"Now look, your grace,” said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails...."
"Obviously,” replied Don Quixote, "you don't know much about adventures."
––Miguel de Cervantes
You don't know much about adventures--ha! I love that.
Who would launch into adventures if they had all the facts?
The art collaboration I'd set up with E and Asst Man turned out to be something of a windmill—or was it a giant?—when AM got drunk the other night and became lewd and mawkish.
I knew, because he'd told me, that AM is alcoholic--(have you heard the new name for alcoholism: Alcohol Use Disorder/AUD?)––but I hadn't directly experienced it at work with him, though I could see the patterns in his behavior.
When I did experience it directed at me (and E) last week, it was really disturbing.
I have known/loved/lived with a lot of people with mental illness, including my wonderful mother, but (oddly?) don’t have much direct experience with AUD... It was like, "OH! THIS is what people have been telling me!"
His drunken behavior created something like an earthquake in the ground of reality.
He didn’t say anything about the evening afterward. I avoided him at work and tried to forget about what happened, but--not surprisingly—couldn't. It was like he'd slimed me, and the slime left a residue.
I finally talked to him about it yesterday. It went as badly as I'd feared it would.
It was like we were acting out a script from a textbook on alcoholic behavior.
He responded with denial ("I didn't say that"); downplaying ("I didn't mean it; I'm sorry you heard it that way");
and blaming me ("I have to walk on eggshells around you").
I'd started out kind and considerate, keeping the focus on me and my experience ("I felt uncomfortable..."); but I foolishly--predictably--ended up engaging, and of course it went nowhere.
The conversation ended with him stalking away, saying "It's always about you!"
Fine. My life IS about me, and I am done with this.
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I'd suggested 12-steps to AM months ago, when he was really down about his drinking and its possible affects on his young children (not to mention his wife), and he said, no, AA is a cult.
Buddy, if it's a cult, join the cult.
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As you could guess if you read this blog, I've never loved AM. Losing him as a work friend is only a small loss.
In fact, I'm relieved. It's nice to have a work friend to bitch with, but his unrelenting negativity is mostly a drain. And it seems to get worse. (I think this is classic too--alcohol doesn't make you better.) He almost never comes up with alternatives or fun ideas anymore.
He's barely even decorated the end caps this summer.
When he walked away from me, the last of the slime slid away.
But I am disappointed that he broke the illusion that we could MAKE ART together with E. That trio worked well... for a minute.
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They Might Be Giants is a 1971 movie I saw with my mother when it came out (I was ten)--the title in reply to Sancho Panza and Don Quixote. (The band of that name took it from the movie.)
I am fine! I will continue to do MY WORK--
launching my adventures with
books and toys and making stuff.
A recent BOOK's Display and Toy Bridge:
NEXT DAY
AM returned his third of the art collaboration. He brought the board to work—he hadn’t worked on it—and left it in my work area without saying anything. If he’s not going to make any changes, I guess I prefer it that way.
Earlier, E had given my leaping figure a clown face, without eyes. When I got the board back, I added blinky doll eyes.
E is mixed, Black and white—she’d commented on how pleased she was with the lips she’d drawn. She said white people never guess she is mixed, but Black people see it. (It actually had occurred to me, but only because of working at the store with so many variations of Human, white in the minority—it took years to knock “white” out of first place in my automatic thinking.)
Reminds me of something James Baldwin said. “White people don’t hate Black people— if they did, we’d all be black.”
