Liver by Darryl Graff

         
 It comes, in every alcoholic’s life, the ultimatum from the doctor: Quit drinking, or die.

I had always thought this conversation would take place in a doctor’s office, with the door closed.  I’d be sitting in an overstuffed leather chair– perhaps brown, or maybe, burgundy– surrounded by framed photographs of the doctor’s family and diplomas from NYU and Columbia hanging from the neatly wallpapered office walls, and the doctor’s file folders, strewn atop his mahogany desk. The doctor would speak in a monotonous, compassionate voice.

Instead, a message went to voicemail on my phone as I rode the Q53 bus over the Cross Bay Bridge to Rockaway.

 When I got off the bus, I walked– as usual– past the Shamrock Bar on 116th Street. The neon Budweiser sign hanging in the window seemed to wink at me, almost like it was saying, “Come on in, Darryl, and have a couple of beers. You can always quit tomorrow.”  Off-duty union men huddled in front of the bar, smoking cigarettes, and laughing, and spitting on the sidewalk. I could hear “Hotel California” coming from the juke box inside the bar. 

When you’re a young man– when  they send you off to war– to prepare for battle, you wear a suit of armor with  three layers:  first, cigarettes;  second,  pot, and the third,  beer and liquor. As the war rages on, those enemies of yours find the weak spots in your armor and they are slowly peeled back, layer by layer.  First to go are the cigarettes; then, the pot, and, finally, the beer and the liquor.  Until you’re left standing, naked and vulnerable and   wondering, “Where did the time go,” and “How did I lose the war?” 

My doctor said that, in a month or two, if my liver stabilizes, he will allow me to drink two beers on the weekend But, only two .

When I was drinking a twelve-pack a day, it was Budweiser and it was all about drinkability: quantity, not quality.  With a two-beer limit, I’m thinking, Heineken will be my beer of choice, available at virtually all New York City neighborhood bodegas. Quality, not quantity.

 Now, of course, I could just never go back to the doctor, and pretend I never got the test results.  I could, instead, sit in my living room and crack open an ice cold twelve- pack of “existentialism,” and say,” Fuck it all.”  But I can’t do that.  I already broke the news to my wife. 

 Besides, I don’t want to die in a hospital bed, hooked up to some machine; not if I can help it. 

 If my liver gets better, and if I do get to drink two beers on the weekend I’ll take it. It sure beats   no beer  and, maybe, someday, I’ll be able to stop into the Shamrock Bar and have a couple of beers– just like I did so many times before.

                                             End

I am a NYC construction worker and writer.  My non fiction stories have appeared in Akashic Books, Hipocampus Magazine, Foliate Oak,

Da Chuna and elsewhere.