Everything Is Bad For You

Recently, I went on a work trip in the Southeast. I was staying in a hotel by the airport, at a chain I'd stayed in when I was last in the area. I remembered it being nice for the price point.

This time, when I checked in, the woman slid a little buisness card at me. It had the days of the week printed on it and three empty boxes next to each day.

"This is your drink card," she said. "Don't lose it. You get three free drinks a night."

"Three?" I said.

"You can buy more after three."

To which I simply nodded, as I did not plan on drinking that amount while at their hotel.

When I went down to the bar the next night, I ordered a gin and tonic. The bar tender opened the little fridge below her and frowned.

"I only have diet tonic," she said.

"Oh..." I heard myself say.

I did the mental math. If I drank the diet, I saved on calories, which as a woman in her late thirties, I had been conditioned since the late '90's to always consider. But if I drank the diet tonic, I knew it had some sort of artificial sweetener in there, which was rumored to eventually give me weird cancer, and it would no doubt slowly kill me in conjunction with the ever expanding lack of health care in the country.

So did I want to be skinny for now, or add weird chemicals to my body for me to deal with later? But what was I even perseverating on? I was ordering hard alcohol. Last I checked, that wasn't a liver healthy activity. A guy wearing a dirty construction yellow shirt got in line behind me. He looked tired and pissed.

"It's fine," I told the woman. "I can drink the one you have."

She considered me like I was living very dangerously, but I realized that might also be because no one in the South drank diet tonic. There was a burbling machine of sweet tea on the opposite counter.

She poured me the gin and tonic.

"I'll get you your second one now," she said.

"What?"

She motioned at my drink card. I gave it to her. "You get three, you can carry two. Come back later for the last one."

"No, I just want this one."

Her pen hovered over marking the second drink box.

"What do you mean, you only want one?" she asked, very, very seriously.

"I just want one."

"But you get three."

"I know. But if I want the second one, I'll come get it then."

"But I can give it to you now."

I looked around the little make-shift bar. Everyone sat at their tables with two plastic cups of alcohol in front of them.

"I know," I finally said.

With obvious effort, she put down the pen.

I took the drink card in one hand and the drink in the other.

I sipped my lone diet tonic and gin and watched the bar tender give the construction worker two cups.

The drink tasted fine. I tried to mentally sort out out the artificial sweetener, but I couldn't really taste it. What I could taste was the fact that no matter what I chose, everything was in someway killing me.

Then the construction worker was back at the bar, the bar tender sliding him his third drink. I watched him shuttle it to his table, where his other two drinks awaited him.

I was doing just fine.

I took my diet tonic drink out the back door and found a spot to stand between all the people smoking and drinking. We watched the airplanes land not a mile from us, their engines screaming so loud they drowned out all other noise.

I savored my free drink and basked in the feeling of the humidity on my skin. None of us were getting out of this life alive, so I might as well enjoy it while I could.