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Track List
01) Being Pointed at Me
02) Ignatius Look at the Camera (Look at the Cam
03) B-I-N-G-O... What's His Name Again?
04) "He Seems to Have Trouble Focusing on Us"
05) You're Not Done
06) Just Take Twice Daily Until You Realize How
07) No Friends［1997-2009］
08) Couldn't Jazz My Way Into Love
09) SNES Brought on Family Vacation
10) Life Started in 2010
11) That Was When I Learned What I Really Was
12) You Can Do It Too (This Should Not Be Surpri
01) Being Pointed at Me
02) Ignatius Look at the Camera (Look at the Cam
03) B-I-N-G-O... What's His Name Again?
04) "He Seems to Have Trouble Focusing on Us"
05) You're Not Done
06) Just Take Twice Daily Until You Realize How
07) No Friends［1997-2009］
08) Couldn't Jazz My Way Into Love
09) SNES Brought on Family Vacation
10) Life Started in 2010
11) That Was When I Learned What I Really Was
12) You Can Do It Too (This Should Not Be Surpri
2:18
4:16
4:41
2:56
3:33
2:08
2:52
2:29
2:03
2:37
2:12
2:19
Data Complete 60%
Total Rating
Total Rating
Back Cover
CD Art
3D Case
3D Thumb
3D Flat
3D Face
3D Spine
First Released
2026
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Medium
Album
0 copies
Album Description
Available in:
Ignatius' first memory was a camera being pointed at him, his older cousin asking him to sing B-I-N-G-O for Grandma. The year is 1996 and Iggy Loiacano has just realized that he is alive. Cousin Johnny is in town visiting from Farmingdale, NY and he just got a new upgrade to his home video camcorder. Johnny had been making home movies for the extended family now for two years since 1994, and this new one was to be his masterpiece, "A Trip to Florida".
There's just one problem: Cousin Iggy isn't focusing on the song that was chosen for him to sing for this scene. His attention keeps drifting elsewhere. While Iggy is continuously encouraged to finish the full round of the B-I-N-G-O song, his mind was elsewhere, distracted by reruns of Little Bear playing on VHS in the other room.
"I'm telling you, this isn't right," said his mother.
"Will you relax?" hushed his father. "He's a kid and he loves this tape."
"But he never gets to see his cousins," his mother protested. "He can watch that anytime." His father replied hotly: "Is this four year old supposed to be a gracious host? Turn the tape off if you're that bothered."
Off flipped the TV from the remote control that had been sitting on his mother's sofa armrest, and out came the ensuing tantrum. Iggy remembers being put to bed early over his reaction. Even then, it felt less like discipline and more like punishment for not performing correctly and on-demand. Another tense night in New Port Richey was postcard perfect.
This was the first time Ignatius' parents considered that their son might have issues with focus and temperament. Unfortunately on one count for the sake of their marriage, they disagreed profusely; unfortunately on another count for young Iggy, this was the gateway to his Adderall prescription, thrust upon him before he could even adjust and find out if honing in focus was a skill he could learn all his own. In the same week that he would begin Pre-K, Ignatius was put onto 2.5mg of immediate release dextroamphetamine once daily.
"This is unnecessary," said his father, watching Mom prod the tablet into the center of a spoonful of tapioca. Mom looked up and replied as hotly to her husband as he had to her the previous week when Johnny was still in visiting: "That's not what Dr. Barrios thinks." She called for Iggy, who was delighted to see pudding and became fixated on it fairly immediately. To Iggy, pudding was a lunch food.
"How would you like to have a pudding every morning, sweetheart?" This was Ignatius' second memory. The final thing he remembered of that day was his father walking away and bluntly declaring, "It's not gonna work."
So began the struggle of Young Ignatius' life whereby he would continue to fail to attain any extra focus, yet one thing was clear to his attention: nobody liked him, no matter what he did. Kids at school, members of his family, even a coldness from distant parents who were themselves fairly detached from each other. Though he never knew why, Iggy always associated being put on Adderall with his inability to make friends.
It wasn't out of a lack of trying. He'd introduce himself, he'd tell his interests, and sometimes maybe in the classroom during free-play, or in the lunchroom as he got older and went into upper-grade school, the most he'd get is a fairly kind reception. But once he was in a space to have quality time with anybody, he noticed one of two things every time: a stoic coldness, or a frenzied unfocusedness. It didn't matter who it was. Anybody that Iggy tried to become close with became as calculated and blunt as the next person, or even more frustratingly, would lend their attention to anything and everything but him. Suddenly Iggy started to wonder if this was what his parents hated about him so much, his own faculties in life having always been these two ways. Hyperfixated on what he enjoyed, or unable to lend the slightest bit of care otherwise.
It wasn't until Thanksgiving 2010, at age eighteen, that Ignatius' father sat him down and told him what was really happening to him, and how he could break free from the invisible chains that kept him in confusing exile. This is where his story begins.
•
"Did you notice," Oswald Loicano said, sitting beside his son at the foldout table used as a makeshift extension to the main dining room table, "that I only drink when the family is over?" This sentence, though redundant in its construction, was more words than Iggy had ever recalled his dad saying to him in a single phrase. It was so jarring that Ignatius let out a chortle. But before Iggy could comment on how peculiar it was for Dad to be talking to him this long, the realization presented to him by his father did strike him as something he always noticed silently but never gave a moment's thought towards. Meekly, Iggy replied, "Hey... yeah, you don't drink unless it's a holiday."
"Or a birthday," added Dad, now raising up his arm from beneath the table to procure a rather sizable 1.75ML bottle of Jack Daniels
“Can you get two of the large shot glasses from out of the china cabinet?” the request was, again, with a strange formality that his father had never shown him. This was a man who had mostly been monosyllabic across his life, and now he was sitting down with that same man as he talked about drinking away the holiday. Why this and why now? Instead of asking what was on his mind, Iggy did as he was asked and quietly got up. He walked over to the large wooden hutch kept in the dining room that housed all the good china and hospitality amenities. Opening it and taking the two golden-tinted glasses out in a single hand, closing it again, and walking back over to the table where his father had now uncapped the whiskey.
He poured them both full. Iggy had seen this before, and always thought it was funny. In nearly every year prior, after the meal was cleared and the majority of the family had retreated either into the den or the backyard to throw the pigskin around, his father would sit at the head of the main table and pour himself two double-shots of whatever bottle he had been recently gifted on his own October birthday. It always looked like he was pouring a drink for himself and an invisible guest, but sure enough, Dad would throw both shots back in five seconds flat. The look on his face at the acidic burn always used to make Iggy laugh. In fact, it made almost anybody who was still in the house laugh if they saw him do it. What Iggy always found rather odd was, after he was done laughing, the rest of the family would stay somewhat giggly. Bubbly. Happier than they were when they got there and even happier than they were while they were eating.
Ignatius never understood that: isn’t the food the initial thrill of the holiday? Why doesn’t everyone get tired and relaxed after being there a few hours? It always felt like the people in his family got louder, happier, more carefree after the dinner was concluded. His mother, a woman who possibly said even less words to the extended family than his father ever said to him, would be busy in the kitchen cleaning dishes and storing leftovers into tupperware containers and zip-loc bags, but even she would seem like she was happier to be doing it after Dad had downed his two shots.
Ignatius was so focused on thinking about all of the above that he hadn’t noticed one of the shot glasses was already empty: his father had downed the first shot. That air hissing noise that so many people do after a big gulp of anything 80 proof came whining out of Dad’s mouth, before a content smile appeared on his face. And then, he put his fingers around the second shot glass, only to do the last thing Iggy could’ve ever expected: he slid the glass into Ignatius’ direction.
Iggy blinked and looked down at the glass, then back up at his dad. His father’s piercing green eyes seemed to stab right through him. “I don’t drink for me,” he started. He then broke his gaze with Ignatius to look twenty feet to the right of where they were sitting, towards the family in the living room: Grandma Luanne who had raised Iggy’s dad all by herself, her husband of 12 years (stepgrandpa Bill as Iggy had been encouraged to call him since he met him when he was six), Aunt Evangeline and her two girls Cousins Ashley and Katherine, Uncle Joe who was his mother’s brother. A motley crew from both sides of the family, though mostly his dad’s kin. This was the tried and true Thanksgiving crew that Ignatius had grown up with most of his life. A tropical drizzle came down outside and had ruined any hope of football this year, as had the 83 degree 90% humidity. Christmas movies were already starting to air and the family had one of them on. Something about a middle-aged couple swearing off of Christmas for the year, and the hijinks that ensue at everybody around them reacting to such a decision.
“What do you notice, Ig?” his father hadn’t looked back at him yet but was continuing to fixate on the family. The movie they were watching wasn’t particularly good; Ignatius even knew it to have a 5.6/10 average across every major movie review aggregate. And yet, all six of them in the living room were laughing their heads off. You would think that all of them were at some highly-acclaimed Broadway comedy with the way they were reacting. Everyone had been fairly quiet until that point, but since only seconds prior with Dad asking his son this question, the volume in the room had increased.
“I notice the family is doing what they do every year,” he said. That was when his father looked back at him, smiling almost too widely but still keeping a sense of stoicism about his body language. “Which is?” Oswald looked at his son, knowing that he was about to get it right.
“Being loud and having a good time, digesting at high volume.” Iggy would never forget what happened next because the validation made him want to burst: his father laughed. “That’s an amazing way to put it, Ignatius. Yep. They are in the throes of digestif.” Iggy echoed a chuckle back.
“Why do you think they’re so loud?” It was a funny question. Ignatius always wondered it but now, apparently, the mystery wasn’t entirely his own after all. His father too had noticed this? It was something Iggy merely found odd, but assumed it to be a coincidence or an artifact of his mind trying to make a connection where there was none. He looked back at his dad. “Why?” Iggy said it as if he was about to follow up with an offering but then realized he hadn’t the slightest idea. “They must be really happy with the turkey this year.”
“You mean like last year?” his dad smiled and then started to look back at the family.
Ignatius had already forgotten that his father had slid the glass in his direction, and dreaded what he was going to suggest. This was supposed to be some kind of rite of passage, wasn’t it? Drinking with Dad. Taking your first shot of whiskey with your father on Thanksgiving at age eighteen. Some kind of milestone moment that his father probably had with him. Iggy appreciated the gesture but he wasn’t interested in alcohol at all. That curiosity had come a year prior, at age seventeen.
“Drink it.” His father said this firmly but non-threateningly. It didn’t feel like a command and yet felt like something that his father was calmly insistent on. He didn’t repeat himself, he just said it plainly. But then, as Iggy looked at the glass and considered what he might say to get out of this, his father added, “I know you snuck some before. It’s okay.”
Ignatius was surprised. He had snuck some, back in junior year after a particularly shitty night at the homecoming dance where he went stag and proceeded not to find anybody who wanted to talk to him. He couldn’t even find a bully that night. He was so insignificant to the student body at his high school that the habitually cruel didn’t even find him to be worth the energy of their malice. That night, after returning home, he figured he would try to have a little party of his own. Home alone with his mother out at her brother’s house and his father working an overnight shift, he helped himself to three shots of unmarked bourbon.
“How did you know?” Iggy was slightly embarrassed but it was clear that he wasn’t in trouble, so he wasn’t fearful to admit it. His father cocked an eyebrow, which scared him more than the admission itself, as his father only ever made that face when he was about to be sarcastic.
“You think I didn’t notice a swig of my best booze being gone? When I last had from it, the liquid reached just to the very top of the label. But when I came back to it…” Dad stopped to look at the family as they burst into laughter at a scene involving the lead actor getting a Botox injection, before looking back at Iggy to finish the sentence, “the line was now a quarter of the way down the brand sticker.”
Ignatius had no words. He hadn’t thought of something so meticulous being on the mind of anybody and yet, if that was really the best booze that his father had, then Iggy was in trouble. Those three shots of bourbon did three things to Iggy: it burned his throat, it triggered a coughing fit from aforementioned burnt throat, and it made his stomach feel awful. But it didn’t get him drunk. It didn’t even get him buzzed. He remembered just how absolutely disappointed he was to realize that the alcohol was seemingly the most ineffective thing he had ever consumed.
Iggy wondered for over a year why that was, but naturally wasn’t going to ask his father. In fact, Ignatius hadn’t realized that it was the most coveted bottle in his father’s liquor cabinet. Realizing this now, Iggy started to laugh. “That… was your best alcohol?”
His father smiled, again with this look in his eye of knowing that Ignatius simply could not place the feeling of. “Why does that surprise you?”
“Because I didn’t feel shit,” Iggy said bluntly, and now for the first time, Ignatius and his father both laughed in unison. Ignatius couldn’t even recall a single time that anybody in his life had ever laughed with him. That was the very first as far as he was concerned.
“Well how much did you have?” asked Oswald. Rather than answer aloud, Iggy felt compelled to hold up three fingers. His father frowned for a moment and then started to let a smile bubble up, like he was holding back laughter behind incredulity. “Three… of these?!” Dad said gesturing to the glass. Iggy nodded.
“These are double shots, Ig. You didn’t have three, you had six.”
Ignatius was about to laugh again before the look on his father’s face stunned him back into hyperfixation. The family laughed loudly behind them again, but neither of the men looked towards them this time. They looked right into one another’s faces: Oswald with a sense of confirmation, Ignatius with a sense of bewildered misunderstanding.
“Drink it,” said Dad, “and watch what happens next. Please.” Ignatius looked at his father and the sincerity in his face as he said this. Sensing that his son was on the precipice of lending his trust, he added two words more. “Trust me.”
Iggy reached for the glass just as he had when it was empty, now filled to the very brim with whiskey. He hadn’t felt it before, so why would now be any different? Ignatius was mostly dreading the burn, the cough, the stomachache that came to him that one night. But then again, that was at three times the amount. This surely wasn’t going to be that bad. Besides, this moment with his father was more of a thrill to him than he’d ever experienced in all his life. Was there really anything to hold fear towards in this moment?
“Don’t sniff it,” Ozy said to his son who was already in the midst of taking a small whiff of the glass. A slight grimace on Iggy’s face as he remembered what that night in junior year was like, but then a regrouping of his faculties and demeanor before putting the glass to his lips and throwing back his head.
There it was. The burn. That awful burn that he absolutely fucking hated. The heat in the back of his throat combined with the somewhat unpleasant taste of sour mash whiskey. He hated it. How do people drink this shit, thought Iggy! He held it in and suppressed the urge to cough that was now starting to rise. His father, whom he expected would be looking onward in approval, was surprisingly not looking at him at all anymore. He was looking back at the family again.
“Watch,” Dad said, now almost in a whisper. Iggy turned his head to watch the family as if they were themselves a movie, as they all watched the movie. The scene that was playing now wasn’t even chockful of jokes or absurdity but rather an expositional part in the movie that showed how the protagonists previously spent the most extravagant Christmases throwing lavish parties and overdoing their giftgiving. It was a necessary segue in any comedy even if there wasn’t much to laugh at. But something interesting accentuated this moment: Iggy realized that the whole family were now laughing in an uproar. Any tiny peculiarity that could be interpreted as funny, from the lead actress making a quirky face to the lead actor having the most flatly dubious tone, was laughed at with the loudest and most hysterical uproar.
He wasn’t understanding what he was seeing, even if he noticed what had just happened. “Did they…” started Iggy, his dad now shooting a glance back at him to finish the sentence, “just get louder? Yes, they did.”
Ignatius did not understand. He looked at his father for guidance, hoping some degree of clear explanation would unfold.
“I can’t get drunk either, Ig. That’s why I said, I don’t drink this for me: I drink this for them.”
Ignatius was confused. “Why would you drinking this, affect them?”
His father sighed and started to recline a bit before remembering how rigid the dining room table chairs were. He sat back up and got closer to Iggy so that nobody would overhear them, as if there was anybody to overhear in the midst of all the laughter coming out of the living room. “What do you hear in the kitchen, Ig?”
Iggy hadn’t even thought about his mother doing the dishes with all that was going on, but now as he focused his ear in, he noticed something remarkable. His frigidly unhumored mother, whom had never shown much visible love towards him or his father, was doing something he had never heard before. She was humming. Over the sound of dishes clattering, suds scrubbing, water flowing, there was an unmistakable hum. In fact it wasn’t even just idle humming, it was a Christmas carol. Out of his mother’s mouth for the first time in his life, from across the house and in the other room, Iggy could identify the sweetly hummed melody of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”.
“My entire life I couldn’t get drunk, Ig.” His father looked as if he was going to cry, like this was some kind of landmark confessional. “I couldn’t get high, I couldn’t get a coffee buzz, I couldn’t even receive anesthetic that time I broke my shin bone falling off the Harley. I…” his father’s voice trailed off.
“I can’t feel any of these things, and Iggy, I don’t think you can either. But look,” glancing at the family just once more, who were now louder than ever since Iggy took his shot. “You can do it too. They feel what you should be feeling. You should be two shots deep into a mild buzz. But you’re not. I should be two shots deep into a mild buzz. But I’m not. But them?” he jerked his thumb at the oblivious roomful of extended family members. “They’re acting like they’ve each had four shots apiece.”
He was right. Ignatius couldn’t believe it but, in that moment, the realization clicked and he understood what his father had been saying from the start. He… was diffusing the sensation of the alcohol across the entire room, to everybody but himself and his father.
“I always noticed that you never reacted like the rest of them, Ig. When the whole family became enthralled after I’d take a shot, you would always be the only one unaffected. I always wondered why, until I realized, you’ve got it too. You can’t feel a dang thing when I drink this, but everyone else here can. That was when I thought that maybe you have this…” his father stopped for a moment, “well, I was going to say gift, but… I do wish sometimes I could experience what they all do, when I sip this.” He gestured towards the bottle. “But I’m able to share something. Those little cousins of yours can’t have alcohol because their livers would fail them and I’d go to jail. And yet when I drink this, the sweet buzz of inebriation seems to fill the room.”
Ignatius couldn’t believe it. He was remembering every Thanksgiving and Christmas now, family birthdays and reunions and anniversaries. Almost every single time, Dad drank, but he always remained at the table with a sense of calm about him. Meanwhile, the entire house would turn into a rock concert in terms of decibel output. People would be screaming laughing, utterances from grandma to little cousins would be slurred; it was as if every family gathering were a frat party, and yet Ignatius had never really thought about why that was. He only noticed it and assumed that all families were like that.
“My shot and your shot are synergizing, Ig,” said his father. “Between the two you downed and the two I downed, it’s as if I did both of them. That’s that. You are whatever I am.”
The silence hung between them. It made sense. It really made sense. And yet, did it make sense? Was Ignatius really supposed to believe that a person can drink alcohol and have the people throughout the room get drunk instead of them?
“I want you to stop taking the Adderall, Iggy.” Oswald looked at him with a sense of genuine sorrow. “I… I tried to keep your mother from putting you on it, I thought even as far ago as when you were a kid that it wasn’t going to be the answer. I even wondered if you would feel it at all…” Ignatius was realizing where his dad was going with all of this.
“You’ve been spiking every friend you’ve ever had with amphetamines and you didn’t even mean to.”
Iggy felt a chill go throughout his entire body. He understood now; nobody could stand to be around him because his daily morning pudding pill wasn’t doing a thing in his system, but it was doing everything to theirs.
“Your mother can feel it. I know that much. That’s why I don’t drink or use any kind of medication when it’s anything but a holiday. I don’t want her to have to feel it and have it change who she is, but… when she put you on that medication, she did nothing for you and everything to herself. And worst of all, she has no way of knowing what she’s done. She’s spiking herself with Adderall because she’s the only one in this house who doesn’t have this problem. She isn’t a conduit to other’s psychoactivity, but you and I are.”
Just then, Iggy did something he didn’t expect to do. He reached for the bottle and started to pour himself another double shot. His father didn’t try to stop him one bit, but smiled. He knew that he wasn’t being perceived as crazy; his son believed him, and was testing it for himself. To prove the point just that little bit further, he took the bottle after Iggy set it down and began to pour for himself.
Ignatius waited to down his shot until his father had his ready. Lifting his shot glass, Oswald looked his son in the face and smiled. “Cheers, kid.” They clinked and downed the hatch. Eight shots across the room, two sober men at the table, and the loudest slur of a clamor you’d ever heard in your entire life from both the living room and kitchen. Everybody was shitfaced, yet completely safe from any physical or bodily harm. After all, there was no alcohol in anybody’s liver, save the two in the room who were able to keep a completely level head.
“I’ve got to tell you more about this, Ig. I’ve had a lot of time to sit with this. I’ve learned a lot from how it works just by trial and error. I…” he stopped and stammered and almost sounded choked up by the end of the sentence, “I love you, son. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this sooner. I always wanted to tell you but I was afraid you’d think I was crazy, or worse, you’d be completely unlike me and wouldn’t believe me. I risked my reputation with you today.”
“Please,” Iggy suddenly blurted, not knowing where he was going at first, but finding the calm he needed for this moment. “Tell me everything you can about who I am, Dad. Tell me everything.”
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Ignatius' first memory was a camera being pointed at him, his older cousin asking him to sing B-I-N-G-O for Grandma. The year is 1996 and Iggy Loiacano has just realized that he is alive. Cousin Johnny is in town visiting from Farmingdale, NY and he just got a new upgrade to his home video camcorder. Johnny had been making home movies for the extended family now for two years since 1994, and this new one was to be his masterpiece, "A Trip to Florida".
There's just one problem: Cousin Iggy isn't focusing on the song that was chosen for him to sing for this scene. His attention keeps drifting elsewhere. While Iggy is continuously encouraged to finish the full round of the B-I-N-G-O song, his mind was elsewhere, distracted by reruns of Little Bear playing on VHS in the other room.
"I'm telling you, this isn't right," said his mother.
"Will you relax?" hushed his father. "He's a kid and he loves this tape."
"But he never gets to see his cousins," his mother protested. "He can watch that anytime." His father replied hotly: "Is this four year old supposed to be a gracious host? Turn the tape off if you're that bothered."
Off flipped the TV from the remote control that had been sitting on his mother's sofa armrest, and out came the ensuing tantrum. Iggy remembers being put to bed early over his reaction. Even then, it felt less like discipline and more like punishment for not performing correctly and on-demand. Another tense night in New Port Richey was postcard perfect.
This was the first time Ignatius' parents considered that their son might have issues with focus and temperament. Unfortunately on one count for the sake of their marriage, they disagreed profusely; unfortunately on another count for young Iggy, this was the gateway to his Adderall prescription, thrust upon him before he could even adjust and find out if honing in focus was a skill he could learn all his own. In the same week that he would begin Pre-K, Ignatius was put onto 2.5mg of immediate release dextroamphetamine once daily.
"This is unnecessary," said his father, watching Mom prod the tablet into the center of a spoonful of tapioca. Mom looked up and replied as hotly to her husband as he had to her the previous week when Johnny was still in visiting: "That's not what Dr. Barrios thinks." She called for Iggy, who was delighted to see pudding and became fixated on it fairly immediately. To Iggy, pudding was a lunch food.
"How would you like to have a pudding every morning, sweetheart?" This was Ignatius' second memory. The final thing he remembered of that day was his father walking away and bluntly declaring, "It's not gonna work."
So began the struggle of Young Ignatius' life whereby he would continue to fail to attain any extra focus, yet one thing was clear to his attention: nobody liked him, no matter what he did. Kids at school, members of his family, even a coldness from distant parents who were themselves fairly detached from each other. Though he never knew why, Iggy always associated being put on Adderall with his inability to make friends.
It wasn't out of a lack of trying. He'd introduce himself, he'd tell his interests, and sometimes maybe in the classroom during free-play, or in the lunchroom as he got older and went into upper-grade school, the most he'd get is a fairly kind reception. But once he was in a space to have quality time with anybody, he noticed one of two things every time: a stoic coldness, or a frenzied unfocusedness. It didn't matter who it was. Anybody that Iggy tried to become close with became as calculated and blunt as the next person, or even more frustratingly, would lend their attention to anything and everything but him. Suddenly Iggy started to wonder if this was what his parents hated about him so much, his own faculties in life having always been these two ways. Hyperfixated on what he enjoyed, or unable to lend the slightest bit of care otherwise.
It wasn't until Thanksgiving 2010, at age eighteen, that Ignatius' father sat him down and told him what was really happening to him, and how he could break free from the invisible chains that kept him in confusing exile. This is where his story begins.
•
"Did you notice," Oswald Loicano said, sitting beside his son at the foldout table used as a makeshift extension to the main dining room table, "that I only drink when the family is over?" This sentence, though redundant in its construction, was more words than Iggy had ever recalled his dad saying to him in a single phrase. It was so jarring that Ignatius let out a chortle. But before Iggy could comment on how peculiar it was for Dad to be talking to him this long, the realization presented to him by his father did strike him as something he always noticed silently but never gave a moment's thought towards. Meekly, Iggy replied, "Hey... yeah, you don't drink unless it's a holiday."
"Or a birthday," added Dad, now raising up his arm from beneath the table to procure a rather sizable 1.75ML bottle of Jack Daniels
“Can you get two of the large shot glasses from out of the china cabinet?” the request was, again, with a strange formality that his father had never shown him. This was a man who had mostly been monosyllabic across his life, and now he was sitting down with that same man as he talked about drinking away the holiday. Why this and why now? Instead of asking what was on his mind, Iggy did as he was asked and quietly got up. He walked over to the large wooden hutch kept in the dining room that housed all the good china and hospitality amenities. Opening it and taking the two golden-tinted glasses out in a single hand, closing it again, and walking back over to the table where his father had now uncapped the whiskey.
He poured them both full. Iggy had seen this before, and always thought it was funny. In nearly every year prior, after the meal was cleared and the majority of the family had retreated either into the den or the backyard to throw the pigskin around, his father would sit at the head of the main table and pour himself two double-shots of whatever bottle he had been recently gifted on his own October birthday. It always looked like he was pouring a drink for himself and an invisible guest, but sure enough, Dad would throw both shots back in five seconds flat. The look on his face at the acidic burn always used to make Iggy laugh. In fact, it made almost anybody who was still in the house laugh if they saw him do it. What Iggy always found rather odd was, after he was done laughing, the rest of the family would stay somewhat giggly. Bubbly. Happier than they were when they got there and even happier than they were while they were eating.
Ignatius never understood that: isn’t the food the initial thrill of the holiday? Why doesn’t everyone get tired and relaxed after being there a few hours? It always felt like the people in his family got louder, happier, more carefree after the dinner was concluded. His mother, a woman who possibly said even less words to the extended family than his father ever said to him, would be busy in the kitchen cleaning dishes and storing leftovers into tupperware containers and zip-loc bags, but even she would seem like she was happier to be doing it after Dad had downed his two shots.
Ignatius was so focused on thinking about all of the above that he hadn’t noticed one of the shot glasses was already empty: his father had downed the first shot. That air hissing noise that so many people do after a big gulp of anything 80 proof came whining out of Dad’s mouth, before a content smile appeared on his face. And then, he put his fingers around the second shot glass, only to do the last thing Iggy could’ve ever expected: he slid the glass into Ignatius’ direction.
Iggy blinked and looked down at the glass, then back up at his dad. His father’s piercing green eyes seemed to stab right through him. “I don’t drink for me,” he started. He then broke his gaze with Ignatius to look twenty feet to the right of where they were sitting, towards the family in the living room: Grandma Luanne who had raised Iggy’s dad all by herself, her husband of 12 years (stepgrandpa Bill as Iggy had been encouraged to call him since he met him when he was six), Aunt Evangeline and her two girls Cousins Ashley and Katherine, Uncle Joe who was his mother’s brother. A motley crew from both sides of the family, though mostly his dad’s kin. This was the tried and true Thanksgiving crew that Ignatius had grown up with most of his life. A tropical drizzle came down outside and had ruined any hope of football this year, as had the 83 degree 90% humidity. Christmas movies were already starting to air and the family had one of them on. Something about a middle-aged couple swearing off of Christmas for the year, and the hijinks that ensue at everybody around them reacting to such a decision.
“What do you notice, Ig?” his father hadn’t looked back at him yet but was continuing to fixate on the family. The movie they were watching wasn’t particularly good; Ignatius even knew it to have a 5.6/10 average across every major movie review aggregate. And yet, all six of them in the living room were laughing their heads off. You would think that all of them were at some highly-acclaimed Broadway comedy with the way they were reacting. Everyone had been fairly quiet until that point, but since only seconds prior with Dad asking his son this question, the volume in the room had increased.
“I notice the family is doing what they do every year,” he said. That was when his father looked back at him, smiling almost too widely but still keeping a sense of stoicism about his body language. “Which is?” Oswald looked at his son, knowing that he was about to get it right.
“Being loud and having a good time, digesting at high volume.” Iggy would never forget what happened next because the validation made him want to burst: his father laughed. “That’s an amazing way to put it, Ignatius. Yep. They are in the throes of digestif.” Iggy echoed a chuckle back.
“Why do you think they’re so loud?” It was a funny question. Ignatius always wondered it but now, apparently, the mystery wasn’t entirely his own after all. His father too had noticed this? It was something Iggy merely found odd, but assumed it to be a coincidence or an artifact of his mind trying to make a connection where there was none. He looked back at his dad. “Why?” Iggy said it as if he was about to follow up with an offering but then realized he hadn’t the slightest idea. “They must be really happy with the turkey this year.”
“You mean like last year?” his dad smiled and then started to look back at the family.
Ignatius had already forgotten that his father had slid the glass in his direction, and dreaded what he was going to suggest. This was supposed to be some kind of rite of passage, wasn’t it? Drinking with Dad. Taking your first shot of whiskey with your father on Thanksgiving at age eighteen. Some kind of milestone moment that his father probably had with him. Iggy appreciated the gesture but he wasn’t interested in alcohol at all. That curiosity had come a year prior, at age seventeen.
“Drink it.” His father said this firmly but non-threateningly. It didn’t feel like a command and yet felt like something that his father was calmly insistent on. He didn’t repeat himself, he just said it plainly. But then, as Iggy looked at the glass and considered what he might say to get out of this, his father added, “I know you snuck some before. It’s okay.”
Ignatius was surprised. He had snuck some, back in junior year after a particularly shitty night at the homecoming dance where he went stag and proceeded not to find anybody who wanted to talk to him. He couldn’t even find a bully that night. He was so insignificant to the student body at his high school that the habitually cruel didn’t even find him to be worth the energy of their malice. That night, after returning home, he figured he would try to have a little party of his own. Home alone with his mother out at her brother’s house and his father working an overnight shift, he helped himself to three shots of unmarked bourbon.
“How did you know?” Iggy was slightly embarrassed but it was clear that he wasn’t in trouble, so he wasn’t fearful to admit it. His father cocked an eyebrow, which scared him more than the admission itself, as his father only ever made that face when he was about to be sarcastic.
“You think I didn’t notice a swig of my best booze being gone? When I last had from it, the liquid reached just to the very top of the label. But when I came back to it…” Dad stopped to look at the family as they burst into laughter at a scene involving the lead actor getting a Botox injection, before looking back at Iggy to finish the sentence, “the line was now a quarter of the way down the brand sticker.”
Ignatius had no words. He hadn’t thought of something so meticulous being on the mind of anybody and yet, if that was really the best booze that his father had, then Iggy was in trouble. Those three shots of bourbon did three things to Iggy: it burned his throat, it triggered a coughing fit from aforementioned burnt throat, and it made his stomach feel awful. But it didn’t get him drunk. It didn’t even get him buzzed. He remembered just how absolutely disappointed he was to realize that the alcohol was seemingly the most ineffective thing he had ever consumed.
Iggy wondered for over a year why that was, but naturally wasn’t going to ask his father. In fact, Ignatius hadn’t realized that it was the most coveted bottle in his father’s liquor cabinet. Realizing this now, Iggy started to laugh. “That… was your best alcohol?”
His father smiled, again with this look in his eye of knowing that Ignatius simply could not place the feeling of. “Why does that surprise you?”
“Because I didn’t feel shit,” Iggy said bluntly, and now for the first time, Ignatius and his father both laughed in unison. Ignatius couldn’t even recall a single time that anybody in his life had ever laughed with him. That was the very first as far as he was concerned.
“Well how much did you have?” asked Oswald. Rather than answer aloud, Iggy felt compelled to hold up three fingers. His father frowned for a moment and then started to let a smile bubble up, like he was holding back laughter behind incredulity. “Three… of these?!” Dad said gesturing to the glass. Iggy nodded.
“These are double shots, Ig. You didn’t have three, you had six.”
Ignatius was about to laugh again before the look on his father’s face stunned him back into hyperfixation. The family laughed loudly behind them again, but neither of the men looked towards them this time. They looked right into one another’s faces: Oswald with a sense of confirmation, Ignatius with a sense of bewildered misunderstanding.
“Drink it,” said Dad, “and watch what happens next. Please.” Ignatius looked at his father and the sincerity in his face as he said this. Sensing that his son was on the precipice of lending his trust, he added two words more. “Trust me.”
Iggy reached for the glass just as he had when it was empty, now filled to the very brim with whiskey. He hadn’t felt it before, so why would now be any different? Ignatius was mostly dreading the burn, the cough, the stomachache that came to him that one night. But then again, that was at three times the amount. This surely wasn’t going to be that bad. Besides, this moment with his father was more of a thrill to him than he’d ever experienced in all his life. Was there really anything to hold fear towards in this moment?
“Don’t sniff it,” Ozy said to his son who was already in the midst of taking a small whiff of the glass. A slight grimace on Iggy’s face as he remembered what that night in junior year was like, but then a regrouping of his faculties and demeanor before putting the glass to his lips and throwing back his head.
There it was. The burn. That awful burn that he absolutely fucking hated. The heat in the back of his throat combined with the somewhat unpleasant taste of sour mash whiskey. He hated it. How do people drink this shit, thought Iggy! He held it in and suppressed the urge to cough that was now starting to rise. His father, whom he expected would be looking onward in approval, was surprisingly not looking at him at all anymore. He was looking back at the family again.
“Watch,” Dad said, now almost in a whisper. Iggy turned his head to watch the family as if they were themselves a movie, as they all watched the movie. The scene that was playing now wasn’t even chockful of jokes or absurdity but rather an expositional part in the movie that showed how the protagonists previously spent the most extravagant Christmases throwing lavish parties and overdoing their giftgiving. It was a necessary segue in any comedy even if there wasn’t much to laugh at. But something interesting accentuated this moment: Iggy realized that the whole family were now laughing in an uproar. Any tiny peculiarity that could be interpreted as funny, from the lead actress making a quirky face to the lead actor having the most flatly dubious tone, was laughed at with the loudest and most hysterical uproar.
He wasn’t understanding what he was seeing, even if he noticed what had just happened. “Did they…” started Iggy, his dad now shooting a glance back at him to finish the sentence, “just get louder? Yes, they did.”
Ignatius did not understand. He looked at his father for guidance, hoping some degree of clear explanation would unfold.
“I can’t get drunk either, Ig. That’s why I said, I don’t drink this for me: I drink this for them.”
Ignatius was confused. “Why would you drinking this, affect them?”
His father sighed and started to recline a bit before remembering how rigid the dining room table chairs were. He sat back up and got closer to Iggy so that nobody would overhear them, as if there was anybody to overhear in the midst of all the laughter coming out of the living room. “What do you hear in the kitchen, Ig?”
Iggy hadn’t even thought about his mother doing the dishes with all that was going on, but now as he focused his ear in, he noticed something remarkable. His frigidly unhumored mother, whom had never shown much visible love towards him or his father, was doing something he had never heard before. She was humming. Over the sound of dishes clattering, suds scrubbing, water flowing, there was an unmistakable hum. In fact it wasn’t even just idle humming, it was a Christmas carol. Out of his mother’s mouth for the first time in his life, from across the house and in the other room, Iggy could identify the sweetly hummed melody of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”.
“My entire life I couldn’t get drunk, Ig.” His father looked as if he was going to cry, like this was some kind of landmark confessional. “I couldn’t get high, I couldn’t get a coffee buzz, I couldn’t even receive anesthetic that time I broke my shin bone falling off the Harley. I…” his father’s voice trailed off.
“I can’t feel any of these things, and Iggy, I don’t think you can either. But look,” glancing at the family just once more, who were now louder than ever since Iggy took his shot. “You can do it too. They feel what you should be feeling. You should be two shots deep into a mild buzz. But you’re not. I should be two shots deep into a mild buzz. But I’m not. But them?” he jerked his thumb at the oblivious roomful of extended family members. “They’re acting like they’ve each had four shots apiece.”
He was right. Ignatius couldn’t believe it but, in that moment, the realization clicked and he understood what his father had been saying from the start. He… was diffusing the sensation of the alcohol across the entire room, to everybody but himself and his father.
“I always noticed that you never reacted like the rest of them, Ig. When the whole family became enthralled after I’d take a shot, you would always be the only one unaffected. I always wondered why, until I realized, you’ve got it too. You can’t feel a dang thing when I drink this, but everyone else here can. That was when I thought that maybe you have this…” his father stopped for a moment, “well, I was going to say gift, but… I do wish sometimes I could experience what they all do, when I sip this.” He gestured towards the bottle. “But I’m able to share something. Those little cousins of yours can’t have alcohol because their livers would fail them and I’d go to jail. And yet when I drink this, the sweet buzz of inebriation seems to fill the room.”
Ignatius couldn’t believe it. He was remembering every Thanksgiving and Christmas now, family birthdays and reunions and anniversaries. Almost every single time, Dad drank, but he always remained at the table with a sense of calm about him. Meanwhile, the entire house would turn into a rock concert in terms of decibel output. People would be screaming laughing, utterances from grandma to little cousins would be slurred; it was as if every family gathering were a frat party, and yet Ignatius had never really thought about why that was. He only noticed it and assumed that all families were like that.
“My shot and your shot are synergizing, Ig,” said his father. “Between the two you downed and the two I downed, it’s as if I did both of them. That’s that. You are whatever I am.”
The silence hung between them. It made sense. It really made sense. And yet, did it make sense? Was Ignatius really supposed to believe that a person can drink alcohol and have the people throughout the room get drunk instead of them?
“I want you to stop taking the Adderall, Iggy.” Oswald looked at him with a sense of genuine sorrow. “I… I tried to keep your mother from putting you on it, I thought even as far ago as when you were a kid that it wasn’t going to be the answer. I even wondered if you would feel it at all…” Ignatius was realizing where his dad was going with all of this.
“You’ve been spiking every friend you’ve ever had with amphetamines and you didn’t even mean to.”
Iggy felt a chill go throughout his entire body. He understood now; nobody could stand to be around him because his daily morning pudding pill wasn’t doing a thing in his system, but it was doing everything to theirs.
“Your mother can feel it. I know that much. That’s why I don’t drink or use any kind of medication when it’s anything but a holiday. I don’t want her to have to feel it and have it change who she is, but… when she put you on that medication, she did nothing for you and everything to herself. And worst of all, she has no way of knowing what she’s done. She’s spiking herself with Adderall because she’s the only one in this house who doesn’t have this problem. She isn’t a conduit to other’s psychoactivity, but you and I are.”
Just then, Iggy did something he didn’t expect to do. He reached for the bottle and started to pour himself another double shot. His father didn’t try to stop him one bit, but smiled. He knew that he wasn’t being perceived as crazy; his son believed him, and was testing it for himself. To prove the point just that little bit further, he took the bottle after Iggy set it down and began to pour for himself.
Ignatius waited to down his shot until his father had his ready. Lifting his shot glass, Oswald looked his son in the face and smiled. “Cheers, kid.” They clinked and downed the hatch. Eight shots across the room, two sober men at the table, and the loudest slur of a clamor you’d ever heard in your entire life from both the living room and kitchen. Everybody was shitfaced, yet completely safe from any physical or bodily harm. After all, there was no alcohol in anybody’s liver, save the two in the room who were able to keep a completely level head.
“I’ve got to tell you more about this, Ig. I’ve had a lot of time to sit with this. I’ve learned a lot from how it works just by trial and error. I…” he stopped and stammered and almost sounded choked up by the end of the sentence, “I love you, son. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this sooner. I always wanted to tell you but I was afraid you’d think I was crazy, or worse, you’d be completely unlike me and wouldn’t believe me. I risked my reputation with you today.”
“Please,” Iggy suddenly blurted, not knowing where he was going at first, but finding the calm he needed for this moment. “Tell me everything you can about who I am, Dad. Tell me everything.”
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