Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 12

1056 Constant Craving

Constant Craving

Albert shepherded us all the way to an absolutely immense reception in the Park Plaza Castle which was basically utter chaos of giddy graduates and their families milling around from one sparsely placed crudité station to another inside a giant stone box. It was a lot of people and a lot of noise and we didn't stay long.

Albert saw us into a taxi and told Court he'd see her later. After the door closed and the cab took off headed for Allston, Claire turned to Court and asked, "Is he coming to the party tonight?"

"He said he'll drop by."

"And you know each other from where?"

"He was taking some marketing classes and we hit it off right away."

"Oh, he's a student, too?"

"Getting a masters," Court said.

"And here I thought, at first, that he was just the most charming good Samaritan I'd ever met." Claire snorted like she was a bit disappointed to find out it had been a setup. "Well, but I suppose there won't be too many folks my age to talk to tonight."

"Not too many," Court agreed, by which she meant none other than Albert.

What followed after a light dinner of take-out was Claire took a nap, and Court and Chris and Colin went out together to buy the booze for the party. I thought about taking a nap myself. My nerves were all jangly from everything, still, and I went up to my room to lie down and maybe read for a bit.

I tried calling Ziggy again, but got his machine. I paged. Then I picked up the phone and pretended I was talking to him. "It's funny. On the one hand all I want right now is to be in the background, and I see the kind of pathological, toxic way that Claire feels the need to turn the spotlight onto herself, so the last thing I want is to be the center of attention. But I am feeling really... marginal right now? Does that make sense? It's totally Court's turn in the spotlight but I mean overall, I can't figure this out. If what I need is to get back on the stage, why am I fighting it so hard?"

The answer was the dialtone changing to the angry beeping that meant "hang up the phone, asshole."

The party got rolling before sundown. My impression was that most of Courtney's classmates, or at least all the ones anticipating music biz jobs, were there. Some probably wanted to meet me, some probably just wanted to say they were there, some just wanted to party somewhere other than a dorm room or with their parents. The ranks of partiers swelled as more and more of them escaped from their family dinners. The amount of booze on hand also continued to rise.

Then at some point those assembled started to drink faster than new cans and bottles were arriving. You thought the last party we had was boisterous and noisy and rowdy? This one was well on the way to topping it.

I don't remember consciously having a moment when I decided to drink over continuing to not-drink. There must have been one, but I don't remember it.

Which gives you a clue how much I drank.

Liquor fixed my jangling nerves, though, for a while. Until someone–I really can't remember who–started hinting that they were going to get out musical instruments and jam, and wouldn't it be fun to jam? And didn't I love to jam?

I did love to jam, but even the amount of alcohol I'd had wasn't enough to make me forget that wasn't something I was doing right now. It was something I was actively avoiding. I eventually avoided it all the way upstairs into my room again.

I lay on the bed feeling the room spinning in a not-totally unpleasant way. I felt kind of like I was on a Tilt-a-Whirl even though I was lying still. My tolerance was way down after not drinking for how ever many months it had been at that point. So I was very buzzed but probably not going to be ill. Tra la la.