Dear Businesslady,I work in a small office (like we-don't-have-any-HR-department small). My co-worker, who is my age (30), is an alcoholic. He used to be a really intense one -- like fucking-up-all-the-time, mystery-sick-days, smelling-like-a-distillery, positively-purple-and-about-to-pass-out-in-meetings kind of intense. Then he was sent on a mandatory leave of absence by the management, for detox. He came back sober, but flash forward a year and he's back to drinking at work on the regular. He's not as extreme…
On May 25, 2015, the night before my husband’s forty-second birthday, he was watching the Houston Rockets beat the Golden State Warriors at a local bar. It was raining. My daughter and I were already home, waiting for him to return after the game. She was eight and had school the next day, so after she went to bed, I texted my husband for an update on his whereabouts. The rain had turned into a…
In my panty drawer you will find my father’s ID, his social security card, and a photograph of a cat I’ve never met. The cat is fat, with Goosebumps-green eyes, sprawled out like a starfish. Stuck to a screen door, only her own claws keep her from falling to the concrete below. The back of the photo reads, “This is Gracie. She is meaner than hell, but I like her. Sorry about the toothpaste –…
Previous entries in the series can be found here. I am superstitious, so that "last" scares me. My last DUI, please Jesus, knock on wood, was in the late summer of 1998. I was driving a white 1968 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, Randy's "project car" at the time, home from the Dead Mule Social Club of downtown Chapel Hill, where we'd been putting back the Maker's. Randy himself was sunk in a wordless bubble…
My DUI happened on a Wednesday night. Earlier in the week, my boss, the owner of a very small consultancy on the outskirts of a large city, announced that we would be having a company-wide wine tasting. After his separation the year before, he had started holding monthly wine tastings in the office, an attempt to bolster camaraderie and assuage his loneliness. He would…
