From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [457]
It was a very delicate balance. Almost a mathematical problem. It took a great deal of concentration, and a whole hell of a lot of energy, just to stay up on the tightrope. Because when you got just high enough, you always wanted to go higher because it was so wonderful. That was what took the will power; not to go higher. It required concentration, and study, and energy, and will power, and a great deal of thought; to really be a really successful drunkard. Anybody could be a half-assed drunkard. But to be a real drunkard . . .
And they all talked about drunkards and spinelessness, all the books you read, that John Barleycorn now of London’s, that was all pure crap and the truth was not in it. It seemed like any of them, all of them, that ever write about drunkards, they always use the words drunkard and spinelessness as synonymous. They just didnt know, that was all. They were ony showin up their own ignorance. They’ve never really worked hard at drunkenness—or else they have tried and failed and therefore feel a great need to run drunkenness down and prove to the world that drunkenness is really nothing, that any half-assed fool can do it.
But a half-assed fool couldnt do it, any more than a half-assed fool could do anything, and do it well. Of course, if you had all the qualities of greatness already anyway, then you could be a great drunkard—but then you would have been great at anything else you did, too. To be a great drunkard required a great deal of concentration, and energy, and study, and will p—— . . . . . . .
The hardest thing, outside of not letting yourself go off too high when you get up there, was the first twenty minutes or so in the morning after you wake up. Before the first drink really takes hold. But you could outsmart that one by sleeping twice a day for four hours, instead of once a day for eight hours. By doing it that way you could still get the necessary sleep to maintain your health, and at the same time a couple extra drinks just before you hit the sack would last over till you woke up. Theres tricks to all trades.
But the hardest thing, he re-decided, the text of the sermon I have chosen today, was when you got up there just high enough, and the liquid magic began to warm through you and the low pressure area suddenly dissolved into fair weather and the sun suddenly got brighter and everything took on that new look, bright and clean-looking and sharply outlined in color, like after the world just been washed by a rain.
That was the hardest: to refrain and hold yourself back from going on any higher, no matter how much you want to. That was where they separated the sheep-drunkards from the goat-drunkards. That was where they told the men from the boys.
Prewitt reached for the bottle and glass on the floor happily, proud of his accomplishment and at peace with the whole world. It was time for another dose of your medicine. It was time for another Revival.
What day was this?
Ha! What the hell difference did it make? You got all the time in the world. You got years. He had seen members of the Canned Heat Brigade stay on a kick like this for years. But then they were really experts. One old guy, up in Seattle that time, and then he had met him in Indiana sixteen months later—just the same. And they didnt even have whiskey; all they had had was canned heat from Woolworth’s that they had to strain the alcohol out of the paraffin through a handkerchief and then strain the alky through a piece of stale bread.
With a sudden great optimism he suddenly believed that he might even actually break the world’s record. That same record that had remained in America ever since the Gay 90’s and the days of Diamond Jim Brady. There was a lot of history behind that record. They would put his name up on a bronze plaque on