Zero Proof
It was the one-year anniversary of me losing my phone. And I couldn’t find my fucking phone.
In October 2021, I was living with my parents in central Massachusetts. Early one afternoon, I took the train into Manhattan for a dear friend’s party. I checked into my hotel, then went across the street to the liquor store and bought four bottles of wine. Presents for the host, I reasoned, though the host did not drink. I went to another friend’s apartment down the street, lugging the wine like sacks of gold, and sat in his living room, drinking Rosé until I looked like I’d been slapped repeatedly. He did not drink any.
We took an Uber to the party, and I sat at the kitchen table, drinking more wine as people filtered in. I talked loudly about the “Bad Art Friend” article. I became convinced everyone in attendance secretly hated me. At some point, I was drinking red wine with a splash of vodka (it’s called the Merlowest Point of Your Life and it’s EUROPEAN, okay??). I fell down the metal stairs outside and gouged both my knees open. Inside, I fell down again, surrounded by people. I couldn’t find my phone. I cried. I outstayed my welcome. Somebody got me a car back to my hotel. I tried to operate an ornamental rotary phone in the lobby, much to the confusion of the kindly concierge. I threw up eight times on the Metro North the following morning. My sister picked me up from the station and took me home as I shivered in the passenger seat like an orphaned kitten.
Exactly one year later, I went to see Amy Schumer live in Austin. I remember bits and pieces of the show, but mainly I remember getting up twenty times to pee, then falling over on the street outside. I got in an Uber and assaulted the driver with my opinions on the Don’t Worry Darling drama. When I got home, my phone was gone.
The pandemic was a famously bad time for alcohol abuse. Or a good time, I guess? I’d always been a bad binge drinker (but in an adorable college girl way, I can assure you). When I was a freshman, I went to the NYU urgent care because I fell over and hit my head while blacked out. Another time, I nearly tumbled off a roof in Bushwick. But the amorphous COVID-era months I spent at home with my parents ushered in a new age for my drinking, an age that wasn’t thrilling or exciting or at all interesting. The clock would hit 6 p.m., and I’d shut my work computer, go to the fridge, and get myself a glass of white to wash away that corporate email taste. Something to demarcate the end of an otherwise shapeless day. I’d drink it with dinner, then, on the way back to the fridge for a refill, I would think about how my life in New York had been unceremoniously bulldozed. Then I’d drink another, then watch a movie with my parents and drink more and more and more as I ate my nightly serving of Ruffles with Ranch Dip (the glamor of it all was undeniable). My parents would go to bed and I’d stay up, refilling my glass and fighting with middle schoolers on the internet about Euphoria. It wasn’t fun or fabulous. It was just what I started doing.
And, really, the whole thing boils down to a simple yet remarkable feat of engineering: boxed wine. It’s cheaper than bottles, it tastes as good as rotten grapes possibly can, and, most importantly, there’s no “I killed a bottle” shame, because there are many bottles in that beautiful box, and it’s all hidden behind cardboard, so you can’t watch the water level lower as the night goes on. When you get near to the end, you tug the bag out of its box like a placenta and drink directly from the crumpled plastic. The animal you are.
My phone was with the Uber driver. The second one. The phone I lost in New York materialized behind a large speaker at my friend’s apartment months later. I got phone #2 back the day after Amy Schumer and celebrated with many cans of sparkling wine after dinner. Simpler Wines, the brand was called. Two weeks later, I quit drinking for good. It was the day after Halloween, and I was deathly hungover. I’d gone to a party the night before dressed as a Target employee. There’s a video somewhere out there of me holding two bottles of liquor, saying “Welcome to Target,” then pouring them both into a bowl of green punch (“Embalming Fluid”).
In retrospect, it was clear that I'd wanted to quit for a while. I was obsessed with the song “Just” by Radiohead, and I would play the chorus over and over like an insane person while I lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling, hungover or drunk or (usually) both: You do it to yourself, you do, and that’s why it really hurts. You do it to yourself, just you, you and no one else. I cried when I woke up one morning and realized I’d tried to do Wordle while drunk the night before and had thus obliterated my impressive streak by writing “CLOWN” in every space. I was also working on a novel about someone who can’t stop drinking.
The day after the Halloween party, I sat in the empty bathtub while my friends went on a hike I was too sick to go on. Gazing at the water-stained ceiling, I realized that the character in my novel needed to go to an AA meeting. Of course! I got up and fetched my computer and found a meeting, for research, but of course I had to introduce myself and say, “Hi, yeah, hey, I’m an alcoholic,” FOR RESEARCH, and then I turned my camera off and listened to people from all around the country talk about higher powers and inner strength and parole requirements until I was throwing up, the hum of the group, the voices of strangers like elevator music.
I’d quit drinking before, though it wasn’t my choice. Shortly after the first phone-loss incident, I was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder that affected only a small part of my chin. Basically, my body was creating scars for no reason (somebody had probably hexed me; payback for the way I expertly dodged acne as a teen). It looked especially bad when I drank. Blood vessels lighting up like fireflies. My hot, bodybuilding dermatologist (story for another day) put me on Methotrexate, an immunosuppressant that you cannot drink on. I spent fourteen days forgoing my nightly Sauvignon Blanc and I felt good. I was sleeping well. I was less grumpy. I didn’t wake up with headaches that made me want to stick my hand in a blender.
And then, the fun ended. Hives sprouted all over my face like mold. I took a shit ton of Benadryl and called Dr. Muscles, who told me what I already knew. I was allergic to the Methotrexate. He had me go off it immediately, and we switched to a topical solution. I was disappointed, and not just because the ointment made me look perpetually slippery. I was bummed because I didn’t have a reason not to drink anymore. I went back to my nightly white wine. I woke up every morning telling myself I would take the night off. I never did.
As fate would have it, shortly after I stopped drinking for good, a non-alcoholic bar sprouted two blocks away from me. Sans Bar. I absolutely did not, under any circumstances, want to go to it. I was in the early days of my abstinence, and everything felt boring. Without the sedative known as ethanol, I could not turn off my thoughts, and thus I could not, for the life of me, sleep. I was exhausted and ignoring friends and didn’t think anything could possibly be as lame as a non-alcoholic bar. I wanted to stew in my lethargy. I didn’t want to do anything.
The truth is, I picked a really annoying time to quit drinking. First came Thanksgiving; we went to Ruth’s Chris and had a feast and I felt fidgety and anxious when I realized I don’t even like steak, I just like pairing it with red wine. Then came Christmas, and I nearly cried when everybody but me did a shot at midnight on Christmas Eve. Then, New Year’s, and I was starting to feel a bit better about the whole thing. I sipped faux Prosecco and felt excited that I wouldn’t be waking up the next morning with a hangover. In the new year, we went to West Texas for a friend’s blowout birthday party, and I was surrounded by people on edibles, Molly, alcohol. They were singing songs from The Simpsons and doing performance art to Kate Bush songs and I was sober as the day I was born- so overwhelmed that I came back to the hotel after all was said and done and laid under the blanket with my dog while my boyfriend played spa music and gave us a couple’s massage.
When I got back from West Texas, I knew what I had to do. I was going to Sans Bar.
The DJ was on fire that night.
The bar was cozy and well stocked and complete with couches and pillows and, of course, more non-alcoholic alcohol than you can possibly conceive of. A leather-clad couple sipped de-alcoholized Cabernet in the corner. A group of girls pounded NA tequila shots. The bartender, a beautiful young woman with corkscrew hair, asked me to select a card from a deck. I did. When were you the most proud of yourself? the card asked. “I quit my job to become a writer,” I said to the bartender, surprised by how honest the answer was. She nodded, satisfied, then poured me some non-alcoholic champagne. It tasted like lavender.
It’s been six months now. I’ve become obsessed with sparkling water, and am working on a Michelin-style guide for all the brands. Topo Chico has the highest rating at present, based on bubble quality and hydration factor. I’ve realized I do not like talking to strangers, and I never did. I’ve learned that movies are awesome when you don’t fall asleep halfway through. I’ve also learned that people are not, in fact, more interesting when they are drunk. They just talk more. I’ve lost a lot of weight. My chin has never looked better.
I didn’t suffer some great trauma that made me start drinking the way I did. Truthfully, I began drinking an addictive substance habitually while I was bored, and it’s as simple as that. The pandemic didn’t help, but the pandemic also didn’t cause it. I could talk for hours about the way our society keeps us sedated with “Wine Mom” propaganda and cocktails that hide the taste of ethanol behind masks of cranberry juice and whipped egg. But the other truth is that nobody likes to hear that shit. It’s annoying. Because people like to drink! I was in Berlin with my best friend recently. Her boss made fun of me for drinking an NA beer (javer fun!). She shot back at him: “Our generation doesn’t drink like yours does. It’s not cool anymore.” He just shrugged and ordered a whiskey.
I won’t lie and say there wasn’t a part of me that wished I could do six shots that night and go dance at a club with the insanely beautiful goths of Berlin and feel that feeling, you know the one, where everything seems like it’s going to be fine. But instead I walked home alone, and I plowed through liquid plumes of cool-kid-cigarette smoke and watched the freezing rain make patterns on my glasses and felt content, even if just for a moment, with feeling normal. Not amazing, not euphoric, not miserable, not deathly sick. But normal.
