Most are only fractionally different from the one they elbowed out, but sometimes there is a decided break. Some are sober, some are drunk, some crave one sort of drink and some another. I have only ever been a series of persons who are vaguely related because they keep elbowing the person that came before them out of the skin they occupy in turn. The answer is no: I have never been the same person and never will be. But, to be honest, back when I craved wine I could not imagine I would ever crave beer.Īm I now the same person I was when I craved wine? Am I the same person I was when I did not drink at all? Will I be the same person if I start craving coffee? And yet, no matter how far I try to look into the future, I cannot imagine myself craving coffee. Perhaps someday I will crave coffee as I now crave beer. I used to drink beer as well to be polite, and now I crave it. I would rather drink coffee than explain to someone who offers it to me that I do not drink coffee.

Though I sometimes drink coffee socially, to be polite. Coffee was also forbidden by the religion I abandoned, along with wine and beer, but I have never craved coffee. I simply used to crave wine and now I crave beer. So, I used to prefer wine to beer and now I prefer beer to wine. But my tendency now, when I have a choice, is to drink beer. I can still drink wine and sometimes do, to be polite. He still sometimes drinks beer, but he drinks wine now as often as beer, perhaps more often. There were wine pairings as well, but, perhaps because he was co-owner of a brewery and was writing a book on beer pairings, I felt I should drink the beer.

When we ate at his house, he would offer beer pairings with each course. I started drinking beer because I had a friend, F., who was co-owner of a brewery. But I outgrew that upbringing and with it that religion, and then I began to drink.īack when I drank only wine, I almost exclusively drank red wine, though I would drink white wine if there was no red. This was because I was raised not to drink, was part of a religion that forbade it. Before that, before I would accept wine, I drank nothing alcoholic at all. For many years when I was asked at a party, at a gathering, at an event, if I wanted something to drink, I would opt for wine, not beer. Before that, before I drank beer, I drank wine.

For many years, I did not drink beer and then, suddenly, I did.

Last days by brian evenson