“Just keep it reasonable. Two, three drinks.”
Now two or three drinks is a ridiculously low maximum, one I would surely surpass before the first inning. But I agreed to the limit anyway, even though I had no intention of holding myself to it. I figured that was one of those lies that came standard with a marriage. The wife tells the husband not to drink too much even though she knows he will, and the husband agrees even though he knows that she knows that he’s gonna do fifty shots of Jameson the second he’s out the door. It’s like a running joke. Good one, honey!
“And try to come home at a reasonable hour,” she said.
“I will.”
I had a habit of pushing curfews. If I said I was gonna be home at ten, that usually meant I came home at eleven. A lot of times, I would call from the bar at ten to say I was “gonna be home soon” while trying to squeeze in one more drink. It wasn’t because I wanted to stay away from home. I loved home. It was because I was out, and sometimes dads feel the urge to maximize the “freedom” because who the hell knows when you’re gonna get another night out. Could be next week. Could be 2035. One time, I got home at 11:00 P.M. and my wife was dead asleep and I cursed myself for not staying out later since she wouldn’t have noticed. I could have spent another twenty minutes at the bar, staring at the TV! Dammit!
So I went to the game to meet my old friend—along with a handful of others—and I drank. There was a rain delay, so we went to one of the stadium bars and I drank even more, staring out the windows and watching the entire span of the Anacostia River outside get pounded with fat raindrops. Each beer tasted better than the last. I had so much fun drinking during the rain delay that I was legitimately disappointed when play resumed and I had to take my seat again. Why are we ruining this fun conversation by watching a baseball game?
The game ended and we went to another bar and I drank more beer because the beer was still making me happy. Then I put in the obligatory phone call home.
“Where are you?” my wife asked.
“I’m coming home soon! Love you! Super love you!”
“Are you drunk? You’re drunk.”
“Drunk with LOVE.”
“Just come home soon.”
“I’ll be right there. Honest.”
I drank one more round before deciding that I had pushed the limits far enough. Fathers are like children in that they’re always scheming to see exactly what they can get away with. I think a lot of men get married so that they’ll have someone around to rebel against. Once you get out of school, there are no more parents or teachers to defy. Who’s left? The old ball and chain.
Prior to the game, I had parked my car at the Metro station and taken the train into town. My reasoning was that this allowed me to drink all I pleased since I had such a short drive home. A mile, perhaps less. I was taking public transit 80 percent of the way to the stadium. Who gave a shit about the other 20 percent? It wasn’t drinking and driving. It was drinking and parking. That’s the kind of mentality you develop when you start habitually drinking and driving. You excuse your behavior at every possible turn because it seems so reasonable. You get comfortable with bullshitting yourself.
One of my friends offered to give me a ride from the bar downtown and I took her up on it. I told her to drop me at the Metro station and I’d take my car back home.
“I can just take you all the way home and you can get your car later,” she said.
“Nah, nah,” I said. “I want my car.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I want my car.” I didn’t want to get up in the morning and explain to my wife that we had to drive back into town to fetch my car because I was too shitfaced to drive it home that night. Driving it home drunk was easier. Better.
Reluctantly, she took me back to my car and I hopped in, driving away drunk from the Metro garage like I’d done before. A few minutes later, the sirens flashed in my rearview.