#or larger women's bathrooms with more stalls in recognition of the fact that people who cannot use urinals take longer in the bathroom

[arisingonmorningsinnocent]

idk which school/hospital/library/corporate office needs to hear this but your bathroom facilities need to have doors that lock and toilets and sinks that consistently work and soap and towel dispensers that are consistently stocked and floors with undamaged tile that people can safely walk or roll a wheelchair over and there need to be grab rails and hooks for basic accessibility functions and there needs to be a gender-neutral bathroom that people can access without requesting a key or climbing seven flights of stairs with no elevator and there needs to be a safe place for women who cannot undress in the same room as a man to change and there need to be sanitary bins for disposing of menstrual supplies and there needs to not be broken glass just left on the floor for weeks at a time literally ever and yes, all of this costs money, but it is actually a good use of funds to make sure people can physically be in the building where your organization is located without compromising their health or safety or dignity. institutional recognition of the needs of the human body or i kill you!!

[ecotone99]

[HM] The Ramblings of an Inept Alcoholic

I was always destined to be an alcoholic. My father drank, his brothers drank, and their father too: and when he lost the ability to swallow, he drank through an IV. He was a good drinker.

I was never sure if my mother was an alcoholic. She was the sort who just slumped in her chair and watched the telly. But she did that when she was sobre, if she ever was sobre, for all I knew she was perpetually inebriated: a far better position to be than in a perpetual state of level. I hesitate to contemplate such a thing. I do not think my father would have married her if such was the case. On second thought he most probably would have. From the lack of cohesion they share, it is reasonable to suppose that the wedding happened quite by accident, and that the whole exchange had been a mishap, that some other woman had been designated as my fathers wife, and that through a haze of drunk delirium, they had much to the misfortune of all, ended up together. To this day I believe that my father won her, or the woman she had replaced, in some drinking game.

My father is quite a drinker. Whether there is pride in my voice when I say this is up to further analysis. Pride is a thing that I have been taught to value only when it is there; and given that I lived my first, however many years, without it, I have quite forgotten its consistency. I recognize it in others, quite often: it is rather belittling. He always was a good drinker. Born to it. From the age of three he had learnt to swim, finding himself in vats of wine. First flask aged four, preferred it to my grandmothers tits: he says that it was less concentrated, less fiery down the gullet.

He was the sort of drinker, whose stories needed no exageration. This isn’t to say that there was no exaggeration, that were the case people’ld think him a lightweight. You have to be tall you see: every man, woman, child knows that your tales must be at minimum twice magnified: it shows discipline. See when he told of winning a town wide drinking contest, there was no lie told. So what does he do? He fabricates the elephant; his main contestant. A large one too. As he’d tell it: big as any building, and bigger still, greater than any tree of the forest, king of all elephants, it’s trunk larger than his wife: which was a trying task for any elephant: and involved a certain lack of proportion, but I garnered that my father’s knowledge of elephants stopped at its ability to drink.

My father was always supportive of me. I resented him for it. He would nod at me: a greeting that said “How do you do? Are you well?” He’d crack open a beer for me once or twice, perhaps by accident, but deeds over words as they say. And I hated him for it. His father beat him. His grandfather beat his father. And I was left, shame of the family, alone and unbeaten.

I suppose with the retrospect a clear mind can provide, that the blame lay on me. That I chose not to suck from my mother’s tit, that I chose not to earn my father’s belt. Born without nerves, into a world no longer tumultuous, into an era with nothing to protest. No oppressor, no pressure, no point to prove. I was given everything, and for that I received nothing.

Eight, the age at which I first tried drink. Brown, and smelling of disease. Pinched my nose and poured a small dosage down the back of my throat. I noticed two things, that it tasted as it smelled, and that I was about to die. I had taken far too large a dose, and there were no ice cubes to dilute it; and my throat was on fire, and I was going to asphyxiate. When I threw it up, my throat was burnt twice. Caught, red faced, so to speak, my father laughed. It was cheap. Neither his smile nor his eyes held disappointment, and I hated him for it. I didn’t touch the stuff again, until the age of twelve.

Smoking started, age ten. Even at that age I knew sobriety to be shameful. And I was teased at every interval by my uncles and their friends. The same ever repeating lines, a result of some alcohol induced brain damage, perhaps early onset dementia. I later strived to replicate such things. I never liked to smoke: it was an expense, it smelled bad, and I knew it to cause ulcerations of the stomach. But it hid the lack of alcohol on my breath, and that in itself was enough.

There were no kids my age, and by that I mean that there were two. One, a product of incest: so I was told, and so I believed; and had certain difficulties, but it may well have been foetal alcohol syndrome: and so I took a disliking to him. The other was female and fat, and that’s all I ever knew of her: Pregnant Penny her nickname. Our teacher, a television and the front cover of a graffitied textbook. Behind the desk and in a state of mellow high, a convicted sex offender. A fact, and the only words he ever spoke to us. I suppose that we were a disappointment. And in later years, when pubescent Penny made her attempt at seduction, she was returned to her seat with the raise of two eyebrows.

At twelve I discovered the older kids. And in return for cigarettes, I was allowed to remain, and to laugh at their jokes, which were implied to be humoristic. Their class was large, with five, and so I went unnoticed. Their teacher, a divorcee, slumped lifeless and dead. And through them I learnt much of the world. And I first tried beer, a bitter brown, resemblant of piss. It went down easy, but went up just as easy. There was neither disappointment nor disdain in their eyes. To support them, and to support myself, I found a job.

Too few people read for a paper route. The pub, a family business. The coffee shop, distasteful of my manners. And the church did not pay. It was in the rundown library that I found employment. The pay was poor, but the work paltry. A one person job, stretched to two, as to not stretch one's legs. The owner much resembled her cat, slumped at the checkout, her eyes beady, whiskers not so much as a twitch. The cat of course, was stuffed. I stacked, and stood, such that nothing was stolen. On occasion, my advice was sought, and with no experience of such things, the recognition of my opinion that is, I would simply recommend the most nuanced titles. Whether they were in search of classical literature, a light read, or a comic, a short walk to the pornographic section would ensure returning customers. From this too, I learnt much of the world. As with tobacco, you grow accustomed to the aroma. And when a man with round glasses, or a woman with a wrapped shawl, crossed our entrance, we would be shutting for lunch; and when they returned an hour later, we would be shutting for the day. On a Wednesday afternoon, a couple of years later, I would go in to find her dead at her desk. A coronary apparently. Two hours it took to notice, and only then from a build up in flatulence.

It was that same year in which my father caught me skipping class. At the park sharing a pack, brown paper bottle in hand, hearing of the excavation of a second cousin from Wisconsin in Canada. And out of a bush, a prickled bush, with thorns like knives, he emerged: distinguished in dishelvery. It took several seconds for his eyes to adjust, several more for surroundings, several more still to observe my presence, and several more that I was his son. Faint and faded smile, and he was gone. The last time that I hung with the older kids.

Sixteen and faced with a decision, uncertain of expectations, I buckled under the pressure and remained in education. Fueled by an alcoholic bulimia, I sought professional aid. And through the writings of Hemingway and S. Thompson, found a certain peace. Only for it to be blown away with the setting sun. Life polarized to the neon saturates and the drab muddy monochrome. Like any opiate, addiction was to happen in several well defined stages. And in recovery there were recurring thoughts of ending it: myself and the pain that came with unrequiting aspirations. All of this and more, quickly forgot in encountering Becky. A sightly slap to the face, overshadowed by its all too physical manifestation. She was the kind of abuse I had yearned for. Young love I supposed. All things come to an end, this too I supposed, witnessing her take a long and shafted suppository, in the school parking lot. Aged eighteen school ended, an unceremonious affair. On Monday it was there, and Tuesday it wasn’t. No one seemed to notice, no one cared. An ashen debris, with arson suspected. And I left for the city.

I became a writer, for they knew how to drink, to smoke, to revel in the ravellings of their own ineptitude. And I did just that, though drinking limited. Insomnia came and went, its passing a side effect of the caffeine and sedatives. I became a writer and did not write: my take on modern literature. My time occupying itself with music and movies, and I learnt that taste was subjective, pubs and clubs and bathroom stalls, with women most often whiskeyed. And then there came a time, when my card was declined, and there became need for a real occupation. And so, two weeks into the life of a writer, I found myself an accountant, with expectations, responsibilities, a thin black tie and a station of free coffee. The money was good, and I became a whore to the constitutional stability. It was only as I mused over the monthly and annual gym membership rates, that my subliminal sufferings became sentient.

The doctors offered sanctuary. A place to list my concerns: that I was twenty and recycling, that I listened to pop music, that this winter I was to ski in Aspen, and that I ate fair-trade, free-range, organic. And he listened, eyes sagged, and asked what I wanted. I responded ‘to drink, to be depressed, to have direction’. And I was given a prescription of sugar pills, and told to get married. A liver transplant, simply would not have been enough.

It was while in pursuit of a wife, that my mother passed. Mistook the highway for the couch. No funeral, no coffin, no cremation, a hole in a field. And sat atop her, I wandered whether pissing or weeping was more appropriate. I supposed it unprecedented. And in any case, my bladder was barren, and there were no onions at hand.

My uncles at forty, were put in a home. Their minds bent and broken, unable to recall which twin they were, unable to finish their own sentences. All culminating in an altercation, in which one brother mistook the other for a mirror, eliciting two broken noses, and enough blood for several large scale transfusions.

We had neither the money nor the sentiment to pay. Instead, an exchange of prisoners. We took two men, ages unknown, providing them a bench in a park, a wholemeal loaf and the company of half fledged pigeons: the neighbouring ducks being an indecent bunch. A homeless shelter stood not half a mile away. A better life.

My uncles were left dry but miniatures: a sip a day. In a purgatory, self-made and self-deserved. Anticipating response, our contact numbers were left in sharpie, stamped upon their wrists. In hindsight, a tattoo might have lasted longer. This was the last we saw of our uncles.

My father's time would come decades later. He clung to life as a tick, yet to drink his fill. I would visit sporadically, mainly for demotivation; a reminder of wasted potential. At a certain point, he was moved, with great force, out of his residency. Henceforth his habitation of the local bar, became in perpetuity. Had a squatter maintained his rights, the pub would be under new management. But a squatter had no rights, my father neither, and he found himself a gravitational force for tourists, who would gawp in reticent inertia. During one such display of excessive drinking, he self-ignited, gaining for himself a sizeable applause. I thought it in poor taste, combustion being the leading cause of climate change and all.

His death hit national news, with a civil lawsuit being filed against the liquor distributor. International news came next, and through which I garnered an appearance on a talk show. The whole run-up being rather insidious, as I prepared to defile my father’s name. A publicist prepped me on dress and on what could be said: which was very little, and was most ninety percent made up by a would-be screenplay writer, assistant of hers. A publicist working for a group of lawyers, whose representation I never solicited, in a trial I never sought, to which end I struggled to discern; but the amenities were above par, and for that I went along supposing it a potential anecdote.

His name... I misremember, but was American and smooth, like coffee. His temperament too: coffee or cocaine, perhaps the two. And his laugh almost natural, and his hair shone as a Sub-Saharan sun, and was moulded in such a way that I was reminded of Marie Antoinette. My spiel was made less dry, by a tangential discussion on the legalisation of cannabis. My view being, it was detrimental to the youths of tomorrow: fewer laws to violate. They thought it British sarcasm, I thought them sheep to the hypocrisy of liberalisation.

I went from being an accountant to having an accountant, and an attempt at being sophisticated and civil. With wines red, not rough, conversations loaded in undertone, and orchestras and operas and an all female rendition of Othello. But sociability did not stick, it bore far too much resemblance to emphatic boredom. So I left it all behind.

And that was my life, at least that which was worth reading about, and which was not too explicit. That most moments were in relation to another, is either the defining characteristic of the human condition, or evidence of my position as a bystander to my own undefined life.

___________End___________

Authors comments/ what I think of it: 1) The beginning sucks, the first few paragraphs need work. 2) The structure is a little simplistic and could be improved. 3) There are a couple of sentences that feel out of place i.e. they are too poetic 4) There are some sentences that dont flow well together. I.e. it feels abrupt 5) The end is as abrupt as an end can be, and it seems to confuse people. 'that most moments were in relation to another': another means 'another person' instead of 'another moment'. Don't know how obvious that is. But adding person would ruin the flow of the sentence.

Wouldn't mind other opinions? This is the first thing I've written that I thought was (despite shortcomings). Is it actually good?

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