DRUNK & HORNY

"Marco! Adrian!" I yell on my way to the backyard. "Let's go outside." They follow me out the door and we resume our previous positions. I'm sitting, they're playing. I sip my wine. Fabiola is going about her chores thinking that we're set for the rest of our lives while I pursue a deleterious and salacious existence. I will live tomorrow like I'm living today, a combination of creation and copulation. I'll wander into Matamoros, attend a funeral, write a story. I'll wander back to Brownsville, a lackadaisical day filled with sex, drugs and alcohol, a sprinkling of friends and and acquaintances, and quality and quantity time with the family in the evening. "Daddy-O, can you play catch with me?" asks Adrian. "Sure, big guy." We lob the ball back and forth. The breezes have increased. It will be a perfect night for sitting in the backyard, smoking dope and drinking wine. Fabiola couldn't believe me when I suggested that I was an alcoholic. A week ago I stopped at Estanislao's in the late afternoon because I needed his assistance on building a website. I brought along a bottle of wine and he had a joint. An hour later I departed with the intentions of going home, but the five o'clock traffic had cut the flow to Brownsville's northside and I decided to visit Ambrosio Zamarrippa, a vice president at the university. I had half bottle of wine and I knew he wouldn't mind if we wiled away a part of the afternoon while the traffic thinned. He married Marcia after she and I had divorced and they remained married for 15 years before their relationship dissolved in a bitter divorce. They never had any children, but she felt entitled to half his property and successfully litigated for much of his nest egg, the lawyer representing her marrying her after the proceedings. I had encountered Marcia by chance during the cantankerous case and she had complained that she had told her friends that I had never treated her as bad as Ambrosio had treated her. "I never treated you bad." "That's what I mean," she said. He was home with his new wife after returning from a week in San Miguel. Over the next four hours we opened two more bottles of wine. I staggered to my car, but before I arrived home, I stopped at a small club. I was incoherent. A band was playing and like a mad prophet I walked onto the stage and screamed profanities into the microphone. The band took a break and I picked up a guitar and started playing, but the owner turned off the amplifier. I stumbled toward a table where I met Clara Luna. She was married to a musician had had a long affair with Brett Donovan. There was a period Brett and I used to run together, splitting most our bachelor time between Matamoros and the Island. One night Charlie was fucking Clara on the floor while I was fucking her best friend on the bed. I figured it was only a question of time and circumstance before Clara and I would find ourselves frolicking with each other's genitals. When I spied her through the fog, I thought the moment might be right. "You know that I've wanted to make love to you," I blathered after a few minutes of small talk. "Ain't gonna happen, Tommy. And I don't think you're in any condition to make much happen." I muttered something about her nipples and pubic hairs before staggering backwards against the wall and collapsing in a heap on the floor. I felt like a boxer who had been tagged with an unexpected right and after grasping for something to pull me off the canvas, I regained my footing at the count of eight. "You'd better go home," counseled Claire. "Or maybe the bartender should call you a cab." Though the latter idea made plenty of sense, I knew that if I arrived home without the car, Fabiola would fly into a rage. She would never appreciate the good sense of my decision. "Where is my car?" she would be demanding as I faded into an inebriated unconsciousness. I made it home. Fabiola was waiting for me at the door and started slapping me, landing a right with her clenched fist to my stomach that caused me to gasp for air. I fell on the couch. During the night I had a headache that I thought was the prelude to a stroke. In the morning I started on the xanax. Two days later I was savoring wings over cold beers.