The last binge

My second last night of drinking was reasonably uneventful, except for the unattractive guy I let masturbate me who pulled my foreskin back so far he made a small mechanical tear across my frenulum. (That’s the little band-like ligament running down from your glans, similar to the one under your tongue.) It hurt; I was turned off, and went home.

The next night, the last night of my last binge, there were two parties. I had told friends about my earlier excesses that week but they still encouraged me to have a drink, only one, and didn’t say a word when I went for the second. At the next house party, the hosts provided free drinks at a pour-your-own bar, which I did, often. By the time I staggered out of there, I’d made a pass at nearly every man who came within 10 feet of me.

On the walk home, I abandoned the buddy I left with, went behind a building, stood under a pine tree and shit my pants. I was only supposed to pee, but I blacked out, came to, and discovered my uncomfortable error.

I took off my shoes and pants (not my socks; I didn’t want to get my feet dirty), tossed my soiled underwear aside, and cleaned my ass and hands by wiping them on the dried pine needles underneath me.

Satisfied that I had cleaned myself sufficiently, I jumped on a bus headed downtown and meandered into a park. I remember having all kinds of sex, unprotected, despite the tear on my foreskin. My memory is spotty, bits surfacing here and there, my dick stuffed one place, someone watching me, a gesture, a grimace, a cock being rubbed against my ass, but a good chunk of the time I must have spent there is a blank.

So many years later (sober now, for nearly six), I have enough insight to thank the men who didn’t try to fuck me, who bothered to notice that I was barely able to stand, who didn’t comment on the fact that I smelled like shit and pine cones. I especially want to thank the white-haired guy I’d turned down a number of times who offered me a ride home in his Jaguar as the sun came up, who chit-chatted so sweetly as he drove me home, despite (or because of) the state I was in, and who wanted nothing in return, not even my phone number.

I want to ask forgiveness from the men I did fuck, unsafely, and I want to apologize to my friends, and to myself, for believing anyone else responsible for my behaviour.

* Miss Cookie has found sobriety has many advantages: for starters, she has fewer dry-cleaning bills.