Pete Hamill - A Drinking Life

The second test was more dangerous. On May first, my father celebrated his seventieth birthday and we threw him a party. There were hams and pasta and chicken and cold cuts; cases of beer; bottles of whiskey and bowls of ice. With all the kids and cousins and the singing of songs, I was back in the dense sweet closed grip of family. And history. Irish history and my father’s history. And mine. The party rolled on. The music played. I was laughing, singing, making plump sandwiches, and then, suddenly, I wanted a drink. My father was being urged into “My Auld Scalera Hat.” Someone found a hat and he took it as his prop and his face was transformed, he was beaming and happy, his jet-black hair still as shining and young as it was back when I first saw him perform. I loved him; Jesus Christ, I loved him. But then I backed up, quiet, allowing him his moment on the stage. I was myself now, for better or worse. I was forever Billy Hamill’s son, but I did not want to be the next edition of Billy Hamill. He had his life and I had mine. And if there were patterns, endless repetitions, cycles of family history, if my father was the result of his father and his father’s father, on back through the generations into the Irish fogs, I could no longer accept any notion of predestination. Someone among the males of this family had to break the pattern. It might as well be me. I didn’t have a drink.

Across those first months, I began to think that I only had to give up one drink: the next one. If I didn’t have that drink, I’d never have another. If that was a trick, then the trick worked, most of the time. The rest of the time, I needed words. For years, I had interviewed politicians in bars. Now I suggested we go for a cup of coffee. Dinner parties were problems because I was always explaining myself.

No, I don’t drink, thank you.

Not even wine?

Nothing, thanks.

But why?

I have no talent for it, I said.

Now I saw more clearly what drinking did to people. In Hollywood, I met old directors and forgotten screenwriters and unemployed actors: all broken by booze. I heard jokes about the Malibu AA, where there were eleven actors in one group and one driver’s license. But I didn’t laugh, felt no comfort in their humiliation. I remembered some of the final tortured stories by Scott Fitzgerald and felt surges of pity, for Fitzgerald, for the people I met, for my friends. I resisted pitying myself. I have stopped, I said to myself. If I begin again, I don’t even deserve pity.

The temptation to begin again grew weaker and then, before the year was finished, disappeared. Somehow, I’d replaced the habit of drinking with the habit of nondrinking. I still visited bars, listened to the stories, remembered the few memorable remarks, but even the bartenders now began to pour a soda when I walked in. My own imagination helped me. I couldn’t imagine enduring again the physical horrors of hangover. And I didn’t ever want to spend a day lacerating myself over the social or personal crimes and misdemeanors I’d committed while drinking. No more apologies for stupid phone calls, asinine remarks, lapses in grace. I might still do such things, but I would do them with an unimpaired mind.

Now I had more time than I’d ever had as an adult. I had gained the time I once spent drinking and the time I needed for recovery. And I began writing as never before, studying the craft with a professional’s forever unsatisfied standards. I had lived past the first rush of arrival, when raw talent can carry you across most barriers. Now I had to learn enough to last a lifetime. I’m still learning.

ONE JANUARY afternoon, after five sober years, I went for another walk in the snow. The children were home in the big house on Prospect Park West, and if I had not yet repaired some of the damage I’d inflicted on them and others, I was trying, I was trying. I wandered into the park, which was whitening under the heavy snowfall. And stood under a dense pine tree and then imagined figures coming down hills and across snowy meadows. Down there by the lake, Maureen Crowley was waiting for me on a bench. Over in the boathouse, Burne Hogarth was explaining trapezoids and Laura was in a blue smock, pulling heavy drags on a cigarette, while snow skirled like fog. In the snow, my mother was calling us home to dinner. Tim was there and Billy and Jake, all of us laughing, bellywhopping on Suicide Hill before heading for Boop’s, and Jose was jogging down snowy roads, and Joel Oppenheimer was defiantly smoking his black tobacco cigarettes while snow gathered on his Mets cap. Beside the Swan Lake, the Tigers and the South Brooklyn Boys were gathering in some violent ritual of the tribe. Up on the hill beside the Quaker Cemetery, Bomba the Jungle Boy was waiting out the winter beside a fire in a cave.

Then I heard my father singing.

On the west coast of Ireland

One morning there was seen …

And I loved my life, with all its hurts and injuries and failures, and the things I now saw clearly, and the things I only remembered through the golden blur of drink. I reached down and took a great mound of fresh snow in my hands and began to eat. I was home. I was free. I’d leave the rest to Providence and Paddy McGinty’s goat.

The author is grateful for permission to include the following previously copyrighted material:

Excerpt from “We’re Off to See the Wizard” by E. Y. Harburg and Harold Arlen. Copyright © 1938, 1939 (renewed 1965, 1966) by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. c/o EMI Feist Catalog Co. By permission of CPP/Belwin, Inc.

Excerpt from “Paddy McGinty’s Goat” by R. P. Weston, B. Lee, B. Adams, and B. Allen. Copyright © 1917 renewed 1945 by Francis Day & Hunter Ltd. and Jerry Vogel. By permission of EMI Music Publishing.

Excerpt from “(There’ll Be Blue Birds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover” words by Nat Burton and music by Walter Kent. Copyright © 1941 by Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., Inc., and Walter Kent Music Company. By permission of Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., Inc.

Excerpt from “Solamente Una Vez” by Agustin Lara. Copyright © 1941 by Promotora Hispano Americana de Musica S.A., copyright renewed. By permission of Peer International Corporation.

Excerpt from “La Cama de Piedra” by Cuco Sá\nchez. Copyright © 1957 by Editorial Musicana de Musica Internacional S.A., copyright renewed. By permission of Peer International Corporation.

Excerpt from “A Case of You” by Joni Mitchell. Copyright © 1971, 1975 by Joni Mitchell Publishing Corp. By permission of Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.

Excerpt from “Stele for a Northern Republican” from Born in Brooklyn by John Montague. By permission of White Pine Press.

Excerpt from “Fall 1961” from For the Union Dead by Robert Lowell. Copyright © 1964 by Robert Lowell; copyright renewed © 1992 by Harriet Lowell, Sheridan Lowell, and Caroline Lowell. By permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.

Excerpts from “In the Egyptian Gardens” from The Strange Museum by Tom Paulin. By permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

Excerpt from “Animals” from The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara by Frank O’Hara. Copyright © 1969 by Maureen Granville-Smith, Administratrix of the Estate of Frank O’Hara. By permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

PETE HAMILL began his writing career as a night-side reporter for the New York Post in 1960. He is the author of seven novels and two collections of stories, and his writing has appeared in most national magazines. He has been a columnist for many years, and currently writes a column for New York Newsday. He lives in New York City with his wife, writer Fukiko Aoki.