Belligerent Drunk

“I wanna go back to Tommy’s and get belligerent drunk,” said the guy at the trough-style urinal next to me at the Indy 500 on Sunday. “I don’t even want to go back into the race and watch the rest. I just want to go back to the house and get belligerent. Do you know what I mean?” He was talking to his friend on the other side. He wasn’t talking to me. But I knew. I did know what he meant. When I was in my fearless and invincible 20s, I felt exactly like that, too. All this public social drinking, even at the Indianapolis 500 where mild intoxication was the respectable minimum standard, was not enough. What the stranger to my right longed for was neither mild nor respectable. He wanted to go to some safe place and drink without rules or boundaries. Becoming belligerent wasn’t an insult. It was the euphoric goal.

The encounter filled me with profound sadness. I wasn’t annoyed by the drunk guy like us sober people are supposed to feel when surrounded by loud, intoxicated buffoons. I wasn’t jealous, either, wishing I was back in that blissful place of drinking without known consequences. I was sad for him, because he didn’t know the pain and suffering that was waiting for him in his 30s and 40s. At that moment when his decision was between drinking a lot at the race, and drinking something more than a lot at Tommy’s house, the hell that was coming his way was inconceivable. It was a completely predictable outcome…