The (eventually) sober light of day: Henry IV, Part I

Outside, a sterile sun was already burning through the gauzy clouds over the mountains. Dumping out the dregs of yesterday’s coffee, I spotted pink chunks in the sink. Some washed down the drain as I filled up the carafe; others were crusted onto the stainless steel.

Was this me? I thought. I don’t remember doing this. 

I remember a bouncer all of sudden asked me to leave the bar. I know I wasn’t rowdy. I wasn’t even terribly drunk, I think. I remember folding slices of peppered salami and sourdough bread into my face after the taxi got us home, as I remember we didn’t eat dinner before going out. But I don’t remember puking in my own kitchen sink.

Pathetic. I rinsed out the sink and measured out the coffee.

A mild headache signaled I was still a little drunk the morning after my sister-in-law’s boyfriend – I’ll call him Rob – and I patronized a gritty dive bar. He came down from Portland to Orange County for the weekend; my wife and her brother, meanwhile, headed up there to enjoy some sibling time.

I don’t whether I’m relieved it wasn’t me or ashamed that I was ready to claim it.

I had a cup or two and made some half-hearted efforts to tidy up when Rob emerged. “Dude, I’m so sorry,” he said, looking at the sink as he poured some coffee. “I puked in your sink last night.”

“Wait, that was you?”

“Yeah, I didn’t make it to the bathroom, but thank God I got down the stairs. I just had dropped down on the air mattress last night when – ”

“ – oh, good! I thought it was…I don’t whether I’m relieved it wasn’t me or ashamed that I was ready to claim it.”

We laughed, carefully, as if not to tug at fresh stitches after a surgery.

I rubbed my eyes, shrunken from dehydration. “Jesus,” I groaned. This was my second friend to throw up in my apartment, I recalled. The first made it to the balcony. Mostly. Oh, god. I’m in my thirties now. 

I looked out at the hospital-white sky and poured some more coffee. “Looks like it’s gonna be another beautiful day in sunny Southern California.”

***

“Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old sack,” Prince Harry teases his friend Falstaff in 1 Henry IV (1.2.2).

Well, I feel you, Falstaff.

With all the boozing I’ve been doing these past few months, I think I’ve racked up quite the tab up at the Eastcheap tavern.

Shakespeare’s The History of Henry IV, or Henry IV, Part I, isn’t heavy on plot. It is heavy, though, on the fat knight, Sir John Falstaff, and other memorable characters, locations, and use of language. This celebrated history play features rebels – including the zealous Henry Percy, aptly called Hotspur, and an occultist Welshman, Glyndwr – who fail to overthrow King Henry IV. (Henry IV, as you may recall from my last post, deposed Richard II, which dogs his reign.) Meanwhile, a wild-oats-sowing Prince Harry revels with common whores, thieves, and drunks – most notably Falstaff – in the bars, brothels, and byways of London until, maturing, he shines on the battlefield and kills Hotspur.

The tavern scenes are particularly legendary, as are Prince Harry’s insults to Falstaff, whom he variously calls a “fat-kidneyed rascal” (2.2.6), “a obscene whorseon greasy tallow-catch,”(2.5.210-11), and a “stuffed cloak-bag of guts” (2.5.411-12).

Now, I don’t quite identify with the Falstaff’s appetite for food, but for drink? I can be quite guilty. As Prince Harry mocks him, “O villain, thy lips are scarce wiped since thou drunkest last” (2.5.139-40).

***

I eat well and exercise daily. I opt for seltzer water or tea during weeknights – or try to.

But it’s been a hectic few months. And one drink has this way of turning into, well, more than one, I’ll say.

“Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world”

I had a goodbye party at work. Christmas followed. My in-laws live in wine country, understand. I flew back to Cincinnati over New Year’s. I had to catch up with old friends – and old watering holes. Then, we had some Minnesota family in town for a few weekends; their conversation pairs so well with a cocktail. Soon after, we learned we’re moving to Ireland. One must celebrate, of course. And Costa Rica was lovely. The chiliguaro made for a proper cultural immersion, and an Imperial (or two or three or four) eased the tension after some long drives.

Rob came down. And back up, in a manner of speaking.

My wife and I then started bidding farewell to various friends, family, colleagues. And to SoCal: beef-tongue tacos at a Santa Ana taqueria and jumping into the Pacific (naked) after the bars closed? I mean, how would you say goodbye?

Then there’s selling and donating just about everything you own, living in limbo as you wait for the Irish government to process your visas, trying not to feel like a fraud and ingrate as a willfully unemployed ‘writer’ (ack) while you’re supported by an amazingly talented and accomplished wife who’s additionally shouldering all the logistics of our move…yes, finish off the gin. Throwing it away as you empty out our apartment would be wasteful.

And not only are we’re moving to Dublin in country already famed enough for its drinking, but my wife will actually be working in the alcohol industry there.

Now, we’re staying at my in-laws’s before we fly out in a week or so. They live in wine country, remember?

Zounds.

Yet, as Falstaff wisely notes, “Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world” (2.5.437). Then again, as he later observes, “The better part of valour is discretion” (5.4.117-8). Not that our beloved, bloated bloviator ever follows his own sanctimonious proclamations.

***

In Henry IV, Part I it’s hard to look away from Falstaff. His larger-than-life antics – and sweaty self-justifications – certainly make you want to have the underskinker fetch another round of sack and not cut it with too much sugar.

But we shouldn’t overlook Harry’s maturation so central to the play. As he soliloquizes early in the play:

I know you all, and will a while uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted he may be more wondered at
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him. (1.2.175-182)

Harry likens himself to the sun, a royal symbol, and his lowly comrades to the clouds, whose baseness he, like a prodigal son, will burn through. It’s cold and calculating.

For me, as I recall the sun burning off the clouds that Saturday morning with Rob, I can’t help but think of Harry’s metaphor more literally. The sober light of day can be harsh – and soul-baring.

I’ll stick with just one drink tonight. Ha. Good thing it’s pretty overcast in Dublin.