The Alcoholic's Playlist Is Full of David Berman

An essay by Ben Gaffaney about how David Berman’s suicide intersected with his own alcoholism and eventual sobriety:

Here’s a story: I was listening to “That’s Just the Way that I Feel” by Purple Mountains on the day I wrecked my wife’s truck. Here’s the truth: I was drunk on a Wednesday, the way I always was. I was in tennis clothes because I’d told my wife I had a lesson on Wednesday nights, allowing me to drink in the office till 8, then use the drive home to verbally practice stories about the lesson. I planned to give her an update on a fellow player, “Phillip Feetshoes,” who played in Vibram FiveFingers instead of tennis shoes. I’d mentioned him before; he was modeled after a regulatory lawyer I knew. It was summer in Austin, but I had the heat on high so I’d have a post-workout sheen of sweat when I got home. I thought about pretending the next lessons were a half-hour later, for 30 more minutes of vodka. Then I ran a stop sign, a subcompact smashed into the passenger side, I blew three times the legal limit and went to jail for the night. I vaguely remember trying to laugh off my field test performance and telling the police that the plastic zip lines they used instead of cuffs were environmentally unfriendly.

I don’t actually know what song I was listening to, but it would have been a perfect story: the lead single from David Berman’s final album, chiming “The end of all wanting is all I’ve been wanting” as I ran through a stop sign on August 7, 2019, the same day Berman hung himself. It was, in fact, the last day I drank.

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via Web Curios