Two One One: High-Functioning

A summer's evening here, warm and hazy. One more archived note, written originally almost sixteen years ago, drunkenly sent to a friend overseas in the austral summer.

The girl who wrote it reminds me that this is

an email from [me at 16], drunk and so stupid...

jim was an older, high-functioning-ish alcoholic that I fell in love with at sixteen...

The email is to a friend of hers, who was in China with her fencing team. So...let's go to a beach house on an austral bay in December of a lost 2002:

heyyy

wat the hell how come u sent Sarah 2 emails and me only one? that's so mean. i'm so drunk already its like 9 o clock here. it's my birthday tomorrow. ive had like 12 gin and tonics. i feel kinda out of it. we were having drinks and i got so upset i started crying. i was real gutted Christmas is so upside down ya know like spending Christmas with people that i never fucken see like my dad and his girlfriend but im not seeing the poeple i really love, its so gay. but jim looked after me and we had mad drunk sex. good to know. haha. Sarah just rang me and shes at a party at Telfords or something and Bradley Jacques is there and last week i went to Woolsworth and bought smokes and condoms off him and he's like real religious and shit and he didn't look to impressed with my fakey but he still sold to me. haha i dont care. so how is the Far East? how is the fencing? ya know its my birthday tomorrow. i'm 17 tomorrow like not a kiddo anymrore. by the way i had such a cool time last night me and jim picked me up and went in his car to Petone Beach and we just sat there for ages just talking and shit it was fucken rad. and i sucked his cock in the front seat ;) then we came back here cos im home alone and shit. Well i was last night and we just hung out, did lines and danced in the kicthen. he is so cool. ur like my best friend ya know and i'm not just saying all this shit cos i'm drunk. you are actually really cool. like not a cardboard cutout like Jingan and Juliana the Asians. You have like a personality. personalities are good. it will be so cool when you get back and we can go the Hummingbird and you can come to the Angus with the boys. oh my god, i keep having weird dreams about Fat Tony like i want him real bad but don't think i really do ya know. i can't believe you have not yet met jim. jim = light of my life, fire of my lions, my sin, my soul. ha ha just kidding that is Lolita. so what the hell loser EMAIL me!! why you email Sarah and not me? that sucks babe ya know. im a bit drunk so sorry if i upset you. you are rad as fuck.  

hVAE A good christmas in case i don't talk from you before then. i'm going to town tomorow for my birthday its tomorrow but jim's not going coming, i'll see him in morning instead. i wish he was coming i wish you were coming too. i know you think i just use jim and he just uses me but maybe it was kinda a little bit of that at the start but now i really quite love him a lot and he's cool as. He even knows about the venting and is a-ok.  i've gotta go now. email me back or i'll be so gutted. tell your sister.

laterhh

Sloppy drunk the night before she turned seventeen. I suppose I wish I'd known her then, just as she was launching out into her Bad Girl years--- her Bad Girl decade, really. I like her sloppy drunk, for whatever that's worth. She's a fun drunk, though prone to tears out of both sadness and happiness. I've no idea what became of Jim, though "high-functioning alcoholic" isn't something anyone sustains for long. How much older was he? Hard to say--- old enough to have a car in a country that tries to keep anyone under eighteen from having a "full" driving license. I also have no idea how long the affair lasted. Long enough for his inevitable collapse into being the non-fun kind of alcoholic?

Still...I've always envied her her past. Posh parents, inevitably divorced,  money and precious little adult supervision in her teens, a life by the beach, a life in posh neighbourhoods where long-legged blonde girls were given a great deal of leeway. She's a successful professional now, with a lovely reno'd house of her own and three rental properties providing her with a private income. A girl who flies to island countries for long weekends and takes her long weekends in elegant little retreat cabins by the shore in hilly wine country. Someone to whom I will always feel de bas en haut, forever and always.

I do envy her all her teen adventures--- envy, not jealousy. That says nothing good about me, but then I'm not likely ever to be described as "high-functioning" in any way whatsoever.