Recent research/trains of thought have lead me to believe that I exhibit an almost unnatural predisposition to alcohol. I don’t understand why - neither of my parents drink, I wasn’t exposed to it all that much growing up, but my taste in music tells an almost entirely different story. A recently created playlist of my favorite songs as a child exposes the real me.
I guess I can partially blame my parents. They raised me on country music, and alcohol is a serious recurring theme in that genre. Brooks and Dunn, Kenny Chesney, and Garth Brooks filled my head with the idea of neon lights and drowning my sorrows in whiskey. Billy Joel couldn’t have helped either - “Piano Man” just made me want to hang out in bars, and “Captain Jack” was full of things I probably shouldn’t have been singing about when I was five.
Whatever it was that pulled me to those songs, it hasn’t changed. I still love country songs about gettin’ wasted. I still dream about running away to Vegas, the neon city. I wouldn’t say I’m genuinely all that interested in alcohol, but there is something about the lifestyle of a drunk that endears me. And it’s definitely not the modern-day clubbing scene that gets to me. It’s that old wood, smokey bar kind of vibe, very American, very wild wild West. And there’s nothing cooler than cowboys.
What I’m trying to say is, I’m stone cold sober, and I have every intention of staying that way. Even dropping all religious pretenses, I would never touch a bottle at this point, for fear that I really have been suppressing a raging alcoholic for the past eighteen years. I’m just drawn to it in an aesthetic sense, like how smoking looks cool because every great artist or writer you’ve ever loved has got photographs with a cigarette hanging out of their mouths. Maybe I need some new heros, or maybe I’ve just got to appease that side of my brain that wants to rebel and start abusing Red Bull, or something.
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