Easily as old as civilization itself is the art required to join together various juices and microorganisms so as to produce alcohol. I suspect this is no coincidence. In its many and ingenious forms, liquor has been with us since the first person sat, hunched over the nearest table, and despaired some new, tragic consequence of social interaction. I suppose the intended spirit of this indulgence has been diluted and lost over the years, as advertisers strain to show us how spontaneous, fun, and lively we can be when we drink but, for me, the best cocktail in existence comes in the form of misery and loneliness mixed well with a great deal of booze.

It seems more honest to admit that even the most fascinating and gregarious of us have nights when we sit, alone, in a harshly lit or dark or candlelit room with a cold beer or a glass of wine or Bailey’s over ice, and only music or cats or silverfish to keep us company. Like chocolate, we use alcohol to celebrate the good times and, equally, to take the sting away from the not so good times. That said, on occasion I find myself in the kind of unavoidable personal agony which requires painkilling beyond the abilities of any candy store. On nights like these, I take comfort in the warm, throbbing euphoria provided by only the most extensive chemical alterations of the activity of my brain.

I feel it would be premature at this point to delve too deeply into the details of who I am, where I am, and why I’m telling this story at all. Not that there’s any mystery surrounding me, of course. I just feel that, at this point, I would only be whining. Obviously something is the matter and, just as obviously, I have indeed been drinking. I’ve been jotting down my thoughts in an old, careworn journal I take with me when I travel, trying to sort out my troubles and attain some perspective, though a lot of this "perspective" seems only to be doodles in (and out of) the margins.

Mind you, even the sketches in blue ink are very telling in their own way. I can turn a page back to last week, and see empty, aimless scribbles, shaped like hopeless, amorphous clouds and miserable waterfalls pouring into lagoons of question marks. As you come forward in the old, dented book, my mindless doodling has taken new shapes, and become more jagged and violent, looking all the world like a sign reading "don’t touch me." This movement is in keeping with my moods, I suppose. I was definitely wobblier and more uncertain of myself a week ago, when I was stuck at home by myself. No one could answer the my questions, and so questions were all I had. I felt disconnected and confused, and apathetic in that way that being in too much pain can cause. Nothing matters particularly, because to make it matter invites even more melodrama and suffering. I tried writing then, too -- putting thoughts down and posing questions to myself simply for a lack of a better audience. I didn'’t get vey far. I didn’t even get very drunk. As I recall, I just slept a great deal. Eventually, an old, old friend called me and asked me the inevitable question of, "how have you been?" and out spilled the shortest, but most important details.

I don’t have a car, but the invite was put to me to join her in the big city for as long as I liked, where we could hang out just like in the good old days, and I could escape from the frustrations and the even more upsetting futility of being alone. Luckily for me, perhaps the only fortunate consequence of suffering by myself and not being prone to a great deal of ‘going out and having fun’ was that I had more money than usual. As such, I could afford a bus ticket and, therefore, freedom. I spent a couple of days thinking about her offer all the same. Normally I don’t enjoy being alone, but of late I have been granted more solitude than I have ever had use for, spent some time trying to consider it "liberating." I reacquainted myself with television, and I tried writing a few letters which are still sitting on my desk. I didn’t eat very much, but there was at least one day when I spent hours in the kitchen, chopping vegetables for an enormous concoction, trying to make myself feel useful and responsible in some way for my continued survival and good health.

I had gotten into a pretty solid rut of hanging out in the big empty house, and even if I did have to go to work in a sour, defeated, wretched state, and return some hours later from work in a mindset more like catatonia, I at the very least enjoyed the luxury of being able to close the door behind me, throw all of my clothes onto the floor, light some candles and befuddle my neighbours with periodic hints of a nude silhouette passing by a window. All the same, every night I went to bed alone, and twisted the covers as I turned and contorted for an hour or two, or more, keenly aware through fits of tears that I was all by myself. Waking up far too early each day, I sat on the edge of the bed, half asleep, for twenty minutes as I sought the energy to get up and face yet another productive day outside in a very large and stupid world. It had been three days since Melanie’s offer to come up and visit her, and following another fit of crying I came to terms with how isolated and insane I was becoming. I decided to take a couple of sick days and turn them into a particularly long weekend away.

There was something lethargic within me that made it very difficult to go out and buy tickets, so I motivated myself by packing only the bags I could carry with me onto a bus (not wanting to burden myself with baggage beyond that emotional sort which was already weighing me down) and hefting them to the bus terminal in a spontaneous shift towards personal emancipation. I figured I could call Melanie in transit, either before I boarded or at the first opportunity at a halfway point. In either case, she was a creature of pronounced whims, and would – I knew – applaud the uncharacteristic absence of preparation and planning in my journey. I’d made the trip many times before, and the only real thought I had to put into travelling involved being sure to bring fresh batteries and some new, interesting mixed tapes with me. I amused myself (though that word is probably best avoided, for I found it more depressing than anything) by observing all my fellow travelers around me, chatting with family or friends, happily reunited or tearfully bidding one another farewell.

Bus terminals are interesting places, charged with the most horribly intense of human emotions, because by their very nature they are places where people who love or hate each other say "hello" and, ultimately, "goodbye." I suppose airports and train stations are also packed tightly with similar emotions, but frugality keeps me away from those kinds of places. All around me, couples hugged desperately in greeting or in parting. People took photographs of one another, smiling or looking wistful, with a glimpse of my face or my back or my arm as I paced in the background regardless. I felt very terribly alone there, knowing that unlike so many of the people around me, I wasn’t leaving anything familiar and beloved, nor was I on a particular voyage to something or someone to look especially forward to. I was escaping myself, visiting an old friend, without much chance of finding anything new or leaving anything unwanted behind. Oh well.

That’s enough self pity for one page, though. The bus trip was fun and enjoyable after a fashion, meaning that no one really tried to talk to me. After so much time on my own, bright light and human company were strange, baffling things I wasn'’t yet ready to fully embrace. I doodled some of those squiggly, uncertain lines in my journal to keep some especially foul poetry company. I sipped a tasty beverage I’d thought to bring with me, and ate sandwiches, and read until I either suffered from motion sickness, or suffered an unpleasant reminder of worries and regrets I had been attempting to stifle. I never managed to fall asleep. Not surprisingly, the entire voyage can be summarized with very little effort. Wilderness and other such elements of highway scenery blurred past me outside the window, interrupted by the occasional isolated bungalow or yet another small town. Six uneventful hours from Point A to Point B. Never in my life would I want to imply that bus travel should be interesting in any special way, however. Bus trips always remind me of the tired joke of the man who dies peacefully in his sleep, unlike his screaming and terrified passengers.

If the worst thing to happen to me involves a stiff, sore bum and a tremendous distaste for whatever movie has been aired for our viewing enjoyment, I will never complain. I’ve never liked placing responsibility for my life, even in principle, into the charge of another person or agency, for the same reason that I don’t trust them with my bags or my coat. A great many legal disclaimers exist to prevent you from feeling undue rage or receiving undue compensation should your luggage be lost or destroyed. I like my life no less than I value my stuff, and in the same way, no one else seems quite as vitally concerned with the continued well-being of my life, nor my sanity, as I do. So when I travel, I hope for a boring trip, completely and thoroughly dull in every conceivable way. Boring people, boring stops, boring scenery, boring movies, and particularly valued are the boring absences of fiery wrecks. I will never have to dine on the frozen corpses of my fellow passengers for survival, and every bit as happily, no one else will ever be forced to eat me.