Sometimes I stop my life for just long enough to step back and appreciate the arcane mysteries of our world, and whenever I lift my nose from the lines of grinded stone (I've set in front of myself) for long enough to smell the wake-up coffee of reality, I start coughing on the kick-in-the-nuts zing it brings to my day: dark, bitter, and strong. So strong, you’ll go crazy if you drink too much at once. And much like the diner where I constantly corner my consciousness with caffeine, no one’s going to put whipped cream on top. I drink to forget. I douse my gullet in happy juice, enough sugar to stand up a spoon. Everything becomes brighter. I catch snatches of whispered conversations inside my head. By the time I kill the second carafe, the walls have started vibrating.
I drink to forget. I drink when I don’t want to think about what I have and have not done, when I want my excuses to be able to beat the Hellfire and Brimstone angel on my shoulder. I drink when I don’t want to think at all because when I think, I see only a perpetual montage of disgrace and tragedy. I think like I’m there in Auschwitz, watching my father help my mother into the shower room to wash the mud off her face. I think like I’m in Rwanda, tripping over the bodies of my friends as I struggle towards the UN forces who will surely put a stop to this carnage. I’m there in Bosnia, picking through pieces of where I live, trying to find enough pieces of my sister to bury. I’m lying in a pool of my own vomit, wishing I’d shared my friend’s courage to jump overboard and drown rather than endure this slaver’s hell. I’m watching my brother’s throat ejaculate a sticky, red sneeze of blood as the Ethnic Cleansers test the sharpness of their knives.
And the funny thing is, as much as this hurts, I wasn't there. I will never feel that pain; I’ll never taste the suffering of a jackboot on my mongrel, subversive, unnatural lips. It’s all based on stories - comics and movies, novels and songs.
I drink to forget the pain of the former Nazi officer, wishing to god that killing himself could even begin to alleviate the crimes of youthful fanaticism; the rapist who’s stopped hurting the one he loves, but can’t find a way to undo what’s already done; the mother who had to smother her infant child when it wouldn't stop crying when Germans were near. I drink to forget that!
Because sometimes, when I climb out of my cozy comforter at 8am, making my way through piles of luxurious crap strewn across the floor, into a room with a bath and hot water and a working toilet; sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I see them. I see a slave, a refugee, and prisoner. I see what they would look like if God hadn't taken a baseball bat to their lives and suddenly the space between us narrows to the width of a lottery ticket. And sometimes the ticket flips over, and I look back into the mirror and I see a young man who so hated the world that he would have given any begotten son or daughter to alleviate his own self-centered anguish. I see a killer who was taught peace; a rapist who was taught respect; a villain who was indoctrinated into the other side. The space that separates us is a lottery ticket. And I drink to forget that.
By the time I kill the second carafe it’s too bright to see the mirror, the voice in my head drown out the pleading in my heart, and in a world where nothing else makes sense, why the hell shouldn't walls vibrate? What I have, it’s called Survivor’s Guilt, and every day I live with the fact that nothing I do will ever be good enough. When you believe in Original Sin, the task of saving the world is a right scary proposition, especially when you know that if anyone else could do it, it would be done already. That’s why I keep my head to the grindstone and my eyes on what’s in front of me. That’s why I drink: to forget…
Montague Keen - March 9, 2014