Get in the Car

When I was a teenager, I hitched a ride with alcohol, and the ride took me to high school, college, Vietnam, marriage, divorce, and successful government and restaurant careers. It let me off twenty-seven years later, sitting in my apartment looking out my first-floor window, wondering where everyone was going as they walked past on that hot August night. The ride was over and I was alone, isolated with my bottle and my pain. I was physically devastated, vomiting blood, unable to walk.