——

Nix

wea

QUEERS

 

ao

 

BY CARA SECCAFTEN, LAYOUT MANAGER

1D eee is super fun. Don’t let anyone tell you
otherwise. A glass of pinot noir or a pint of
pale ale brings warmth to your cheeks, to your
body, to your soul. A few more and everything is
thrilling. Ordering it at a bar or a restaurant makes
you feel adult, independent, smart. It’s even fun to
say it: “Pale Ale, Paleale, Paleale. One more paleale,
please.” Makes you feel like a butch sailor.

Liquor unearths vulnerability, which develops
compassion and community. Learning more about
beers or wines or liqueurs makes you feel like
you are part of a very cool club. Your membership
card displays how many drinks until you drop.

I love a good party—the ambiance, the
performance, the schmoozing—and it is
ostensibly impossible without a little elixir.

When you fall asleep that night, the party
continues on in your drunken dreams. Liquor
makes us feel safe in our bodies, and against
other bodies. Liquor brings out the truth. Being
drunk is a revelation. I absolutely adore it.

However, the revelation is obscured—15
second snippets in poor lighting with no distinct
beginning or end. Forgetting can be liberating.
But obscurities in excess, being drunk two to
three times a week for months at a time, keeping
hangovers at bay with a few drinks in between,
that is a prison. Disassociating all of the time
is horrifying. Alcohol is actually a depressant
(who knew!?), a diuretic, and a poison. Drinking
every day feels like half your body is on leave.

Four months ago, the morning after a
backyard kegger, I found myself with little
recollection of the night before. There was
nothing special about this night, except that
I decided it would be the last one like it for a
while. Maybe forever. When I “quit drunking”

(I've had four drinks in the last four months, and
no, they were not all at once), I became lucid.

I was a patient in a women-identified harm
reduction addictions program called Sisters Together
Active in Recovery (STAR). I realized that I was using
alcohol to avoid fully embracing my queerness. I

came out very young. As an urban kid of the ‘90s I
thought being gay was pretty cool. At 12, I told all my
closest friends that I was bisexual. I managed my
coming out like a complete boss, and felt empowered.
By 15, [had a girlfriend, and it was amazing. Being
gay was the bomb. Guys said dumb things at school
when we kissed in the hallway, and I felt like I was

in a secret club they would never get to be a part

of. I felt strong because I had figured everything

out so young. I had defied all odds! I was a Queen!

And then my mother found out. After she kicked
me out, I supported myself in a one bedroom with my
sister and graduated high school. And then just like
that, I shimmied back into the closet as though I had
never left it. Just like that, I found a place to store
my queerness—in my drunken revelations. I was on
my own, so! could drink when I wanted to. I didn't
drink often at first, but I nearly always got drunk.

I used drinking to express my true feelings to
gitls I was crushing on, to be vulnerable, to seek
pleasure, to admit my desires. I should add that I was
never a prude and I was never really closeted in the
traditional sense of the word. Most everyone knew I
was at least half gay. I had a lot of sex growing up and
it was pretty safe. I attempted to embody feminism
as a teen. I grew up atheist and did not suffer from
Christian guilt, unlike my other white middle class
peers. However, retroactively, I see an obvious spiral
of shame and drinking that I was mitigating even
before I had clearly recognized it. Despite my free-
spirited teenage stance, I was constantly anxious.

It went on for nearly eight years. Even when I
started dating women again in my twenties, I was
constantly fighting shame about sex—which was
sometimes accompanied by panic attacks, extreme
nausea, and dizziness. Even though I had a history of
abuse with men, and had had fulfilling queer sex as
a teen, in my twenties hetero sex simply felt easier.
Why is a queer woman, who is technically out
of the closet, afraid to soberly have fulfilling,
queer sex? OT, is there a relationship between
closets, queerness, and alcoholism?

My personal experience reflects a social