How to Be Perfect Like Me by Dana Bowman

Author:Dana Bowman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781942094722
Publisher: Central Recovery Press, LLC
Published: 2018-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

* Michael Bolton’s album THE HUNGER released in 1987.

CHAPTER TEN

HOW TO

be cool

When I was a kid, I would watch my brother get ready to go out dancing on a Saturday night. He would coat himself in Brut and polyester while the Bee Gees chirped in the background. “Be cool, kid,” he would say to me and then head out into the evening, trailing sophistication, and a whole lot of cheap cologne, in his wake.

I have a cinematic memory of my brother. It’s illuminated with the soft-filtered light of Polaroid images where I am little and he is big. I am looking up. I have feathered hair and a lime-green terry cloth jumper, and he’s getting into his souped-up Volkswagen before prom night, dressed in a white tux. He was John Travolta. Now, my memories of him are carefully folded and put away, but whenever I get them out they are a bit more frayed, a bit more creased around the edges. Some have fallen behind a drawer or under the dresser, lost forever.

He is stuck in my head accompanied by the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, shiny polyester, and imitations of Steve Martin. Chris was a wild and crazy guy. In my memories, he is his own walking and talking greatest hits album.

Looking back now, I realize I had missed a few things. Heck, I was seven. As a seven-year-old, my understanding of my brother was a bit skewed. I realize now that Chris, even as a teenager, felt the weight of being the life of the party. There were those fights with my father. And he got a few DUIs. He dropped out of college after one year, probably due to too much partying. But as he grew older, these behaviors seemed to abate, and we all breathed a sigh of relief and filed them under “He’s always funny, which means he’s totally fine.”

He wasn’t fine. In the last ten or so years of his life, Chris started to slowly fall apart. His addiction to alcohol, which I think started for him much earlier than any of us in the family really knew, became more pronounced, more visible to those who loved him. He would gather sober time, and then he would relapse. Over and over. But, as usual, I always just figured he would get his life together.

But then, he didn’t. He died.

I could rack up expensive hours with noncreepy therapists about why my brother’s death still messes with me. I’m sure there are many reasons, including my fear of abandonment and my longing to control things. But ultimately, I think it’s because I am addicted to stuff, too.

Alcohol, yes, but there are other things.

Like feelings.

Feelings make a great addiction. First of all, they are around all the time. Alcohol eventually runs out. But feelings? There’s an endless supply. And feelings can be really endearing. So that’s confusing. They love to be felt. They don’t ever say, “Oh dear, I think I’m not making your headspace healthy right now.

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