I was fifteen and I had the seminal teenager Saturday night planned.
The oldest of my group of friends just got his license and we were driving to a dance club in the big city, an hour away. A few girls from school were also piling in the car and their friends from the big city were meeting us there.
Dancing in front of girls was the most terrifying thing I could imagine. But the possibility of meeting and, if there’s a God in Heaven, making out with girls, gave me heroic courage.
I was still drying off from the shower when my friend stopped at my house to pick me up. So when the phone rang, he answered it.
Hello?
Dude, where are you guys? Get here already.
We’re leaving in a minute.
Okay well hurry. One of the girls’ boyfriend said he’d buy for us but he’s leaving for work soon.
No way!!
I could hear the excitement coming through the phone and see it on my friend’s face.
At that age, we could just start to glimpse the adults we were to transform into. A version of ourselves, with great powers and abilities. Fully fledged, independent people, with agency in our lives.
People who could go wherever they wanted, any time they wanted. Who had money. Who could buy extra fries. Who had a car to drive around with friends. Who had sex. Who know what to say.
After a long childhood of feeling powerless, the excitement of this transition made us crazy and wild, like cooped up puppies finally released into the yard.
For my friends, adding alcohol was rocket fuel for this epic night.
But I only felt neutral about it.
The summer I was eleven, I was bailing hay with a crew of high school kids for the neighbor farmer. This was a rite of passage where I’m from. I drove the tractor while the older kids picked up the bails in the field and tossed them up on the wagon to be neatly stacked.
They treated me like one of them. Or at least, like their mascot, which was plenty good enough for me. I was so hungry for any attention that I ate it up.
Secret from the farmer, they passed around a flask. One of them offered it to me.
I was terrified of alcohol. It turned my step dad into a volcano and I was haunted by the fear of one day turning into an alcoholic too.
I’d never been presented with the opportunity to actually drink. Seeing it in person, was like seeing down a long corridor, the glow of Hell.
Though repulsed, I was also afraid of offending the offerer and losing this fragile feeling of belonging.
I froze.
He pulled back his offer and took another swig.
What, don’t drink?
I don’t know if he intentionally gave me an easy out, but at that moment I saw a method I could use to avoid my greatest fear.
I just wouldn’t drink. Ever.
I was so adept at living with depravity, I knew I could maintain this pledge.
And I did. But that meant enduring things like my friend’s beer pit stop. While the boyfriend went out for the beer, we roamed his college apartment parking lot on our skateboards laughing at nothing and everything the way fifteen year old friends can.
Then the girlfriend stormed up to me.
You better call your mom. She’s been calling all our parents, telling them about the club and the beer.
My mom was only moderately intuitive at sniffing out teenager schemes. How did she know?
Hello?
Mom?
Where are you?
At a friend’s, in town.
You better get home right now.
Why?
Just get home.
But I don’t drink, why do I have to come home?
Just get home!
The ride home was quiet. Everyone looked nervous as they rehearsed their defenses and considered their punishments.
But not me.
Normally, while my friends were having a blast in a plane of unrelatable, uninhibited, drunkenness, I was off entertaining myself wondering what I was missing out on.
So, I was scrunched in the back, smiling, thinking how my discipline, for once, was paying off.
When I walked in, the answering machine has been moved to the kitchen table, like a court exhibit.
My step dad hit play, crossed his arms, and watched me.
The answering machine had somehow started recording when my friend picked up the phone while I was in the shower and it recorded his entire club and beer conversation.
You want to explain this?
It seemed self evident, and more importantly, not to do with me. So I didn’t know what he wanted me to say.
Well, were going to go this club and they got someone to buy beer for them.
What do you mean “them”?
My mom was aware I didn’t drink, and I thought my step dad was as well.
It was for them. I don’t drink.
Don’t give me that bullshit.
I was immediately furious.
After rehab you always said it was up to me to break the cycle of dysfunction. And that’s what did, I chose not to drink and I never have.
How can anyone be around beer and not drink?
I don’t drink!!
Don’t raise your voice to me, boy.
I did exactly what you told me to and I’m getting in trouble for it anyway.
Even if you didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. If you were caught in a car with other minors who were drinking you’d be in just as much trouble as them. In fact I called the police and reported your friend’s car being full of minors with alcohol.
Why would you call the police!
You need to learn. And I’m going to make sure you do. You’re grounded for two weeks.
For what!!?? WHAT DID I DO!
You got no right to be angry. Make it a month.
I felt a wave of heat rise up my spine and engulf my skull, consumed from the inside out by all the years of suppressed anger packed in my guts.
I ran into my room, slammed my door, and found myself ripping clothes from my closet, snapping and bending hangars, with clumps of clothes landing all over my bed and floor.
My step dad yells through the door.
You want some more boy?! Keep it up. I’ll ground you the rest of the school year.
I need to scream, but the only place I could scream it was deep into my soul. Where I did. I buried and packed where it would sit for decades — atoms aching to be split.
On the surface I was angry at not being believed and being punished for what I hadn’t done.
But there a special kind of soul breaking anger that came from being told that my feelings were wrong.
As a child, my internal emotional reality was not a safe place to be. To protect myself, I learned to transform my wrong feelings into:
- Ghosts that would pass right through me.
- A sacred vow to be a different than him, to hate him, and never forget the things he did to me.
- Manic optimism that felt like running on top of a frozen lake before the cracking ice gave in.
As for my would-be drinking friends from the foiled adventure, the worst punishment received was grounded for three days.
Later that week my step dad called me back into the kitchen, crossed his arms, and made this declaration.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. I have done my best to raise you right but after your actions last weekend and your volatile response to being held responsible for them, I see I’ve done all I can do. You are totally out of control. And so, I am turning all control of you over to your mother.
My feelings passed through me like a ghost.