The Goldslagger night became one of many as I desperately attempted to cling on to someone whom I valued like no other, but had no idea how to keep. It was a useless mission, and anytime I tried to talk to him about it, my attempts were only countered with telling me how jealous and possessive I was. Even after I left for a few days, only to begin receiving phone calls from our friends asking how to get to our home for the party, that I later found out they had planned together to have it at my/our home, and neglected to invite me, too. So I arrived home early, only to have her pull up in my driveway at three in the morning, after getting off of work from the bar that he and I had once frequented together.
We all have heard, and many of us have related to, Garth Brooks’ famous song, “I’ve Got Friends in Low Places,” where he tells us that “whiskey drowns and the beer chases the blues away.” I believe that anyone who drinks at all has been there, at one time or another. Usually resulting from being hurt by the opposite sex, we come up with and go out and make the grand gesture of deciding that we are going to wash that man, or woman, out of our mind and hearts by tying on a “good one.” I’ve been there; have you?
I remember one particular night when I went out with the intended mission of chasing my blues away. The bartender proceeded to fill me full of double shots of Goldslagger, while I sat there crying my eyes and heart out over a man with whom I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life, a man who decided he preferred the company of the town hussy over mine. I was devastated, humiliated, and totally and completely confused. Needless to say, the bartender ended up having to carry me out over his shoulder, and flopping me into the backseat of my neighbor’s vehicle. I was utterly unable to stand without falling to my knees.
My significant other at the time used to have this ring tone on his phone with Tiger’s voice that said, “You have a phone call. I wonder who it is.” When he first put it on his phone, I thought it was cute, and it would put a smile on my face every time I heard it. I soon grew to despise it, and even the thought of it to this very day brings a cold, unwelcome chill up my spine.
When I got home that night and crawled my way into the house, he was sleeping soundly in our bed. But his phone soon started ringing at that ungodly hour, like it had many times before, and many times after that. All I could do was repeatedly slur Tiger’s words over and over, emphasizing, “I wonder who it is,” in a sarcastic tone. Needless to say, he got up and spent the rest of the night in her bed instead of ours, like he did many times, claiming that he had spent it somewhere else.
One of the points is, my heart refused to accept what my head knew was true, so I tried to drown out my head and the knowledge in one bottle after the other. Not very attractive, and it left him with nothing of value to come home or back to. More and more, the woman who had slept with every man in town, and probably every man who passed through, was commonly referred to by many as being built like a man and behaving like one too, could drink any sailor under the table, and had aged well beyond her years appeared way more appealing and of value than the slobbering, heartbroken heap I was turning into. Of course, her confidence was soaring, as I allowed her to continue to suck every ounce of mine away and claim it, and my man, for her own.
