When I see a drunk person on the street, some emotion very deep inside me is triggered. Given my upbringing, I have no intimate encounter with drunks so it doesn’t hark back to a memory, but a feeling of deep sadness and imminent tears is triggered. Male or female. Tonight, on the way to the theatre, in a constant rain, a man, late 40’s wearing a business suit, no coat, no umbrella. He was wet- his hair, his face and shirt and his tie askew. He was being moved along the sidewalk by a younger man, dressed in no way as his peer. The drunk man was bumping and stumbling and almost not able to stay upright. We were passing in opposite directions so I don’t know what happened, although I watched until they were out of sight. These moments the drunk is so vulnerable.
In early September, in Charlottesville, Virginia, an apparently very drunk 18 year old girl on a Saturday night was on the pedestrian mall without her earlier-in-the-evening-friends and this University of Virginia student’s body was found this past Sunday. Makes me feel a kind of sick.