40 More Ounces: A White Trash Romance

2024 Barrett Winner

3rd Place Lexi Drysdale

I could open this essay with some tired old cliche about love to tug on the reader’s heartstrings or some highly dramatized “data” about alcoholism designed to scare children and arouse Pentecostal prohibitionist pastors, but the punk in me will not allow the former and whatever is left of the Catholic in me will not allow the latter. The truth is that I am uninterested in the heteronormative definition of love and I am even more uninterested in painting my first real romance in broad black and white strokes; her body always looked most seductive draped in flamboyant, luminous gray. I love, or at least loved Booze. I loved her like a dyke loves leather. I loved her like a fly loves to savor the odious flavor of a steaming heap of dog shit on a warm summer's day. I loved her the way my parents claim they loved each other in late 1997. I loved her the way Humbert thought Dolores Haze loved him. We have since divorced and I have moved on, but I still daydream about those romantic nights turned early mornings over a bottle of whiskey, bound in her dungeon begging for more. I cannot say I hate her, but I can say whatever we had going on for the better part of twelve years was toxic in the full definition of the word(not the social media definition claiming any minor inconvenience to be toxicity). I still wonder whether we were in a consensual B.D.S.M. relationship or if I was a victim of abuse. Regardless, I know that my love was true. Moreover, I believe that regardless of perceived abuse or toxicity, addicts both in active addiction and recovery have a genuine romantic, albeit perverse, connection with their vice of choice and that relationship should not be discounted.

It was somewhere between my tenth and twelfth year when the flame was kindled, a few years after I was first introduced to her most precious blood by the bishop at my first communion. My mom had fallen asleep early as she did at the time because mental illness, especially in working-class women, is treated like a nuisance to be pacified rather than a legitimate medical condition in the almighty for-profit medical system; she was prescribed enough klonopin to make even Anna Nicole Smith blush. I made my siblings go to bed early, put on the ESPN awards, I believe former Detroit Red Wing Pavel Datsyuk was nominated for something that year, and went to grab a drink from the fridge. As I walked to the kitchen, I noticed the barely drunk bottle of whipped cream flavored vodka in my mom’s antique, oak liquor cabinet. Before I knew it, I was pouring what was probably the equivalent of seven shots worth of the sickly sweet flavor-infused vodka into my large Wrestlemania Slurpee cup from 7-Eleven and filling the rest of the cup with instant iced tea. It was love at first sight.

When I say it was love, it must be emphasized that I have been a pervert as long as I can remember. My twelve to fifteen year romance with The Poison was more like Pink Flamingos than Breakfast at Tiffany’s, more like The Image(1975) than Casablanca. It was intense, cheap, perverse, sensual, and lacked subtlety. It was as queer of a romance as a sad, perverted, closet-case could find at the time. It might not have been the popular definition of romance, but it was love nonetheless.

Our first couple years were puppy love. We had only held hands and shared the occasional closed mouth kiss. It was a beer here, a sip of liquor there, the blood of Christ at mass, and an occasional child-sized portion of Chianti or sip of Sambuca at Sunday dinner. It was sweet, sloppy, but still sweet. It was not until I was thirteen years old that we consummated our relationship. I am usually the dominant and top in romantic endeavors, but this sordid relationship was different. When I say that she fucked me, I mean she really fucked me. She kept me up into the wee hours of the morning tying me up and pounding me into submission in every position possible. I was deflowered. Most people ease their way into the kinky stuff, but I was lucky enough to experience this raw burst of emotive romance on my first try. Sure it hurt, bad in fact, but there has always been a very thin line between pleasure and pain that I will forever walk. That night her skin tasted like cheap tequila, Pall Mall lights, Seagrams gin, and store brand cola and her breath of lime. I never thought that I would lose my virginity in my grandparents’ basement, but they were not home and she was too beautiful and had a firm enough grip around my neck for me to not focus on that. A less responsible kid would have thrown a party, but I was more than happy to spend the night in her everlasting arms. I knew from this night on that we were finally serious; I wanted to be beat up, humiliated, fucked, caressed, and cared for by her every night. That ethereal moment of drunken splendor kept me blindly devoted to her for the next ten to twelve years and for the better part of that time, she did not let me down.

High School was not an easy time for me. That’s not to say it was not fun or that I did not do well, but it was indeed filled with all the quiet self-hatred, forbidden bisexual yearning, imposter syndrome, pubescent rage, and gender confusion every poor, mentally ill, closeted tranny from a poor, mentally ill family goes through. In fact, pretending to be a good Catholic boy was the only thing anywhere near as difficult as divorcing my first love. Through all the teenage turmoil she was there for me. Long days at school were remedied with a Newport, a spliff, and an evening with her clad in 40 ounces of glossy emerald lingerie. If my old man’s opiate habit was affecting the family more than usual(it should be noted that he is now happily separated from that mistress), her malted barley body would seduce me with her sultry Irish brogue. If I needed help socializing, her agave eyes never failed to guide me. Just thinking about the way the taste of her lips would linger on mine brings me back to the times when I was still her baby.

Around this time she started to share her more sophisticated side with me. Though I still yearn for those evenings disrobing her Bordeaux, single-malt, añejo and Cognac, I always preferred her Mickey’s t-shirt and Jameson hat. She also began becoming comfortable enough to show herself off around my friends at this time. Some people might be possessive and call her a slut for this type of behavior, but I was happy to share her because I knew she’d still be coming home with me. I still think about all those sweaty punk shows I spent hooking up with her or being cuckolded while my friends took her rather than watching the bands. I also cannot forget the many basement parties and kickbacks where we left early to take long walks together until I was sick from exhaustion or the sun came up. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other.

She also showed her sweet side in these years. She was the only one who I could be completely honest with at times. She would listen without judgment when I would tell her about the struggles of school life, home life, gender dysphoria, self-doubt, trouble, and pain. She never doubted me or talked over me and always made me feel important. She never called me a faggot when I told her about the crushes I had on my male friends or that I felt more powerful with eyeliner on. She always made time for me and my problems. More than anything she was completely selfless. She always comforted me in her warm caress when I was feeling down, and all she asked in return was my obedience, submission, and devotion. It was true love!

It was around the time I brought around my first real girlfriend that she started to show her jealous side. I tried to keep my relationship with each of them separate. Since I was pretending to be a boy, I figured there was nothing more quintessentially male than having an affair. My first love however could not stand the idea of another woman, and for this she punished me. She made it clear that the only way both lovers could coexist would be if she had a seat at the table in my new relationship. I tried to compromise and let her join in on date nights and nights out but she would not have it. It seemed like the closer my real girlfriend and I got, the more she would punish me. My body was always sore and bruised up after those nights shared between all three of us.

The physical and mental anguish was sometimes unbearable. I cannot count how many nights she beat the shit out of me for spending time away from her. The things she would do to me would leave me shaking in fear if I didn’t obey her for a few days. If it wasn’t physical pain, the bitch would use sleep deprivation to get her way. I asked for it though, right? Isn’t this how BDSM relationships work? Isn’t this the only kind of love queers are deserving of? All of this while I was trying to navigate the first relationship I had besides her was unbearable. Most times, I’d cave and just talk one of them into a threesome. I wasn’t happy, my girlfriend wasn’t happy, and The Booze wasn’t happy. It was hardly a compromise. My two lovers could not stand one another but I selfishly ignored this and let The Booze have her way. It was better than the headaches and lack of sleep and if I was discreet, The Poison and I could have a quickie in the bathroom while my girlfriend was in the other room. Out of sight, out of mind. Still, the fact that she coerced her way into the first more traditional romance I had should have been unforgivable, but she still understood me better than anyone and I always came running back.

When my high school sweetheart and I parted ways, Alcohol still stayed with me and supported me. When I started dating my other long-term ex, my first love was even more open-minded and allowed us to be a throuple for a while. The Booze even introduced me to her friend Amphetamine around this time. The four of us spent many nights together and my ex didn’t even know Speed was in on the action. The brief but intense polyamorous romance with Speed was the only new thing my old flame really did for me.

Just like anyone aged 18-20, I realized that ex abusive, I unsuccessfully tried to kill myself, I got a bipolar diagnosis, I ended my short but intense fling with Amphetatmine, I got sent to the psychiatric hospital, and my abusive ex broke up with me. Despite Booze’s past abuse and failing to visit me in the looney-bin, she still had my back through that breakup. She at least seemed less abusive than my ex was at the time. She was cruel, but predictable. My relationship with her during these years was monotonous. I worked, she fucked me until I fell asleep, and I shared her with friends from time to time. It was all second nature at this point. I was starting to get jaded, but at least she didn’t leave me.

My now fiancee is the first person I dated that The Booze ever approved of. As my first true romance budded between my love and I, my old flame seamlessly joined in on the relationship. My first taste of fully requited queer love was beyond my wildest dreams. It was more intense, yet gentler than I had ever imagined. For every perverse act we partook in, there were a dozen quiet, sweet moments. It felt the way I imagine Breakfast at Tiffany’s would feel if it were directed by John Waters. For the first time, Alcohol felt like a third. My fiance and I absolutely indulged her and shared some very intimate nights with her. She comforted and supported both of us when we needed her, but my partner and I had each other and it was starting to seem like that could be enough. We were just not prepared to deal with that breakup in the salad days of our romance.

From 2020-2022 I rekindled my romance with Booze in a way I had not experienced since high school. She was still the third in the relationship, but as the world looked bleaker with the pandemic and state-sponsored violence and I grew more exhausted attending protests everyday, her support once again became a necessity. As time went on, I became the closest to Alcohol that I have ever been. I became so dependent on her uncritical support that I began treating myself and my fiancee poorly. My only drive was to indulge her and bask in whatever delusion she had created to aid me in my times of pain. I no longer had the romantic heart I once had, but I was still happy to let Booze jack me off. It was neither beautiful nor romantic; it was sad, pathetic, and purely functional.

A glimmer of hope came when I finally came to terms with gender, came out as a woman and started hormone replacement therapy. For a short time, Booze felt like a friend with benefits my partner and I would call on occasion for a good time rather than a third. I must be clear that I still loved the old whore, just not as much as I love my fiance and a little more than I loved myself at the time. She was definitely still a decent lay and was absolutely a welcome addition to my relationship.

Dealing with a second puberty with my new hormones, I definitely relied on my first love for support still. Though I finally had a level of self respect that I had never possessed before, navigating the physical and emotional changes estrogen induced puberty in my early twenties, the cis-heteronormative pressure to “pass”, and lingering gender dysphoria was sometimes too difficult to bear and I needed an escape. I didn’t try to hide the affair and at a certain point my partner and I, me more so than them, were both cheating on each other with Alcohol. She was not what either of us needed, but she was easy and she did listen when communication with anyone else was near impossible.

After our shared mistress introduced us to Cocaine (she must have remembered how much I loved it when she introduced me to Speed) and we spun out of control for a few months, we were finally fed up with her abuse. My fiance and I got engaged and they began seeing her less and less until they finally stopped seeing her all together. My mistress was frustrated and as usual, she took it out on me. Even with my newly sober fiancee begging me to break it off with Booze, I still did not have it in me. How could I turn my back on the one I had loved for so many years?

I continued seeing her and taking her abuse until I caught her trying to drive a wedge between my fiancée and I; she did not like it when I communicated with them and she would do anything in her power to pacify me. Instead of saying what I meant and being vulnerable I would lash out at my fiancee or not say anything at all. Though I am the sole party responsible for this behavior, I must admit that Alcohol certainly used her silver tongue to manipulate me into behaving this way.

One morning after some vacuous argument she encouraged me to pick, the jezebel decided she wanted me for herself. I resisted her seductive charms and managed to ask my fiance if they thought my relationship with her seemed to be playing a role in my poor communication, mood swings, and general immaturity. My love gently but firmly verified what I already knew deep down to be true, so I divorced The Poison for good. I was free.

The breakup with my first love was the hardest thing I have ever done. She had kept me up for almost a full week, shaking and quaking in fear of retaliation. I was in intense mental anguish, physical pain, and I was sick to my stomach. The whole time I could not stop obsessing over her. This was the first time I had dealt with anything like this without her. My fiancee was there for me, and in lieu of everything else I was going though, I was finally there for myself. The months since the breakup have been easier than I would have imagined. It is amazing how a heart full of love and honesty, a support system, self-respect, and a strong will can pull one out of even the deepest trenches. I find myself being a lot more patient, thoughtful and vulnerable than I have ever been before. My heart once again pumps the blood of a romantic and my fiance and I have never been better.

I still find myself daydreaming about my ex-flame from time to time. She even tries to make me jealous by taking my friends as dates to parties, just so I do not forget her. Though she was abusive, she understood me in a way few others ever have and she was there for me when few others were. I can say with certainty that I would be a very different person today without her and for that I forgive her. And in the eternal past where time stands still and all moments are forever immortalized, my undying love for her remains.

With my heart’s blood spilled upon these pages I ask you: Is a junkie’s relationship with their vice of choice any less human than any other relationship? If so, why are these relationships pathologized rather than treated with empathy? Could it even be stronger than many relationships? Is this type of romance not just as pure? Could denying this love be dehumanizing?

Since I have sobered up, I have been pressured to either fixate on or ignore my relationship with alcohol. Doing either would essentially dehumanize a very critical albeit dark part of my life. I refuse to define myself by my lowest moment or completely ignore a major part of my life and myself. My intention in writing this is not to glamorize addiction, but to humanize it. Love and romance do not always work out; they can often be abusive, coercive, cruel, and toxic. If it is socially acceptable for someone to openly talk about good memories and tender moments with a toxic or even abusive ex-partner, then I deserve the same vulnerability and compassion when discussing my romance with alcohol. One might argue that the difference is because alcohol is a thing and not a person, but people do not question when people have an almost perverse romantic attachment to their cars, food, plants, and pets. So, why are people like myself not allowed to speak about the love they have or had for their vice? The common denominator is society’s distaste for addicts who despite being forced to live on the fringes, still bleed the same as everyone else.