If that subject line doesn’t grab the attention of a man’s hindbrain (particularly an american man’s hindbrain), I don’t know what will. 😉
I’m reposting comments I made in response to an entry in
Ya know, at one point, not so very long ago, I had a very similar record. I think I was 21 or maybe 22 before I ever set foot in a bar. I liked it, at first, though I didn’t drink at all. It was more a feeling of community, and the realization of not being alone in the homo world. Different, to be sure, but I’d still never touched anything more mind-altering than caffeine, and I avoided that too.
Then at 24-pushing-25, I was in a strange town, with strange, beautiful men, and they were all drinking. And the one I most desperately wanted knew I didn’t drink. Most of them did, actually. But not the one who ordered a round of buttery nipples. I was pointlessly obsessed with a man who disdained me for thinking too much, whom I’d fixated on over a friendly goodbye kiss on the cheek months before. I’d heard alcohol was good for temporary oblivion, escapes from unpleasant realities, and it’s not like anyone but me was going to judge me. So, I took the shot.
And three more drinks rapidly after that. It was a piano bar. My entire group was singing along with the musician, them well, and me badly. (they were all chorusters). I found that the alcohol released my tension, and let me let go of my stupid obsession, or at least reduce it for awhile, and my fear of looking like an ass in front of a bunch of strangers.
When I got back home, I told friends of my exploits, to the surprise and amusement of many. A few of them then made a project of exposing me to what I’d been missing, and I set out to satisfy my curiosity. Overall, my review of alcohol is this. It’s expensive, it mostly tastes bad, and, by and large, it’s not good for you, you may be able to fudge one of those factors at the expense of intensifying the others. However, it does help the terminally uptight relax. And sometimes the psychosocial benefits may be worth it.
After a few months of exploration, my consumption died down. As part of my current foray into grad school culture, I have a drink or two a month with my classmates. I still wave off alcohol more often than I accept it.
Pot I tried once, under more private circumstances, but otherwise similar to my initial alcohol experimentation. I have a much smaller sample to generalize from, but nothing truly positive to share about the experience [other than the company kept].
I think you’re probably missing something, but probably nothing important. Then again, I’m still pretty straight edge, so you’ll have that.
How can you know if you’d “love to be drunk”, if you don’t know what being drunk is like from the inside? Sure, you’ve seen it from the outside*. But it’s impossible to know without experiencing it first. So many things are like that. My feelings of “I’d love to be drunk,” rare and fleeting that they’ve been, are almost always a desire for belonging and connectedness in an environment where I’m surrounded by people who are drinking. There used to be some curiosity in there too. Not so much anymore.
*=This reminds me of something I said to a guy at a bar once, after fending off an unwanted advance from an unattractive individual who was pretty sloshed, but not rude, considering his impairment:
Me: “That’s why I don’t drink.”
Him:”Because you don’t want to be him, or you don’t want to go home with him?”
Me: “Yes.”
When I enjoy sex, it’s most often in an accomplishment sort of way, interestingly. I get into the idea of doing (giving? 😉 a good job.
But yeah, I like the idea that not all good things in life need to be earned. Stupid moral capitalism 😉
As an additional note, I did karate late in high school, and swim team starting in the fifth grade. I even did a little gymnastics as a tot. But I never really got into the gym until I moved to california, and had a guy 9 years my senior who outhotted me by an order or two of magnitude in no small part due to a religious devotion to the gym.
My initial motivation for karate was fear of getting beat up if anyone found out I was gay. But it rapidly transformed into a love of the sport/discipline/exercise, a love of the practice itself, however you want to call it. Unfortunately, after moving away to college, I was never able to recapture the experience. Even going back to the same dojo. Very sad.
My initial motivation for the gym was envy (and some confused lust). The motivational transformation has been neither as rapid nor as complete, but it’s more something I do for the sake of how it makes me feel in the short term than as part of a goal-oriented behavioral bargain. The joy in doing, rather than the longing for what I could become.
Gymnastics, on the other hand, brings me to abuse a word I hate to see so abused: “addictive”. It’s not really (I’m not going to get the shakes when I stop), but it is an amazing rush. And I have no desire to put it down and step away. Joy in motion, and so beautiful.