jcuervo
No matter how much you want to keep the secret, there is tequila and gin like crafty interrogators with heat lamps and truth sera and the ability to reach your irresistible tickle spots, and late nights when you’re on your own, the rain beats down about the tin spots on your roof and images on the television bombard you with happy feelings that aren’t your own. Modern communications like the buttons on the phone or keyboard or blackberry smile their toothy grins, the numbers, addresses and URLs lighting up like self-playing pianos. If you’re lucky, you’ve carried on your liaisons with men and women of indeterminate, gender-neutral names, like Chris and Terry and Kim, in a pinch, so that the odd messages can be explained away as failed golfing trips or business meetings or even the occasional wake for a high school friend’s grandmother.
And then all that remains is to avoid the interrogators yourself.
But without the liquor, I’m a deaf-mute at the keyboard, a blank slate to match the empty screen. I scream inside my head to jog the words, but all that comes out are nonsensical phrases floating through blue ink, ‘Not at this time,’ ‘It looks good,’ ‘Most definitely.’ People offer magic when what I need is an answer.
Any chemical is all I need to run the ragged race. Cooking sherry and a ½ benadryl will tune my cords, and I’ll talk as I type, shutting the door when the profanity wafts the children’s way.
Once, on a move from South Carolina to Kansas, the vet recommended we give our cat a tranquilizer for the ride. The pill looked sized for a horse, so I bit it in half and fed it to Tsi-tsu between a slice of bologna. It only half-knocked her for a loop, stunning the right side of her body, her mind. She cried the drunken whine for 500 miles, breaking a tooth in her attempt to escape the tranquility of her carrier. It was her masterpiece. For 8 years I’ve been trying to find the other half of that pill.
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