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Our first is by Christina Gombar

Sober in a Sodden Land

I fell out of love with booze in England. As an American teenager in the 1970s, there was little stopping me from drinking as much as I wanted, whenever and wherever I wanted. By twenty, I’d grown so sick of the lush life I put an ocean between myself and the bars on the Connecticut Post Road.

Word of advice: If you want to create a social life that’s not centered around booze, don’t move to the binge-drinking capital of the world.

I met the Bank Clerk on the street, my friends asking him the way to a pub.

“Oh, don’t go there. If you want a real English pub, come along with us…”

The Bank Clerk’s crowd went to the pub every day of the week bar none, chain-smoked Marlboro Reds, bet on horses, had all slept with each other’s girlfriend — except the Bank Clerk himself, who was in love with his ex. Their sole exercise was walking from pub to pub, and when I moved in later I’d see the Bank Clerk go days without a real meal. They didn’t read Economics, study for the Foreign Service Exam or run in Regent’s Park like me. Just worked all day and got pissed every night — or legless, as they put it: It’s your birthday! You have to throw up! You must throw up!

Back in the states, my vodka and grapefruit cocktails were invariably picked up by some Vinnie or Tony in exchange for a twirl on the dance floor.  I invariably told them: I’m not the girlfriend type.

In London, double digit inflation, record unemployment meant only 50-year men, usually married, usually foreign, sprung for cocktails. The plunging dollar, my lack of green card translated into me nursing a pint of that awful-tasting dark bitter all night — so strong I swayed on my Camden Market spike-heel vintage pumps.

Now I was ready to fall in love – but couldn’t get the Bank Clerk alone. Always someone crashing in the next room, heaving over the toilet.

I got a job in the country. The boy I finally fell mutually in love with there didn’t drink much and I didn’t at all.  But this Being in Love thing – God, it was hard, Ow! It hurt. No dancing, no mirror ball, no banter, no joints, no jokes, no coke, no dramas in the parking lot nor theatrical apologies the next day. With this English Boy I went on hikes, walked arm in arm down high streets of rinky dink seaside towns, painted on a scaffold, built a stone wall, did laundry and talked marriage.

I got depressed, from the shock of being in love, the shock of life, and also maybe the shock of leaving that drunken ditzy disco person behind — I missed her. I got fat and sad and the English Boy dumped me and I went home.

I dropped the weight waitressing. Atkins, no booze.  On my night off I joined my girlfriends at the disco.

‘You know Janice, that fun girl in high school? Dead. Car wreck.  And, Oh, Don’t look now, don’t look like you’re looking – that’s Crazy Carla Manfredi – I heard she was paralyzed. I guess not totally.”

Like me, Carla drank seltzer. And I could see in her doped-up smile, her slowed underwater movements, what drunk driving did.

Of course I was lucky to fall out of love with booze in England, before that happened to me. But who was I really, now, without it? I didn’t know — only that the mirror ball held no answers.