Drunken Love by Que Son (to read list TXT) 📖

thousand knives were stabbing his heart: guilt and sadness. She was a virgin.

 

After that brief contact in 1992, years again passed in oblivion. Then in the summer of 2004, Adam suddenly received an email--from Eve. He was surprised, it was like the emergence of a memory that he thought had been buried in a forgotten corner of his mind. And wondered if he should answer her. Perhaps he should leave things alone. She had long ceased to be a factor in his life even though the love was still there. She was not a free woman, he knew, and re-contacting would only disturb the water for no good purpose. Adam wanted to continue to forget. One week passed, and he got another message from Eve, asking him why he did not reply, and if he still considered her his friend. This time, without thinking twice, Adam wrote back, and the ball rolled: they now communicated almost daily by emails. They had found each other again. Eve wrote that her sea voyage was one unfortunate trip and the terrible thing that had happened to her during the days on the sea was one of the reasons why she felt she should not try to look for him after she landed in Thailand and even after arriving in America. Eve said that she stayed in Thailand for two years, all alone; but near the end of her stay there she met a man who took care of her when she fell gravely sick, a man who later said that he loved her. Eve said she was grateful for the man's help during the time she was ill. As Adam understood now, she and the man migrated to America together, or perhaps she went first and he joined her later. But in any case, once settled in the new country, they got married. All this was happening perhaps during the five or six years that Adam was under the water incommunicado.

 

They kept exchanging emails, and the more they wrote, the more Adam became enthralled. The feelings of those lost teen days came back and intensified with each day and with each email. But at the same time, Adam saw the hopelessness of the situation. Now, when he reviewed the events, he accepted that people who meet each other at the crossroads of life do not necessarily travel together for the rest of their life however much they want to, because things do not always work out as people desire, and because there are forces at work that are beyond anybody’s control. That was the case with him and Eve. Now she was well-situated with a good husband (according to her) and two children, the older was now in 11th grade. She had big obligations and debts to pay. She was getting old, middle-aged already. And he was getting old too. It had been 27 years since they last saw each other--and Adam asked himself, would there be a chance he might see Eve again in this lifetime? Just one more time? Or are they going to wither away like autumn leaves, get sick, and die without ever seeing each other's face again? As he pondered the question, Adam felt heavy in his heart. There must be a better way to settle old scores.

 

At this, Shakespeare sighs and feels like jelly. The story he is beginning to form has already saddened him. The two lovers live separate lives thousands of mile apart and each has external difficulties they cannot overcome. But there must be a happy ending, Shakespeare thinks, I want a happy ending, I must bring them together, reunite them, make them happy together in the end, I want them to walk hand in hand into the sunset, because they still love each other despite the long years apart. But how am I going to pull that off? Shakespeare is baffled and says to himself I need time to think, or maybe a bottle of Vodka will help because alcohol has the power to free the imagination and knock down writer's block! Alcohol is God's spiritual gift to men--men like him.

Shakespeare puts his hat on and goes out heading to the liquor store. He knows that this character Adam desires to see Eve, his old lover, again. But right now the man is trapped in a fantasy forest, having nothing but happy memories of love to cling to.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Two

 

Shakespeare buys a bottle of vodka. 750ml. He will get drunk this evening. He knows creativity calls for help from the booze god, and that is a more important reason to get drunk than just being bored and sick of life and wanting a pick-me-up, at least during these moments when he is obsessed with the story and wants to break down the writer's block. Shakespeare is a poor man. What he makes he spends mostly on rent, food and transportation; then what is left he uses for relief of the mind, like alcohol and marijuana. He does not believe in a sober life. A life sober all the times is not worth living. Alcohol is no vice, because the holy liquid opens up the mind and frees a man from the mental constraints of the mundane. And Shakespeare despises the normal and the mundane. Even the Buddha frequently travels in the land of the bliss by means of meditation. But Shakespeare is a normal and ignorant man and does not have the power to do things like the Buddha, so he has to resort to chemicals.

 

After leaving the liquor store, Shakespeare walks into a park nearby and sits on a bench. The pigeons peck at his feet, looking for bits of bread that don't seem to be there. The wind is blowing hard and the tree branches sway violently as if wanting to break. And the cold is biting into the bones. It is almost dark, and there is no one in the park except for the keeper who is emptying the garbage cans. Shakespeare opens the bottle and takes a drink, a small drink, as a warm-up, and he darts his eyes around to see if there is a cop in sight. He has to be careful because he might get a ticket for "carrying an opened container," a misdemeanor punishable by a $200 fine or community services or even jail time. But Shakespeare does not think anyone ever goes to jail for drinking on the streets. At most, they pay a fine, or if they have no money, they will be required to do a few days of community services. Once Shakespeare was caught with a beer in his hand in a park and he explained to the cop that he had just come out of work and felt depressed and just wanted a little drink to feel better before going home and he had to drink in a park because there was no bar nearby and the cop said he would let him off this time but he had better not do that again. So whenever situation demands that he drinks in public, he always does that discreetly by transferring the booze into an empty water bottle that would make it looks like he's drinking water not Vodka, or if he's drinking a beer, he will take a long swallow then quickly put the can (in paper bag) behind his back to keep it out of the view of others. Nobody knows how many undercover cops are around these days especially after that attack on New York. And cops make commission on the number of tickets they write.

 

After the first drink, Shakespeare feels warm and the cold becomes bearable. Then he takes another drink, again straight from the bottle. He feels even warmer, with a burning sensation in the throat, then a warm feeling in the stomach, and his head starts to lighten. The angels of happiness have entered and opened the doors of his mind. It's time to enjoy the wonderful liberating effects of alcohol. Whenever the spirit hits, it sends Shakespeare's imagination flying high, thoughts take on dimensions not normally possible, including funny and meaningful thoughts that in sobriety can never materialize in the mind.

 

And thoughts about the Adam and Eve, his modern time Romeo and Juliet, come back to Shakespeare. He has said that he wants a happy conclusion to the story, but how is he going to do that successfully--like a smooth operator? It is not easy at all, even impossible, perhaps. He cannot just make the lovers leave their families and run off together into the sunset. That would be cruel and offensive to society’s standard of morality. People don’t impulsively leave children and spouses in the dirt just to answer the calls of the heart, even though for some it has happened, but then they have to live in a world of regret when the love wanes and reality hits. Circumstances control most people and would not let them free, no matter how much they want to, no matter how much they desire, no matter how much lovers' hearts cry out for union. No, they have to fulfill duties to their families, before all else, as they are required to. It is the case with Eve: she has two old parents, a husband, two children, and a mortgage. But how sad it is to ignore the calls of the heart that both characters are hearing now that they are writing to each other everyday. The hearts cry out for the lovers to be reunited, to hold hands again, and to tremble in nervousness in each other's presence again. Could they just fuck it all and run away together and forget about everything else? Is it possible? Shakespeare takes another drink. He can not bear any longer the impasse of the situation.

 

Suddenly out of the corner of his eyes he sees a dark figure approaching him. The figure comes near and he recognizes a woman perhaps in her early forties. She dresses in a long black coat but is wearing no hat despite the bitter cold, and steam is coming out of her nose. Under the weak yellow light of the lamp, he sees a beautiful but sorrowful face. Her eyes are cast downward, and she projects an air of deep sadness. He wonders what is going on in her heart and mind. She looks like the Eve of his story, a woman torn between longing for the fulfillment of the love of her life and the demand of responsibilities toward her family. He can see conflict in her face. The woman walks slowly pass him, and seems unaware that there is another person in the park--Shakespeare. She appears to be lost in her inner world, and is barely conscious of her surrounding. Shakespeare follows her with his eyes as she strolls pass him, and he imagines that the woman is probably going through the same dilemma as that of Eve, the desire to reunite with her lover but forbidden to do so. And suddenly a thought hits him: there is no way Eve can forsake her family to answer the call of her heart, to run to Adam. She simply does not have the courage. She has been trapped in a marriage for 20 years and the chains around her ankles are made of steel--she can’t shake them off. She will continue to stay in the chains and she will die, taking the love unfulfilled with her into the grave. Will she? At the thought, Shakespeare feels as if a thousand knives are stabbing his heart. No, I don't want to conclude the story that way, it's so cruel and inhumane. There must be another way. I must think harder and find a happy ending for the two characters. I want them to be happy. No way I will let them die without a satisfactory outcome. I have cheated the world for the last five hundred years, as far as the outcome of Romeo and