Drinking

No one should drink as quickly as I do, says W., no one. Or as much. You drink too much, W exclaims. Of course, W. remembers when I barely drank at all. I wasn't a drinker then, W. says. I lived with monks at the time, which explains a great deal. What happened?, says W. What changed for you? I know: it was finding friends. You didn't have any friends before, did you? All you had were potatoes, your potato friends.

W. remembers coming to stay with me, and being made potatoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Potatoes were your mainstay, said W. I tried to convert him to my potato diet, W. remembers, and he agreed, I did have quite a way with potatoes, I cooked them in interesting ways, but in the end he thought I was insane. No one can live entirely on potatoes, W. says. Not even you.

In those days, W. remembers, the only friends I had were potato friends. Didn't I draw faces on them, and animate them like some idiot child? That's what W. imagined. You and your potatoes, W. says. Your only friends.

It all changed when you actually found some friends. You left your potatoes behind, W. said. You went out into the world. My God, the amount you used to drink! And the way you drank! So quick! So remorselessly!

For his part, W. is a steady drinker – a heavy drinker, but a steady one. He paces himself – he learnt it from Polish drinkers, who begin slowly and continue slowly, but drink through the whole night. Visiting Poland taught W. a great lesson about drinking.

There comes a stage in your life when you have to drink, W. says. There's nothing for it. The world is shit, life's shit, and if you thought for a moment, really thought, you'd kill yourself. W. went through a period of drinking everyday, he says, just as I went through one. He had to, he says, it had all become too much for him. He learned it from me, he says, drinking through your despair.

He was a melancholy drunk, W. says, lying in front of the TV with a bottle of wine. I, on the other hand, was an exhilarated drunk, writing rubbish on the internet all night, when I wasn't out in the pubs. Of course, W. never knows when to stop drinking. He never stops until he passes out, he says. Imagine it: passed out, in front of the TV. That's why he cut down his drinking, W. says.

I ruined my digestive system, W. remembers, that's why I stopped drinking so much. I was continually on the verge of soiling myself, it was disgusting, says W. When he came to stay and followed my drinking regime, it was exactly the same: he was on the verge of soiling himself. He had a glimpse of the horror of my life, which was completely different to the horror of his life. Your digestion!, he remembers. What did you do to yourself? No one should have lived as I did, says W. He's amazed I survived.