The Saddest Moment of My Life

Holy shit, right?
Not only have I just dropped the "Happiest Moment" but now I'm right back with the Saddest. Back to back. Right after the other. Go ahead. Call bullshit. I've gone in over my head with this autobiography crap and now it's just getting heavy-handed and ridiculous. Well. You're damn right. But this Moment was very Important, and not just for self-absorbed folks like me. It was damn Important for you too. And your family, and your friends, and your co-workers. This day was huge. And happy. And of course with the fine blending of dualities my life has become, it was the saddest day I've ever had to wake up to..

It was the day America chose a new President, Mr. Barack Obama.

It was day before my brother flew to the other side of the world. And I had to say goodbye.

Now you get it.

He had spent the night before with us, we were playing a drinking game while watching the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. Drinking once for whenever they said "Frodo" or "The Ring" and twice for "Mordor" or anytime Elvish was spoken. We were tanked by the end of The Fellowship. My brother left halfway through the Two Towers. I'll provide some background here:

Fletch was moving to Guam with his girlfriend, who was from there. To live. This naturally breaks my heart, I moved to San Francisco to be with him, and it breaks the hearts of Conman and Jamman, our best friends.

And now he was leaving the apartment in Alameda, his last night to spend with us, to go back to his girlfriend's hotel room. It was pretty emotional.

I was blacked out by the the Battle of Helm's Deep at the end of the Two Towers.

And now here I am waking up on this fine day, my only plans being to eventually make my way into San Francisco, find my brother, and say farewell.

Jamman's on the couch when I stumble out of my room. Conman walks in and instantly proposes, "So throw the third one on?"

And we started right where we left off. That was the only point of the day I was sober.

At the end of the Return of the King, it's not even 10 in the morning and I'm drunk. This was bad. Call us alcoholics. Say we're escapists that hide our feelings behind masculinity and booze. Tell me how weak I am for drinking away my pain. Numbing myself. Descenting. Go ahead. I can take it. Let me know how much you disapprove.

I'll tell you to shut the fuck up, mind your own business and get the hell away from me. If you were there, in my presence, telling me what you thought, I would have fought you. Not today. Not when I have to deal with this. Not like this.

I mentioned before, in emotionally trying situations I tend to resort to simple activities I know I can control. And this was today's game. Drink so I don't think. Laugh so I don't cry.

We went into the city, knowing we just had time to waste. I went to work and got my paycheck, a risky move but I don't think anyone who mattered knew how tanked I was. We bought more beer and went to Conman's and got a bit high. It gets hazy after that. I knew we moved to some other people's apartments and they all had the same strange concern on their face after we told them we'd been drinking all day. Whenever anybody asked us if we voted yet, we'd remember what day it really was and just laugh and laugh.

I'll have to update this later when I have more sources to help me remember, because I know more happened that day when the sun was up.

I recall being at Cybelle's, this sweet pizza place, watching the votes being counted and the numbers climbing, each state eventually blinking into red or blue, like some weird board game. I foresaw Obama's win and didn't give fifty flying fucks.

Then we had to go to the hotel to see him.

He had earlier invited us up to the hotel room to hang out, but we all knew and agreed we couldn't do that. I didn't want to see the expensive hotel room his girlfriend's father had bought for them after she had moved out before they flew to Guam the next day. I didn't want to see her, the reason he was moving to Guam. I didn't want him to move to Guam. Still don't.

While we walked the streets of San Francisco, we were shouting belligerently up and down the lanes "Hope and Change!!" "OBAMA 08'!!" "Democracy! Hurray!" in awful mocking tones.

I called and he came down with a briefcase. He was happy to see us, unaware of exactly how drunk we were. After a few words he gave me the briefcase, saying it had some of his art supplies and clothes he didn't need. I thanked him but broke down crying before I could say much else. I bawled my eyes out, and so did he, and so did my friends. Cried like babies on the sidewalk. I lost my shit.

He ended up giving me his jacket off his back, he knew I liked it and he let me borrow it a few times the first few days I moved out here. He tried to give Jamman some money he owed him, but Jamman just pushed the wallet down and embraced him. At one point, Conman said we'd been drinking since we woke up. He looked at me and asked real innocently "You've been drinking all day?"

"I didn't know what to do." And I broke down again.

Conman and Jamman gave us some time alone at the end. We were hugging and crying, meanwhile San Francisco exploded with celebration. People shouting out their windows, honking horns, running up and down the streets shouting with glee and hope. Obama had won. We finally had a black President. And a Democrat. I wasn't even there, I was trying to hold on to my only brother and tell him not to leave me.

Two stupid rich girls walked past us and one stopped and came up to us, real cautiously, seeing us crying. She must have been drunk. She asked gently "Did Prop 8 pass?"
As if we were a homosexual couple crying together because we couldn't legally get married in California anymore.
I flipped out and told her to go away.

Then it had to end.
We had to let go and he had to go back up into that hotel and across the sea and out of my life.

We went back to Conman's and sat. But then we couldn't just sit and be sad all night. A random friend we had seen earlier called us and asked us to come over. She had some problem and was crying and needed to talk to someone. I was so far in my drunken stupor I was practically offended someone else even had a problem they considered significant enough to try and draw my sympathy on this day of all days, she knew what we were going through. But whatever. It was better than sulking in a room for the rest of the night.

Jamman talked to her, something about a friend's mother needing surgery soon. I was neither caring or not caring. I was somewhere else. A bunch of random people came over to see Obama's acceptance speech. They were talking about politics and bullshit, but I wasn't there so I didn't care. Then we all shut up for his speech. I was so mad at Obama's stupid face just for being there, drawing my attention from the bleeding wound in my chest. So we drank more. The strangers cried a bit at his speech. I cried the whole time about something completely unrelated. There was all this talk after like "Hey, you'll always remember this moment for the rest of your life. This is history in the making." I chose a nice juicy moment of self-righteous liberal chest-thumping to just sort of blurt out "I didn't even vote."
It was real funny then, because it didn't matter.
But every person I had told up till the moment of was quite upset with my apathy.

When we walked home, people were still shouting and hollering on the street, but we had nothing nice to say.

"Shut up! Fuck America! Obama can go to hell! Shut UP!"

Sticks in the mud, as my mother would have called us. I pray she never reads this.

I don't remember passing out, or where I was, but I do remember work the next day being the worst day of my life. Physically, my body made me pay for what I put it through. My kidneys and my liver will never forgive me. I couldn't even look at an open beer, much less taste one for days after. Once we could try beer again, we weren't even finishing single cans.

But I'm glad it hurt me so badly. I'm glad it wasn't nothing.

I'm glad that wrapped in the arms of my best friends and my brother, whom I love more than any other people on this planet, crying my eyes out as the city of San Francisco revelled in this historically groundbreaking presidential election was the single saddest moment of my life.