That spring evening, right before ninth grade, my parents were tied up with something I wouldn’t fully understand until much later. With the house to myself, I called Jason and Chip over and talked them into raiding the liquor cabinet. Whiskey, gin, vodka, schnapps—I mixed a little of everything into one tall glass. It was gross, but I didn’t want to drain any single bottle dry, so I topped each one off with water to cover my tracks.
We all took a sip, though I ended up drinking most of it myself. That was my first real drunk. We started in the basement, then stumbled down the road to the neighbor’s barn once we were buzzed. Before I could even make it up into the loft, I fell out, smashed my finger, and bled all over myself. I’m pretty sure I blacked out. Thirteen years old—turning fourteen that June—and I passed out on my very first binge. That kind of disaster usually teaches a kid a lesson. It didn’t teach me one. I saw it as a discovery. All that nervousness and fear that had kept me tied in knots just vanished, and that was exactly what I wanted to feel again.
By the time we sobered up enough to walk home, we crested the hill and spotted a blue ’70s Ford Econoline van in our driveway. It was Chuck, my dad’s other son from his first marriage. He’d left Colorado and needed help—which, as I’d eventually learn, was the family’s native language. His chaotic arrival completely overshadowed my drunken mess. I got away with it. Sort of.
It set a pattern I’d live by for thirty years: the first time I drank myself into a blackout, someone else’s crisis absorbed the consequences. Nobody noticed. Nothing happened to me.
Since Chuck couldn’t stay and the old van was dying, my father packed him and his stuff into the Phoenix—with me in the back seat—and headed for Florida. My second trip there. My dad’s brother lived in Fort Myers and could help his nephew get started in the Sunshine State.
The drinking episode faded for a while. We were fourteen, broke, and too isolated to find anything. My parents were busy making big plans, and life settled back into its strange version of normal: school, friends, chores, and the slow churn of adolescence. But underneath it all, something had already shifted. The fuse was lit.
My dad enjoyed that trip more than anyone knew. Soon, he was hunting for houses, and before long, he moved us there too. I often wonder what would’ve happened if someone had been looking my way that night. Maybe they would’ve smelled the smoke. Maybe not.
Around the same time, while we were flying down to look at homes, I tried to get drunk again. We were touring a little old lady’s house where every room was piled high with random junk. Today we’d call her a hoarder, but to me, it was just distraction after distraction during a boring trip. In one of those piles, I spotted a pint of grain alcohol. I stuffed it in my waistband—a spot I’d already learned to use for stashing ill-gotten goods. After thanking the woman, I remember keeping my hand in my pocket, hurrying to the car and holding the bottle tight so it wouldn’t slide down my leg and give me away.
I hid it in the hotel room and went back to being bored while we looked through strangers’ houses. Then, on the morning we were getting ready to fly home, I realized I’d have to smuggle that bottle onto the plane. Panic set in. I wanted to take it back to Ohio and show Jason. I didn’t have a master plan; I hadn’t even planned to steal it in the first place. It was just a crime of opportunity. And it was plain stupid.
When it was time to go, I shoved it back into my waistband, using my belt for support this time, and got in the car. I was terrified. By the time we hit the airport, I went straight to the bathroom and tossed the whole thing in the trash. My relief was instant. A moment later, I rejoined my parents to board the flight home. It’s one of the only times in my life I ever willingly threw alcohol away.
Soon, it would be time to join the big kids in those mysterious halls of Utica High School. My kleptomania was forgotten, and I never spoke of it again. Not until I finally wrote it down while working the steps in recovery.