No One Throws Up in the Alps
A guest post about letting loose from hidden depths
I’m delighted that agreed to do a guest post while I’m on vacation. Reading Anna is like having your coolest friend talking to you, only cooler, incredibly fluid, and consistently funny. I lose myself in Anna’s writing, and that’s a precious gift. I’m happy to share her writing with you.
Anna’s Substack is called She’s Gone Chilaquiles.
Anna: Thank you for having me, David! I’m happy to be here. Today I’ll be sharing a love story…
No One Throws Up in the Alps
When we first met I was under the impression that you were a pretty shy guy. You were a pretty shy guy. You were pleasant, awkward, funny and shy. But that was before I knew about the Hidden Depths. I found out about those the night we were walking home from downtown after stopping in a few bars. It was a quiet Tuesday evening, but we were looking for the action. We almost didn’t find any. We’d been somewhere drinking, and had gone somewhere else drinking, and then somewhere else, and now we were finally headed back to your house. I wasn’t very drunk myself but as we stumbled up the road it became clear to me that you had entered a whole new space-time continuum. You had found a mega galactic dimension. You were in a galaxy far far away. You were, in a word—soused, fried, wasted, bombed, plastered, gassed, loaded, lit, tight, stiff, sozzled, sloshed, crocked, blotto, pickled, or, putting it another way—inebriated.
We had been walking for about an hour. We were in the eastern part of the city in a residential neighborhood, it was dark, quiet, nothing around but houses. Suddenly we saw a glowing light, a sign—stuck on the front of a low concrete building: “The Copper Rooster.”
“It’s a sign!” you exclaimed, in your clever, drunken way. “We have to go in!”
I balked, but you were insistent. “Well, I do have to go the bathroom,” I said, “but I don’t want to hang out. I don’t think we should drink anymore.” I was worried that if you got any drunker I wouldn’t be able to get you all the way home, so to speak.
We went in. The Copper Rooster was a sad sleazy dive bar, not a hip dive bar though, a real dive—full of old prostitutes and what looked like traveling salesmen, slumped over the bar. The bartender was in her sixties, with platinum blonde hair, tired but friendly. I asked if I could use the bathroom. “Sure, love, be my guest.” I wasn’t in there very long, but as I was washing my hands, I heard her gravelly voice coming over a PA. “And now, presenting …James!” I paused, confused, because James is your name. “Everybody give it up for James!” she said. This was followed by a halfhearted whistle, a few claps.
As I walked back into the room, I saw a dry-erase board propped up against a table. “Tuesday night only, $2.00 Karaoke!” it said. There was a portable spotlight on the table, and it was shining on …you. You stood, beaming, next to a mic stand. I still didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t know you that well, and I certainly didn’t know that you had a penchant for karaoke. But most of all I didn’t know what happened to you when you listened to Rush.
Suddenly, the music to Tom Sawyer came on. The spotlight became a strobe light, flashing on you. You grabbed the mic and began to sing mesmerize the inhabitants of the Copper Rooster. I stood amazed. Your skill was incredible. You sang, spun and wailed like Geddy Lee on steroids. You hit all the high notes. You ripped on the air guitar. You killed the drum solos. At the climax, you threw yourself on the floor and writhed around, still singing. The crowd went wild, the traveling salesmen were on their feet, the prostitutes were head banging. When it was over, I stood stunned, unable to say anything. The beautiful representatives of the Copper Rooster—Tuesday night edition—crowded around you. “What was that? That was the best performance I’ve ever seen! Where did you come from? You’ve got to come back!”
I stood quietly by your side, proud to know you.
After a few more beers, “It’s on the house! A rockstar like you? Put that wallet away, sir!” I got you out of there. And against all odds, I got you home, if you know what I mean. If I’d had any hesitancy about the future of our relationship up to that point, (I had) after seeing this side of you I knew I was doomed. It wasn’t exactly the way I had wanted to fall in love, but what could I do? No other man could possibly live up to you and your no-longer-hidden depths. Thank you Geddy Lee.
The last time I ever got drunk was a few years later, on another Tuesday evening. We were having a quiet dinner at home. You had bought wine like you did sometimes, so I poured us each a glass. We ate on the sun porch overlooking the street with the windows open—it wasn’t summer but still warm enough and the air felt good coming in across the table. I hadn’t been drunk in years by then but for some reason I decided to have a second glass and then a third and after that I finished the remnants of another bottle that had been sitting in the refrigerator, too foul to drink, for months. I hadn’t been drunk like that since the time—right before I had met you—when I got kicked off the stage at a hip hop show for trying to grab the mic and rap alongside the performers. The bartender at that place, who I knew and had a crush on, was cool about it—after they booted me from the bar he came out and said he was looking forward to meeting up when I was less drunk. He must have really liked me. He was a guy I’d been playing music with and kissing a little who had long greasy hair and played in Portland’s best metal band, a band so good I felt flattered that anyone in it would hang out with me. That makes me sound awful and like a slutty sycophant type of person which is what I am. He had a girlfriend he had just broken up with who was moving to another country on Monday and he kissed me on Saturday but seemed troubled by it because she wasn’t actually gone yet. I commended him for that.
Another time I went with him to see your band play and afterward the three of us sat at the bar and I watched while the two of you realized about each other. Then you were both angry with me but I was angrier with myself for being so stupid, neither of you had professed undying love so I told myself I had the right to go with someone to see someone else’s band but I forgot about your feelings. I always forget about Men’s Feelings because I’m too busy worrying about mine. It never occurs to me except in retrospect that maybe I wasn’t always on the verge of being rejected, maybe the guys involved were feeling things too and maybe they were just slow or confused or, let’s face it, hopelessly cloth-headed.
But even that painful scene at the bar wasn’t provocative enough for either of you to profess undying love; that only happened later, after the time you walked in while I was standing with Dylan by the jukebox at the Red Flag—we were standing there holding pints and listening to the Kinks which is exactly what you and I had been doing there a month earlier, but you still hadn’t professed undying love so I went out with Dylan that night, just as friends, not that it mattered because you came in by yourself and saw me and Dylan and pretended not to but I saw how you looked at us, how you blanched and immediately walked out again and I loved you for it. You really gotta see a man when he’s down sometimes. There was nothing between me and Dylan although it took you thinking there was for you to protest the undying love, so it really worked out for the best, as good as if I had planned it, which I hadn’t.
So it had all worked out, and I had happily buried my excesses in the past, until this one Autumnal Tuesday, when I started drinking like I’d been bitten by a rabid pony and wine was the only antidote. We finished dinner. You began to clear the table, but I had other ideas. I ran to the bedroom and opened the closet. There was a lot of laughing, I remember, mine—not yours. You weren’t drunk. You seemed a little startled by what was happening, but happy enough to go along for the ride. I remember that I decided it would be a good idea to put on my vintage Swiss hiking boots that were a size too small but that I kept anyway because I liked the way their thick red laces stood out from the mass of black shoes that sat on the floor of my closet. I thought it would be a good idea to put those on, as well as a pair of fishnet tights and a large frame backpack. I remember shoving my broken camera at you and insisting you take pictures of a “sexy hiker.”
“I’m a sexy hiker and you’re a photographer for National Geographic!” I exclaimed, propping myself up seductively against the kitchen counter.
“Oh, okay, is this the Exotic Animal segment?”
“I’M A SEXY HIKER!” I remember bellowing.
“Okay, well, that’s really something, but maybe we should get you to bed now…”
“OH you men, you’re all the same!”
“Yep. Here’s a bowl if you need to throw up.”
“I don’t need to throw up! We’re in the Swiss Alps! No one throws up in the ALPS!”
I remember later, as I lay in the bath that you had drawn for me, how beautifully pink my vomit looked against the stainless steel of our IKEA salad bowl as it floated, bobbing gently, in the water.
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Hi, Anna. Reading your exhilarating work makes me happy, even when you’re writing about barf and bad choices.
Hahahaha I loved this read. I feel like it caught so many universal truths / experiences along the rollercoaster of dating / falling in love / confusion.