A Memoir by Alison Watson
During my college years at NYU, I always thought my friends had a drinking problem, not me. They were the ones who puked on frat house floors. They were the ones who needed their hair held back while they leaned over the toilet. They were the ones I had to drag home from dive bars and put into bed.
I could “handle” my liquor.
One night during my junior year, my friends from swim team and I were at a party on campus. Jennifer and Melanie were freshmen, and looked up to me. They followed my lead as I chugged down over a dozen red plastic cups of lukewarm keg beer.
“Want to party at our place?” a good-looking guy yelled at me over the Talking Heads blaring on the sound system. He looked older than the rest of the boys at the party. But I didn’t question what he was doing at an NYU frat house.
“Sure!” I yelled back, and I found Jennifer and Melanie in the crowd and informed them we were going to Brooklyn with some cute guys.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Jennifer said cautiously.
“C’mon!” I said. “Live a little!”
And so, my friends reluctantly followed me outside and climbed into a jeep with three adult men. Melanie and I had to sit on guys’ laps so we could all squeeze in. The wind whipped through the car; the window controls were broken and they couldn’t be shut.
I remember feeling, as the jeep sped through the deserted East Village and over the Williamsburg Bridge, that I was falling through space, my tether to the Mother Ship unleashed. I was falling, falling. There was no place to land.
When we arrived at a row house in Brooklyn, we all trudged up three flights of stairs and found ourselves in a filthy apartment with pizza boxes and beer cans all over the floor.
“You go with him, you go with him,” one of the men told us, divvying my friends and me up between them and pointing toward three separate bedrooms.
Jennifer and Melanie looked at me, fear clearly showing on their faces.
But I followed my designated partner into his room, and my girlfriends slowly disappeared into the other rooms.
In bed, the guy I was paired with couldn’t get it up, and we wound up falling asleep.
When I woke up, with dry mouth and a raging headache, I stumbled into the living room, where Melanie sat with the three men. Jennifer was nowhere to be found.
In the light of day, the apartment seemed even more disgusting.
“I don’t have any money for the subway,” Melanie said. I didn’t either.
And so, one of the guys reached into a jar and pulled out pennies and nickels, and threw them onto the floor. They laughed as Melanie and I scurried around trying to gather up the change.
I took a really long shower when I got home.
The next week, Jennifer didn’t show up for swim team practice. After a while, Melanie informed me that she had dropped out of school.
She had been raped that night at the Brooklyn apartment. She had been a virgin.
I’m sober now. I see now that I was the one with the drinking problem.
In my 12-step recovery program, the 9th step involves making amends to persons we had harmed. I wish I could make amends to Jennifer, for getting her drunk, for convincing her to follow me to Brooklyn with those sleazy men. For abandoning her in that horrible apartment.
But I have no idea where she is, and I don’t remember her last name.
I wish it had been me who was assaulted that night. It would be easier to get over my own trauma than to live the rest of my life knowing that she was collateral damage of my raging alcoholism.
Jennifer, if you’re reading this, I’m so sorry.
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Alison Watson is a memoirist who writes about overcoming mental illness, addiction, and being an adoptee. She is currently shopping her full-length manuscript, “A Psychotic’s Journey Through Eastern Seaboard Psych Wards,” with publishers. Alison’s work has been published in The Sun Magazine, Please See Me, and MoonPark Review. In addition to writing, Alison feeds her soul by working in an animal shelter. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband of 22 years and their shelter mutt, Cindy Loo Who. To read more of her writing, please visit her website, alisonmorriswatson.com.