Click

Brick has his “click.” “Somethin’ hasn’t happened yet,” so he drinks and waits for the click in his head that makes him feel peaceful, “like a switch, clickin’ off in my head. Turns the hot light off and the cool one on, and all of a sudden there’s peace.”

BIG DADDY
Boy, you're, you're a real alcoholic.

BRICK
That is the truth. Yes, sir, I am an alcoholic. So if you'd just excuse me ...

I didn’t have a certain point I reached with a certain drink that turned the cool light on. But there was a moment, at the end a daily one, that was similar. It wasn’t on the stoop, locking the front door, because there was still the walk or the metro ride. It wasn’t in the elevator, as the doors closed on work, because there could always be a private party at the bar. It was at the door to the bar, arriving, walking in, sensing no further separation between me and the drink, looking up at the marvelous sepias and thick transparencies bottled up on the backlit gantry, waiting to be served, without having to ask.

It was like being drunk already, and it would feel like that all night, until the opposite moment would arrive and it was time to go back out into the dark, underground, to unlock doors and disappoint others, back to something that hadn’t happened yet.