
I'll never know for sure, but I like to think that it was their first beer of the evening before heading off to a party. I like to think that there is such a thing as natural honesty. I believe that when we relinquish our carefully maintained self-images, we finally begin to see the real images that surround us.
And then, when they walk by, we introduce ouselves.
[The preceeding has been an “Oh, SNAP!” to those of Danielle Ibrahim's room-mates who can't seem to understand the beauty and humor in her hedonistic ways. Get out there and burn Bloomington to the ground, Egypt.]
