A love story.  Yes: this is a love story.

It's about passion, sensual pleasure, deep pulls, lust, fears, yearning hungers.  It's about needs so strong they're crippling.  It's about saying good-bye to something you can't fathom living without.

I loved the way drink made me feel, and I loved its special power of deflection, its ability to shift my focus away from my own awareness of self and onto something else, something less painful than my own feelings.  I loved the sounds of drink: the slide of a cork as it eased out of a wine bottle, the distinct glug-glug of booze pouring into a glass, the clatter of ice cubes in a tumbler.  I loved the rituals, the camaraderie of drinking with others, the warming, melting feelings of ease and courage it gave me.

Our introduction was not dramatic; it wasn't love at first sight, I don't even remember my first taste of alcohol.  The relationship developed gradually, over many years, time punctuated by separations and reunions.  Anyone who's ever shifted from general affection and enthusiasm for a lover to outright obsession knows what I mean: the relationship is just there, occupying a small corner of your heart, and then you wake up one morning and some indefinable tide has turned forever and you can't go back.  You need it; it's a central part of who you are.

I used to drink with a woman named Elaine, a next-door neighbor of mine.  I was in my twenties when we met and she was in her late forties, divorced and involved with a married man whom she could not give up.  Elaine drank a lot, more than I did, and she drank especially hard when the relationship wi...