$2.99

Dear sirs who may find it curious,

The best crime of my generation has been without a doubt a price hike of a single dollar. In 2013, the good and corporate people of Trader Joe’s elected to raise the cost of their honorably shitty line of California wines from one cent short of two dollars to one cent short of three, ruining a perfectly memorable mnemonic that got me through the worst parts of high school. At that depressed and exceptional time of my life, I feasted mightily on discount crates of acceptable cab sav and passable merlot. Never in my life have I had anything but an appreciation for the classics. 

For the same reasons I stick a bright and smiling face onto computer cameras, I state it now that could tell you the source of my underage supply, but rats are dirty creatures and, for all the wallowing I’ve done on cum-stained couches in my time, I consider myself a clean animal. We do not betray those who make us rich. Even after their deaths, the Eight Witnesses continued to attest that they had seen the golden plates with their own eyes. We’re all dedicated to the best of thieves and most impressive of charlatans, if only at the risk of our own embarrassment. 

When Charles Shaw was a married man, his immense wealth won him every heart but his own wife’s, and when she divorced him for his essential millions, she took the court and half his profits with it. In an act of spite, Chuck deigned to sell his wine so cheap that she would never make a worthy cent of it. Our mythologies are misinformed, perhaps, but entertaining. We admire that sort of thing, I think. Contented to be poor but satisfied in his revenge, he ultimately reigned a champion in the hearts of cheated misers overlapping drunks. 

Impoverished and teenage, I became an acolyte of this church and every day, I held communion from my bedroom hoards. I wore no special garments and was unfaithful to my Lord in those occasions where it suited me best, but He forgives me if only for my dutiful evangelicy to his liquid prophecies. My racket spanned the breadth of the school district and ensured no juvenile land was dry. While I freely indulged in the coke and kush and pills and poppers that made themselves easy in the filthy garages of my friends, my base pleasures were all fermented, and if I were present in a room, it surely stank religiously of wine. 

Like the belief in Christ the son and God the father and eternity on the planet Kolob, we believe our salvation will become manifest if we have faith enough. If we believe that it’s the alcohol that makes us the life of the party, it will become manifest too. If ever there was a time in my life I held a greater popularity than in slamming open a garage side-door double-fisting Chuck to be met with applause, then it is in preaching the gospel of “none of us have a problem here” and binging a crate until we couldn’t feel our guts dropping out through our assholes. We must never forget that all the best illusions are founded on deception; the best prophet is the one we still believe in spite. Chuck might’ve known his wife was having an affair or two, but even if his ignorance was willful, all that mattered were his grapes. Integrity be damned, we all prefer a fun, cheap lie to the expensive truth. Divorce is without sacrifice. Addiction is something that happens to other people. 

Furthermore, if ever you might’ve doubted it, you can’t just tell a drunk he’s a drunk. Critics were frequently excommunicated from the church without distinction. I ignored the early warnings of better people and banished the friends who wouldn’t break glass with me until all who remained were the cum-couch Lamanites who all sat on the swing in the yard, chugged pills when our parents weren’t home, and went around in the night crying aloud to God for forgiveness in the gutters, holding up each other’s hair to save it from the splash zone of our wine-red insides come out. I made my company among my believers only. In the echo chamber of the faithful in the tabernacle of ourselves, we’re all breaking covenants in temple garments. If we’re all nude junk-shaving just the same, our insular embarrassments compel us to be secret. We go home and never speak of it. Mrs. Shaw climbs into bed, turns out the lights, and schemes. 

Here follows the liturgy until it runs dry: if I’m in control, I am in control. If I’m in control, I am in control. If I’m in control, I would not have crashed the car, or fucked that guy, or yelled at my mother. If I’m in control, multiple distracted accidents would not have followed me into the classroom and broke the kayfabe of my life. Forever a cabinet for curio not far from the wine rack, I became the sad martyr all true drunks become when the bottle is empty and the charm wears thin. When the myth of power comes up against reality, our best apologists become our rejectors. In 2013, 54% abandoned their prophets and became disfellowshipped. In 2013, two friends overdose at separate parties and it stops being funny to drink.

The thing is, once you leave the church, you can’t take it with you. What family you left on the pew will stay seated firmly on the pew. The Bible is a sword that can cut both ways. Outsider contact is strictly verboten. I graduated high school and never spoke to my friendly addicts again. Whether it was mutual loss heavy on our souls or the irreconcilable facts of our scripture that informed my choice to leave the church remains in question. Did the Prophet fuck his daughter and make polygamist concessions to save face, or did God tell him to obey the word of his Lord at the expensive of dignity? It’s a question as old as faith itself. On our last night of high school, while my remaining cousins of the cloth found their way into another backyard temple, drank themselves into familiarity, and did not mourn for me, I cloistered myself with pillows against the door and forbid sacraments from my private temple, recompensed my vows, and paid penitence in frequent chunders as all sin was purged from my weeping mouth. At the end of the party, somebody’s got to pay the tab. 

In 1883, Joseph Smith received his latest revelation from God and barred all his faithful from the pipe, the kettle, and the bottle. Periodically, I learned to pretend that my body is holy. I obeyed the law. I banished from myself light-mindedness, loud laughter, evil speaking, and every other impure practice. I took down my trophies and donned tiny aprons with fig leaves on them. I progressed from grace to grace and took new names, moved to new places, and, yes, found new corruptive rituals to satisfy my tendencies. Unseasoned living could never keep me long, but sure, I went a little sober.

Permit me now these trespasses and receive here my confession. Show me the man who was happier for a 30 day token and give me the strength to respect it. I maintained a streak of relative cleanliness for a summer before two more untimely deaths brought me home in a new town of new people to the familiar isles of booze beyond the dairy aisle. In 2013, the price has gone up. I can appreciate the metaphor. In the end, I escape what is coming to me.

Chuck’s rich now, but I like to think that all his wealth is in the knowledge of having cheated death of something well deserved. Look at him there, smug and lovable prick sitting on the stoop of his shack in his plentiful groves. We talk about him still with admiration for his sins as he looks out over the glistening fruit and wanders in and out the vines, inspecting here and there his masterpiece. No matter how violently it hemorrhages members, the church still stands 15 million faithful. No matter how much the dollar increase does me dirty, vengeance is still penniless. No matter my best attempts, I could never hope to be so pleased by my creations. 

Kind regards,