Drunkards

Drunkards are so alike. Drink with other drinkers to the end of the night and there is a great camaraderie. Everyone else has left and a few remain. The jollity has gone, the exuberance. Drinking has become a serious business; you must match each other drink for drink. You are the last drinkers, barely coherent, no longer exuberant. Stoic. You have survived the evening. But this is not camaraderie. What do you share? Everything – you have drunk enough to become more or less interchangeable with the others. You are drunkards, all alike. But what you share is what dissipates each of you. You share a kind of dispersal. Tape your conversation and you would hear hesitancies, intermittiencies, inarticulate murmurings … it’s magnificent.