Guy Smiley

My first crush, which felt an awful lot like love, was on a Muppet. I was five years old when I first saw him in all his square-jawed yellow-tinged glory. His name was Guy Smiley and he was the most self-assured, well-dressed, manly Muppet I had ever seen. My love for him felt real and secure. He would be able to take care of me.

This unrequited love affair with Guy lasted for about two years until, in second grade, I saw a photo of Roger Daltry from the rock band The Who. In the blink of an eye, all my swirling, confusing, heart-thumpingly thrilling feelings transferred their allegiance from Guy to Roger. “Guy who?” I would think as I gazed longingly at a photo of Roger that I had ripped out of Creem magazine and stuck on the wall near my pillow with scotch tape.

Love, I realized even then, is such a fickle thing.

Over the years, I had other infatuations that felt a lot like love, with all the delicious, out-of-control, swoony feelings that are love’s harbingers. John Travolta in his “bad boy from Grease” era was one. David Cassidy of the Partridge Family was another. Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky made my heart race.

I was still young while experiencing these crushes and my love for these men was not sexual in any way. In fact, my fantasies almost always included one of them coming over to my house to bake chocolate chip cookies. After baking, I would take him to the playground at school where I would show him off to my friends. “Look what we made,” I would tell the assembled crowd while passing out the still warm baked goods, John, David, or a hulking Sylvester standing sheepishly by my side.

The love I felt for these real men was intoxicating, and their flesh and blood made the idea of a relationship seem more possible than it might be with a Muppet. But that scared me a little. There was something about my love for Guy Smiley that had felt safe. I never fell in love with another inanimate object again - until I did.

I was thirteen, sitting on a beach one hot and boring summer day when my friend Georgina came running up. “Look what I have!” she whispered dramatically while holding the mouth of her backpack open. I peered into the canvas-shrouded gloom of the bag and once my eyes adjusted, I saw what Georgina was so excited about. There, at the bottom of her bag, was a tall can of Budweiser beer.

“I stole it from my parents’ garage,” she informed me. “Let’s drink it!" And so we tucked ourselves into the dunes. I was curious, foolhardy, and already fully addicted to doing things I knew I should not be doing.

Hiding in the tall grasses with the warm sea breeze caressing us, I fell in love again. But this time it was with alcohol. The beer was warm and yeasty and fizzy. I didn't like the taste but that didn't matter. I drank most of the can myself, while Georgina sipped as responsibly as a thirteen-year-old can. As soon as that first beer of my life hit my as yet unsullied system, I felt such joy that I thought I might explode. This was love.

I had never in my life felt the way that first beer made me feel. Sure, I realized in a flash, I had experienced flirtations with Guy and Roger and David and Sly, but this was different. Now that I had alcohol in my system for the very first time, those past loves felt trivial, simply passing emotional blips. A young girl’s flights of fancy.

This new love of mine was a full-body, euphoric experience that was unlike anything I had ever experienced. My jaw, which had been tightly clenched since exiting the womb, miraculously softened. “Is what normal people feel like?” I asked Georgina, as the beer worked its magic, relaxing my body and melting all my fears and insecurities away.

From that very first beer, I loved alcohol, and it loved me right back. Our relationship was one of mutual understanding and respect. I never felt lonely when I was drinking because alcohol was such fabulous company. It told me exactly what I wanted to hear and agreed with every single thought I had. It never talked back. Alcohol was my best friend, lover, confidante, and therapist. We were a fun and lively couple.

Until alcohol, in some perverse and unexpected reversal, started to beat me up. At first the beatings were mild and purely physical. A bad hangover here. A drunken tumble and a sprained ankle there. A few unexplained bruises. But I wasn’t concerned in the least.

I’m a voracious reader of romances. Cleopatra and Mark Antony. Romeo and Juliet. Napoleon and Josephine. I've read about them all. Even Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s volatile and addictive passion. And what I deduced from all these love affairs is that true love is supposed to hurt. At least a little bit. Isn’t it?

“I still love you,” I whispered to my bottles of wine, and surreptitious sips of warm vodka when the wine wasn’t giving me the sort of love I needed. “We love you too,” they assured me.

Eventually the severity and frequency of the beatings increased. “I forgive you,” I whispered after each and every one. Hangovers so intense, I couldn’t see straight. Early morning vomiting and all-day nausea. Intense shame from whatever the hell happened the night before. “This is just the price I pay for love,” I assured myself. But then the emotional beatings got worse. “You're just a loser,” the alcohol started to taunt me when I was drunk…and even when I wasn’t. “Pathetic,” my merlot whispered to me through my sad and lonely buzz. I understood then, for the first time, why people have such a hard time getting out of abusive relationships. “What’s happening to us?” I would ask my fourth glass of wine. “We used to be so good together.”

I had my heart broken once, in college, when my boyfriend cheated on me. The pain felt unbearable. I took him back (of course) telling him that I believed in our love and all of his many lies. Even with the cheating scoundrel ensconced firmly on my arm, parading around our campus, my heart hurt…for months.

But alcohol? It broke my heart in a way that it had never been broken before. I knew that if I wanted to live, I would have to stop drinking. This, unlike my college romance, was a question of life or death. Alcohol, which had once given me such confidence and joy, was now bringing me nothing but self-hatred, shame, and despair.

But how does one get out of an abusive relationship? “You cut it off like a gangrenous limb,” a friend told me. “You don't screw around with a butter knife…you use a newly sharpened machete. The initial cut will be much more painful and bloody than if you were to employ a softer blade, but trust me. It’s the only way to get out.”

And that’s what I did. I broke up with booze, and if you had been listening, you would have heard my heart breaking into a thousand little shards. From one day to the next, I stopped. As a daily drinker, I should have gone to a detox facility and then to a rehab, but I did not. “I’ll be alone forever now,” I told myself.

During those first few months of not drinking, I craved alcohol in a way that I had never craved a person in my life. It was all I thought about, even in my dreams. I lived for those dreams. I went to bed early every night knowing that I would be able to drink in my dream life. There I would be, sitting on a boat in the Caribbean with my one true love, a giant bottle of rosé. I would wake up and the physical longing for alcohol would be so severe, that I would cry. And cry and cry. I cried for a full year. But I stayed firm in my resolve. I went to therapy. I went to yoga like it was my job. I went to work and tried to do my actual job. And I went to A.A.

The booze tried to win me back. It wooed me in a way I had never been wooed before. Strong and sexy and cool and fun. Everywhere I went, booze was there, beseeching me in its plaintive voice to return to its safe and reassuring grasp.

Booze assured me that although we were experiencing a slight pause in our relationship now, if we got back together, everything would be different.

But I knew, deep down, that it would'nt be.

Eventually the intensity of the cravings started to settle down. My spirit began to shake off its gloom. My mind cleared up, as did all my mysterious bumps and bruises. The world began to shine again.

“I should have stuck with Guy Smiley. He was a lot less complicated,” I tell myself when I want a drink. I still miss my liquid love. When I think about having a drink, it’s that first beer in the dunes and the amazing change in my body, mind, and spirit that I recall. I don't remember the shame or despair or isolation that alcohol brought to me in later years.

Alcohol still calls to me. Like my college boyfriend did, it holds me firm and repeats its many harmful lies. “Don’t you remember our first time?” it taunts me from afar. Decades after having my last drink, I can still recall the swirling euphoria of my first, and the comfort I found in my early years as a drinker. Before the monster of alcohol addiction emerged.

Now, when the drinks sing to me, calling me back into their warm embrace, I tell myself, what I would say to anyone trapped in an abusive relationship. “Don't believe the lies,”

I’d implore them, “and when freeing yourself, make sure to use a machete.”