I’m One Year Sober

And it’s been a thimble of light in the dark.

Years ago, the last time I was sober.

I never had a problem holding my drink, I just couldn’t let it go.

I pack a bag and ride the railroad to the subway to another subway to walk down Fordham Road to meet a perky freshman with bleached hair who folds me into her tiny frame, and the first thing I notice is the drink. On her hair, on her clothes, cloaked in the bubble gum she chewed. I’m seventeen, test-driving a university on an overnight stay and Kelly is noticeably drunk.

We tour the campus that will soon become my home for the next four years. We weave through dorm rooms and bathrooms where women cart shower caddies. Flip-flopping down the carpeted hall. It was the time of too-tight shirts and flannels and brown lipstick and Absolut if you had the money. When I say I live on Long Island, everyone asks me if I know Amy Fisher.

I don’t.

We go to bars. Fifty cent drafts and sticky flours and jukeboxes that will play “Gimme Shelter” on repeat. The hum of ovens from the bakeries of Arthur Avenue and we get slices of extra cheese pizzas while Kelly instructs me on all the fluorescent drinks she orders. I’m holding a beer I don’t drink because I’ve spent the first seventeen years of my life being a parent to a woman who loved her cocaine and six packs more than she could…