I’ll do you one better, officer. I’ll say it backwards—and tell you a story for each letter. Just call me Scheherazade!

Z

Z, the best drinking buddy I ever had. Met him at the newspaper I used to work for. He liked me, I liked him as a friend, but he was fun. Flirty, flattering. Drank sweet girly cocktails like me. Pranced “Singin’ in the Rain” routines off streetlamps. Once saw a sign for a sake bar and misread it—said, with a gleam in his eyes: “Ooh, let’s go to the Snake Bar.” We can just black out that time I got so drunk I had to crash in his room, and he said, “I promise not to try anything,” but put his hand up the back of my dress when I hugged him goodbye in the morning.

Y

“You Oughta Know,” the song the DJ played that time I dragged D. out to Nineties Night, and everyone was bobbing their heads and dancing, most of all me, on the little postage-stamp dancefloor, and through cupped hands I shouted to D. how wrong it felt, to exult at a song about poor spurned Alanis on the movie-theater floor, poor spurned Alanis calling up the family man at dinner. D. was going through a divorce, so I was showing him a good time. What the DJ should have played was that song about forget your troubles, come on, get happy. Sung by Judy Garland, an alcoholic who died at my exact current age.

X

Nightclubs mark an “X” on your hand if you’re under 21, so you won’t get served booze; nightclubs mark a frowny face on your hand if you’ve had too much and are getting kicked out; ask me how I know. 

W

Water—the etymology of “vodka” is “little water” in Russian. I used to fantasize about baptism, even though I’m not religious. To think of easing into a country stream, supportive arms around you, face to the sky. You dunk back into the water, and you come up transformed, pure. I went to vodka seeking this. At times I came closer than you might think.

V

Vodka, my poison of choice. I used to drive around with bottles of it clink-clanking in the trunk. You see, officer—I always drove first, then drank later. I’d parallel park a block or so from the club. I’d get there an hour early. Then I’d pop the trunk, run around back, grab the hooch, slam down the lid, and get back in my seat (with the ignition off), and drink until I felt ready to swim down the street.

U

Underage drinking—I never did it. Can you believe I was a month shy of 28 the first time I got drunk? I’d had sips of this or that, but looked down on all the college drinkers around me, including my freshman roommate who passed out sometimes. No keggers in high school, no frat-party blackouts. The thing about being a late bloomer is you make up for lost time.

T

My tire popped one time. I’d been drunk at a nude photo shoot; I used to do those. I didn’t get paid, and my photographer friends (“friends”) didn’t either, but they got photos for their portfolios, and I got validation. I felt ugly all my life. My mom was a legendary beauty; my sister walked the dang runways in New York. All my best friends growing up were pretty, free slices at the shopping-mall Sbarro’s when my junior-high pal M. batted her eyes. To think a person might want to point a camera at me, might like what he saw there—I got drunk on it. Even if I had to get drunk to do it. So yeah: farmhouse photo shoot (the place was also used for raves), driving home, tire popped. Not sure how. Must’ve hit something.

S

Screwdriver—the name of my go-to cocktail, even if I didn’t know it at first. I’d been down in New Orleans, had never been drunk before, and the guy I was with took me to a gay bar, saying they made good cocktails there, and he asked the bartender what I should drink, and the bartender peered at me, as if doing a scan, and, unimpressed, pronounced me an “orange juice and vodka” girl, so that’s what I’d always order afterwards, “Orange juice and vodka, please,” and then one time a co-worker said, “Oh, a screwdriver,” and the name sounded wrong for my custom, voodooed-up-for-me-in-New Orleans, city of steamy romance recipe, a toolbox moniker so utilitarian and harsh, but there you go, that’s what I am, a screwdriver girl.

R

Restroom floor, that’s where my sister spent most of the night, unbeknownst to me then, that time we put on sparkly halter tops and went to Club Five, an awful place of pounding music and grind-y guys buying us Jägermeister shots, but we didn’t know where else to go, and a bouncer cornered me and brought me up to the VIP Room where there’s a stripper pole, and I was drunkäand felt indebted to him, so of course I, shall we say, “made use of” the pole, and when the club kicked everyone out at 5 a.m. I texted my sister, and that’s when I found her, she’d spent all night puking, and we held hands and shook in the cold, trying to remember where we’d parked the car, then we gave up and called a cab.

Q

Quitting—you know, I’ve tried before. I did the “Day 1” posts, got supportive comments from friends. But the friends whose voices I heard loudest were the ones who said: “Everything in moderation, including moderation.” Maybe the loudest voice of all said: “But—Drunk Christie is Fun Christie!” It’s easy to judge him, but—where is the lie?

P

A pool party, and they don’t always tell you not to mix antibiotics with booze, so I had to be carried outta there by not one but two guys. Later a friend said of my exit: “You were dead weight!”

O

The office, work, on the job, and wouldn’t you know it, I had a two-hour workshop to lead and I was nervous, so I went across the street to a food-court restroom and I sat in a stall with a bottle of wine from Spain, and I pre-gamed before a freaking work presentation, and thankfully I didn’t overdo it, but when I posted about this on Facebook later, oversharing like always, one girl’s entire comment was: “It’s a shame you can’t remember what kind of wine it was. I love wine from Spain.”

N

New Orleans: the first place I got drunk. I already told you about that first screwdriver, but let me tell you about prancing down Bourbon Street after three of them, complimenting strangers, twirling around parking-meter stripper poles, then the guy I’d flown into town for led us to Harrah’s, the big glittering casino, and said: “Be cool. Just act normal.” This was so security wouldn’t haul us out, but they started playing “Hollaback Girl,” that Gwen Stefani song that normally sounded to me like cheerleader music, like not-me music, but that night I wasn’t me, and I started swaying my hips to it, and for the first time, after sitting out so many Electric Slides at wedding receptions and standing stock-still at concerts—I danced.

M

Moonshine. My family’s from Appalachia, lotta moonshiners in the family tree. My Granny said her brothers would take their pay from the factory that employed all the men in town, and blow it on cheap wine. My Granny said someone would fire a gun “whenever the law came to the mountains,” as she put it, so the moonshiners could abandon their stills. I heard about a guy who kept moonshine in his artificial leg. Probably he had flasks tucked in there, but I had first pictured a liquid-filled leg, sloshing with each step. Like my trunk full of clanking bottles, a noisy secret.

L

Liquor stores—I used to walk past them and look inside at all the bottles, and they looked like good times that hadn’t happened yet.

K

The club I used to go to, the one where we jubilated to Alanis’s pain, was called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Even the name—from a goth-punk eighties song and, before that, a 1966 spy movie—sounds drunk: staccato caveman words and no punctuation. There was a church down the street, with a Mary statue in front. I used to talk to the Mary statue when I got drunk. She had red fiberglass hearts on her palms until someone stole them. There’s a quote from Mary in the Bible, about when the wine had run out at a party: “They have no wine.” (John 2:3) It was because of this that Jesus turned water into wine for the first time. It was his first miracle.

J

Juice, orange. For a few years of my life I only drank orange juice when I ordered screwdrivers. “Vitamin C, yeah!” I’d think, as if it were a health tonic. “Folic acid!” I knew it was important for pregnant women to get folic acid. I always wanted to be a pregnant woman. Wonder of wonders, I drank not a drop of alcohol when I was pregnant, or even when my husband and I were trying to conceive. During this time I drank only juice.

I

I, I, I is all you ever think about when you’re drunk. And when you drink in the first place.

H

Hangover cures: we’ve all got our remedies, and the first thing I always did at the tail end of a night out was hit up the 7-Eleven for things like buffalo wings, Fritos, and custard-filled donuts. People always say to hydrate, but I mostly just ate. Once I came into the same 7-Eleven twice in one night, and the second time, the cashier said “Hello again,” as if he were unsurprised.

G

Guest room—I woke up in one, at the home of upstanding-citizen friends, a young but rich couple, who had a nice place in DC, and those are hard to come by, and they seemed to do everything right, had high-paying but creative jobs, never overdid it with booze or anything else as far as I could tell, and they’d let me crash in their guest room, and they’d turned out the light, and when I woke I didn’t know where I was, only that I didn’t belong there.

F

Fatty liver, my dad’s cousin G. had it, then it progressed into cirrhosis and killed her. She was an alcoholic. It runs in the family, along with the moonshine making. When G. died, my dad said: “I never saw G. when she wasn’t happy.” I once told a friend at a bar about this. We raised our glasses to G. and drank.

E

El-wire, or electroluminescent wire, is like a glow stick, but rope. You can drape it over a girl’s naked body, tie it into cool knots, make the whole effect vaguely bondage-y. You can take photos of the naked, wire-wrapped girl, politely pretend to adjust your camera when she pops back over to her tote bag to sip booze from what she is pretending is a water bottle. You knew the girl would agree to this, to be wrapped in these wires and let you take pictures of her, because she always does. She gets drunk on it.

D

A “DD” is a designated driver. A “DUI” is what you get if you don’t have one of those. Or if yours breaks the rules and gets drunk. “MADD” are the Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The club for mothers who are in favor of drunk driving is called “prison.”

C

And now here we are, officer. The car. I know I shouldn’t have gotten back in there after I drank so much. But it seemed so easy. Normally I sober up more, pound some buffalo wings like I said. Maybe bong a bunch of water. In the middle of the night it’s so peaceful. You can drift through the streets like a parade float, but one that you hope no one will see.

B

Did I say bong? At least I don’t do that, smoke things with a bong. I do, however, binge. Blitz my brain. Binge, bong, blitz. Bibbity bobbity boo!

A

AA, a place I have never been. Alcoholic, a word that never seemed to fit. Now that we’ve come to the end—which is really the beginning—have I charmed you to spare me, like the “1,001 Nights” Arabian king? Have I convinced you? That alcohol isn’t a problem for me, that it’s not woven throughout my life, even before I was born, like a strand of DNA? What can I do to persuade you? Touch the tip of my nose? Keep my balance while walking on a line? Tell you what—you turn on your radio, I’ll put on a little show. Shall I twerk? Running Man, Robot? Moonwalk, watusi? Hey, Macarena!