And third, why is drinking alone so bad anyway? It’s not like I’m some derelict drinking cheap aftershave alone behind the bus depot. Say you get grounded and you’re watching TV or playing on the computer in your room—a couple of drinks can keep you from going stir-crazy. Or maybe your friends all have curfews on weeknights, so you go home and have three or four more beers sitting on your windowsill with your iPod before going to bed. What’s wrong with that?
It’s all in the attitude behind your drinking, see. If you’re like, Woe is me, my girlfriend left me and God hath forsaken me, and guzzling down a fifth of Old Grand-dad until your neck turns to rubber and you can’t lift your chin off your chest, then, yes, I’d say you’re an alcoholic. But that’s not me. I’m not drinking to forget anything or to cover up anything or to run away. What do I have to run away from?
No, everything I do when I’m drinking is about creativity, broadening my horizons. It’s actually educational. When I’m drinking, it’s like I see another dimension to the world. I understand my friends on a deeper level. Music reaches into me and opens me up from the inside out. Words and ideas that I never knew I had come flying out of me like exotic parakeets. When I watch TV, I make up the dialogue and it’s better than anything the writers dreamed up. I’m compassionate and funny. I swell up with God’s beauty and sense of humor.
The truth is I am God’s own drunk.
In case you haven’t heard it, that’s a Jimmy Buffett song—“God’s Own Drunk.” It’s about this dude who gets so wasted he falls in love with the world in its entirety. He’s in harmony with nature. Nothing scares him, not even the most dangerous of things, like a gigantic, whisky-still-thieving Kodiak bear.
My father—my real father, not Geech, my stupid stepfather—he loved Jimmy Buffett. LOVED him. “Margaritaville,” “Livingston Saturday Night,” “Defying Gravity,” “The Wino and I Know,” “Why Don’t We Get Drunk and Screw”—my dad wore those songs out. I still feel good anytime I hear one.
In fact, the first time I ever had a drink of alcohol I was with my father. This was before the divorce, so I couldn’t have been but six years old. We went to a minor-league baseball game at the old stadium by the fairgrounds, back before they built the new one in Bricktown. It was me and my dad and two of his buddies, Larry and Don. I still remember those guys perfectly. They were fun. Big and rowdy.
My dad was big too—he built houses. And handsome? He was George Clooney–handsome, only with the same gap between his front teeth that I have now. Even though I was little, I still felt manly being around these guys. They razzed the umpires and jeered the other team and called players on the Oklahoma City team their “boys.” And they held tall, cold beers.
Man, did I want a drink of that beer. I wanted to drink beer and stand up on the seat and holler at the top of my lungs. It didn’t matter what I hollered, I just wanted my voice to blend in with the men’s. Finally, I pestered my dad enough that he let me have a drink. “Just a sip now,” he said, and Larry and Don threw back their heads and laughed. But I showed them. I chugged down about half the cup before Dad pried it away from me.
They all laughed some more, and Don said, “You are a bad, bad badass, Sutter. You really are.”
And Dad went, “That’s right. That’s damn right. You are my badass boy.” And he squeezed my shoulder and I leaned into him. I can’t say that I got drunk, but I sure did feel warm. I loved that ballpark and everyone in it, and I loved good old Oklahoma City off in the distance, the tall buildings growing soft and cozy in the twilight. I didn’t throw up till the seventh inning.
It’s not like I was ever some kind of Drew Barrymore, though, drinking my way through grade school and snorting cocaine at dance clubs before I even got pubes. I really didn’t drink much at all till seventh grade, and then it wasn’t like I was drinking every day.
What I’d do was fold a paper bag and stuff it down the front of my pants and then go in the grocery store, saunter very casually back to the beer aisle—they sell weak-ass 3.2 beer in grocery stores in Oklahoma—and when no one was looking, I’d pull out the sack and stick a six-pack inside, and then put on my most angelic Huckleberry Finn expression and walk out the front door as if I didn’t have anything but a sack full of Count Chocula and Fig Newtons under my arm.
Me and my best friend, Ricky Mehlinger, made a regular routine out of this for about a month. We’d filch a sixer and drink it down in the concrete drainage ditch and let the Doberman chase us. The Doberman was one big, ugly, mean-eyed dog. He ruled three backyards. One day we were just finishing off our beer and looked up and there he sat on the corner of the brick wall looking down at us like an evil gargoyle. A split second before he leaped down, we took off running. Then here he came, snapping at our heels. I literally felt his teeth on the back of my shoe right before I scrambled up a stockade fence. It was a blast.
After that, we always made sure to walk by his domain after we finished our six-pack, and without fail, he’d spring out from nowhere, wild-eyed and slobbering. Then one day I bet Ricky five dollars he wouldn’t try to make it all the way through the Doberman’s backyard and touch the wrought-iron gate around the swimming pool. He chugged the rest of his beer and said, “You’re on, dude.”
It was hilarious. Ricky got about halfway through the backyard before the Doberman came tearing around the corner of the house. Ricky’s face went all Macaulay Culkin, and he took off at a sprint for the swimming pool gate, the dog chomping air right behind him. He tried to flop over the gate but got seriously hung up on the black, wrought-iron spikes. That’s when I saw it. The Doberman kept barking and chomping at Ricky’s ankles, but he never took a bite. He could’ve easily gnawed Ricky’s leg off, but when it came down to it, he was just like us—out for a good time and nothing more.