The Three 'Graph Ode

It's the best time of drunkenness, this, when everything feels just right. I'm a little wobbly. I stumble just so. If I had to speak, I would slur--but just a little. I open my bottle and spill a little. I wipe up the spill with bad judgment: I use a dishrag and then put it back next to the rack. Nothing can hurt me, and it's a pleasure--a goddamned pleasure--to walk the dog at midnight.

It doesn't happen much anymore. I rarely have the wherewithal to balance myself on this perfect fulcrum. Usually, this perfect moment passes by too quickly. I'll be at the bar or, more often, at dinner with a few friends. And because my mind is focused on conversation, that thirty-minute window of inebriate's perfection passes unnoticed. Invariably, I have another drink--which is fine--and then another--which is also fine--and then yet another. And, somewhere around the fifth or sixth iteration of the process, I'm drunk.

Which isn't to say I'm no longer enjoying myself. But that moment of drunken absolution--my own discreet epiphany--is lost. Until the next time.