Art and Alcohol

As I sauntered over to grab a cracker, I noticed that she was chugging a plastic cup of white wine. I quickly scanned my eyes across her body: slightly shaggy hair, a floral-patterned dress, an olive green jacket, white socks and sneakers. She was alone.

We were in an art gallery that was celebrating the opening of a show of floral prints. Drinking as discreetly as possible in a relatively empty room, she rapidly refilled her cup. I do not believe that anyone else observed her in the act. Instead of picking up my cracker, I walked around the table as if I had intended to look at the prints near the window.

As I vaguely examined the images in front of me, I thought about the juxtaposition in the gallery. A room with a few elegant socialites, collectors, dealers and this woman. They calmly drink their wine, engaged in “civilized and sophisticated” chatter. She takes a merely perfunctory glimpse at the images and then returns to the desolate wine and cheese bar. Jaggedly reaching for the white wine bottle, she avoids the eyes of everyone else in the room. Perhaps everyone else is oblivious, but it seems as if they have agreed to a reciprocal avoidance, a tacit contract to not acknowledge the presence of each other.

She gulps another cup and departs.

She must have been walking down the street and spotted the open wine bar. She could not resist the urge to drink and her visceral impulse seized the opportunity. These thoughts swirled around my head as I haphazardly read about the x-ray process that the late artist had used to make his floral prints. The image of her floral dress lingers in my memory. Her action clashed with the aura of the dress and with the aura of the room.

No one, including myself, attempted to approach or connect with her.

Clearly, this woman could use some help. I recognized this and yet, I did not act. A feeling of utter futility consumed me. Nonetheless, what would I say? “Why do you feel the need to chug white wine?” What could I have done? What would you have done? Social convention does not enthusiastically condone the random intervention that this would require. Do I have the right to intervene? If I feel as if she is abusing herself, I imagine that I have an obligation to speak up. Does it make a difference that we are strangers?

Perhaps it is presumptuous of me to label her as an alcoholic, but the conclusion does not seem unreasonable. I wouldn’t be able to directly relate to her. I would hope that I could help her discover the nature of her problem, though that is only the first step.

In an ideal world, perhaps I would humbly walk over to her and ask her how she is. I noticed that you were drinking quite a bit of the wine and I wanted to know if you would like to talk about that. She would say “sure” and we would sit down on the red sofa in the gallery and get to the heart of her alcoholism. She would cry and have an epiphany, realizing that white wine is not the solution to her frustrations. I would walk her out, feeling as if I had done my duty.

In reality, if I were to ask her how she is, she would probably say “fine” and walk out. Nevertheless, even the prospect of walking over to her shuts down my mind.

A teenager stepping into the complicated life of a much older stranger. How patronizing; how thoughtful.

—Robert J. Saranchak