Do You See What I See?
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Three drinks for two people. That sure looked familiar. He carried them triangle style – two beers in plastic cups secured in the semicircles of both of his thumbs and index fingers, with her plastic wine cup precariously squeezed between his two middle fingers. His priorities were made clear by which drink was least secure in the very likely event that he stumbled. But he didn’t stumble. At least not yet.
They heard the upbeat music from the beverage tent, and drifted over looking for the party and his people. But this was a brass band playing at a summer outdoor festival for a food-truck lunch crowd, and so early in the day, he was one-of-a-kind. A kind I recognize. He was me from a decade ago.
Sometimes I am the only one who notices people aspiring to intoxication because of my finely tuned drunk-dar. In this case, everyone noticed him because he ripped off his shirt to, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” I think he thought he was at a flaming axe throwing festival. Wrong crowd, dude.
Everyone noticed, but I doubt many kept as close an eye on him as I did. They were front row, stage left, and I was fascinated with the couple. It was like watching peacocks mate in the wild as he danced and jiggled with an occasional hip grind while she grinned anxiously and tried to avoid his sloshing beer. After a brief rain shower, he wiped the water off a plastic folding chair for her with his bare hand, then gestured for her to sit. She shook her head sheepishly. To me, it was clear that she was nervous to reject any suggestions from him. She looked a little like a mistreated pet, unsure about the potential wrath that her reluctance to sit could bring.
That chair wasn’t dry with a swipe of his bare hand. She was wearing white short-shorts, and I could almost hear her thoughts as she weighed the embarrassment of a see-through bottom layer against the embarrassment of him making a scene because what he did wasn’t good enough for her.
That look on her face. The terror universal in relationships with a man who drinks too much sometimes.
I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of the crowd thought that the jovial man slugging down beers was more likely to breakdance topless than he was to turn sharply to anger and berate his partner. But they would have been wrong. He was right on the edge. In fact, I would be willing to bet that the few coherent scruples he had left were the only things that kept him from making more of a scene. Later, when the party was over, but he was still drunk, I bet she got an earful about rejecting him, being no fun, having no sense of adventure, being too stuck-up to get wet, and needing to learn how to let loose before she ended up a lonely old bitch. I bet what happened behind closed doors was terrorizing or worse.
He put on a show in public. People thought he was having fun. Some likely thought he was just across the line from appropriate, but others surely wished they had the confidence to want all eyes on them. But who cares, really, how alcohol manifests in public. It is what happens when the eyes of others turn away that is the real story. But I could see what was going to unfold even while they remained in public. And I’ll bet many of you could have seen it too. You could have seen it because it looked awfully familiar.
To unknowing eyes, the dysfunction is hidden in the subtlety and insignificance. A half-dried chair. A polite rejection.
He didn’t take a swing at her. I’ll place another bet that roughly half of the people in alcoholic relationships will understand. I’ll bet that on some level, she wished he did take a swing at her. I’ll bet that she wished he’d crossed that red line of physical abuse, and that he’d done it in public. Hitting a woman isn’t nearly as subtle as an aftermath of verbal or emotional abuse, but the scars are the same. You just can’t see some of them.
After the festival, we biked home and ate grilled hotdogs and my wife’s surprisingly delicious dill-pickle pasta salad. We carried on with the things sober people in emotionally safe families do on a summer holiday weekend. But I couldn’t get that couple out of my mind. I also couldn’t stop knowing that they weren’t one-in-a-million. They were one of the millions who celebrated Independence Day with dependence on a toxic substance and the kind of fireworks no one ever wants to see.
I’ll bet one more thing. For women in situations like hers I’ve wagered everything I understand on the belief that there are only two ways to safety – both emotional and physical. Either he can do the work to get sober and healthy, or she can get out. Will either of those two things happen? I would never bet on that.
I don’t like the odds.
If you are the partner of someone who sometimes drinks too much, you deserve people who will help you trust your instincts and reject your insecurities. You deserve Echoes of Recovery.