A Great Day for Freedom

“Water is the strong stuff

It carries whales and ships

But water is the wrong stuff

Don’t let it get past your lips

It rots your books and wets your suits

Puts aches in all your bones

Dilute the stuff with whiskey

Aye, or leave it well alone”

-Robin Williamson

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Some things you should know about me.

First, I am not a maiden in distress. You might have heard otherwise, but in that case, you would have heard wrong.

It’s not true. Never was.

Honest injun.

And hey, I can appreciate your whole chivalry thing. But that dragon you think you’re saving me from? My type exactly. I went after him. Just about had the whole thing wrapped up with a nice big latex bow – a vibrating bow at that, ribbed for my pleasure, the whole bit – when you came along with your white knight routine and ruined everything.

Lookee here: I can open doors all by my lonesome. See? I can achieve orgasm in a single bound, even when there’s not a man to be seen for fifty miles. I have even broken the bring-home-the-bacon-fry-it-up-in-a-pan barrier once or twice, although admittedly, that was mostly by pure accident.

You also may have heard that I’m sober. You may have heard that I am stone cold dry.

This is true. Has been for more than a year.

Honest injun. Cross my heart.

During my three hundred ninety days of sobriety, I have, um… Okay let’s see here – I have subjected myself to weekly court-ordered urinalysis … sat through excruciating blind dates with my senses fully intact … stared at the ceiling through hundreds of nights of insomnia … Hell, I even survived the election returns of November 2 – ALL without the aid of swig, smoke, snort, or shroom.  

I have sat through hundreds – literally hundreds! – of hours of goddamn AA meetings, listening while middle-aged, intermittently dry drunks with the I.Q. of bacon bits have attempted to convince me that they would have risen to the top ranks of business, art, politics, or Casanova-dom if it hadn’t been for the bottle or the pipe or all those cans of sweet, sweet paint with their sweet, sweet fumes.

Three hundred ninety days.

Go ahead: Do the applause thing. Get it over with.

I don’t do these things for the applause, of course. You may have heard that about me, but it’s not true. Honest injun.

No, I don’t do it for the applause... I do it to keep my driver’s license, guns, bar card, freedom, et cetera et cetera…

Yeah. You’re probably not going to like where this is headed...

I don’t care.

After three hundred ninety days of court-ordered sobriety, I can say with a modicum of confidence that there’s nothing explicitly wrong with sobriety. It’s not evil.

In fact, in the same way that I don’t think we ought to deport or euthanize folks for wanting to get married, believing in God, or voluntarily traveling to Indiana, I think sobriety ought to be officially tolerated in our society, if not actively encouraged.

I’m just that open-minded. Live and let live, I say.

However:

+ WHEREAS, I have calmly and rationally considered the pros and cons of sobriety as a lifestyle for three hundred and ninety consecutive days;

+ WHEREAS, I have patiently waited for any of the mental, physical, or spiritual health benefits I was told would accrue with ongoing sobriety;

+ WHEREAS, none – not a single goddamn one! – of the aforementioned promised benefits materialized;

+ WHEREAS, I only started listening to the music of Nick Cave in February and have thus never heard The Firstborn is Dead whilst high; and

+ Whereas, the poor Fractal Elves of Hyperspace have had no head to call home for over a year;

It is hereby RESOLVED that MS. ADRI ANNA OOPSY – upon successfully completing her final court-ordered piss test on Thursday, the eleventh day of November in the year of our Lord two thousand ten – shall take a new VOW.

A Great VOW, even.

A VOW which shall rival even the Great Celibacy Vow of 2006, the Great Cleansing of 2007, the Great Silence Vow Competition of 2008, and the Great Emotional Rollercoaster of 2009.

Friends! Neighbors! Countrymen! Slightly creepy stalker dudes from the interwebs!

Here’s something you really ought to know about me: Tomorrow, I begin the Great 60-Day Inebriation Vow of 2010-11.

It shall be glorious.

Honest injun…