Nothing Good Can Come from This

by Kristi Coulter

  It’s the main reason that I avoid Drinker’s Bars: I don’t know how far I’d fall if I didn’t have to fake being a normal drinker. If I could toss my list of rules and just disappear into the windowless box full of lotto tickets and well brands and idle chatter and brain fog. I can’t risk it. I need to pretend that my drinking is an accompaniment to the real event: catching up with a friend, or networking with colleagues, or eating dinner with my husband. I need the tropes of alcohol as an artisanal passion around me to keep me in line. I need someone waiting for me to say, “Yes, I do taste notes of plum and dirt,” or to praise the lemon verbena syrup sourced from the bar’s own living rooftop. Take away my money or my extreme whiteness, and it might be clear that getting a lot of ethanol into my bloodstream as fast as possible is all I really care about. I could be a whole different kind of drunk.

  Instead, I’m the kind who turns this bar into an anecdote. Mindy and I stay for one more round, wake up a little hungover the next morning, and go wine tasting in her new Lexus, laughing about the Barn and Carl and his nipples in between stops. In Seattle we return to our rooms full of men, those high-earning, high-fiving guys. “It’s nice to be back to civilization,” I tell one of them when he asks about our trip, and I slide into my seat at the conference table, dressed up, laptop open, already dreaming of that evening’s glass or two of cold white wine that will become a whole bottle at room temperature. It will take years for me to see that civilization was not where I belonged then. The Barn was my rightful home, and those men were my brothers.

  How to Be a Moderate Drinker

  1. Only drink on certain days of the week.

  Only on weekends, or only on weekdays, or only on every other day. Make sure that on the nondrinking days you think of nothing else but drinking.

  2. Decide in advance how many drinks you will have, and once you’ve had that many, stop.

  Two is a good number. After two drinks your prefrontal cortex will be in the perfect state to make wise and unfun choices.

  3. A standard drink is five ounces. Measure your drinks so you don’t accidentally have too much.

  If five ounces looks too sad, pour both of your five-ounce drinks into one glass. Then forget that counted as two drinks and pour another ten ounces. Then have as many more drinks as you want of whatever size you want.

  4. Drink a glass of water between each glass of wine to cut down on the buzz and keep you hydrated.

  Or just sort of nurse one glass of water all night and call it good. Wine is basically water, anyway.

  5. Write down every drink in a notebook, to stay accountable and observe your habits over time.

  Note the date, time, and amount of each drink. Get specific about varietal and region. Note flavors and mouthfeels, who you were with, what you were wearing. Let it be erotic fan fiction.

  6. Make a habit of socializing with nondrinkers.

  Totally. Just use Google Maps to find the nearest tabernacle and show up with your Scrabble board. Try not to let them see your hands shaking over the tiles.

  7. Drink only things you don’t like.

  Sure. Switch to red. Switch to tequila. Guess what? You’ll learn to love what you hate and they’ll still drop a veil over you.

  8. Stop drinking as soon as you feel buzzed.

  Good idea! Also stop eating when your food tastes too good. Stop having sex when you think you might come. Stop the movie before the finale.

  9. Don’t drink when you are sad, anxious, or lonely.

  That’s funny.

  10. Practice mindful drinking. Savor each sip. When you want more, first ask yourself, “What need is this drink fulfilling?” When the need is filled, just stop.

  Yes. Good idea. What need is this drink serving? Or this one. Or maybe just one more. Is panic a need? Is horror? What if my needs have blood-drawing teeth? Should I just pause to name these needs for you while they chew my skin and spit it out? Help me, please. I want to do this right.

  Pussy Triptych

  I’m eighteen, drunk, and about to fuck a boy at a party. I’m not that into him, but he’s been hanging around for weeks, and I’ve set a goal to sleep with at least three guys by September so I can start college knowing everything there is to know about sex.

  We make out a little, and then he pushes my Fiorucci dress up around my waist and unzips his jeans. I’m not even wet yet, but I don’t want to come across as, you know, needy. He pushes me down on all fours—a first for me, but okay—and tries to put it where I wasn’t expecting him to.

  “Wrong hole,” I say. He laughs and ignores me.

  “Stop it,” I say. “I’m serious.”

  “C’mon,” he says, still poking around. “It won’t hurt.”

  “I said stop.”

  “Okay, calm down,” he says.

  Now would be a good time for me to get up and leave, except he’s already course corrected and is inside me. I no longer want him there, but okay. Soon, very soon, we’re done.

  “I didn’t realize you were so conservative,” he says as I pull my dress down.

  “Try asking first next time,” I say, while thinking, Am I too conservative? We leave the pool house and he goes back to the party and I never see him again. (Turns out he was sent to military school a few weeks later.) I join my girlfriends under a sea grape tree. “You guys,” I say, “Eric just tried to buttfuck me. Twice.”

  We howl with laughter. Someone passes a plastic jug of vodka, and we toast to the occasion. Something inside me is quivering like a scared animal, but the cheers and vodka cover it up, and I’m just a cool, emancipated chick laughing with her friends after fending off unwanted anal sex.

  I’d like to say this was the last time I confused pickled self-destruction with emancipation, but I was just getting started.

  I got a music journalist ten years my senior to visit me from New York, and I seduced him fifty feet from where my parents were sleeping. I fucked a guy from France in the deep end of a pool five minutes after he told me I was nothing special to look at. I slept with a diplomat’s son who never looked at me again, and turned down a shaggy, skinny poet because he looked at me so kindly. I got a stoner off with my foot through his jeans while six people slept around us. I permanently scarred my elbow having sex in an awkwardly shaped bathtub. I got HPV and had my cervix frozen to kill precancerous cells, twice. I fell in love with a man from Vermont and took him back over and over when he cheated over and over, even when he put his hands on other women right in front of me.

  I drove drunk to meet up with men instead of taking taxis because calling a taxi would be admitting I was making drunk sex plans. I never had an accident, but I forgot where I parked sometimes. And on Halloween 1991 I ran over a black cat.

  I told men I’d come when I hadn’t, because it wasn’t their fault I was too drunk to feel anything. I lied about what I liked and didn’t like in bed to accommodate whomever I was in bed with. If I liked something I thought I shouldn’t, I lied about that, too. I lied to wretched men and wonderful men. When I finally met the one who lit me up through the alcohol haze, who knew exactly how to crack me up and kiss me and love me, I was so scared he’d leave that I spent years trying to make it so. The night before our wedding, I set my hair on fire trying to light a cigarette.

  I told secrets to strangers. I told other people’s secrets to strangers. From time to time I’d make up a secret to tell to strangers, just because. And all the while, as my world grew smaller and darker and more brittle, I told myself, This is freedom.

  * * *

  I’m forty-three and it’s my last year drinking. I’m in Frankfurt for work, staying in a chilly, artsy hotel that reminds me of old SNL “Sprockets” sketches. Tomorrow is Sunday, my jet-lag recovery day before the workweek starts. Around 9:00 p.m., I decide to go to the bar for one glass of wine. Just one. I’ll drink it slowly. I even bring a book to focus my attention.

  The bar has a dark, cozy vibe out of step with the Brutalist feel of the rest of the place, and the
bartender is olive-skinned with a gleaming smile. I drink my one glass of Gewürztraminer, then another. (This isn’t breaking my promise to myself; when I say one, I always mean two.) I read my book slowly and chat with an older couple from New York. The bartender fills my glass a third time. “Oh, I’m fine,” I say, but he smiles and says it’s on him. “To welcome the beautiful American to Germany,” he says. “The night is young.”

  The night is not young, and I’m dehydrated and sallow from the flight, not beautiful. But I am also a paranoid American, convinced that every European who meets me sees only the simian smirk of George W. Bush, and it makes me overly susceptible to the kindness of strangers. Even if that stranger is paid to be kind. I raise my glass to him. “Danke,” I say. He winks.

  The room is thinning out when a stunning, Slavic-looking blonde in a fur coat sweeps in and takes the stool next to me. The bartender greets her by name—Basia—and hands over a glass of amaretto. She is simply, impeccably turned out—black dress, heels, diamond studs, full makeup. Next to her, I feel like Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island. She lights a cigarette—she even looks good smoking—and comments on my book. I forgot about the book at least one drink ago, but I rally and we talk about the series, by an Italian woman who writes under a pseudonym, which she is also reading.

  “Without anonymity she would not feel free to tell what she does,” Basia says.

  “That may be true, but it’s a shame. Women shouldn’t have to hide themselves to tell the truth.”

  She shrugs the most European shrug of all time. “This will not change,” she says. The bartender, returning from a booth across the room, leans between us and refills my glass, squeezing my shoulder as he does.

  I should probably find that odd. I do, a little. But why worry? I’m a smart woman, a master traveler, used to drinking alone in foreign countries. And I’m not even alone now that the glamorous, learned Basia has befriended me. I am proving my worthiness to be here with the cultured people of the world. My bed is an elevator ride away, and if I’m a little worse for wear tomorrow morning, a big German breakfast will set things right.

  We drink and talk some more—I drink—Basia is still working on that one small amaretto. The bartender keeps topping off my glass, and I lose track of how much I’ve had. At one point he pours one for himself and leans across the bar to talk to me. Where am I from? How long will I be in town? He is unabashedly flirting, which strikes me as funny—he’s at least ten years younger than I am. But that’s what men do. They flirt. And a woman like me watches, wryly amused and a little flattered, then pays the check and walks coolly away, to wake raccoon-eyed but alone.

  It’s after midnight when Basia gets a text. “Time to go,” she says. “Come with me. I’ll walk you to your room.”

  The bartender protests. “We are open two more hours! Don’t leave me,” he says to me. “Stay and talk. The night is still young.” The night is apparently always young with this guy.

  Basia’s eyes suddenly flash with something dangerous and she speaks in German to him and he says something back with a sneer. “Come,” she says again. I slide off the bar stool and once my feet hit the carpet, I realize how drunk I am. Don’t let it show, I order myself—as if I were still in control, as if I could convince anyone that a bottle and a half of wine (at least) didn’t put a dent in me—and I pull my muscles inward to hug my bones.

  “Gute Nacht,” I tell the bartender. He gives me a small, tight smile. Maybe I’m not beautiful anymore. I’ve seen it happen before.

  Basia walks me to the elevator. “You have your key?” she says. I nod. “I couldn’t leave you with him,” she says. “He’s not safe with women. You would be sorry.”

  “Oh, I’d be fine,” I say breezily, or maybe it’s my body that’s swaying breezily.

  She stares at me. “He hurt my friend,” she says. “You would not be fine.”

  In the elevator we punch different floors. Hers is first. “So you are staying here, too?” I ask, wanting to bring the conversation back to glam-woman topics. “My client is,” she says, and her eyes narrow. “You do realize I’m an escort?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Of course.” I can’t tell if she believes me or not.

  I enter my room giggling, congratulating myself on a night of adventure: good white wine in a chic European bar, book talk with the world’s most glamorous prostitute, and the defeat of an ill-intentioned man. You’ll remember this night forever, I think. Before I pass out, I go through the motions of washing my face, brushing my teeth, and drinking a glass of water—hangover prevention. It’s important to me that I do all the things an actual drunk would forget to do.

  I wake under the white duvet, unable to turn my head without zags of pain. My eyes feel parboiled. I lie on my side staring at the windowsill. A prostitute saved you from being raped in a foreign country, I think. And no one would have believed you. You’d just be some married woman who fucked a hot young bartender and tried to blame him for it. A hooker took care of you because you can’t take care of yourself. I push myself upright and sit naked and cross-legged on the bed. Remember this night, I tell myself. Remember this forever.

  Eventually, I force myself off the bed, pull on the same jeans and boots I left on the floor last night, and take the elevator downstairs, going out of my way to say a cheerful “Guten Tag!” to all the people I see so they will understand that I am a healthy and successful person. I turn left outside the hotel and walk for two miles, stopping at a Turkish restaurant when my head has cleared and I’m finally hungry. Only “cleared” for me is more like “erased.” The events of the night before are rewriting themselves into a minor anecdote. I had a little too much to drink and got into a bit of a scrape. On the walk back, I feel almost cheerful. Just watch yourself a little better, kiddo.

  But something must have stuck around, because I don’t go back to the bar that night. And I only drink one bottle of wine, alone in my room.

  * * *

  I’m forty-six, sober, and traveling back in time just long enough to leave a note for my teenage self to find after the thwarted buttfucking:

  Hey. Nice save back there. Personally, I wouldn’t have let him fuck me after what he tried to pull. But your body, your choice and all that.

  Look. I need you to know that this kind of stuff will keep happening. The world of teenage boys and the world of men are a lot alike, it turns out. Men will keep trying to ignore whatever limits you set. I don’t know why. Maybe they had lousy fathers, maybe they think “no” means “convince me,” maybe they’re just desperate for whatever bits of power they can grab. The whys aren’t the point. The point is, you don’t have to make it so easy for them to hurt you. You think that shrugging off their aggression is a show of power. You think that matching them drink for drink and then blowing them in their cars makes you cool. But making a choice when you’re too drunk to think of anything else to do is giving your power away. Give your body away if you want, but not your power. And not your judgment. You’re going to need both.

  You think sexual freedom is your birthright and that no one should tell you how to use your body. You’re right, but it doesn’t matter. You know how the creepy old bagger at Publix always tells you to smile and it drives you nuts? Men will still be doing that in your forties. Remember in sixth grade when that boy cornered you in the hall and grabbed your crotch and the first thing the principal said when you reported it was “Did you have a hall pass?” That’ll stick with you, and in twenty-five years when a man walks up and grabs your breast when you’re just walking down a street in Paris, you won’t report it. You’ll tell yourself it’s because reporting a crime in a foreign city will just give him even more of your time and energy, but deep down you know it’s because talking to the gendarmes would be humiliating. After all, you weren’t even raped, you will tell yourself.

  This shit is happening around you right now, more than you know. In the last few years, scores of women have accused Bill Cosby of rape, starting from before you w
ere born. He might be raping someone right this second in your time, or mine, or both. But despite the accusations from women of all ages and geographies, a lot of people think it’s all just a big conspiracy. It’s easier for them to believe that a bunch of women would band together to ruin Bill Cosby’s life for fun and profit than it is for them to believe that maybe, just maybe, Cliff Huxtable is a rapist.

  That’s what it’s like out here in your future.

  Oh, and then there’s the president of the United States. (You already know his name, but I’m not going to tell you who he is because you would never in a quintillion fucking years believe me.) During the campaign, he was caught bragging on tape that he gets away with grabbing women’s pussies uninvited because he’s famous. And it sent the country into an uproar. Even men! Men got mad about sexual assault. It was a beautiful moment.

  Then he won the election.

  He won because when it came right down to it, people didn’t really care what he did to women. Not that America doesn’t love its women. Who wouldn’t love those soft, pretty creatures so willing to be sacrificed over and over? Who wouldn’t love those patient, selfless dumb fucks?

  Believe me, that’s not the kind of love you want. So don’t sacrifice yourself. Don’t roll over. Don’t trust in good intentions. Don’t think you’re too special to be hurt. Don’t blunt your own brain.

  Save yourself and save me, too.

  P.S.: And stop calling yourself fat. You’re not. Jesus Christ.

  Useful

  It was raining steadily, making the entire Washington State Fair an electrocution opportunity. John and I stumbled off the Tilt-A-Whirl and into the nearest exhibition barn, where I spotted some blue-ribbon Katahdin sheep. “Oh, I have four of those!” I said.