AlliMorphosis: The night I became a Real Person (according to my grandma)

Probably most people don’t look back on their grandparents’ 50^th wedding anniversary party as “this time I got really hammered and made questionable decisions.”

But I’m not most people.

Ten years ago this month, we celebrated Nick and Doris Nicholas’s half-century of wedded bliss. I was twenty-four, newly married, and far worse at moderation than I am now. (Which, if you’ve ever been to a bar with me, should be concerning.) We’d rented a hall for this—and not just any hall, the Exeter Legion Hall.

The Exeter Legion Hall is an old, quaint party venue, and the only game in town. It’s pretty standard for a reception hall: partitioned bar area at the front, a big open space with a wood floor in the middle, a kitchen and bathrooms in the back. It perpetually smells of burnt coffee and old men’s cologne. But oh, how I wish its blue carpeted walls could talk. That hall has no doubt been a keen observer of Exeter’s unfolding history—family arguments, the beginnings and endings of social movements, the first meetings of lovers and the dissolution of marriages—it’s all taken place under the eyes of those walls.

So much of my own personal history has happened at that hall. Multiple wedding receptions, including my own. The annual Exeter Alumni dance. Proms. Pancake feeds. Estate auctions. Lots of other stuff. That place is a nocturnal creature: sleepy by day (bake sales, funeral lunches), and WILD by night (the fun stuff). When I roll up to the "The Legion" after sundown, my body is conditioned to expect multiple strong drinks. Preferably drinks that feature bright green vodka, and preferably served by Stub Moore, a legendary drink mixologist of Exeter.

Yet, even though this was a nighttime event held at our town’s Monument to Public Drunkenness, it was my grandparents’ anniversary party. A family event, and also a community event. The thing you have to understand about my hometown, Exeter (population ~600), is that when there’s an event at the Legion Hall, all are welcome. It isn’t really an invite-only kind of venue. If you live in Exeter and you know the people being celebrated, and you don’t have anything else to do, you go up to Legion and say the obligatory “congrats” to whoever, then you drink Stub Moore drinks with your friends.

So I could expect, on that evening, to be in the company of all of my family and a big chunk of Exeter’s AARP crowd. All of whom knew me as a Good Girl. I’d been the valedictorian. I’d gotten a full ride to college. I’d never been in legal trouble. I’d married my high school sweetheart. I was working on a PhD in therapy. I helped people. Good. Girl.

I was left with two basic options on how to spend the evening of my grandparents’ soiree: Uphold my Good Girl image, or do the Legion Hall as it is meant to be done.

Here’s a clue as to the choice I made:

The real win here is my mom's face.

Those little bottles of liquor get me every time. It’s like I get thrown off by their cuteness and tininess (“Oh look at you, you’re just a little guy!”) and forget how much of a punch they pack. I drank three or four of them, whatever I had in my purse, because gosh darnit, they’re so petite and tasty.

And then someone brought me a couple of Stub drinks. I was thirsty, and they were wet.

And then I became the world’s best dancer. So did my brother. It’s hard to describe what happened that night, to the tune of Sinatra’s New York, New York. I can say that there were many Ginger Rogers inspired jumps, and lots of frolicking and pirouetting (it was pirouetting in my mind, at least) on my part. I’m pretty sure there was some high kicking at the end—you know—“These little town bluuuues…are melting awayyyyy…” Both my brother and I fell at some point during the song. We made Nicholas family history that night. Sadly, someone got this on video, so we could not preserve the graceful images that our mind would have saved for us. We’ve got the real, raw, ridiculous truth of it, now stowed somewhere in our parents’ entertainment center.

And here's a few pics of the raw, ridiculous truth

I think New York New York happened at like 9 PM, while most of the party guests were still milling around. This means that a big chunk of the Exeter geriatric population got to see me act as stupid as I ever have. My reputation was officially sullied. I don’t know if it’s ever recovered.

The night progressed. I sidled up to Exeter’s part-time police officer, a man I’d never actually met and wouldn’t have recognized, save his uniform. Leaning against the wall near the men’s room, I informed him, in a slurred voice, that he “couldn’t do anything to me, because I was the mayor’s daughter.” All of which was technically true, but incredibly unnecessary. I was of-age and not doing anything illegal (because being stupid isn’t illegal, and neither is bad dancing). I think the uniform and the liquor made me regress a few years, and I’d forgotten after all the years of illicit drinking in that Legion Hall, that I was, in fact, old enough. Also, I think I seriously overestimated my dad’s power to get me out of stuff (if I had been doing anything illegal). I mean, being the mayor of Exeter is something, but it’s not like he’s Johnnie Cochran or anything. “If the liquor’s legit, you must acquit!”

Still later in the night, my grandmother caught me scrounging for potato chips in the hall kitchen. Because I’m a maudlin drunk when I’ve had too much, I started crying. I told her that I never wanted anything to change and I didn’t want her to ever die. Drunk as I was, I remember saying this, because I remember feeling it and at that moment it was the rawest, most vulnerable wish inside of me. I was happy and I wanted things to stay the same. Grandma was a good sport. She laughed, hugged me, and wiped away my tears and the remnant potato chip crumbs that dotted my dress. She told me that everything changes, and it has to because “that’s life.” Then she escorted me into the bathroom and made me put cold water on my face, because “you’re a mess, Alli.”

Eventually, the party died down and the hall cleared out. The drinking-aged cousins and I retired to my aunt’s for the after-party. (You know you have won at life when there is an after-party to your grandparent’s 50^th wedding anniversary. Seriously.) I mostly dozed on the couch, exhausted from all of my socially inappropriate interactions and sweet dance moves. My brother and cousin drank wine and milk, per their report, because it’s all they could find. They sat together at the table, loudly quoting movies, one of them saying “Go back to your home on whore island!” I, because I hadn't (AND STILL HAVEN'T) seen Anchorman, didn't understand that this was a movie quote and took it as a statement directed at me. I sat up and told them that “I wasn’t a whore and had never been a whore!” And then I laid back down and went back to sleep, though it wasn’t great sleep, because someone kept yelling “Porkasaurus Rex!”

At about ten AM the next day, I awoke with a headache, cottonmouth, and a vague sense that I should be embarrassed but not completely sure of why. Images of the previous evening came back in fits and starts, with family merrily filling in the blanks of moments I’d forgotten. Someone got the New York, New York video out and made me and my brother watch it. Oh, the horror.

I’d hoped for a quiet, dim, salty lunch at home at my Mom’s, a meal that would help me recover my electrolytes and my pride. Mom announced we were going to the Community Spaghetti Feed. And where, pray tell, did that event take place? The Exeter Fucking Legion Hall. So, I got to walk immediately back into the scene of my public shame, and lucky for me, many of the same townspeople who had witnessed my antics the night before were there again. I wore a baseball cap and a big sweatshirt, incognito-like, and tried to keep my head down. My aunt and uncle applauded when I walked in, effectively blowing my cover. I’ll never forget the looks of frank disapproval, those pursed lips, those narrowed eyes, on the faces of Exeter’s Holier Than Thou delegation, and also the subdued laughter, the twinkling eyes, of Exeter’s “I have a good sense of humor” crowd.

I didn’t say much to anyone. Mouth too dry, brain too foggy, embarrassment too stifling.

But my grandma was there, and I talked to her. I told her I was sorry about the way I’d acted. She said to me, and I’ll never, in my whole life, forget this: “Alli, last night made me realize that you’re a real person.”

A real person.

Like when the Velveteen Rabbit had been held and played with for so long that he wore out, but then, because the boy had truly loved him, he became real.

I’d lived a life wound so tightly, guarded my “good girl” image so closely, that I’d at times forgotten to just be a person, a person with vulnerabilities and heartache and desperate, secret fears and wishes. Yet when my grandma saw all of that wear, all of that crazy, she loved me just the same. Unfortunately, it took a lot of liquor to bring the realness out of the twenty-four-year-old me. Over the years I’ve been working on accessing my authenticity while sober, because I've realized I’d rather be real than perfect.

There’s nothing I would go back and change about that night, even if I could save myself from embarrassment and one spectacular hangover. Ten years later, I’m so grateful for the honest conversations with my grandmother and for that unforgettable (literally—the family won’t let us forget it) dance with my brother. I’m not as glad that the town cop du jour only knew me as a lush, but whatever, I’m pretty sure my dad fired him anyway. (I’m totally making that up. But Dad could have fired him. Because he did have the power to do that.)

We’re coming up on Grandma and Grandpa’s 60^th wedding anniversary, and guess what? We’re having another party. This time it’s on a Sunday afternoon, there's no dance, and it's not at the Legion Hall. I think grandma might appreciate it if I didn’t get quite so “real” this time around—but I’ll ask her.

And to be safe: Someone lock down the Captain Morgan.