Critic, Sixteen

I had experienced blackouts ever since I first started drinking. That was the summer I finished tenth grade, at the Norway Cup, when I just laughed and laughed, a momentous experience; being drunk took me to places where I was free and did what I wanted while it raised me aloft and rendered everything around me wonderful. Only recalling bits and pieces afterward, isolated scenes brightly illuminated against a wall of darkness, through which I emerged and disappeared again, was the norm. And so it went on. The following spring I went to the carnival with Jan Vidar, Mom had made me up as Bowie’s Aladdin Sane, the town was heaving with people wearing curly black wigs, hot pants, and sequins, everywhere there was the throb of samba drums, but the air was cold, people were stiff, there was a...