Like Vodka for Water
I love Thursday nights. Historically, I have employed Thursday night to being my binge drinking weekends. At the ripe old age of twenty-six, I can’t believe that I am ever going to want to change my habit of submerging my head in a vat of vodka. I know that it may change, I see my older sister toning it down a little, but then I see some of my older friends still living like I do so I know that it can go either way really.
Besides alcohol there are other signs of my lack of clean living. I may or may not have (this is called plausible deniability) participated in light and not so light drug use.
I have been known to engage in behavior commonly referred to as a one-night stand. There were also those two guys in one-night stands (not at the same time mind you).
I never claimed to be a paragon of safety and virtue.
So I want to know why, I am suddenly getting a lot of attitude from “friends” and my sister about my behavior. There have been comments about my flight to Texas (“It was so unsafe, you could have been killed.”) and my outlook on life (“Not everyone is as willing and able as you are to through caution to the wind and behave dangerously.”)
I started thinking about this, because this is where the previously mentioned roommate problems began. She thinks I am dangerous, rude and shady (her words, not mine). I think she’s nosey, jealous, and patronizing. Seriously, why should I be taking advice from a girl who got married at the age of 25 in secret? Yeah, legit, she never told her family, well, not until she decided to file for divorce. And I am the shady one. Right.
Back to my point. I started thinking about what was being said. I began thinking about college. How many times had friends or I gone home with some guy? When we did, no one ever asked for a phone number and address? If I even knew the guy’s real name as one of my friends tottered off in her stilettos and miniskirt, I had a lot of information. I am still living like this, as is one set of friends. We range from twenty-six to thirty and not a single one of us feels guilty or makes anyone else feel guilty. We’re not married and we live in a major city. This behavior is not scandalous or shocking. If my sister’s one-night stand in her sophomore year at college had not turned into a long-term relationship (she married him) she would be doing the same. Right, she had a one-night stand that worked out, but I go off and do the same and I am behaving dangerously.
Then I moved to London after graduation. I was there completing my Masters degree, but I was also living the life. I knew no one in the city; I had to make my own friends and my own life. I did so around alcohol. I would wonder off with strange men night after night and not a soul knew where I was or with whom I was associating. Sure I had friends who loved and cared for me, but the point is that they were smart enough to recognize that they could not pass judgment about the way I was living my life.
Moving back to Boston has put me in the grasp of my family. They know where I am and what I am doing and suddenly they are all so very concerned. Where was the concern for me when I was eighteen and being taken advantage? Where was the concern for me when I was twenty-two and getting wrecked on a Tuesday night? You can’t have it both ways, you can’t tell me that I need to lead an exciting and independent life and still expect me to conform to your boring ass rules. My saying is if you don’t pay my rent and don’t pay my bills you can’t tell me how to live my life.
That’s the thing of it all. I will never be the one to lead a nice, bow-tied life. I will not construct this cocoon of comfort created by living in the same city all my life. I will not define adventure by wearing white shoes after Memorial Day. I will not live this deathly boring facsimile of servitude to Puritanical morals.
It’s not that I can’t, it’s that I won’t. To do so would mean the death of my soul. I refuse to be one of those people who at fifty are sitting on a therapist’s couch talking about how unfulfilled their life is. If I am going to be in therapy at that age it will be for some hard core addiction not because I wish I had taken time off in my twenties to see the world and to behave as I want.
Bringing this all back to today, when I went to Texas I sent my sister my travel plans. I had my cell phone. I had plenty of money to get out if needed. More importantly, if I am at a bar here and go home with someone on a Friday night, no one would think to look for me until I missed work on Monday. Bad things happen everywhere. Most cases of rape occur between acquaintances. More women are attacked in their own neighborhood than in a foreign place. We don’t want to think about things like this because it’s unsettling; no one want to believe that they could be at risk in the place they feel most comfortable.
Ultimately, I took a risk. I believed in another human being. I believed that a stranger was telling me the truth. I accepted what he had to say and trusted that he would take care of me. I think that is the best part of my whole trip. For the first time in a long time I trusted and believed. Whatever the outcome of the relationship, it feels good to be able to see beyond suspicion and fear and find admirable qualities in another person. I think that should scare people more than anything else.