The circle is just a hole

8:07

I construct a game. It is a game only I know is being played, and I am the only one playing it. It is a game like a shadow and it is this: seeing how many drinks I can have without anyone noticing I’m not sober. Two hours ago they asked me how my sobriety was going and I showed them the app, the one that says I’m 104 days sober. I have been drunk for the past five, not even bothering to make it to 100. I knew, after all, how I was going to celebrate.

6:03

We arrive at the cottage, me and two friends. They haul in cans of beer, tart coolers, half empty bottles of wine. I count them to know when they will become countable, when it matters that the number is off. They head out back and I count and divide the beer and coolers and wine and their location, what is obvious and what is not, before I join them.

6:05

It is a trip we take every year, to go to their boss’s cottage, spend the days playing games, talking, them drinking, me maybe not. Today, it is only the three of us, not the usual four, one of them down in Mexico looking after some cats. He is the heaviest drinker, the year prior us going to the liquor store and buying a flight a day, the woman at the cash saying, ‘see you tomorrow,’ and so now it has become ‘civilized,’ and this integrity means less alcohol and more risk. But it is all a risk––to be one thing and say you’re another.

6:15

We sit on the dock and talk about what happens in a year. They talk about having kids and I say that I have a death drive, that I often do things that are bad for me but good for my writing. They ask how sobriety factors in and I quote Kaveh Akbar, him drinking because he suffered, and now that he was sober, he simply suffered more. They ask if I’m talking to anyone and I say, yes, I am talking. I am talking to you. I excuse myself and go inside to grab a beer from the fridge, carefully replacing and rearranging it, before going upstairs and squirrelling it away behind my bedside table. The cool mist on the bottle glistens in the soft light from the window, but I do not drink. Not yet. There is a hierarchy of moments.

8:08

They’re downstairs making dinner and I say I need to lie down. I have a lime-flavoured water with me and I immediately open the now-warm beer. There is a bitter tang that comes with the giddiness of reassurance. I sip it and sigh, the feeling of warm and good and yes, this is the beginning. I tally the drink and they say dinner is ready. I take a sip from my lime-flavoured water and check my breath. Enough, I think, and I am down and outside and sitting at the picnic table. The air is cool, the sun full and dipping like a lull.

11:00

I wait until everyone goes to bed. They work tomorrow and I don’t. I never ‘work,’ so they like to remind me; that writing doesn’t earn a living. They say goodnight and the lights go off and I am in the fridge. I carefully pull a beer, then another, hiding them under the coffee table, next to the couch. I say I am up reading, yet I listen with one ear, the delicate feeling that the night is mine. It is mine and I drink and drink, a fourth then a fifth, and when I do, I lie back and think about how life comes to this; how there is only joy in the thing you shouldn’t have.

8:53

My reality is downstairs. That the veil of lies will be lifted. I can hear them putting it together. That, in the minutes before they start work, one of them says, ‘there’s more empties’ and the other says, ‘yeah, I think so.’ And I know they know. And what does that say about me and what I’ve been doing? And how does it make me feel, where do I go from here, and what fakery will I attempt to invoke? Foiled and I laugh because I played a game; I am playing a game. The self is a ride, it carries you forward, propelling by an unknown force, and you can only see it in waves just before it crashes.

9:23

I am still drunk when I write this. Is it obvious? I went downstairs and they treated me like everything was normal. I did not reveal I heard their conversation, just pretended that everything was as usual. There is hope in the human that everything is as they think it is, and so I try to evoke it. They both go to work in their separate rooms, and only they have seen my face. I look at it later in the bathroom mirror and the eyes are sunken, the bags puffed and purple. There are creases in my forehead and cheeks. A colour that’s drained. “Take care of yourself. You look like shit,” an ex once told me. I am either under-slept or, as they probably infer, drunk. And now? I am on the couch, them working and me pretending to read, write a little, the words blurry and forced.

9:35

As I read, I see a quote: “So the challenge is how to maintain stamina, past youth, and without having to be routinely visited by crisis.” (Carl Phillips) The routine visit of crisis is like a gong. It is, to me, the only thing I know, and so the language pours, that it finds itself on the page, and I have a partner that says I don’t listen to her, and can you when you’re struck by madness?

2:40

I have decided to lie. To tell them I am going to the beach, after having gone to the beach earlier, but really to go to the liquor store nearby in Cherry Valley. They nod and go back to their calls and I drive south, past the rolling hills and dunes of white sand, my skin itching and excited. Alone in the car, I make hollering noises like I am free. I am free. It is something to do, to go somewhere and drink. Society has made it that way, and why should I be different? I drive past the beach and arrive at the corner store, buying a mickey of rum and stuffing it into my pant pocket. I am giddy with fizz.

3:01

They ask why I’m back so soon and I tell them that the beach was barred. That it must have been an off day, it being a Wednesday, but how should I know? I go upstairs to nap until they’re done work at 5. I have a long night ahead of me: this drinking and lying.

5:03

I fill my water bottle with rum and soda water, bouncing down the stairs as I greet them after work. They are already in the backyard, and we set up croquet, and I laugh because I am alive. You can feel being alive; it is in your veins, pulsing as if your body simply can’t contain all that good. We joke and sabotage one another, watching as one of my friends with a broken hand tries to hold a mallet. It cools and we go inside, me upstairs to relax and drink and drink, the rum dwindling, which comes with a mounting anxiety. How I will have to go back to stealing, and when it’s late and they’re drinking, it’s so much harder, but it’s a need.

8:35

We are bleary-eyed when their boss shows up. He’s come to pick up one of our friends and drive them back to Toronto in the morning for a meeting. He sees the beers on the table, looking in the fridge and seeing how little remains, and asks why we haven’t bought more. My friends say that the liquor store is too far away and then their boss says that didn’t they know there was a liquor store just south of here? Where, they ask. And he says in Cherry Valley, near the beach. There is a silence, a slipping in my throat. I can see their faces tense, putting it all together, but they say nothing. They will say nothing. And sometimes, I think, don’t you want to be caught? Doesn’t anyone want me to clean up this mess?

8:35

Now there are only two of us. The mornings are the worst because I have to pretend I’m only dying in the usual ways, not hungover, not revolted by why I do any of this. “God is dead, Marx is dead, and I don’t feel so good either.” (Annie Ernaux) I try to count how many drinks constitutes ‘a mickey’ but give up. The game is both irrelevant and in full swing. The game is my life, and I’m winning and I’m losing and I’m losing. It takes all my effort to stay awake, pretending I’m reading or writing, though I nap when necessary for the hope of a long evening.

4:27

We stop in at the liquor store after golf. My friend says I can stay in the car, that there is no need for me to go inside because he understands the temptation. He is trying to both protect me and spare me, and I am furious and skittering. While he’s inside, I think about how I can get in the store, get a drink, and get out without him noticing. He returns with, in his words, just enough beer for him and my other friend-–four tall cans. I pull out of the parking spot and put the car in drive before stopping. I lurch forward slightly and then park in another spot. I say I’m going to check if they have any non-alcoholic beer and my friend says he’ll go get it. I insist but he insists louder and, five minutes later, he returns with eight non-alcoholic beers. And who is this all for?

9:07

Misery is like the tail of a fox, them drinking around the fire and me with my non-alcoholic beer. What is beer if not alcoholic? Where is the sizzle and descent? I think it’s like fake meat and how I just don’t want it. I want something real, whatever it is. I want this night to be real and, without alcohol, it is numb and uninteresting. I leave the fire early and go to the kitchen. I count all the real alcohol left and there’s not enough and too many people. I cannot because to take it would admit to fault and there is always a little hope, don’t you think? I go lie in bed. There is nothing for me here and I know it. Sleep comes like a loom.

1:31

“It all has to burn. It’s going to blaze.” (Jenny Halzer)

10:15

The cabin is clean, the bags packed. The dock is secured and the fridge empty. The car pulls out and it’s another week gone. On the drive, I will not tell them about the game. My confession is here, in these time logs, in these words and days. And if they ever get published, will they see it? Will it matter? Because, ultimately, it is this: to know what makes a person want to live.

William John Wither is a writer and designer living abroad. He is the lead designer of IMPACT: A Foresight Game, and has been published in The Puritan, Exile Quarterly, Tales to Terrify, and the CVC8 Anthology, among others. He recently finished his MFA in creative writing under the mentorship of Billy-Ray Belcourt.