by Drew Magary
I remember sitting in that car, asking myself why I was there, why I was bothering to endanger my life to sit in a car going nowhere I wanted to go. I’m sure any number of teenagers have died asking themselves the same question. It’s such a stupid thing to do, to get into a car being driven by a blind-drunk person. And yet, when you’re that age, you feel as if that’s clearly the best option. You feel as if turning down the ride would be embarrassing, which is insane because the real shame is in being stupid enough to accept it. I easily could have died that night. We could have gone skidding off the road and that would have been that. Instead, we made it back to his house and I slept myself sober.
I’m sure there will be a moment in my children’s future when they will be shitfaced at a party and someone who is equally shitfaced will entice them to take a ride in a car. And they’ll have to decide, on a whim, whether that’s a good idea. One stupid tiny moment in an ocean of hours and days and weeks and years, and maybe that’s the moment when they’ll randomly choose their own demise. You can do everything possible as a parent to prevent it, but ultimately, there are no guarantees. There never are.
The first time I ever got drunk and drove on my own was at another after-party for some other table-running job I had (the Austrian guy declined to bring me back the next summer, probably because I used to sing out loud while washing dishes). The head chef brought everyone to his house and cooked up food for us on three different grills, with buckets of One-Eyed Jack—a precursor to Mike’s Hard Lemonade—dotted all over his lawn. I was eighteen, so I was at the proper age for consuming malt lemonade and thinking, This tastes like candy!
I drank one after another and quickly realized that I was shitfaced with no way home except my car. I could have called a cab. I could have gone with my tail between my legs to someone at the party, asking them for a ride home. I could have called my parents to pick me up. But there was a combination of laziness and that ever-present fear of embarrassment that prevented me from doing the right thing. Instead, I got into my car, drove back home, and blew a stop sign along the way. I was NOT driving the speed limit. I was halfway through the stop sign when I realized what I had done. I slammed on the brakes and skidded into the center of the intersection. No one was there. No one saw me do it. If another car had been around, I probably would have hit it. Maybe killed someone. Maybe died myself. After that, I promised myself I would never drink and drive again, but time has a way of loosening you up, of getting you to give bad ideas a second chance.
I began drinking and driving regularly after moving from New York to DC when I was twenty-seven. When you live in New York, you never drive, so going out and drinking is never a problem because there’s always a cab or a subway or a bus or your own two feet to get you home. Anyone leaving New York for another American city has to find a way of adjusting to that new city’s driving culture, taking your car with you virtually everywhere you go. I adjusted poorly.
One night in my new hometown, I was out with a friend, with no way home except for my car. I figured that one beer wouldn’t impair me all THAT much, so I had a beer and drove home and everything was hunky-dory. So the next time I went out, I figured that perhaps TWO beers would be just fine. After all, one was no problem. Why not one more? In no time, I was merrily drinking and driving every weekend. I stopped counting drinks. I became convinced that I was good to drive no matter how much I drank. I drank and drove with my wife in the car. A handful of times, I had a couple of drinks and drove with my kids in the car, which was irresponsible but softened my temper when they were kicking my seat. At any kid function like a birthday party or a playdate where booze was served, I drank. Adults need alcohol in that situation. You stop hovering over your kid and have an easier time talking to other parents. Oh, you’re building a new basement? FASCINATING. Do you have any more of this Cabernet? It’s awesome. GLUG GLUG GLUG.
The longer you go drinking and driving without getting caught, the more you become convinced that you’ll NEVER be caught. Getting caught becomes the domain of other, less professional drunk drivers: teenagers getting loaded on peach schnapps, hobos, athletes who drive too fast, etc. Not you. You wildly underestimate how much the alcohol impairs your abilities behind the wheel. I’m okay to drive. I said that a lot, as if my own bullshit assessment mattered.
In the back of my head, I knew it was wrong. There were nights when I would wake up at 3:00 A.M. to go piss and to down a glass of water and two Advil to prevent a hangover the next morning. And while standing in my bathroom, with nothing but the moonlight illuminating my bloated body, I would think to myself, Why did I drink and drive like that? What am I, stupid? In that moment, I would feel a tremendous surge of dark guilt and shame, a sense that I had endangered the welfare of my wife and children for no good reason. It was that sickening feeling you get when you know you’ve done the indefensible.
Then the morning would come and I would forget all about it. Despite the occasional self-induced guilt trip, I came to enjoy drinking and driving. Sometimes I would go out and look forward to the drive home more than the actual time spent at the bar. I loved the feeling of the car zooming along when I was buzzed. Sometimes I would blast the music and take curves at a decent speed, pretending I was driving an Alfa Romeo with a cadre of Russian spies hot on my ass.
One spring day, I met some friends after work at a bar to watch basketball and I drank five or six beers. Then I drove home on the Beltway—one of the worst roads in America—and got stuck in traffic. But I couldn’t have cared less about sitting there in that jam. I reveled in being the only person stuck on the road that had no problem with it. I rolled down the window, took in some fresh exhaust, and sang along to the radio without a care in the world. I was having a blast, alone, drunk in my car.
• • •
The second I knew I was gonna be arrested, I accepted it. There was no frantic search for a penny to suck on or some wild deliberation in my own mind about taking a Breathalyzer. I sat there calmly and waited for my fate to be sealed. Officer Burgess had me step out of the car, walk the line, say the alphabet backward, run an obstacle course, do burpees, and all that other fun stuff. Cops don’t do this to figure out if you’re drunk. They know that the second you roll your window down. I think they do this just for fun, and I can’t blame them. It really builds up the anticipation for administering the Breathalyzer and putting on the cuffs.
“Close your eyes,” he ordered.
“Okay.”
“Now touch your nose.”
I felt my finger touch the point of my nose and I had to suppress my glee. Maybe I was getting away with it.
“Okay, Mr. Magary, I’m gonna have you take a Breathalyzer test.”
Shit.
He led me over to the Breathalyzer and had me blow. Seconds later, he took my hands behind my back and I felt the cuffs go on. They were cool to the touch.
“I’m going to book you for DUI, Mr. Magary.”
“What did the Breathalyzer say?”
“I can’t tell you that right now.”
“Really?” It seemed like such a tease.
“Sorry.”
He helped me into the front seat of his car. I wondered why I didn’t get the backseat treatment. What if I try to bite his penis off while he’s driving me to the station? There’s nothing stopping me, except for common sense and basic human decency. I made small talk with the officer, as if we were on a business trip together. “Busy night?” I asked. What a fucking stupid question.
I stared out the window and thought about the impending fallout of my arrest. My wife would be angry, to be certain. I might go to jail. I was gonna have to cough up a lot of money that I would rather not cough up. I dreaded the idea of not being able to drink for a while. I remember feeling like the party was over, that life was going to stop being fun now. Somehow I had become so fucked in the head that driving a car after a few beers was now an important facet
of my existence, something I didn’t want to end. I was a suburban dad with two kids. Lemme have my one last piece of rebellion. Pathetic, meaningless rebellion.
Once Officer Burgess took me into the station, he cuffed me to a table that had a special steel bar running underneath that served as a prisoner hitching post. Then he had me fill out reams of paperwork and snapped a Polaroid of me.
“Is that my mug shot?” I asked. I kinda wanted one. You know, for posterity.
“No,” he said. “I just take this so I can remember your face when I see you in court.”
He morphed into my DUI field guide, telling me everything that was going to happen to me and explaining that I needed a ride home since my license was now temporarily suspended. He also recommended a handful of state-approved alcohol education classes, which you must take prior to showing up in court.
“You think I’ll be able to manage this without a lawyer?” I asked. I already knew the answer.
He shook his head with genuine regret. “It’s unlikely, Mr. Magary. You can try, but I wouldn’t advise it. I’m sorry.” I visualized pretty whirlwinds of cash streaming out of my shorts pocket.
After hours of being processed, Officer Burgess handed me my paperwork, which included my official BAC of .10, and I was formally released. My friend picked me up at the station and drove me to my house. Just as we were turning the corner onto my street, my phone rang and I saw the word “HOME” flashing on the screen. And now the shame and regret and sadness arrived in a rising tide. Why? Why, why, why? I took my wife’s call and told her as fast as I could, like ripping off a Band-Aid to get the pain over with.
I walked through the door and she greeted me at the top of the stairs, exhausted. It was now 3:00 A.M.
“I thought you might be dead,” she said.
“I’m so sorry.”
“We can talk about it later. I just want sleep.”
The next day, she barely spoke to me. I wasn’t her husband that day. I was just this thing that she had to deal with. For a single twenty-four-hour stretch, I felt convinced that my wife didn’t love me anymore. Whatever life force is created when two people love each other had vaporized, and I could feel it. You could have strapped me to a table and sawed through my bones and it wouldn’t have been as painful. Being unloved is like being homeless. Destitute.
My daughter was playing outside on the swing when my wife finally pulled me aside to unload. She didn’t raise her voice.
“I’m hurt, and I’m angry.”
I broke down in front of her. “Please forgive me. Please. It’ll never happen again. Please believe me.” I kept saying that line over and over again. Please believe me. I thought if I said it enough, maybe it would stick. It began to grate on her.
“Stop saying that. I’m not gonna believe you right now. You have to actually not do it again.”
Wives aren’t dumb. They aren’t just going to absolve you on the spot. You’d never learn your lesson that way. If forgiveness were that swift, it wouldn’t be worth anything. That’s the hardest part of being married—when you’ve fucked up and want desperately to mend everything quickly, only your partner won’t give you the satisfaction.
The drunk driving wasn’t even the worst part of it. As a result of my arrest, I had my license suspended, making her the sole family driver for two months. She was far more pissed about that than the actual drunken driving, and I couldn’t blame her. In a family of four or more, it’s crucial to have at least two functioning drivers. A parent that can’t drive isn’t a parent at all. It’s an old dog that should be dragged out and shot.
My daughter continued playing as I cried to my wife for absolution. Later on, I told the girl that I was going to have to go to class for a few nights.
“What kind of class?” she asked.
“Uh . . . a learning class,” I said. “Here, have a pretzel.”
• • •
I walked into alcohol education class and was greeted by the sight of twenty other drunk drivers sitting in a loose circle: rich, poor, black, white, Hispanic. It was a Rainbow Coalition of fuckups, almost heartwarming in a way.
The multitude of DUI arrests in this country has created a microeconomy of lawyers, alcohol education facilities, and local government agencies. Your arrest helps keep the industry afloat, and nowhere is that more apparent than in alcohol education. No one in my class seemed at all remorseful about getting arrested. In fact, many of them felt dicked over by the system for having the gall to catch them drinking and driving when everyone else did it anyway. The class was just like detention, only sadder.
Class started at 7:00 P.M. every night, which further infuriated my wife because 7:00 P.M. was right around kiddie put-down time, when it’s crucial for all hands to be on deck to deal with bathing, brushing teeth, and threatening the kids with prison for coming downstairs more than six times after being tucked in. Before the teacher arrived, we would sit in a circle and make small talk, which always revolved around three questions:
1. How did you get arrested?
2. What was your BAC?
3. How many classes you got left?
Everyone sympathized with everyone else, and everyone thought everyone else’s arrest was some serious bullshit. There was an immigrant who got arrested for being drunk in a parked car. There was a twitchy, dark-haired man who was bitter because he had to travel all the way from Virginia each week for class. There was a seventeen-year-old high school student who was now grounded until 2027. Everyone complained about lawyer fees, about the cops, and about the obligations of the class. My first night in class, a girl asked me where I got pulled over.
“On Rockville Pike,” I said.
“Oh my God, was Officer Burgess the one who got you?”
“Yeah, that was his name.”
“He got me too!”
Suddenly, we had so much in common. It was like we were siblings. Officer Burgess was the Scourge of Rockville Pike.
“What was your BAC?” she asked me.
“Point one-oh,” I said.
A handful of other students let out winces because the legal limit is Maryland is .08. I was THIS close to not being too drunk, even though that doesn’t really mean anything. I was plenty drunk. We all revealed our BACs to each other: .09, .16, .18, .25. I tried to form a mental picture of what each level of drunkenness looked like. I was delighted at how many students had higher BACs than me. It made me feel like less of a criminal.
Every week, a handful of students would announce that they had just one or two classes left to go before being freed, and the rest of the class would congratulate them despite also being deeply jealous of them. New arrestees would come in to take the veterans’ place in class. They are never short on students in alcohol education.
Once the teacher arrived and we had all settled in, she would have us say our names and then ask us if we had “used” in the past week. The correct answer to this was obviously NO, even if you had drunk alcohol in the past week (I abstained for eight months after I got arrested). But more than a handful of students would happily confess and then watch the teacher scribble down the answer without realizing that she was there to report such things to the courts.
One lady even showed up to class drunk, as if she had been shotgunning beers on the Metrobus ride over. The teacher asked her if she had used the past week and she was like, “Of course! But what’s the big fucking deal? AM I RIGHT, GUYS?!” A lot of scribbling after that. I was so embarrassed for her, I wanted to gag her and hide her in the closet so she wouldn’t dig a deeper hole for herself. You fool! Don’t you understand that the teacher is a government mole?!
The teacher’s only job was to press play on a DVD player so that we could watch the educational video for the night. Most of the time, this consisted of an episode of A&E’s Intervention, which was a fantastic show, and part of me was happy to be arrested just s
o I could discover it. We also watched Leaving Las Vegas over the course of three classes, because there’s no better lesson for alcoholics than to watch a dying, insufferable drunk manage to score with a smoking-hot prostitute.
Despite its flaws, alcohol education was uniquely successful at shaming me, at making me feel like a total fucking loser. Everyone who shows up to a DUI class thinks that they don’t belong there and that they’re better than everyone else in the room. It’s like walking into an OTB parlor by accident. These people are degenerates. I’m the anomaly. That’s the standard alkie train of thought. But down in my guts, I knew that I belonged in that class. I wasn’t there by accident. I was just as stupid and irresponsible as the rest of them. And it’s never comforting to feel like a stupid person. You wanna die from embarrassment. That’s the real deterrent to a second DUI arrest. Not the money. Not the inconvenience. It’s the self-ridicule.
The alcohol education course also required students to attend AA once a week for eight weeks. The teacher handed me a green booklet of meetings that took place around the area, and I perused it like a college student going over a course catalog. There were AA classes for people of all stripes: vegans, dog owners, evangelicals, pastry chefs, you name it. I chose one called “We Agnostics” because it promised a secular approach to sobriety, and I wanted to avoid prayer circles if I could. The meetings were held in a church, which kinda defeated the purpose of the enterprise, but I went anyway.
