Skimming — A Story of Alcohol

The stones fly from my hand through the black. Sometimes I see them land, bounce and break the water. On bright nights when the Moon is full-faced, or when the lights on the promenade have the strength to pierce the night, I can sometimes see the lines they trace through the twilight before trickling off and submitting to the small waves or the still sea. Sometimes.

By the way, kind-of-oddly-shaped, but decidedly rounded, rectangular or triangular stones are infinitely better for skimming than perfect discs. Perfect discs will let you down more often than not.

And it’s only when you choose the wrong one and mess up the throw that you get the big beautiful baritone plonk.

Sometimes I see and hear all these things.

Mostly I don’t. Mostly I lash a few stones off every so often into the night and then crash down on the pebble beach to take a big sip from the bottle of vodka in my coat jacket.

I knock it back and wipe my mouth. It used to be a shoulder and now it’s a bottle — better too much than not enough. It burns its way down my throat before scorching upwards toward the brain. It is burning my brain now and numbing inwards.

In a second it will begin to numb its way outwards and a warm fuzzy wave will swallow the whole world. And it is now that I am skimming stones on a numbed extension of my own self. It is a wonderous feeling.

The vodka in my pocket gets warmer as I sit but I am drunk or drunkish from the off. You get a taste for it at its purest and most venomous, a bit like espresso or black coffee in a perverse way. That’s horrible to hear I know, but it’s the truth. Vodka’s your lad for outside too. Whiskey packs too much of a punch for good solid predation. Whiskey at the bar, vodka on the beach. Anyway, I always have a bottle of water in my other coat pocket, just in case I need it.

I suppose you’re most likely thinking of me now as some wild lunatic falling all over the place with pebbles and bottles clattering everywhere firing off stones in the wrong direction back towards land. I will admit it can be a blur, especially the last stretch, but it’s a source of pride to me that I’m usually rather self-contained.

I don’t smoke for instance, which I think is some sort of achievement. It’s more of a numbening than an exploding. If there is violence, it is committed against my own person, and surely that’s the sort of violence one has a right to?

There are other people out and about too. They walk the promenade with dogs and without and jog and chat and visit the bars and restaurants over in the distance. How many all depend on the weather, season, and time. Summer’s the worst for my little bit of fun — their festivals ruin my ritual.

But the beach is big and not so many come far down onto the stones to stay for long. They walk by, skim a stone or two or don’t, and then are gone. Besides, I know where to set up shop and am discreet in my methods.

I skim some stones, drink my fill, mull things over, and get a little bit lost in what is and what could have been. The waves are crashing inwards now and collapsing in on me. This is the muddy last mile where the big blur sets in. I smell bad I know and seem to have the hiccups.

No work tomorrow I think to myself, what a fuckin blessing, as I crash back up the beach to the ringing chainmail choruses of pebbles, discommoded by my struggling feet, cascading. Home I stumble with bad breath through the blur — and with my two trusty bottles in tow — one full, one empty.

The door folds open at the weight of my hand and I am funneled across the Axminster carpet to a seat at the bar. A body kind of floats with zero friction with one or two to the good. Wood, wainscotting, wet lips smacking — that’s what an Irish pub is all about.

They know me, the barmen; this one’s Keith or Alan or something like that. He calls me Micheál. My name’s Michael but I like that he calls me Micheál. Makes me feel like some sort of special distilled concentrate of Irishness, boiled down to its quintessence, like John B. Keane.

He lines me up a whiskey and a Guinness. No messing around. He knows what I want. Golden dawn and great glorious firmament of glistening black. It’s best to drink at places, if you’re going to be drinking a lot in every sense of the word that is, where they know you a bit but not too much.

They know what you want, they get to know your habits, you both know what to expect and there are minimal surprises on both sides. You’ve got to uphold a certain level of charitable decency for the relationship to hold though. That’s why I finish myself off on the stones. I put store in setting standards and sticking to them.

You don’t need to follow someone else’s standards but you’ve got to stick to your own. More or less I always leave in a condition that would be deemed by all but the puritanical, respectable. I take pride in that.

Bang. Whiskey. Back-of-the-throat burn, down the hatch to hit the mat below. That first powerful violent impact as John B said somewhere. I savor the moment and smack my lips, imbibing the sensation as the olfactory and gustatory fling themselves into each other’s arms.

Cool considered intake of Guinness to wipe the slate clean. Back on the counter; two glasses returned and at rest. The hour is eight and the Moon is high.

This is the best time. I’m in full or fullish control. I always am mind. Never hurt a soul and treat others well, but the stumbly mumbly blurry finale is when all falls in on itself.

There is a certain diaphanousness to this stage; my inner and outer worlds discretely but delicately divided and I an acrobat backflipping between them. All are at the mercy of a mere flick of my mind — whether to watch the room around me or wander off? I indulge myself.

I come home to my wife and two children. Herself back from work or a housewife and there’s no shame in that. There’s a warm dinner on the table, something like roast chicken with gravy and potatoes and some veg. I sit down weary from a tough day having hung my jacket and given my tie to my wife.

My work is important and at times it feels like the weight of the world is on my shoulders, but I bear it well. I’m a responsible man. And I’ll help my kids, a boy and a girl, with their homework because I’m the sort of father who goes the extra mile.

She indulges me, my wife, in taking care of those small things that may not be small because I take care of some big things that may not be big. I am like clockwork — good husband, good father, good man.

I take a large inhalation and order more.

We’ve raised them well. They’ll make us proud. I’m a respected man who’s treated with real esteem and got to a good station in life. My wife succeeded in her line of work. We’re prosperous but in the true sense of the word: not just things but things and warmth and love.

We have our moments but work through them. We are resilient and support one another. There were one or two times that almost broke us but that’s just like everyone else and only makes us real. I like to think I’m open-minded but my children disagree and call me an aul grouch. I can be pernickety with the way I do things I admit but they love me for it.

They know I am always there for them, my wife and kids. I give them a love unbreakable and unconditional. I am a noble soul. There’ll always be a place in the world for men like me.

I enjoy this process of moving between my worlds as I suck back these two liquids. I’m pretty still from the outside but I can be miles away with my kids and wife and job. Then suddenly a noise or movement brings me back and I get a sudden rush of self and take another inhalation. Sure let me have my fun, where’s the harm?

My favourite is to look forward to myself as a 70-year-old man at a bar much like this. He’s having a drink not because he really wants to but because he does it so rarely he’s been told, ‘will you ever just take some time for yourself for once for God’s sake.’ And of course, he’ll only have the two or three.

I look forward to him looking back over his life pondering it all. How he worked hard and was a good husband to a good wife. How well they raised their kids. His professional and academic achievements. The life they shaped together. The depth of the love they all had and have for one another.

He looks back at himself and sees the sacrifices he made, the burdens he bore with quiet resolution, the good deeds done, the promises made and made good on, the work put in to make everything work out. He regards it all with quiet modest sober satisfaction.

I am looking forward to him looking back at me looking forward to him looking back in one endless cyclical motion shared by two sides of the same human being.

But he looks at me and the whole thing shatters. I am a 45-year-old man with a mediocre job who lives for alcohol. I had a wife once. We talked about children but she left instead — she couldn’t handle me the way I can’t handle life. My deeds are undone, my promises broken, and my existence is evaporating before my eyes.

If he, I, my future self, is still alive at the age of seventy, he will look back at us both with bile and bitter anger and hatred. He will look back and see only the horror that produced horror. He will look forward and see only approaching death, oblivion, and the extinction of his wretched being.

For my old-man self, there will be nothing left, not even fantasy. He will know that the circle we share dies with him. Behind him — a life lived badly — ahead — death. He will be closed in on all sides. Nothingness surrounded by nothing — nothing to cling to, nothing to change, nothing waiting for him round the corner.

The only salvation a person can hope for is to have something worthwhile to look back at when they’re old. At least I can pretend. But for how long?

The fantasy world I conjure up with the power of drink is destabilising; harder to maintain, and harder to believe in, with each day that goes past. What’s left for me when that’s gone? The blur at the bottom of the bottle.

I finish my drinks and pay up. Now I am walking towards the beach. I need to work tomorrow. They said something about a smell a few times.

This is my life — bar, beach, work, while I have it, home, while I have it. I am caught in a whirlpool and cannot escape. I spin around the same spot yet am forever sinking deeper — my memories and hopes and dreams skim off into the darkness.

It is cold when I leave. I take my bottles and stumble up the stones to the churning of the sea.