Freedom Is Messy
You can now find me on Google, in some dope magazines, & living a life of sobriety!
Lovers & Friends,
Yo! KB Brookins here. I went outside last night and it was *kind of* chilly, which means Texas is approaching fall!!! Y’all have no idea how ready I’ve been since… June’s 100+ heat waves lol. I hope this newsletter is catching you in the best of moods, having the best of times, and eating the best food your local grocery stores/restaurants have to offer. Here are some writerly updates from me.
I am now the Poet-in-Residence at Civil Rights Corps. Read my announcement of this here (or here) (or here).
Prolit Magazine — a literary magazine about money, work, and class — published what I think might be some of my best poems (?) this month. In FREEDOM HOUSE, my debut full-length collection of poems that comes out next spring, I write a lot about the chains that money puts people in, and how we are expected to perform sexuality and labor in the 21st century. Read a few of my musings on this here.
If you’ve ever spent more than twenty minutes around me, you’ve probably heard me rant about the state of literary America. For Poetry Northwest’s “On Failure” series, I speak on my journey through the creative writing landscape, and how writers aren’t exempt from being….. racist and sexist and stuff. Too often, people in our profession — especially the profession of poetry — are seen as truth-tellers, folks with insight on contemporary issues, and “chosen ones” who can save us all. Two things can be true: creative writing is a provocation that people go to to tell the truth, and creative writing is an industry run by capital (just like every other one), which makes it susceptible to the many issues creative writers claim to be above. Read more of my thoughts (plus a poem!) here.
Google me! I was finally able to prove to google that I am me (lol…. Long story) and added some ish to my results.
I’ve been doing such BEAUTIFUL interviews with the likes of the Chicago Review of Books, Sightlines Magazine, and more. Check out all my recent convos and reviews here.
Please ask your local public library, bookstore, university, college, book club, or political education group to please carry my debut poetry book, “How To Identify Yourself With a Wound”. It would mean the world to me! The ISBN is 978-1-952224-13-3. Let's get it poppin’ baby!!!!!
So now that that’s over, I’d love to get into the crux of this here newsletter. I know that I said I would be trying out multiple audio newsletter segments, but….. editing audio is hard & I’m tryna outsource it (lol). In the meantime, can I share some other thoughts I’ve got on alcohol, freedom, and mess?
(you: yes you can, KB)
Ok great! Here are those thoughts, most of which are still marinating, but I love y’all enough to offer them anyway.
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Things I’ve learned in 6 months of sobriety
In the city that I live in, there is no problem with accessing liquor. At the club, chain and local liquor spots, coffee shops, restaurants— hell, even some of the kiddy spots hold makeshift bars for all the thirsty parents. Even somewhat hidden on my university campus, there is a study space where workers and students get their fix. It is quite normal to drink here.
So much so that at times, I get weird about saying that I’m sober.
“I need to hydrate first,” I say, when I really mean that I’ll be babysitting a Topo Chico with lime all night. Though I’ve never been chastised for not drinking, it is the tone in which people respond that tells me that my habits are odd.
“Why?” a dear friend said when I denied their gesture to pay for a drink.
“Okay, nobody’s stopping you,” a stranger said at what I was hoping to be a friend mixer. It is that what’s wrong with you subtext that keeps me blaming my not drinking on something that makes more sense in a city whose culture is booze and brews.
The complicated thing is, I can’t blame them. From 16 to 26, I enjoyed a drink when I could (and couldn’t) afford it. Especially in the early days of the pandemic, when everything was uncertain and terrifying, my drinking went from casual to multiple days a week. The feeling of alcohol hitting my bloodstream and making me feel like I breathed easier, my muscles were more relaxed, and I could have conversations without anxiety making me say I had to go to bed, or check on some food in the oven, or —-. For me, drinking was something that no other substance could do. Weed made me drowsy, and anything stronger than it made me squeamish. When you’re in the liminal space between sober and “too much”, the little-bit-more-than-buzzed, it’s beautiful. It’s a kind of freedom that American life doesn’t afford unless you’re high or rich.
And it was like that…until it couldn’t be. Somewhere between 24 and 26, my body started to be more repellent to my ingesting it with calming poison. The little-bit more-than-buzzed only lasted 30 minutes, and then quickly dwindled into peeing, sleeping, and trying to survive a hangover. My complicated schedule couldn’t handle an entire day of feeling like my head was pounding. I developed kidney issues, which especially made drinking precarious. This old habit was no longer synonymous with my new life and gradually-disabling body.
Every now and then, I still like to go to clubs; they’ve been my safe haven to meet friends, do a little two-step, and watch drunk people dance. What feels especially potent is the sentiments around drinking:
“It’s been a hard day; I deserve a drink.”
“It's your birthday; let’s get drunk!”
“I need to get loose; fetch me a drink.”
Every emotion warranted a drink; celebrations, the end of a harrowing week, scrolling for too long on Twitter, their morality— everything; most things, however, were connected to wanting some kind of freedom. In any case, friends and strangers I’ve come to love being around craved to be messy.
When you’re messy while drunk, at least you have something to blame it on—a sense of freedom brought on by diluting your blood. You have license to dance in ways that make you look ridiculous, or avoid the emotional labor of processing a hard day in the midst of a mess. While I’ve been breaking a 10-year habit, I’ve watched human minds crave release from the everyday perils brought on by late-stage capitalism. I’m uninterested in “alcohol is bad rhetoric”, and more so interested in interrogating alcohol and drugs as band-aids to larger issues.
In this life, we have lots of responsibilities to tend to (work, school, keeping our rooms clean, feeding and clothing ourselves, keeping our bills paid, etc). For many of us, we’re expected to be responsible as soon as we wake u
p. So when we go to a club or have a night in with our crew, or pick up a bottle of wine in a room all by ourselves, we are often asking for permission to give up our muscle-memorized responsibility, even if just for the duration of the caesura between “not enough” and “too much”. Those hours are hours out of our 16 hours of consciousness that don’t have to be spent being responsible! So for that reason, I get it.
While I haven’t been drinking, I’ve searched for ways to be messy elsewhere. It has proven to be HARD! The loosening of our roles as adults — the insistence on doing something that brings you joy, and you never plan on monetizing — is, in essence, anti-American. No matter how many brochures I’ve been given on work/life balance, it’s near-impossible to work hard for your basic needs AND be able to be messy! Daddy Bezos and friends expect perfection, and we expect perfection from each other. Nonetheless, it has been important for me to try out new ways of feeling the freedom that is kinder to my body.
In the “today” of things, I’ve become something of a hobbyist. Feeling the Texas breeze at 8 AM while riding my bike is pretty damn close to what I used to feel from liquor. Solidly sitting in 2nd place is yoga. Others include snorkeling, roller skating, and attending entertainment venues (museums, drag shows, comedy, theatre, music shows, and the like). Every now and then, I still feel tempted by the bottle, but then I remember that it’s made way for other (better) habits.
Any freedom worth having is messy. If we don’t have something in our lives that doesn’t expect us to be perfect, then we are missing out on freedom, I think. In the age of late-stage capitalism, what is a thing you can do that brings you joy, and you never plan on monetizing? I’d love to pose this to you, in hopes that you get it, and keep it close.
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Thanks, and hope you had fun reading! Til next time.
Love, Peace, and Chicken Grease,
KB