Humor/Character Analysis: If I Were A Drinking Man

I wonder if all aspiring writers create characters based on how they feel from time to time. I've often fantasized about being a drunk. I'm not referring to a closet drunk or a partying drunk or a recovering alcoholic. I'm talking about a can't-walk-straight, tripping-over-trash-bags, whiskey-bottle-in-a-paper-bag, crying-in-the-corner drunk. It isn't that I want to drink — I rarely do. It is one of those rare moments when the way I feel crystallizes into a storybook character that I could draw or describe. While you'll never find me drunk, there are occasions when someone could ask me how I feel, and I could point to the unshaven, foul smelling hobo lying in the gutter and say, "that is how I feel."

Maybe the attraction is that drunks don't have to explain themselves. You can sort of tell by looking that they didn't just win the lottery. You don't ask them how the family is doing, because you are afraid to hear the answer. You can tell from a distance that something is terribly wrong. The look is as effective as wearing a signboard that says, "My life is a mess." I don't need the long-term complications of being a drunk. I don't need the addiction or the social status or the health problems. Maybe there is a certain aesthetic to being a drunk: some people write poetry to express themselves, some people paint, and some people wet their pants and stumble down the alley looking for sympathy and pocket change.

I believe Hollywood has made such a cliché about escaping your troubles with the bottle, that a drunk has become the perfect metaphor for feeling desperate and hitting rock bottom. The stereotypical hobo stumbling down the streets of the big city with a brown paper bag is a modern rendering of the biblical Job, a man who has lost everything: family, friends, employment, possessions, and even a reason to live. A drunk is the closest real thing to a zombie — the living dead. Of course, I haven't yet hit rock bottom, although there have been times I've felt close. Most of the time, our darkest hours could always get worse, but this doesn't make them any less dark.

Maybe instead of wanting to be a drunk, I am comforted by the fact that no matter how bad a day I have from time to time, there is somebody somewhere smelling like Jack Daniels and urine and having a much worse day than I am. Truth be told, I don't really like to drink. I don't have a religious or moral problem with drinking in moderation. But as far as acquired tastes go, I don't even drink coffee — never liked the stuff. I will choke down a beer for the sake of fellowship and conversation. When I do occasionally drink, I like sweet cheap wine and mixers. I'll drink Smirnoff Ice and Mike's Hard Lemonade, strawberry daiquiris and margaritas. My uncle said I'll rot my teeth before I ever rot my liver. I've actually tried putting sugar in red wine like Fozzie Bear in the Muppet Movie — it doesn't work. I guess I'll stick to writing poetry.