But where were we going find that? No problem: first liquor store I’d ever seen that displayed Kool-Aid packages on the counter by the cash register—you could pick them up easily when you got your fifth of Thunderbird handed to you.
We got our supplies and about five of us walked into the night together. We put the Kool-Aid in the Thunderbird, and watched it swirl and dissolve. We passed it around, mouth to mouth—I thought it bad form to wipe down the bottle before taking a swig.
Our “church” was an empty lot with a chain-link fence and our “sacrament” tasted like cherries and oranges more than grapes. Maybe it wasn’t Communion, but it was a communion, I was sure of that—even when we started walking down the street together and I lost track of the group and had to hail a cab to get back to my apartment.
The next day, I realized that alcohol wasn’t exactly the universal solvent that could dissolve distinctions of race and class—after all, I woke up in a bed, with a blanket, and there was a roof over my head, even as terrible as I felt. But maybe, I thought, just maybe I had performed an act of mercy, beyond simply buying the booze.
I had shown the homeless that I cared, that I was willing to share.
It was the mercy that mattered—not the uncomfortable fact that I couldn’t remember anyone’s name.
I wasn’t the type attracted to the Polynesian novelty drinks, not at Ciral’s House of Tiki, not anyplace else, but I knew the House of Tiki was there for me. I never had a zombie—with its seven kinds of liquor—and didn’t feel the urge to stick my face into a flaming Scorpion bowl. I kept to Jack Daniels and chasers of Miller Draft—plunking down enough scholarship cash on the bar to keep the drinks coming.
When I loosened up, I’d even talk to the barman.
I think the barman and Ciral were actually the same person—but I never asked. In any case, it was the same barman every time I went in. He wore a floral Hawaiian shirt. His beard and mustache were well trimmed, and his brown-black hair was slicked back, curling midway down his neck.
One night, I asked whether it was true that Mayor Harold Washington used to stop by for a drink after hours. No such thing ever happened, the barman said. Another night, I tried laying the groundwork for an extended discussion:
“Wasn’t this the setting for a shootout filmed for the movie The Package? Gene Hackman, right?”
I thought of the spiky blowfish lamps exploding with gunshots and the air thick with flying bamboo splinters and spinning drink coasters.
“No,” the barman said, “we only appeared for a couple of minutes in the film.”
I quickly drained my beer glass and left.
But I would be back soon enough.
The best thing about the House of Tiki was that it had beer to go, and it was open till four in the morning. The beer would keep me going until five, which was when I started to feel hungry. I liked frying up steak and eggs at dawn’s light, even though I’d have to first wipe down the plates smeared with the mold growing in my kitchen sink.
I wasn’t exactly born with a silver spoon in my mouth—more like a book in my hand. I was an adopted child, christened to be an academic. The one thing I knew about my time in the orphanage attached to a Catholic home for unwed mothers is that the Sisters of Providence insisted that I be put into a family with a professor: evidently, my birth mother was particularly bright, and the sisters assumed that her intellect had been passed down to me. Although this meant that I had to wait longer to be adopted, it was intended as a mercy: even if I didn’t have a God-given birth family to take care of me, I would still find my God-given abilities nurtured.
And sure enough, here I was in graduate school.
But I didn’t cook high-end fusion cuisine; I didn’t frequent wine tastings; I didn’t go to French film festivals. I ate breakfast like a farmer, like a truck driver. At night, I went to dive bars like the House of Tiki and favored Everyman actors like Gene Hackman.
I had a double life, and the flip side of my bookish coin was rougher and grittier than my classmates and advisers could imagine when they saw me in those shiny black loafers. The homeless were a relief from all that graduate-school posturing and posing.
Maybe, I realized, the homeless were the ones who sensed where I was coming from.
Maybe they were the ones who showed me the mercy, not the other way around.
A couple weeks after drinking with the homeless, I made my usual visit to the all-night grocery store for my breakfast routine. I got London broil, a dozen eggs, a brick of American cheese, and put it all in a basket. I felt good—it was the kind of drunk when I didn’t feel quite drunk, just calm and collected. It was a surprise when I saw a security guard shadowing me. But no matter—like any normal customer, I engaged in some polite conversation with the woman at the cash register.
I tasted the stale beer and whiskey on my breath. My tongue was thick and my voice loud.
The woman at the cash register smiled and nodded.
But she wasn’t smiling and nodding to me—she was smiling and nodding to the security guard. They both wanted to make sure that I was going on my way.
Remembering that, I never went back.
Over the next month, I also got the sense that the barman at the House of Tiki wanted me on my way as well, probably fearing another awkward attempt at conversation involving half-remembered details and made-up facts.
One night, I nodded off between my whiskey and beer, and the barman loudly snapped his fingers next to my ear. It woke me up like a fire alarm, and I left whatever cash was on the bar and staggered out.
It took me a couple of weeks to get up the courage to go back to the House of Tiki for an early-morning beer run. I had been drinking alone, heating up my VCR by going through a stack of horror films and psychological thrillers. I had finished off two six packs of Colt 45 tallboys and was ready for more. The walk to the House of Tiki was uneventful, and I was looking forward to the comforting coolness of beer cans under my arm.
I entered the House of Tiki just as I had many times before—after 2:00 a.m., it was the only bar open, and it was packed.
I went up to the barman and asked for a six of Miller to go.
“Can I see your ID?” he asked.
This hadn’t happened before.
I handed over my Massachusetts driver’s license—I was twenty-eight years old but looked more like eighteen. That had to be the reason.
“What’s the name on the ID?”
I paused. I panicked.
“I don’t know,” I blurted. I couldn’t think.
The barman shook his head slightly as he pushed my driver’s license back to me over the bar.
Stumbling home, I realized my drinking options were becoming limited. “You’re becoming a shut-in,” I told myself, careful not to fall or walk into something.
I probably strung together a couple other sentences as well. “Mathew”—I’d always call myself Mathew—“Mathew, the fundamental problem is that everyone around us is such a lightweight.” I’m sure I focused on Peter—a new friend, a great guy, someone to speak Hindi to and watch Star Trek with. But he didn’t drink at all.
As I got closer to home, I had a moment of inspiration: change the context, stop all the sneaking around! Have a party!
It took over a week, but I worked purposefully.
I