Uncool Me

Posted on October 24, 2002 in Addictions IRC/Chat

A favorite taunt to fling at an IRC chatter whose views you don’t like is to accuse them of drunkeness. (It works especially well on Friday and Saturday nights when many have, in fact, intoxicated themselves to an extreme.) My way of handling this is to smile and state the simple truth: I don’t drink.

When I did this the other night on #politics, a cacaphony of jeers from my opponents went up. In the face of their outrage over my dryness, I said simply that I did not drink because it interacted with too many of the medications that I was on. I had no problem, I said, dining with people who liked a glass of wine or a beer with their meal. If dinner was my treat, I went on, I’d even buy it for them. The ruckus continued, to the amusement of those who knew me well. LaDiva said that, in particular, she found it hilarious to hear them call me a “militant nondrinker”.

Last Friday, I had dinner with Blaz at the Irvine Spectrum Center. We ate in a fancy Italian restaurant called L’Opera. When the waitress handed me the wine menu, I passed it across the table to him. He set it aside and ordered a coke.

There was good conversation, shared memories, and, yes, laughter. (I didn’t start to suffer from the nuclear-flavored speciality I’d enjoyed at the Peruvian restaurant until after we left and watched the merry-go-round spin around.) In the days since, I have reflected on how good that time we had was. It embarasses me that I turned into a burden because I hadn’t been observant of my need for tagamet following the habenero-spiced lunch treat, but aside from that, a lot of good things happened and we parted friends.

I’m grateful for Blaz’s understanding about the disease over which I have little control over. People do forget themselves and I am no exception. But then I think, how boorish of me would it have been if I had eaten spicey foods full well knowing that I would get sick and if I kept it up believing that it was all right because Blaz was driving me home. Blaz did the right thing — something I would have done for a sick friend. (And I owe the circle of karma a favor to some friend in a similar need.) But again, it makes me wonder about folks who think that the main use of nondrinkers like me is to ferry them home from their binges.

I’d still do it, but the thought that that may be what they see as my chief utility at a gathering saddens me.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not cool.

Me and John Barleycorn is an earlier meditation on this subject.