I haven’t seen my friend Tracy in over a decade, but I know he’s still alive out there, somewhere. Or maybe he isn’t. It’s hard to know, really.
The first time I knew his drinking problem had gotten to the point it was going to be a real problem was the time we went out to eat Mexican and he passed out in the bathroom with a cigarette in his hand, his pants down around his knees, and the door locked.
The manager asked me if my friend had heart problems, and we finally pounded on the door hard enough to wake him up.
I paid our tab, slipped waitstaff a twenty, and we got the hell out of there.
College educated and good with people, he invariably ruined each and every friendship by borrowing something and destroying it, losing a job due to not showing up, or by showing up, or even stealing money to buy booze. He drank a marriage to death.
He came over a long time ago, we drank for a while, I quit drinking so much, and he passed out on the porch. I left him there. The next day I had to go to work and I think he got his feelings hurt because I wouldn’t let him hang out at my house while I was gone to work.
Recently, a friend of mine in Florida I haven’t heard from in a while called me and wanted to know if I had seen Tracy. I hadn’t, and this guy, Bart, was livid. I saw it coming before he told me. Bart and his wife were friends with Tracy from way back, and they were trying to talk him into getting help. They let him have the spare bedroom, but they weren’t giving him any money or alcohol. What could go wrong?
Tracy rummaged around their house while they went out, and found a can with change in it on the dryer, and a couple of bucks here and there in the house. He took Tracy’s truck, went to the liquor store, and bought a pint but also stuck another in his boot. The clerk saw him so Tracy bolted without paying for the bootleg pint, so to speak.
So Tracy leaves and starts drinking from one of the pints. Tracy has nearly made it back but he sees a cop car do a U turn and does something bizarre. He stops the truck, parks it, and then walks off into somebody’s yard and keeps walking.
After that, no one knows what happened.
The cops got the truck, called Bart, showed up at his house, and Tracy was nowhere to be found. It cost Bart five hundred to get the truck back. An empty pint was on the floorboard. Bart called me and I assumed sooner or later Tracy would appear but he didn’t.
No one has seen him since.
Or at least no one has called me. I don’t think he will now. Not because I’ve stopped drinking but because I think those of us who knew Tracy, and really cared, are exhausted. We’re tapped out. And we’ve all tried.
Eventually, if you were once a party animal, you drift away from drinking, or you sink deeper into it. Or maybe not. I can’t speak for anyone else.
Take Care,
Mike