I showered, took some aspirin and actually looked for a volume control knob somewhere in my room to dim the crashing of the waves. If anything, they were getting louder. God, my head hurt. (It was at this point I swore off Stienlager...not drinking, no, that would have made too much sense, and we all know it probably wouldn't have worked anyway.)
There was a restaurant next door with a patio by the water. Food seemed to be in order...food and a large Bloody Mary. Perhaps two.
I ordered eggs Benedict and sank half the drink, munching on the celery.
As the vodka hit bottom I looked across the Pacific to the horizon, and thought, damn, that's a lot of water. (What do you want...my head hurt.)
After breakfast and my two fortifying cocktails I felt human enough to wander through town. As of now, I was technically a tourist, so I did the touristy things. Gawked at the natural beauty, wandered through touristy shops and bought large buds of purple weed from sidewalk surfers on skateboards.
(It took awhile for me to understand them as they all spoke that strange bastardization of the English language...Pidgeon. It really takes some getting used to. Vowels were dropped and entire words were omitted and substituted and it was done in a sing-song fashion. In fact, there was more of a cultural difference in the speaking of the language than the language itself. Very hard to describe.)
I tried to keep the drug and alcohol use to a respectable level, avoiding a huge bottom out, but my tolerance was wearing thin. I kept to myself and found out of the way beaches where I could soak up sun and body surf. My pasty Alaska pallor was replaced with a deepwater tan, and my hair bleached out from the sun and salt.
I had found an apartment on Mongoose lane, and started waiting tables at a pizza joint in town. One of my co-workers was a coke freak and after a particularly long and vibrant weekend, I decided to try and get clean one more time. I looked in the phone book and dialed a number. The meetings were a block away, in an open air pavilion.
I had stumbled past the place countless times and never knew. All I had to do was ask for help, and there it was.
Here we go again...
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