Early Sobrieties Quotes

“I could give up a year. I could give up a few. I’d lost a few already. I could lose a few more. Here -- take my years. Dole them out to the others. Share them with Dave Deane and Ranim and Owen. With Maeve Slaughtneil. Make their lives long, if you can’t make them good. Take my years. Just leave me my days. Leave me tomorrow, at the very least. An addict only ever wants tomorrow. Tomorrow, I can make it work. Give me tomorrow to splash across my face, to muss into my hair. Let me walk around in it, watch the compost molder in the yard, smell the season on the river. Let me show you how okay I am, how good, how sorry. How easy to love. I have to be inflexible on this. I can’t compromise any further. I’ll cry and yell and plead. I’ll beg you on my knees. Just give me one more day.”
― Michael Deagler, Early Sobrieties

“However one felt about the Mummers, guys like Franny infused South Philadelphia with a hint of the carnivalesque. Any bulky white man on the street—plumber, roofer, carpenter, cop—might abruptly slide into a swoop or a twirl, buoyant and sleek as a synchronized swimmer. He might prance like a reindeer, lurch like a tyrannosaur, pulse like a rave girl in a festival crowd. He would strut one minute and complain about Mexicans the next.”
― Michael Deagler, Early Sobrieties

“I’d been under the impression that I’d been building up calluses during my eight years of ceaseless boozing, but upon ripping away my whiskey bandage I found there was only new red skin beneath it. I was raw as an infant.”
― Michael Deagler, Early Sobrieties