Chapter 2

Life was relatively good with Blair, at least better than anything I had experienced before. We didn't live together at first. We didn't want to rush into anything. Also, Blair was roommates with Darlene, and she didn't want to leave Darlene in the lurch. The apartment wasn't big enough, nor Darlene comfortable enough with me, for me to move into their place. Blair had a big yellow lab dog called Prudence, who was allowed under the terms of their lease. It was very hard to find another apartment that allowed pets. So, given all those factors, we decided to be together while living apart, keeping our eye on eventually sharing living space.

Neither of us changed our lives much. I kept going to Nations' right after work for drinking and drugging, although I no longer had sex with other women. I'd head over to the Blair's and Darlene's apartment about 10 p.m., drink some more, then head home at midnight or 1 a.m. Blair drank, a lot, but she didn't generally like bars, so she'd hang out with Darlene drinking until I came over. On the weekends, we'd head out into the countryside in Blair's van and swim, and drink on the water's edge, or in the woods while hiking. We had been out all day one Sunday and were coming along a back road, when a turn came up on us unexpectedly. We had driven the road a few times, and knew the turn was there, but Blair was practically falling down drunk. The radius at which she turned the van was wider than the curve of the road, and the van gently went up over the side of the hill edging the turn and down into the trees below. We both got slightly bumped on the head, and we sat there a moment slightly dazed. We struggled out of the sharply angled van and wandered around it a little. It was sitting all nestled nose in, pretty as you please, among the thick balsams and hemlocks growing there. When you're drunk, it's all good, so we shrugged, wandered off and hitched back to town.

When I got home from work the next day, a Monday, Blair told me the rest of the story about the van. She had hired a wrecker to go up there and pull the van out. When they got there, she found police and yellow tape and dogs and all sorts of confusion. Although you couldn't see the van from the road, you could see tire tracks and broken branches from its path through the bushes. A passing motorist had spotted the trail of destruction, and climbed down and found the van with its doors hanging open. Apparently we had bled a little, leaving just enough blood around to cause the passerby some concern, so he called the police. When the cops couldn't find anybody, they called in tracker dogs. It turns out that just beyond the very few trees holding the van back was a deep and twisted ravine containing a rock strewn river with dashing white water at the bottom. The police thought we had fallen in and been swept away. Blair arrived during the middle of their search. They charged her with leaving the scene of an accident, but despite breathalyzing her, that was all they could do. She was pretty much sober by then. It was by luck, because she would have blown over the top by a long ways had they tested her the day before, and she hadn't started drinking that day yet. The even weirder part was that despite a few very minor dents, the van was just fine, and once the battery was charged back up, it ran thereafter about as good as it did before its off trail adventure.

What we really needed was a wake up call. Unfortunately, the accident was so benign that it failed to alert us to the dangers of our constant intoxication (both of us) and chemical indulgence (me).

Very occasionally, Blair would go to Nations' with me. One night at the bar, I introduced her to a friend of mine, a very thin and dreamy fellow who sort of reminded me of an 18 year old male version of Kimmy. I had a soft spot for Kenny, which I didn't wonder about, and spent a lot of time talking to him and giving him advice, however messed up. Blair liked Kenny a lot, and got to inviting him over often to join us for dinner or just to hang out. Somewhere Kenny found a young 16 year old girl, Lissa, who was almost Kenny's carbon copy. They instantly enmeshed themselves together, and Lissa came up pregnant within 3 months. Kenny's parents swooped down on them, and took Kenny away, telling Lissa to get rid of the "bastard" by having an abortion. That directive was not going to work on so many levels. Gathering tremendous courage, shy and timid Kenny told his parents to go to Hell, and walked away from them. He went right to Lissa's house, where her parents encouraged the kids to get married. This sounded like a fairy tale come true to Kenny and Lissa. With her parents' encouragement and support, they decided to get married in one week's time, and asked us to help them get ready. Blair was tickled pink, and ran around throwing together a pot luck reception, lining up an officiant, and the like.

The wedding, held right on schedule one week later, was magical. Lissa' mother had put in many late night hours to make the bride's dress, which, like Lissa, was wispy and fragile. A faint breeze lifted the filmy outer layers away from Lissa's face. She was aglow with joy. Kenny and Lissa stood there, lost in each other's eyes, not even hearing the official's words at first, so lost in their own world were they. Blair elbowed me, and when I turned to her, she nodded toward the marrying couple, and sniffed loudly while tears ran down her cheeks. I hadn't taken it all seriously until that moment. Suddenly, I wanted what Kenny and Lissa had. I wanted instant and total happiness. I firmly squeezed Blair's hand, then put my arm around her and held her tight. Later, much later, after the food, after the dancing, after the newlyweds had been whisked away, and with my heart in my throat, I asked Blair to marry me. When she said yes, I tried to breathe again, and choked. Blair laughed as she clumped me on the back to help me stop coughing.

Three months later we had our own fairytale wedding. It was a blast. We had a live band made up of friends from Nations', we had some low cost catering, and we had lots and lots of alcohol available. With many from the Nations' cohort egging us on, we got stumbling drunk. I remember at one point, one of my cousins said brightly to Blair, "How does it feel to be Mrs. Newsome?"

Blair looked a bit shocked, and stuttered, " Ah, no, um, I'm keeping, um, Thomas, it's my own name ... Newsome is a good name, but, uh, I'll never go by it." She didn't notice my mother behind her, until Blair turned around and spotted her. Blair blushed deeply red, and my mother looked like she had licked a persimmon. Oh well. We didn't get married for anyone else but ourselves. I've always been partial to strong, capable women, and I was proud of Blair for holding her own in the face of stifling tradition. On the other hand, had she not imbibed so much alcohol, her response may have been more gentle and less grating on the conservative members of our families.

The wedding was held at a lake shore cottage owned by Blair's parents. Instead of going away for our honeymoon, we had the use of the cottage for a week. So, we were staying while everyone else left. We got drunker and drunker until we passed out. Consummation that night was impossible. We tried fucking the next day despite the painful strength of our hangovers, and managed, just barely. Talking about the previous days' events caused us to realize both of us had blacked out and didn't remember the evening at all. Oh well, that just means we had more fun, didn't it? We groaned with the seemingly unavoidable after effects of our inevitable drinking.

We did more drinking than fucking for our honeymoon, and kept right on when we came back to our real lives. I tried to carry Blair over the threshold of our newly rented apartment, and couldn't hold her up. She laughed, and patted my arm, but I could tell it bothered her. Never mind, we just had another drink or two and the embarrassment went away. I went back to work as a presser, and she found herself being the same secretary she had been all along. Somehow we had expected life to change, and while it was nice to actually live together, it wasn't that much different from both of us spending most of our time with each other before we got married. Life went on ... the same. It was exactly the same. We went to work, we drank, we passed out. Along the way, I did some kind of drug almost every day just to enhance the insanity.

One day, Blair and I had a little spat over something. I think I left the toilet seat up. She went into a drunken rage about how she did everything around there, and I never thought of her, and so on, and she got herself into a real froth. She was screaming so venomously at me, that our dog Prudence got very upset. She came up behind Blair and growled a low warning. Blair spun around and kicked Prudence so hard the dog flew backwards out the door, and all the way down the steps to the ground floor. "Ohmygod," shouted Blair, and instantly sober, she raced to help Prudence. Unbelievably, the dog was ok, although she limped for a day or two. Blair, however, was changed by this episode. For the first time, she had clear and present physical evidence showing how dangerous the drinking had become.