I used to drink. A lot.
I loved being under the influence - it meant I didn’t have to have any of my own. I could be towed along through life by greater ships, a drunk sailor toasting the success of a rotating roster of better captains – my partners, bosses, a world I perceived that was brimming with better artists. From the trenches of a white-collar job and throbbing dissatisfaction, I could gripe freely at the forces of oppression with a cutting wit, badged and verified by lived experience. And it suited me. Until it didn’t.
POV: it's 2021 – nobody’s favourite year. Living alone mid-pandemic has me bored to the point of painting different walls in the house most days to pass the leaden hours. My (now ex) wife is working away in another state, so I’m alone. In fact, I’m lonely, perhaps for the first time in my life. I miss her specifically but I also miss people en masse. And I miss the world itself, who seems to be staging her own strange socially distanced funeral.
The seething loneliness is compounded by a gut feeling that my wife is using the opportunity of global collapse and a work credit card to cheat on me, which, as it turns out, she is. The walls I paint and seal in the mornings run with suspicion and quiet devastation by night. But little does my wife know that I have also taken a mistress - drinking. Alcohol makes me blush. It fills me with a warmth that reminds me of the summers I’ve fallen in love. Am I again? I mean, I could be. Drinking satisfies me in ways my partner hasn’t in years. It always laughs at my jokes, for one. And it’s keenly focussed on my pleasure, goal-oriented and refreshingly honest. My six-packs never express feelings of wanting to be with anyone else. They’re never frustrated by my temper or my love of board games. They’re happy to be held by me. They wanted me to feel good. And I don’t drink to drown anything out. Rather, with my marriage adrift and the world slowly sinking, I drink to stay under the influence of love.
Prior to love and 2021, money was my poison. I drifted away from writing and started working jobs that didn’t really suit me to make a regular paycheck. I told myself I was happy being second in charge, that the pawn life suited me, that a job was just a means to knocking off. And alcohol was a great CEO. Drinking gave me back my main character energy. After two glasses, I felt sexy and certain of myself - in way I had only felt on stage or when making a particularly valid point in a good dinner table debate.
And I could purchase all of this and more from the local shop with $21.99 and a loyalty card. I even didn’t flinch when my bottle shop membership looked the same as my private health insurance card, I’d pull out my wallet and accidentally hand over my medical details. The cashiers just shrugged and cracked a “same thing really isn’t it” or something to the same effect. I understood. They had to make sure they were securing a sale and not a crisis.
When my marriage collapsed, I suddenly remembered I hated fish. And camping, actually. And flannelette. And fucking beer. And what I liked, most surprisingly, was myself. I remembered I could write, and well. I could take a photo or two. And, though sporadic and mild, I genuinely liked my internet presence. I was prone to a witty caption, a killer registration plate photo (SKMYDK69) or a fatal one-liner. My boss (a comedian) had asked me (as a distraction from the marriage debris) to start a TikTok account and sleuth around for what her young contemporaries were up to. So I did.
I decided to keep my profile on TikTok anonymous by using a cryptic jumble of letters and symbols for a username and made sure I didn’t post anything, particularly not any of the silly filters I’d tried out on my couch (potato head, horse face, poo), to my feed. Then, I went to work, typing “female comedian” into the search bar. Almost instantly, my future wife popped up. Aurelia was the first profile that came up in my search, so I clicked on her it. Not only was she obscenely talented, she was also incredibly beautiful.
Or at least I thought she was? I couldn’t work the TikTok app to save my life and kept accidentally tossing her profile back into the nightmarish stream of pimple popping and what sounded to me like a global screech of blonde teenagers. When I finally found her again, I made sure to copy her Instagram handle from her profile and take my “research” to the app instead. That simple action lead to a DM I’ll never regret, a shotgun wedding in Las Vegas and two years (and counting) of genuine love I’ve never felt, not even six glasses in.
People still ask me advice on sobriety and it’s divorce. Just kidding, it’s TikTok. And influencers. Stay with me. When I emerged from the rank swamp of a no-contact divorce (my preference) drenched in financial loss, a waft of spiritual gain and a very odd conversation about cryptocurrency, I was myself again. People say that a lot about divorce. But I snapped back to my own pre-toxic marriage self within days. My ex-wife, and my need to drink, carved off me like a heatstruck ice shelf from a blind continent.
Influencing is a dirty word. The images it provokes are thin, white and addicted to protein shakes and slimming teas. But it saved my life. Real influence deals in courage, and so do influencers. While most of us work in industries that value our silence and depend on our humility, influencers profit from being the salespeople-cum-court jesters of the world. They wholly embrace the “cringe” and the “ick” some would rather die than succumb to, then use them to a fame advantage. While we wrestle with whether to view them as smart businesspeople or airheads “selling their souls” for sponsored content, they are out there creating content and making serious money. All this profit from what we’re so used to condemning as social crucifixion.
The night I decided to send a flame Emoji in response to my now-wife’s Instagram story was my first act as an influencer. And it wasn’t easy. I physically winced before I pressed send. I knew what the risk was to my sense of maintaining my “cool” - to seem natural, unaffected, magnetic and not wanting or, god forbid, desperate. I remember taking a deep breath, looking around at my sister’s house, where I was crashing after my last relationship proved more catastrophically cyrogenic than “cool”, and realising that “cool” had really never worked for me. “Cool” was somebody else’s boundary. I would go on to cross many more of these false boundaries during the emotional weeding and stumping of the next year. But most of all, I would dine out on all the sumptuous moments of being uncool that were the stuff of my becoming. And what I was becoming was an influence.
And we all know the world doesn’t respond well to influential women. The images of “positive influences” we rehearse are almost exclusively good mothers and capable wives. The news cycle dines on the demonisation of female-led industries – OnlyFans, health and beauty, motherhood, the constant critique of women in power. The media love a catfight. Even moreso, one that allows them to platform the “stability” of traditionally male-dominant economies like cryptocurrency and big tech. In the home, they’ve deployed the concept of “cringe” so we remain self-policing and humble. Women, they tell us, are far more useful dating influencers than being influential ourselves. But I know the dangers of being under an influence. And I’m not about to shout them another round.
Influencers saved my life. And I’ll remain a fan. I may be the only one. But, to quote the catchphrase of budding YouTubers – don’t forget to like and subscribe.
It’s clear we’re endorsing something either way, so why not invest in the power of our influence, rather than drink to it?
TN
Also not drinking and loving it, feel like life's more of an adventure (cringe). Also not to debate your own chronicles, maybe more your math, would you guys be two years and counting if your marriage only broke down in 2021 covid.