The Writing Machine

Stories by Christian Cloud Abraham

Addicted to Brown Fluids

I am an addict. I admit it. I admit I am addicted to brown fluids. Particularly the acidic brown fluids. While one exception to the acidic rule is my guzzling of black tea at work, otherwise, if it is brown and if it has a bite, I’ll drink it. I’ll prove it: I just poured my sixth cup of coffee of the day. All decaf though. It’s not for the buzz, it’s for the brown and the bite. And I mean six double-mug-sized cups of strong-ass coffee. This afternoon, I drank an entire two-liter of Diet Coke. Not for the sugar, because it has none, but because it’s brown and I like the poppy fizz.

All day long I engorge myself on brown fluids. I drink double-strong black tea at work. I use two tea bags for each cup and drink three cups a day with a full eye dropper of liquid Stevia in each cup to add a little pizzazz. No noticeable buzz with the tea like coffee - coffee gives me panic attacks and speech impairment - but a calm uplifting sense of awake. With lunch, a Diet Coke with a refill. When I get home, a pot of decaf before bed. Brown fluids from the time I get up, till the time I go down.

Yes, I am addict. It is the desire for continual pleasure. Brown fluids give me pleasure. They make me happy. They are my reward for living. Brown fluids are the pleasurable flavor I use to get me through the activities I find boring. At one dull job, I drank approximately 6-9 bottles of Diet Coke a day until the aspartame made my blood screwy and I drew a low platelet count until I stopped the stuff for a while. But I always return to the junk; I’m addicted to it. That first sip of the day calms my heart with its delicious textures sending euphoria throughout my body from toes to skull. Sometimes, this happens over and over, with each sip, all day long. No wonder I’m addicted.

There has been only one exception to this brown fluid addiction rule, when, for a short spell, I consumed green fluids consisting of four, 44 ounce Super Big Gulps of Mountain Dew a day. I was later told my voice shook from the effects of the Mountain Dew and I can say I couldn’t form a sane thought or make a sound decision during this time, but my brown fluids also have created the same effects so it is not necessarily the green fluids that caused this instability. This green fluid period ended with serious stomach problems, after which, I drank no brown fluids for six months and passed through one of the most mentally stable and clear periods of my life. But that was a long time ago and life is too long to think I could go on for ever feeling so calm and so serene, so I returned to the brown fluids for my fix of elation and euphoria and mania and hyperactivity and distraction and poppy fizz.

Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, Diet Coke, coffee, tea - all day long, brown fluids. I didn’t start this though, it was passed on from my mother and from her mother to her. My grandmother drank a 12 pack of warm Pepsi a day and smoked a pack of cigarettes a day. And when she died of cancer in her late forties, her ghost entered my mother who, a non-smoker before her mother’s death, started smoking like a steel mill and drinking pot after pot of coffee a day. You’d think she’d go down the straight and narrow and despise the compulsive behavior of her mother, but my mom took on the spirit and began a lifetime of compulsion. Her sister chose to recognize the destructive behavior of this brown fluid compulsion, and became more like her father: solid in his singular and stable ways. He ate healthy, rarely drank, certainly did not smoke, and did not have an addiction to brown fluids. I started my journey down this road in high school the summer of ‘84 when I had a moped and a 32 ounce Coke slushy was only .49 cents at the QT and I could get up to QT in a matter of a few minutes on my sky-blue Suzuki moped. Later, once I could leave campus as a Junior, the bottom of my locker always had a 32 ounce Pepsi waiting for me between classes to go with the cigarettes I would smoke in the baseball field dugout. I can absolutely declare that this addiction to brown fluids also brought about the end of my life as an athlete and the beginning of my inability to focus and sleep, which have brought about many other issues in my life, but when you’re an addict, you are blind and you don’t care and it feels great to feel this way.

Which reminds me of the best brown fluids of all: beers and liquors. Beers, although a little light brown at times, and shots of whiskey a brown the color of amber, are the best browns of them all. I love them and once I start drinking them, I want them more and more and cannot stop drinking them until the well runs dry, or I close my eyes let my intoxicated body pass out. Beer and liquor: the ultimate in acidic poppy fizz and caustic bite.

Oh! And I almost forgot chewing tobacco! Talk about caustic and biting, I wouldn’t swallow the brown fluid, but I still savored it in my mouth as it dissolved my lip away. A tin of Kodiak - delicious and potent Kodiak - still makes me drool even after all these years away from the junk. “The only bear you’ll ever pinch,” the can says, but the bear certainly bites back.

Ahh, my brown fluid addictions. I choose them all and decide when, and when not to be addicted to which fluid. For now, I’m good on the coffee and Diet Coke and black tea, but done with the alcohol and chewing tobacco. But the brown in the color of brown fluids is the color of the mellowing of life. Of pleasure. Of happiness. Of good memories and positive feelings. Of euphoria. Brown is also the color of crap, but that really puts a bad spin on my addiction so let’s forget I said that. But to wallow in the intoxication of a brown fluid binge, that is one of the most simple pleasures of being alive, and my intentions these days are to live simply, so give me another cup of Joe and bottle of Diet Coke, and let me be happy. Let me be addicted. And let me be brown.

END
© 2006 Christian Cloud Abraham

Posted on January 8, 2006 in
Emotion: Subjection, Type: Essay