What happened? I remembered when the bottle was my savior and damnation. Now I’m so incredibly indifferent. My martini has become the ex-boyfriend at my party. I sure as hell know he’s there, and yes – we’re still friends thank you very much, but I’m not going to maneuver through a room full of people to start up a conversation.

I nurse from the drink, I twirl my straw, and I give the glass startled looks. ‘Did I really only drink that much?’. I used to have quite the crowded table, with little empty cups crowding like Elementary School Field Day Prizes. Now it’s just me and this one glass, and dammit, it doesn’t appear to be drinking itself. I don’t think it’s age that causes me to notice that even a single drink makes my contacts get sticky. My stomach, even though it dearly loves you, Ms. Bloody Mary, doesn’t chill with you as well as before. I can already anticipate the sleepy come down, the irritating knowledge that I’ll wake up the next morning and something will be off.

Did I really delude myself that much? How could a driver’s license lead me on to conveniently forget that being intoxicated provides a good thirty minutes of fun followed by two days of apologizing or a diet of stale bread? I mean, I won’t refuse that vodka and tonic. I’ll be the first to admit that I like a drink with my dinner. But I think it’s time that I admit that it isn’t all cracked up as I’d thought it’d be. I find drinking now more of a chore than a pleasure. I hesitate at the thought of the next day being ruined because my stomach’s ‘just not right’ and my head is ‘still a little fuzzy’. Now, I’m not even talking about getting drunk here folks. Just the two drinks seems to do that to me these days. It’s not tolerance, because I certainly don’t get drunk – I get sick.

So the bar tonight was stranger than usual thanks to these revelations. There was a walker in the middle of the floor. Hey, if you’re still coming to bars with a walker, I’ll buy you a drink. You deserve it because I give a thumbs up to dedications of all sorts. There was the pool table hustler who made forty dollars in one pop and seemed genuinely surprised his opponent left after bitter defeat. There was also the ass-ette that put her cigarette out in the sink. None of these things really mean anything in particular.

So to wrap this up, I’m still going to have my damn Bloody Mary. I just don’t think she’ll have as many sisters as usual.