Then & Now

I love riding on trains. There’s something about that quiet little lurch the car makes when the motor kicks in and the car pulls out of the station. It’s like you’ve just been unplugged from the world.

I grew up in Washington, DC, and in the old days the Amtrak ride from New York to Washington was a particular favorite of mine. The train rumbled through darkness for a few minutes, then came into the light among those strange New Jersey marshlands that lie just south of the city. The bar car would open around then, and I’d go back and buy – if memory serves correctly – two cans of Ballantine Ale.

Gradually, the alien landscape of water and reeds gave way to towns and suburbs. Sitting back in my seat, I’d catch a glimpse of a dog in a backyard, a couple talking – or arguing – on a street corner. Little moments of ordinary life -- pretty one second, ugly the next – all of it flashing by like something on a movie screen. Something I could see but no longer had anything to do with. Something that couldn’t touch me.

I’m not the first person to have enjoyed drinking on trains, of course.

If you watch any TV, you’ve probably seen the Staples Office Supply commercials featuring a large red device called an easy button.

In the commercials, various people face seemingly impossible office-related tasks, only to realize at the last minute that the task they thought was going to be so difficult really isn’t after all. All they have to do is hit the Staples Easy Button and everything gets taken care of.

Do people grow?

That’s not quite as dumb a question as it may sound -- especially for someone like me. I’m 44 years old (45 next month), and well into a phase of life in which I don’t feel like I grow all that much on a day-to-day basis. What changes I do experience are more often, in fact, the opposite of growth: A muscle group that’s unaccountably sore after an activity that used to have no impact, or an inability to remember someone’s name or the title of a book that in the past would have sprung instantly to mind.

There’s a place that I think about from time to time.

In certain ways, this place changes a lot. Sometimes it’s a crowded city, sometimes it’s a remote jungle. Sometimes it’s in Greece, sometimes South America, and sometimes the Florida coast (It’s always, for some reason, near water). Sometimes there are other people with me at this place, and at other times I’m completely alone.

Beneath these superficial changes, however, the place always stays basically the same, and I always recognize it when it pops into view, even if it’s in some new and momentarily unrecognizable guise.

This magical place is – as you might already have guessed – the place where I’ll finally be allowed to start drinking again.

I like to think I started out in life as a reasonably honest person. As a kid I was, if memory serves, about average in this regard: not a saint exactly, but not a scoundrel either.

Then I grew up, developed a drug-and-alcohol problem, and suddenly found myself having to lie all the time.

It’s not a black-and-white world. That’s one reason why the idea of giving up drinking – of never ever taking a single drink again, for as long as I lived – struck me as crazy when I first heard about it. After all, everybody knows that the minute you decide that you’re never going to do something again, some situation comes along that makes you do it anyhow.

Then something unexpected happened.

Though the winter got started late this year here in New York, it’s now been extra-cold for what feels to me like an extra-long time. For weeks now, temperatures have largely been so low that each time I step outside it’s like a fresh insult – a fresh slap in the face from the elements.

If that makes it sound like I take the weather personally, I do.

Life is full of ironies. Back in my twenties, I would have liked nothing better than to have lived in Greenwich Village. Even people who’ve never been to New York know that it’s the neighborhood with the most fun bars and the most things to do. That’s why visitors to New York from as close by as New Jersey and as far away as New Zealand gravitate here – especially on weekends. It’s where all the action is.

It’s also expensive. That’s why I couldn’t afford an apartment here when I was younger. Then, in the early 90s, I met a woman who lived here already, and eventually got married to her. Against all expectation, I ended up in the Village after all.