Once upon a time I dreamed of this life--traveling around the world with a Buddhist master, making a positive meaningful impact on people’s lives. And for the most part, I do. Help others, that is. The problem has become my lack of ability to help myself. I have become the very person I humbly warm others from becoming.
By day I wear a suit and tie, spending countless hours helping an incarnate lama as we travel the world giving talks on compassion, understanding and meaningful living. By night I slink around in any bar I can find drinking until blackout. My life has somehow, unbeknownst to me become so painful that I must anesthetize myself from it.
Before we arrived in Colorado we were in Baltimore, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Before that, Vienna, Amsterdam Germany, Paris and Italy. Then South America. I can order drinks in ten different European cities in five languages. I know what time Happy Hour starts in at least fifteen of the nation’s major airports. I’m now so tired I hallucinate. While I’m awake. I visit a family friend, a doctor. He takes my pulse, my blood pressure, does a Chinese medicine work up of my phlegm, then pronounces me “Exhausted”. “Thanks, Bill--real news flash” I laugh, buttoning up my shirt.
A tall man with intense, caring eyes, Bill takes me by the elbow. Not forcefully, but it gets my attention. “I’m not kidding. You are clinically exhausted”. Doctors can add a stress to syllables in a way that commands respect. He could say “No Dana...you must take out the gar-bage” and it would take on a new, important significance.
“You can rest for a few days, or I check you in right now and hook you up to an I.V.”. I stop buttoning my shirt. Bill’s words weigh me down with their solemnity. I meet Bill’s penetrating gaze and nod. “I hear you. I do”. Bill purses his lips, blinks his forgiveness. “No stimulants, stay away from spicy food. In three or four days, you should start sleeping through the night again. Dana, you need to rest”. Bill leaves the office and I sit there, his admonition a slap on the face, still stinging.
I leave his office, shaken as much by Bill’s intensity as his diagnosis. I drive along in a daze, not sure what to do. I notice “El Chico’s”, a bar popular with the University set. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon as the cute sandy-haired waitress smiles and sets a cocktail napkin down in front of me on the laminated table. The tables are chest high and I feel like Lily Tomlin in her oversize chair. But already I feel better.
El Chico’s is famous for its margarita’s that come in a laughably industrial size glass big enough to raise trout in. There’s actually a neon sigh above the bar--an oversize glass with a line through it, forbidding anyone from having more than two of their large or three small margaritas. This always makes me laugh, but before i finish my first large, I am happy like a five year old on Christmas and realize that Bill the doctor is simply jealous of me, of my lifestyle.
“Getcha’ another?” the waitress smiles and I grab for my glass, a little too desperate for the last gulp. I fish the plastic straw from the cavernous glass bottom as she lifts it from the table. I can chew on the straw and suck the last of the margarita from its marrow to nurse my buzz until she returns. Somehow, I’ve now been at El Chico’s for four hours. The after work crowd is in full swing as is the first of the college crowd. Van Morrison wails “Brown Eyed Girl” and twice I almost tip over and fall off my stool.
I switched to beer long ago and am on my fifth Dos Equis, acting like I can handle this. The truth is, I am an instant drunk. My mother is diabetic and Navajo. Any kind of alcohol instantly converts to sugar in my system. I can get drunk on literally half a beer. That I’ve had the equivalent of twelve drinks means I’m dangerously inebriated. Being this drunk now means, I must have sex. And if I must have sex, I must drive my car to wherever the sex is. People tend to forget how easy alcohol makes problem solving.
Suddenly I remember I haven’t checked in with the secretary of the day. Essentially, I’m a traveling Joint Chiefs Of Staff. So whenever we arrive at our next city, I have to constantly ensure that the daily schedule is adhered to. The daily schedule is a Wooly Mammoth of meetings, interviews, conferences with local directors and public talks. The daily schedule is a massive, ambling Dinosaur that crushes me with every step. No matter how fast I run, I cannot escape the lumbering daily schedule.
I look at my watch, squinting to stop the hour hand from spinning. I left for my doctor’s appointment six hours ago. By now the staff is dealing with the fact I’m not there – I justify my absence as a much-needed break. What’s six hours away from the grind for a guy that travels over 250,000 miles a year, right?. Again, alcohol enables me to really cut through the bullshit and get to the heart of things.
Besides, I am invincible. I travel with a Buddhist lama, so even deeply intoxicated I tell myself I’m blessed and can do no wrong. I exhale deeply and for the first time all day cannot feel the Wooly Mammoth’s huge foot crushing my chest. I smile to myself and stretch my arms. I am not exhausted. I am fine. Bill is wrong. I am still stretching my arms, which must be incredibly long because they are going up and up and up. I feel free, airborne. And then my head hits the floor solidly with a hollow “thunk”.
People are pulling me up. A twentysomething kid with a Van Halen t-shirt high fives me and hands me his beer. I drink it as a bouncer leads me outside. He hails a cab. We drive for one block before I am curbside, emptying out my body of liquids and solids. Cabbies hate pukers. My ride is free. I wake up later, behind the wheel of a friend’s car.
I’m on the Interstate leading into Denver. Within an hour I’ll be downtown. The windows are open and the radio is playing Cool And The Gang. I am Cool And The Gang. I haven’t slept a full night since we left Amsterdam. That was eight cities, three weeks and many time zones ago. The gas pedal feels like a marshmallow under my foot – it gives way easily, all the way to the floor. I’m flying again, soaring past the cars next to me.
I close my eyes, cold air rushes through the windows. I remember the cold air off the coast of Portugal. An exotic, old-world mix of orange, red and yellow buildings spired and tiled. Cobble stone streets disappearing up alleys so narrow, cars have to flip back their side-view mirrors to navigate through.
When I open my eyes, I see the ruby red of taillights ahead, and wonder who put a parking lot on the Interstate. And then I realize the cars ahead aren’t parked, they’re stopped. I’m going 85 MPH, waking up too late in the left lane. And now I wonder if its true – am I really invincible? Because unless I click my heels together and manage to Oz myself out of this dream, chances are very good I’m going to miss our Thursday flight to London.
