I showed up to his house full of food and a toothbrush I had stolen. I would keep the toothbrush here. I would take the food to work. It was in his room. He was at his computer, I was on his bed. I had been drinking diet coke but also an entire bottle of wine and was going to open another one when he said

“I think you’re an alcoholic.”

When I watch horror movies, I love trying to pick up on the exact moment that the character realizes they are not getting out of the haunted abandoned church basement alive. They had brought the Ouija board with good intentions, they had gotten a little stoned with their boyfriend, they were taking off their shirt. The first thud, the first punch in the gut, the first threat with the knife and the first time the ghost showed his face was just a “teaching moment,” but there was still time. It was an accident. They can run!  Now, they are chained to the radiator and she’s forced to eat parts of her dead  boyfriend just to survive and it’s with the first pluck of their friend’s esophagus, her chin smeared in blood and she’s sobbing and you know that she knows she won’t ever wake up in her bed again. She finally understands.

“I’m not an alcoholic.”