“Don’t you know they shoot alcoholics down there?”

I was up one late night eating powder donuts and drinking tequila watching the movie “Mama Dearest” My first memory is that of wire hangers. My mama beat me with one because I took off my diaper and got shit everywhere. I was destined to be a Diva. In the movie Joan Crawford husband tells her, “When you were young and getting liquor up it was sexy. Now that you are old, you are just a drunk.” His words cut me like a knife. I just knew he was talking about me. It was mama beating me with the wire hanger all over again because I’d gotten shit all over my life. Babies and puppies are only cute when they are clean and not pissy or shitting over everything. Drunks are only cute when they are slutty easy college girls.

One of my good friends is obsessed with the A&E show “Intervention” It’s like how criminals are obsessed with the show Cops. It’s because some people are train wrecks that just need to be watched. I think he watches either to get tips of becoming a better addict or not to get caught. I just think Interventions are just rude.

Am I an alcoholic? I guess every addict asks that question. It’s like how my sister talks about girls who are more overweight than her like “she know she shouldn’t be wearing that.” In fact my sister once tried to pull off a cabwoman’s suit at size 22. She asked me if she looked fat. I replied do I drink too much. She said I didn’t. I told her she wasn’t fat. We were both happy for the time being. It’s like my life is fucked up but at least the children in Africa are still starving. Somebody is always worse. But when do you know that you’re at the end of pudding cup.

I think I watch that show Intervention because it’s like I’m not that damn gone. It’s like watching the show Cops and thinking you’re smarter than those idiots. I know not to run or hide in a dog house in the back yard when the cops are chasing me. I know I can’t outrun a police chase in a 1988 Ford Escort. Then again, I’ve never been in that situation. I’m sure it would cross my mind. \

And addicts are vain people. It’s like a sex tape. Nobody looks as good naked as those people in porn. It’s all in the lighting. It’s all faking. It’s all in the editing. It’s like why did David Hasselfhoff allow himself to be taped eating a hamburger. Did he think he was doing a Wendy’s commercial? I guess that’s why I’m an angry drunk. If I see a camera I’m breaking it like it’s the paparazzi and I’m Kanye West. I don’t want no damn evidence getting out. And I’m sure nobody wants to see my sex tapes. I’m terrible in bed.

On that show intervention, addicts, they love documenting their self destruction. It’s like a competition but nobody dies. I stopped going to AA meetings because I felt like a lightweight considering the hardcore drunks testimonies. There was one AA meeting where a man was pissing on himself in a corner. I guess the ghetto AA meeting are a little more hardcore. The gay AA meetings are more coherent have better bathrooms. It’s like the same drunks you see in a club but there’s no disco music. I never had the DT. I wasn’t hospitalized for “wet brain.” I had no desire to drink Listerine just because it had some alcohol. Some even drank shoe polish or rubbing alcohol. There was this one older man about eight five years old in a wheel chair and oxygen tank. He said he drank seventy years of his life. He said he’d been hospitalized so many times he stopped counting. I felt some comfort because I figured I had at least a good sixty years of drinking before the shit hits the fan.

Black people don’t go to rehab; they go to jail and then find Jesus. DMX is not in rehab. Tupac didn’t go to Rehab. Rick James went to jail.