The Friars Club (for example):

Having survived this long, I think of myself as a man becoming old, whereas to those around me, I am already old. Quite rightly, perhaps, I feel like Spencer Tracy in The Old Man and the Sea, or, more properly, the old fisherman portrayed by Tracy in the Hemingway novel. Except, instead of the struggle with the fish, my struggle has been with my addiction: A world where so much has been forgotten, because so much was not remembered in the first place.

Here’s a perfect example: My older friends (at the time), Lenny and Don, took me on a trip to New York City to have dinner at the famous Friars Club and to meet Jackie Mason, his career undergoing a huge resurgence. The thousand and one memories I should have had about this trip, the amusing anecdotes and charming witticisms that would have entertained whomever would listen, are now in the dustbin of history, like so many whale carcasses upon a beach whose name I no longer remember.

Alcohol.

Whale carcasses. Bones picked clean. Toy soldiers. Dead soldiers. Same thing.

I have surrendered and whatever there is now left, I will savor.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 38)