CHEERS!

The anticipation is almost unbearable.

I’m walking to my destination, literally bouncing. The balls of my feet are like rubber, and soon I transition from step to step-ball-change… and I’m a backup dancer, and the street is my arena stage.

Every shimmy takes me closer to it, and I am literally panting, short of breath, heart racing. I’m thinking ahead to how it will feel, how I will feel afterwards, how this will alter my whole being for the next few hours.

I get back to the telly, and there it is…a huge bag of ice, my brand new shaker, a big bottle of cranberry juice, a bottle of grapefruit juice, and a bottle of Appleton Reserve.

I am literally Alcoholically Aroused.

Toronto was off the hook. Had a great time with great people, great food, great music, great parties, and most of all great effing liquor.

I realized recently that the conventional wisdom regarding the allure of controlled substances is actually the acute opposite for me.

Ya know, 'alcohol makes you forget your worries, takes you to a different place, makes you more uninhibited.'

Truth for me is that alcohol gives me a bird’s eye view of my issues. Drives me curbside to my shit, drops me off and speeds down the road.

And that’s probably the allure.

Because don’t we spend most of our time trying to ignore the uncomfortable things? I believe our daily routines are mere distractions from the bad stuff. In our quests to maintain a semblance of sanity, our fears and troubles tend to manifest through stress, bouts of anger, silence, obsessive work ethics, whatever.

And by *we* I mean Wise.

I haven’t done any research yet to confirm that this is an occurrence prevalent beyond my own head. But, I can confidently call my damn self out on this one.

A year ago my therapist asked me to bring in pics of my pops, and then asked me to describe, a) how I FELT in the picture, and b) what I THOUGHT in the picture.

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what she meant by FEEL.

Everything I said was what I THOUGHT. I hadn’t a clue how to identify my feelings.

But at the bottom of a mojito/gin/rum/Goose/Red.Str!pe, I understand quite clearly what it is I’m feeling. And said mojito even interprets the shit for me. Even takes it a step further and gives me an opportunity to deal with it, whether by waving like I just don’t care, or drunk texting or earling out of the back seat door (I’m kidding. This isn’t exactly my steez, but you see where I’m going with it).

Gives me the stomach for one or two or three more, which in turn equals one or two or three more moments to face whatever it is I call myself ignoring.

And oh, how good it FEELS going down.

[INSERT Wise dancing all hard...
Row di boat, row di boat!]