Peer pressure

I wish I was drinking. If I were drinking, I would seem funnier than I am.

This is how others make connections in dark places with fake bookshelves that smell like whiskey.Usually, without alcohol, with people I know, I can keep up with the mood of a Friday night. But not tonight. Tonight I am stiff and I can’t relax. I’m intimidated by his confidence and his ease. I can’t tell how much of it is tequila based. It  feels like an upside down world; those drinking see everything as it is and the sober see everything in black and white. The books are empty and the writing looks like its on fire on the wall.

I feel slow, I can’t keep up. The conversation jumps from senseless sentence to senseless sentence. They’re not listening to each other, they’re jumping into pauses with their own theory, their own story, their own excitement. I don’t jump. I slide into conversations and tonight their is no room to slide. I’m up against the bar and there is room for me to move. I’m surprised that they can find the space to agree. But they’re not really agreeing with each other. They’re only agreeing with themselves. I have been told that alcohol bonds people. I see it. It is the way we bond with strangers on the internet. We read their words in our own voices. We connect but it is not a real connection.

I’m disappointed that we don’t have as much in common as he does with her. But I guess, alcohol does that. I wish I was drinking.  If I was swimming in intoxication would my insecurities be drowned out by the noise? I feel wooden tonight. I feel like I’m back in high school, stuck in a corner, shouting to be seen with a frown on my face and black varnish on my nails. I could be back in high school because there is a boy here, I guess he’s a man now, who was in the grade below mine.

‘It’s Theo, right?’ I say faux smile affixed on my lips.

‘Yes. How do you know me?’

‘We went to the same high school.’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t remember you.’

I wish I was drinking. Then, I wouldn’t have to remember him either. If I was drinking it would be easy; I would be easy. If I were drinking I wouldn’t mind that more than half the books on the obnoxiously large bookshelf are empty jackets with hard spines and no stories to share.

I stopped drinking years ago; with a few exceptions. It’s never been a problem. But tonight, a week into the last year of my 20s, I feel like I’m missing out. Tonight I feel like I am back in high school. I just can’t fit in.