Fractured Soul - "My Beautiful Ethanol"

My Beautiful Ethanol

© 2006
Based on the poem Chemical Seduction

A wall of sound hits me as I join the throngs of euphoric partygoers. Music pulsates like the heartbeat of the night as snatches of conversation merge together in a confusing hum of voices. It's all a bit overwhelming to cope with at first, when coupled with the almost-visible heat of a hundred sweat-soaked bodies. For a moment I cast a glance around the energy-charged room, trying to gain my bearings. And it's there, on a nondescript glass table, that my focus changes completely and I start to think my imagination is in overdrive. There, untouched, looking so innocent, it must be, but it can't be...you.

You, my beautiful Ethanol, with your curvaceous body of dark green glass and your amber liquid soul. With your secrets concealed by a metal cap, you're there on that table, waiting to be consumed. For someone to remove that cap and let your chemical beauty flow over their lips. Break down their barriers. Seduce them, even. You're looking stunning tonight, Ethanol. They'll be after you before long with their hungry eyes. Temptation is irresistible, it makes them give in...I watch them in wonder, thinking how stupid they are not knowing where to draw the line. How can they let you win, night after endless night? You have some invisible power, Ethanol. A power to which no one is completely immune. I should know – once I was your conquest.

"You got a drink?" I remember someone saying. I shook my head, I recall, and they took you from a box on the floor and placed you in my hand. Cold to the touch, you were. Forbidden, too – I was still underage. But sometimes the best pleasures in life are forbidden, and you were no exception, Ethanol.
I remember staring at you for a moment and running a tentative finger down your smooth glass shell. "Drink up!" someone yelled to my right. "You're not going to make that beer last all night, are you?"
"Too right he’s not," laughed the person who'd given you to me in the first place. "C'mon, man, what are you waiting for?" he bellowed, stumbling on the words like someone who’d obviously had too many. I didn't want to be like him, Ethanol. I didn't want to lose my sense of self-control, I didn't want to be vomiting in bushes at the end of the night, I didn't want to wake up disoriented in a bed that wasn't mine. But I did want to experiment, to fit in, to be one of the "crew". Something I'd never been, with my demon Depression always eating away at my confidence. But I thought to myself, maybe you could drown the demon, Ethanol. Maybe. Only one way to find out. So I took the plunge.

The first touch of you on my lips was like nothing I'd ever experienced. Like a bittersweet river flowing into my system, sweet at first but then giving way to a chemical aftertaste. The taste of you, Ethanol. Unpredictable. No one could accuse you of staying the same. With each sip I took, I began to feel powerful, invincible. It was like being reborn from the chasm Depression had thrown me into. It was like being in love, my beautiful Ethanol – suddenly I saw the world through optimistic eyes. For once, I was king of the castle. And, as I drank the very last drop so all that remained was your glass body of green, I wondered how I'd ever lived without you.

It got to the stage where I couldn't live without you, Ethanol. The party ended that night, but my dependence on you grew stronger. Like a lost lover I pined for you; I needed you in my system to survive. You may be legal, Ethanol, but you’re still as addictive as the most illegal substances. It was like a tide; when I drank you, you would take me out past sobriety on a wave I craved to ride. Without you, I crashed down again, onto the rocks, back to earth. I needed you to blur the black-and-white reality of life; to change it to a hazy grey of inebriation. Nothing in this world could hurt me when I was drunk. You broke down my barriers and I felt confident, self-assured, not depressed anymore. Under your influence, I could turn the tables and I could hurt them. I would take you to school with me, disguised in a black drink bottle so no one could see my little secret. Just a sip here, a sip there, and everything would be all right. You were my saviour, the suppressor to my demons, my reason for living. Until the day your power pushed me too far.

Her name was Hayley – my best friend since primary school, my girlfriend since Year 10. She'd been there for me through all the hard times, when I was stuck firmly at rock bottom. But she wasn't there the night of that party, Ethanol. She didn’t know the extent of my addiction to you.
We were at my house one Saturday, watching the music channel and talking our way through the songs we didn't like. As a slow one came on, she leaned over and kissed me softly. I went to kiss her back, but she placed a hand on my chest and pulled away.
"Have you been drinking?" she asked. I tried to deny it, the same way I always did. "No."
"I can taste it. I've been able to taste it, smell it on you for weeks. Are you drinking all the time or something?"
Denial again. "No."
She lost her cool. "You're lying to me, Damian! I know that what's in that drink bottle of yours isn't fruit juice like you’ve been telling me. Do you know what alcohol can do to you? It can kill you, you know that? Ever heard of alcohol poisoning? Have you? Have..."
She never finished her last sentence. In a surge of white-hot anger, I raised my fist and struck her across her face. Like a porcelain figure she fell to the ground, blood and tears combining in tiny red rivers where I had hit her. She looked up at me like a wounded animal, fear and hurt in her eyes. I immediately hated myself for what I'd done to her. What you had made me do to her. You'd made me into a monster, Ethanol, a wallowing wreck in a sea of addiction. I couldn't live with myself for that.

I had to let you go.

I took every bottle that I possessed, unscrewed the caps with trembling fingers and watched as your liquid amber soul spilled like battlefield blood into the cool metal of the sink. All that was left of you, gone forever from my life. From my system. It was either you or Hayley, Ethanol. And she won, as I gently brushed my fingers across her bruised skin and vowed I would never touch you again. A vow I never hope to break.

So we meet again tonight, Ethanol. There you are, on that glass table, waiting. Waiting to take your next victim for a ride. Still innocent, you look, despite your evil secrets hidden under that metal cap. You've got the power, Ethanol – I know you'll have your victim. It's only a matter of time.

But tonight, my enemy Ethanol...tonight it won't be me.

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