One a man and the other one will always be a girl.
Both had jet black hair. That black that almost looks blue. One had curls that she would spend hours in front of the mirror every Sunday, Wednesday and Friday burning down so her hair hung limp, flaccid and straight. The other also had curly hair, but you'd never know it for he buzzed his short and kept it hidden under a baseball cap.
Both drank hard and both had that telltale, pink tint around the edges of their eyes.
He didn't drink every day - maybe just on the weekends - but when he did he would start with a fresh bottle of Glenlivet and never left a drop.
She preferred wine, which she drank every day. Cheap red wines, high in colour, thick with tannin and, most importantly to her, bloated with alcohol. On the weekdays, she'd get home from work, climb onto the couch and knock out a bottle or two. At the end of the night, if there were half drunk bottles still on the coffee table, she'd move them to the kitchen and down onto the shelf under the toaster. Come the weekend, she would polish off whatever was left standing in that half-drunk collection.
At first, it was fascinating to watch someone self-medicate so hard and so intentionally. I had never lived with an alcoholic before. She knew she had a routine and she knew it looked just like her mother's. And she knew just where that routine would leave her. And who it would leave her with. And still she drank on. Every night. Running directly into the darkness.
Once, back when she got old enough to leave for college, she ran from the darkness. She left her hometown and, for a while, started to clean the memories of an adolescence competing with her mother's drinking. But by the time I met her, halfway through her thirties, she had given up on trying to outrun her destiny and was now retracing her mother's steps.
The thing is, to the way I saw it, her mother used wine as an attempt to climb back into the Life Before the man who broke shit up into the Life After. She had an anchor point in her mind and the wine took her there.
And, yes, whereas did Ariel drink for the same reasons, unlike her mother, there was never actually a time in the Way Back when she was ever truly happy. She was just as miserable Then as she was Now. And still she drank on. Searching for - but never finding - that phantom cozy memory to rest in.
Every night, halfway through her first glass, a little voice in her head lied and sang to her about happier and prettier memories if she just pushed on. And every night - as she did push on into the bottle - that voice grew into the roar of a full chorus inside of her and it scared her. And still she drank on.
The male Ariel drank because his friends seemed to enjoy it when they did. He could've easily gone sober for years on end and not be bothered. But if others liked it, he reasoned, he should find a way to make it work for him as well.
He had a full and busy life and I never did quite understand why he went searching to burden himself with the amusements of others. Come to think of it now, there was a lot about him that baffled me. I never understood why beating me was so important to him. Especially when I was so happy to let him win.
When we were kids, he and I would take our little wind-up, toy cars and race them down the steep, concrete driveway that ran down along the length of his house. My favourite car - not the fastest, but still my favourite - was a canary yellow one with a tomato-red racing strip running up the middle. That colour combination - red against yellow - stays with me. It appears to me in my dreams on the nights that I am most exhausted.
It didn't bother me that I was guaranteed to lose every time I raced that car. Like I said, I was more than happy to let him win.
One Sunday, about a week after my eleventh birthday, we were racing cars and he took that little favourite car of mine and smashed it up against the ashy, wooden fence at the end of his driveway. It was another one of those days where he won every race, so it wasn't like he did it out of a loser's frustration. I had no idea why he took such a violent turn. There was so much about him I couldn't understand.
The other day, as another bout of heavy summer rains trapped me inside my apartment in The Quarter, both Ariels came across my mind. They both left such an impact on me. Yet, if I had my time again, I'd certainly choose to have never met either. They were both so scared and that fear exhausted me.
What they were most sacred of was acceptance.
To clarify, they weren't scared of not being accepted - they were sacred of people actually accepting them for who and how they were.
Because, they both lived a life fueled by a conviction that if they could just keep pushing a little further they'd find a place; or a partner; or a body; or a job-title; or a charter school for the kids; or a stark, white BMW with beige, leather interior; or a golf swing; or a captivating, witty dinner party story about wandering through Naples at night; or a glass trophy awarded at the annual sales conference; or the right sized tits; or even just a perfectly captivating profile pic for their fucking Instagram; that would finally leave them with a single, solid moment of happiness. An anchor point in their memories - a flame that would burn eternal inside of them and blow away the rest of the raging darkness in there.
I wonder if either of them ever found that flame.
I certainly wasn't it. And they burnt me out. And, frankly, I'd like a fucking refund.
