excerpt, VOY

SHANAHAN

14

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At sixteen, life was a mystery. Unleashed with the newfound freedom of a driver's license, I traveled streets I'd never known that fall, and with a tank of gas in my '97 Plymouth Breeze I pushed against the limits of my suburban life. Nighttime joy riding and parking lot meet-ups became social events. But mostly, I drove around aimless, passenger-less. There were a lot of voids in my life, that fall – spiritually, emotionally, philosophically.

Disenfranchised with the Catholic church, I had stopped believing in God entirely, and sensed, quite palpably, an awkward disconnect with those religiously-inclined classmates, parents, and family members around me. I despised the Bible-thumping crowd dressed up in their Sunday best. Some of the more gossipy mothers already disliked me for my known drinking habits, and while that hurt initially I embraced it, eventually, fashioning myself a sort of outlaw lurking on the fringes of that whole scene. I went through the motions of daily life in a Catholic school dutifully, religion courses and mass included, but inwardly condemned it all as bullshit. Existentially, I felt void of purpose in a small-minded school and town that I was stuck in for another two years.

More immediately, I had a void in the way of my after school schedule that fall for the first time in many years. That summer I had quit football the football team, declared myself free from the tyranny of high school football coaches. No longer were after school study halls and evening practices a part of a grueling daily routine, that fall, leaving me free to do what I would with a new car all those nights I otherwise would have spent at practice. I continued tailgating varsity games, cheering on my buddies, including Matt Forystek, from the stands, went to some post-game parties with the team, but I was no longer in the locker room with the guys, no longer had a jersey to wear on spirit days. While my friends were doing wind sprints and tackling drills in the cool evenings, I drove around with a bottle of whiskey under the seat, veering away from that identity.

Moreover, my job at the bookstore turned out to be “seasonal” – whatever that meant. Management simply left my name off the schedule when the college semester got underway. Initially I considered this another victory for social liberties until, no more than a week later, Dad started hounding me to find another job. I realized soon enough that it hadn't been that bad, at the bookstore. I started avoiding him, went out driving in the evenings after six, when he would arrive home, doggedly, from work.

Plausibly, the NHL lockout that season contributed to Dad and I’s straining relationship. A labor dispute between NHL players and owners over a proposed salary cap resulted in the postponement of the 2004-05 NHL season in September, and there were zero games through Thanksgiving and Christmas. In February, 2005, commissioner Gary Bettman called the entire season, marking the first time a major sports season was lost to a lockout and the first time the Stanley Cup would be orphaned since 1919. There were no games to watch, that winter, no Mitch Albom articles to discuss at breakfast, no playoff races to make small talk over, all of which contributed to a growing distance between the two of us that year. There were high school hockey games and the Grand Rapids Griffins, but those weren’t the same – not for me and my dad.

Naturally, I went out more. I had recently watched Dead Poet’s Society for the first time and – inwardly – declared Robin Williams’ “carpe diem, lads, seize the day – make your lives extraordinary” line my personal mantra, used it as an excuse to start drinking on school nights. Alcohol injected a sense of possibility into otherwise dull school nights. I drank with Matt and Chris, when they could meet up, but they were busy with football most nights. I found other drinking companions, or drank alone.

I drove out to Dolan’s a few times more; we patched things up between us and he took me to a dance at his new high school, where we drank from a flask in the bathrooms and flirted with sophomores. We tailgated with vodka slurpees before Divine Child football games on Friday nights, after all, and we even met a couple freshman girls in the student section whom we started hanging out with at Matt’s house, in the barn. An innocent-looking redhead named Janel and I started dating soon thereafter.

Often I met some of the JV football guys – Manuel, Harry, Andy – in Dearborn at the Levagood Park parking lot, where we drank beers in the baseball dugouts and smoked weed in various vehicles. Other nights I met up with my Catholic Central buddies – Nidhal, Brian, Joe – out in Novi or Northville, where we smoked hookah, drank in parking lots. Some nights, I drank while driving out to my girlfriend's house on Belleville Lake, where, imbued with liquid courage, I called her on the phone, trying to convince her to sneak out. Those Autumn nights of aught four are all soaked in an amber haze.

I maintained my grades, studied when I needed to and crammed for tests, but high school was no longer novel. There were tricks for cramming and memorization, tools for skimming such as SparkNotes. I had even learned Chemistry in a weekend before my sophomore final exams after failing to learn a thing from our wayward-minded witch of a teacher, Mrs. Harvey. I did homework at school and studied immediately afterward, perfecting my time management skills so that I could go out in the evenings. It did not matter where.

Because many of my peers considered it a sin to go out on a school night, I wound up alone, many nights. By choice or by lack of an alternative, I grew increasingly interested in self-discovery, experimenting with mind-altering substances.

When I finished my afterschool responsibilities – chores and homework – I marched downstairs to the basement to find a C-D from my parents’ music collection, then headed upstairs to my bedroom. There, I’d get down on my hands and knees to find my half gallon bottle of Rich & Rare whiskey underneath my bed, unscrew the cap, sniff, and pour ten ounces or so into an empty gatorade or pop bottle. It smelled of carmeled whiskey, root beer, and apple, an aroma that got me high on its own. I grabbed a Coke or a Diet Coke, too, for mixing purposes, stashed the lot of my stuff in a mesh backpack that concealed my hoard aptly. Finally, I told my Mom – Mom and Dad, if Dad was home – that I was “going out,” vaguely.

“Where are you going?” Mom and Dad asked, drinking beers on the living room sofa, watching “Survivor”.

To Brendan Dillon’s, I said. To Chris’s, to Matt’s, Allen’s, a movie, dodgeball, the DC basketball game, Art Club, it didn’t matter. My parents trusted me enough, at the time. They probably would have let me go wherever, but I lied about my whereabouts constantly, almost compulsively. It felt like part of the whole routine – sneaking out to go drink somewhere. We occupied two very different worlds. I walked out the front door guiltily, headed across the lawn to my Plymouth Breeze parked in the street.

I had a secret spot – not far from Millwood. It was off the gravel portion of the old Farmington Road, mostly hidden from street view under a sighing row of towering pines, adjacent to the Lutheran High School athletic fields and a hundred yards or so from the haunted bridge and haunted barn at the dead end of the dirt road. I pulled into a parking spot that overlooked the Lutheran athletic fields, the beacon light of the football field press box tower glowing golden like a North Star over the grounds, casting a deep blue haze over the pines beyond at the edge of the Rouge River woods. Another light glowed golden through the trees from Dead Man’s Hill, across the river near the Nankin Mill, which grew increasingly visible as the autumn trees shed their leaves.

I used to go there nights, that fall of my Junior year. It served as a default spot for when I had no other immediate destination – when I was waiting on a friend to text back, waiting for a friend to get off work, or when I just needed to get out of the house. I went there before going out and at the end of a long night; I even slept there a couple of times over the years, too drunk to bear the prospect of encountering one of my parents. It became my secret spot away from the world, a place I could sneak off to and disappear for a while.

Some nights – if liquor was in short supply – I went there to get high. I smoked out of a makeshift soda can bong out along the baseball fields, in the dugouts. I walked out to the edge of the woods and sat atop the banks of the Rouge, looking down on the brown waters reflecting shadows in the fading daylight. Dusk settling, the fear induced by the marijuana made strange visions appear near the haunted bridge and the haunted barn, strange lights appear in the starwealthy sky of violet.

But mostly I went there to drink. Liquor was my drug of choice, even then, specifically whiskey and gin. I poured an ounce of whiskey into my cactus-shaped shot glass, added an ounce of coke, and mixed the miniature cocktail with a plastic sword. I sipped, swallowed hard. The whiskey burned in my chest, stirring up memories. When I had a sip or two down, I’d slide the C-D into C-D player, wait for the music to turn its magic. Neil Young, REO Speedwagon, John Cougar Mellencamp, Gin Blossoms; or my own music: Our Lady Peace, Blink 182, mix cd’s. The sweet buzz of intoxication slipping over me, those songs and words conjured strange spirits in the Rouge River fog.