Three Times She’s A Lady
from Bottle Talk

“I only do it three times a year but I still need help for my boozing.
What I did was buy a case of champagne and drink every last drop by myself. I booked off work for a few days. Told the boss I’m in the hospital and not allowed to have visitors. Three times a year. Once in the Fall. Once in the Winter. Once in the Spring. I usually made it through the summer dry. I’m an excellent employee. A top professional on the job. A real lady too. The boss never questioned me about my hospital visits. And the champagne made the fear go away. I could be whoever I wanted to be for a week or so and felt wonderfully scared. During my last binge, I became someone I thought I’d never be. No control at all. Stumbled along The Left Bank in Paris. Nearly choked on the neck of a bottle and rolled into The Seine River. Woke up in a somewhere bed. Woke up with a man I’d never recommend , even to my ex-mother-in-law. The first sip killed me. Yes, that first sip sent me places three times a year. My sponsor says I broke out in spots like Montreal, New York or Paris, where I pretended in another language. Be a bilingual drunk. Learned to throw up in French.
Whenever I looked at my glass, it was neither half-full or half-empty. Only too small. Even for champagne. In public though, I stuck with those long, thin-stemmed glasses you hold between your third and fourth fingers, the ones that felt like my bones did after a binge. I was born thirsty.”

Remembrance Day. I see only the handicapped boy smelling like fresh bubble gum, face twisted with blue eyes and freckles, short straight hair the color of mahogany, legs like rubber on gymnasium wood. His crutches are gigantic knitting needles click-clacking on the quiet. Everybody in the gym looks like those kids listening to the hearts of their dogs. Listening. For pulses. Get close. Closer. Then the place is filled with one solemn story after another for all those soldiers stuck in the mud of war. The man who was suddenly face-to-face with an enemy soldier looking down at him from the top of a trench but both men too shocked to shoot each other.
“I just couldn’t shoot. Neither could the other guy. He looked like my cousin. Could any of you shoot your cousin? Could you?” the veteran says.
Wheel-chaired men with missing arms and legs. Men who expect us all to stand at attention. Men with honor under their skins. And only the crutch-framed boy cannot stand so easily for that one minute of trumpet playing from a cassette player. The boy stabs the floor with one of his crutches.
“Who are we talking about?” the boy says to me. “Come on, who are we talking about here?” he asks again. “And will someone, anyone, lend me your legs!”
At the front of the gym, a trumpet plays its heart out.