A Bit of Tragedy
by
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One time, the school authority told my dad: Your son is such a problem in class we’re sending him to the nutcracker before he has sex with someone and multiplies. Of course they weren’t looking at the possibility I might be an alcoholic before anyone classified me as a sex maniac. As soon as they reported that to my dad I was in double trouble after that because he didn’t know what the hell was going on: I always told him everything was going great in school. When he was hit by the shocking news something else was happening he started having headaches like a maniac with a loose tooth. All he knew was sex and drugs were what concerned the school officials the most back then, and how much homework we actually got done. Very little emphasis was placed on drinking. And of course when my dad learned later that was what I was into he was sort of relieved about it. Not that he liked it or nothing. He knew teenagers in
always stands up and tells the group why they stopped drinking in ten minutes or less. But how can you explain all that, why you quit drinking in so little time? I know I can’t because the reason I quit wasn’t all that simple: it kind of built up over a period of about three months with all the problems I had. And in the end, I discovered something so shocking about myself I couldn’t believe it for a while that it just blew me away. It really did.
It all started out on a Friday night a couple of years ago. I had a big blowout with my wife earlier that evening and decided to go out and drink my problems off my mind when I suddenly ran into Grace.
Grace was one of those women that can only be described as a looker: she stood five-five with a curvy body that had so many moveable parts in her walk it just made your eyes swirl. She had the kind of dark Italian baby doll eyes everyone dreamed about too, softly framed by her long dark-brown shiny-combed hair. She wasn’t flashy or nothing, I’m not trying to say that. She might look great but one of her best features wasn’t so much her looks as it was her smile: she smiled just like Julia Roberts: her lips stretched so wide across her face it just made you want to smile right back at her, rather you wanted to or not.
The only problem about her is: we were just friends.
I ended up at Tom’s Bar off
walked in with some really tight fitting jeans and a blue jean shirt. Her sudden appearance practically caused the whole place to hoot and holler above the jukebox loud music, even some girls blew out a few whistles. Grace turned around and damn near stomped out of there, she was so ticked that she got tagged like that. When she saw me she came over and slipped onto the bar stool beside me and said, “Well, I guess we all know what they got on their minds tonight.”
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About the Book
A Bit of Tragedy is an off-beat humorous but sobering story about the life of Daryl Cross, a minister’s son, as he recounts his last three months of his drinking life. Careless drinking had pushed him into a whole new level of alcoholism, and he was becoming so sick with the disease it pushed him to a point where he had to make a decision between life and death. As an alcoholic, bad decision making had built up over time too that kept him drinking when dealing with relationships with those in his world. Drinking had also kept him blind to what was happening around him during his drinking years that eventually turned his life upside down when he learned he wasn’t who he thought he was but someone totally different, and the story ends on a small twist of a mystery.
He went out drinking one Friday night after a silly fight with his wife and that long night ended when he was arrested for DWI. Unknowingly he was born into a new level of alcoholism, hallucinations and irrational thinking had settled in and his wife, Karen, kept him at bay from her when she suspected he had an affair with a strange woman in the parking lot of a bar. Then her friend, and his best friend’s wife, Betsy, used his confusion he was in to seduce him and alcohol to keep him silent. The second time they had an affair Karen caught them. That put Daryl in trouble with his family when Karen reported the events of their recent lives to them at dinner that sent Daryl into anger and hopelessness and more drinking. His brother David blamed him for their dad’s death after a quarrel between their families at their last dinner, and the problems with David and Daryl continued that pushed Daryl over the edge of madness when they finally clashed over Daryl’s wife, Karen, and David finally revealing who he really was; his family has been hiding from him for years.
About the Author
Mr. Whitlock was born and raised in a southeast suburb of
Alcoholism has always been a subject of interest to him since his earlier days writing in his teens. For generations his family had fell victim to it and researched it as years went by. One of the issues that struck him about the subject he could relate to: most alcoholics and their children have difficulty in learning and expressing themselves. They also lost interest in reading as time went on: books bores them to tears, and their vocabulary had drop dramatically since falling into alcoholism. So he wanted to write a novel about an alcoholic based on that and created a character that also had a tough time expressing his self but pushed it one step further: his character fell into the depths of madness of fourth stage alcoholism where he was forced to make a decision between life and death. The message the author wanted to get across with this story: drinking and driving is not the only thing that doesn’t mix: family life and drinking also doesn’t mix well. He began working on A Bit of Tragedy since 1995 and believes he has finally accomplished an entertaining and informative novel about the madness of what most people call “full-blown alcoholism”.
He is also the author of Acid Dream and Other Essays. Poems. Stories & Songs.