‘Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.’
Ambrose Bierce
PART FOUR*
SOME PEOPLE DON’T LIKE ALCOHOL?
Nothing else bothers a person like an overfilled glass of Stolichnaya vodka with a little ice and lemon for aesthetics. It resembles a bucket full of extra-strength pills, impotence, and a migraine; it reminds you of a black liver on a kitchen table and implies a slight whimper after a bad beating.
At the same time, nothing else delights a person more than a glass of Stolichnaya vodka, filled two fingers high (also with a little ice and lemon for beauty).
What is the big deal, you ask?! The difference is feeling is like someone requires you to run an extra 100m race while you’re already a marathon master.
The viscosity of vodka with ice is beautiful. The feeling of Alcohol in the veins is beautiful. The vodka in your stomach is beautiful (only upon entering). Even the hangover is beautiful (like any suffering). Even the drunk woman is beautiful – she finally becomes real and behaves not as she was taught but as she wants: she wants to sleep with everyone, wants to cry and scream. This is the difference between male and female drinking. If we compare Alcohol to the Tree of Knowledge, men at least try to climb it, while women use it as a cudgel to their own psyche and start mumbling what they never dared to say.
The fact that some people, mostly women, don’t like Alcohol should not alarm anyone. For women, it’s understandable because they are made to hold each other’s hair while they vomit (and for that, a steady hand is needed). However, if you look around and see which men don’t like Alcohol, you will realize that they are only the Forgotten Universal Assholes, through whom no one will ever even take a dump.
the glitch in the matrix of our collective inebriation
In a reality where liquid courage is the only way to flex any cojones in our dehumanizing Corporate Existence, the teetotaler is the anomaly, the glitch in The Matrix of our Collective Inebriation. They navigate the Alcohol-fueled zeitgeist with a clarity of mind that is occasionally admirable but always confounding. While their comrades chase the White Rabbit down the hole, these abstainers cling to sobriety like aging whores to a good street corner.
The abstainers witness the absurdity of it all – the exaggerated laughter, the misguided confessions, the confounding attempts at coherent conversation. The air around them crackles with an unspoken challenge, unencumbered by the haze of Alcohol-induced joy or camaraderie.
Nonetheless, their bitter soul craves the intoxication of a different kind – (self) righteousness. In their sobriety, they wear a cloak of detachment, an armor that shields them from being human.
In this moment, when conformity clings to every social gathering abstainers will never get the bitter sweetness of a life lived unapologetically, where every sip is a rebellion, and every drop is a testament to a raw nerve that courses from body to body. In the embrace of alcohol, drinkers find a place where the rotten becomes the sweet and the soul, despite its bitterness, finds solace.
*THE ‘HOLY SPIRIT’ 5 PART SERIES OF ARTICLES IS OUR SPECIAL HOLIDAY PUBLICATION.
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