Chapter 3: The Functional Alcoholic

Let’s talk about my dad. He was what you’d call a functional alcoholic. Sounds fancy, right? It’s not. It means he managed to hold down a job and pay the bills, all while being best buddies with a bottle. To the outside world, he looked like a responsible, reliable guy. Behind closed doors? Not so much.

Every night before supper, my dad would send me and my sister down to the basement. Ah, the basement—home to his precious wine cellar. And by wine cellar, I mean a collection of homemade, full-potency wine stored in barrels. Picture two kids, barely seven, messing around with a hose and siphoning wine into bottles. I remember the taste of that wine, the feeling of putting my little thumb on the clear hose and sucking the wine through.

We’d dutifully bring the wine back upstairs, and as dinner progressed, the stories of my dad’s crazy construction workday would emerge. Never a conversation, though. It was always about him—monstrous bosses, careless coworkers like Joe Blow who didn’t harness himself to the building. Never about us. Slowly, the conversation would degrade. My mother would tell him it was enough, he’d get angry and continue talking, often to himself, lost in a trance.