Family Man (Requiem 12)

I’ve done some incredibly shocking things while drunk. For example: Since I started playing the guitar in 1996, I’ve played in bands a few times. In 2002 shortly before beginning my rapid descent into madness, I was in a band that played mainly covers. Practices were usually nothing more than a glorified excuse for me to drink a half dozen beers while deluding myself into believing I was doing something useful. One day at practice I changed it up and was drinking whiskey and cokes. After practice we were all going from the singer’s house where practice took place to the drummer’s house to party. We jumped in the car of the sober guy and took off. About a block away I realized I’d forgotten my bottle of whiskey. We doubled back so I could grab the bottle. We pulled up, I got out and noticed there were some people waiting at the front door. I jogged up to the front door, excused myself through the people and let myself in. I made it halfway up the stairs before I realized that I didn’t recognize anything in the house. It then hit me that I was in the wrong house. I turned around to see the shocked look on the faces of the people still at the front door. This was THEIR house. I turned around, mumbled something along the lines of ‘Whoops. Wrong house. Sorry about that.’, and then jogged to the right house next door to grab my booze. My band mates were cracking up in the car as I tried to play it cool. Like I didn’t just walk into somebody’s house by accident RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM.

As laughable as that as, it’s not the drinking story I tell people that raises the most eyebrows. By far, that honor goes to the fact that I got engaged while drunk ....in a bar....on a dare.

As my drinking slowly got worse, Katie and I were spending all of our time together. She had even introduced me to her family (shortly before meeting her father, she said to me cryptically ‘There’s something I want to tell you about my father. He used to work for the CIA’ – I thought she was messing with me. She wasn’t. I’d say you can’t make this stuff up, but Thank You Hollywood I guess you can). About 3 days after I met her family, her grandfather died. The day he died the doctor had told the family that he was going to go soon. Katie wanted to stay with her family that day. It was my birthday that day, and I selfishly talked her out of being with her family to go to Wendover with me. I mention this to show how self centered I can be while drinking. Unfortunately, this behavior wasn’t a one time thing. While drinking I could be incredibly mean. While sober, I worked overtime trying to make up for the damage I had caused by my words or actions. It wasn’t just Katie that I treated so poorly while I was drinking. Anybody nearby was fair game. I would be as charming and sweet as I knew how 6 days a week and turn into a monster on the 7th day. I’m not sure why Katie stuck around, but she did.

At work one day, a coworker told us he was playing a show in Park City at this bar I really liked. Katie and I made plans to go up there. Around this time I was drinking this bubbly wine called spumanti. At the bar that night, I ordered a bottle of it. People around us saw a couple order a bottle of bubbly and were looking at us to see what the occasion was. Katie thought it was pretty funny. She dared me to go tell our buddy playing drums in the band that we just got engaged. As a lot of people know, never dare a drunk to do anything unless you don’t care if they do it. I was already 2 or 3 sheets to the wind, so I went up to the band and told them. Our buddy then did something neither Katie nor I expected: he announced to the bar that we had just got engaged. The bar comped us the bottle of wine, and we spent the night being congratulated. The next morning we both woke up and looked at each other. The talk went something like this: “Man, Rob is going to tell everybody at work’ ‘You're right, he is’ ‘What are we going to do about it’ ‘I don’t know. Are you against the idea of us getting married?’ ‘No. Are you?’ ‘Not really, no’ ‘Do you want to just be engaged?’ ‘Yeah. Sure. Okay.’ ‘You have to ask my dad, though, okay?’ ‘Yeah. Sure. Okay’. And we were engaged. That day we went and picked up a ring. The next day we went over to her parent’s house for family dinner. Her dad had this way of dragging me off to a room by ourselves to watch TV and do some manly socializing. I’ve never felt overly masculine, but that day I was petrified. I had visions of CIA interrogations as I tried to change the topic of discussion from ‘How the Redskins look this year’ to ‘By the way – can I marry your daughter’. I don’t want to give away too much - her dad died not long after we were married and I don’t have enough memories of the times he and I spent together to be passing them around - but it went far better than I could ever have expected and I got his approval.

The celebration was short lived. Katie gave me an ultimatum to sober up or the wedding was off. After a false start in another rehab before a booze filled vacation, I went back to the hospital I’d been into twice before in the last year.