#21 - I Just Can't See It!

Three married couples gathered around my kitchen table. By now, it’s an old table with cheery hand-painted sunflower tiles.

Initially, I thought I could offer some coffee and pastries and enjoy the camaraderie that we had been building the times we had gathered before this Sunday afternoon.

I should have known better. Soon enough, on the table there were two bottles of fine tequila, a pot of coffee for me that I should not consume alcohol and an assortment of foods, mostly leftovers from the week.

After that time flies. Some of the adults drink unrestrained; a couple of them wait or start spacing out the sips they take from their caballito glass.

There is much laughter and jokes. The youngest of the couples stand and dance to a nortena song and then to a couple of salsa tunes, without stepping out of the breakfast room. I so wish I could just “up and dance” but I sigh to myself grateful for the high pleasure of being alive.

In our minds there is the awareness that when morning comes we’ll need to be at work. One of them convinces himself to call in sick and raises his caballito to everybody. The other two males remember that for one reason or another they don’t work that Monday. The women, well, they’re women and know they can handle a bit of a hangover and function well on a just a few hours of sleep.

So the party continues happily for everybody. The two kids are entertained watching The Perks of Being a Wallflower in the movie room. My daughter’s sixth time!

Before calling it a night well after a midnight, the two bottles of tequila are practically gone. One of the women proposes we take turns singing what she calls “tequila songs,” which I understand are songs you request or sing when you’re drunk remembering a “love gone done you wrong”, you’re probably resentful, hurt, still have feelings for him or her; it’s that unforgettable love that you can admit to through the song. The only completely sober one, me, raises her hand eagerly and says, “I’ll start.”

At this point I YouTube every song chosen in turns while the “singer” is busy looking up the lyrics on a smart phone.

So the musical “soiree” starts with José Alfredo’s “Maldición ranchera” sung by Amalia Mendoza which I sing with no shyness and to my heart’s content with the good Amalia. We each sing four or five songs.

While I’m actively participating and singing with everybody, in the back of my mind I’m thinking of the tequila I’m not drinking and my coffee mug that I raise to clink against the five caballito glasses that are raised regularly.

In my country alcohol is deeply ingrained in all our customs. We become happy, outgoing and extroverted when we drink our liquor in the right measure. But we rarely know how to stay put in that right measure. When we pass that point we become stubborn, despondent and even aggressive, we cry for that lost love. We become pretty silly and pitiful.

So ingrained is alcohol in our culture that I’m sure any of us can mention dear ones lost to alcoholism. My mother’s three brothers are victims of alcoholism. My uncle Jorge died from that; my uncle Humberto had the same lifestyle (though he died of brain tumors). And my uncle Ezequiel is in his sixties and a drunk.

But we’re not like that, of course not!

So there we were happy and cheering each other with our selected songs. Sometimes the faces of people from work would pop into my mind and I would wonder, “Do white folks get drunk like us? Do they take turns around a kitchen table, YouTube a song (say by Patsy Cline of Johnny Cash) and sing their heart out loud and very off key? Somehow I just can’t see it!