Connie Armstrong: The Life Story of a Functional Alcoholic

By Nathan Aguinaga

Connie has her whole life ahead of her. She has youth, beauty, and popularity in her hometown of Lapeer, Michigan. Putting her athleticism to use, she embarks on an adventure in the Army. She works hard, but she plays hard as well, and her continuous binge-drinking steers her life through complicated twis

• Language: English
• Publisher: Koehler Books
• Release date: Aug 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798888240618

Nathan Aguinaga

Nathan Aguinaga is a retired master sergeant who served twenty years in the US Army. He is also an accomplished author with Koehler Books where he started with his three-part series, which includes Division: Life on Ardennes Street, Roster Number Five Zero, and Wake Up: You're Having Another Nightmare. After the series, he wrote One Term: A Current-Day Political Assassination. All four books still currently receive excellent ratings on Amazon.

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INTRODUCTION

Make no mistake about it: This book is not a documentary about alcohol addiction, nor is it a guide to help people who suffer this addiction to stop drinking. This is a story based on a childhood friend of mine and her addiction to alcohol. I will tell you her stories about how her drinking affected her as a teenager, throughout her professional career, and after her time serving in the military.

Connie was on the verge of being my girlfriend at the beginning of our freshman year of high school. Instead, we simply became good friends. I think she had a small crush on me during our seventh and eighth-grade school years, because she would call me almost every night after school. My mom thought she did, anyway. Sometimes she would call my house and I wouldn’t be home, so she would stay on and talk to my mother.

Our freshman year, we got drunk together for the first time. I mean, we got trashed, drinking so much that we got violently sick. The consequences didn’t seem to matter to her, though; she continued to get drunk at every high school party we went to. I’ll get into more details within the chapters.

I believe Connie became an alcoholic the first time she got drunk. Up until recent times, we remained great friends. We didn’t hang out, but we did the Facebook thing and texted every now and then. After she got out of the Army, she moved back to our hometown in Michigan, and I went to Ohio not long after.

These are the stories of my good friend Connie and her lifelong battle with alcohol addiction.

Chapter 1

HIGH SCHOOL PARTIES

I was born and raised in Lapeer, Michigan, a small city about seventy miles north of Detroit. Lapeer is a blue-collar city; much of the adult population works in auto factories in the Detroit and Flint areas. When I grew up, there were two high schools, two middle schools, and around six elementary schools. Today, all high schoolers are consolidated into one school, with each class consisting of approximately four to five hundred students.

I attended Lapeer West High School from 1986 to 1990. Back in those days, there was a high school party every single weekend. Whenever parents went away, their kids let loose. Most of the time, we would crash out at the host’s house—usually on the floor, though sometimes we got lucky and found a bed to sleep in. The unwritten rule was that the parents’ bedroom was off limits, and rightfully so. Other facts of the party life in Lapeer: there was always beer and/or liquor, and there was always a fight. Lapeer had a lot of alpha-male personalities, and they always seemed to clash over a girl. Sometimes two or three fights broke out in one night. Every now and then, we had the cops called on us, and the parties would get broken up. The host would get into trouble when their parents got home on Sunday, but it was worth it for the street cred.

The biggest event during the summer was Lapeer Days, a three-day celebration with a carnival and vendors all along the downtown streets. The beer tent was the place to be when you turned twenty-one. It was also very common to get kicked out of the beer tent at twenty-one for being drunk and obnoxious.

I first met Connie during the Lapeer Days right before my seventh-grade year, standing in line to get some food. I was wearing gray parachute pants and my checkered vans, and she complimented my outfit. We’re talking summer of ’84; parachute pants with vans were it, man. I even had my hair spiked. I was as cool as the Fonze—at least, Connie Armstrong thought I was.

She was a good-looking girl, and we hit it off right away. She introduced herself and asked what school I went to. I told her that I was going into seventh grade at Zemmer Junior High. She got excited because she would be in the same grade at the same school. Unfortunately, we ended up with only one class together, but we knew where each other’s lockers were and linked up in the hallway between classes. Anyway, we were good friends throughout seventh and eighth grade. I had a few girlfriends, but Connie never approved.

She called me almost every night. Sometimes we talked for a whole hour. This was before cell phones, of course, so I would sit at the kitchen table and talk on our one and only landline. My mom really liked her. She used to ask why I wasn’t dating her.

I told her, I don’t know. I guess we’re just friends, Mom.

She would reply, Well, I really like her, and I think she’s a nice girl who cares about you.

My usual reply was Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fast-forward to our freshman year of high school. I was playing football, and Connie was on the volleyball team. I finally decided to ask her out on a date. She was all about it. After practice one afternoon in mid-August before the school year had officially started, we were sitting and talking in the cafeteria. I leaned over and kissed her for the first time. We started to get hot and heavy right there in the school. At the start of the fall semester, me and Connie were finally boyfriend and girlfriend. My mom was certainly happy.

During that summer, I had agreed to paint my grandmother’s house in nearby Capac. I stayed the weekends with her, and my parents picked me up on Sundays after bingo. The crew who played bingo at the American Legion included my grandma, an aunt who lived with my grandma at the time, my uncle and aunt who lived next door to my grandma, and usually my mother. My grandma’s house was an old, two-story Victorian and took me forever to paint.

During the second week of school, Connie decided to sneak over to Capac for the weekend to be with me. I figured she could stay at my aunt’s house next door. My uncle was going to be up north hunting, and my aunt was really cool, so I knew she would go for it.

Connie had a friend drop her off at a gas station in town. She called my grandma’s, and I met her uptown. We had to be sneaky about it and tell my grandma that she was visiting a relative in Capac that weekend, so we went to a pay phone and went through the phone book inside. We picked out a random name and address and memorized it because I knew my grandma was going to ask who her relatives were. Capac is a very small town, with a population of about three thousand. Everyone knew each other.

When my grandma asked, Connie spit out the name without a hitch.

My grandma and the aunt living with her simply shook their heads and said, Nope, doesn’t sound familiar.

We got away with it. Now the only thing I had to do was take her to my aunt’s next door and tell my grandma I would be staying there overnight. She didn’t care. After all, she wanted her house painted.

Finally, Connie and I were alone at my aunt’s house; I don’t recall where my aunt was.

We were sitting on the couch in the living room when she said, Look what I brought, Nate and opened up her gym bag, pulling out a bottle of wine.

I had never drank alcohol before, so my reaction was pretty much So what?

She said she was going to save it for nighttime. We started kissing and again getting hot and heavy. The next thing I knew, we were upstairs on my aunt and uncle’s waterbed. We took off our pants and underwear, she climbed on top of me, and we had sex. It was my first time, but I don’t think it was Connie’s. She definitely knew what she was doing, and she was very aggressive. I must say, it was freaking awesome! We did it two more times before my aunt got home.

When she finally got home, her nephew and his girlfriend came over too. They were a little older, maybe seniors at the time. He had asked her to buy us all beer, and she did so without hesitation. Like I said, she was cool. We sat there and got drunker than a skunk. It was my first time ever getting drunk, but like with the sex, I don’t know about Connie. She was putting the beers down like a champ. Then she opened up the bottle of wine, and we went to town on that too.

After two hours of steady drinking, we went upstairs. I had to be helped up the stairs. Connie and I went into the spare bedroom, and this time we got butt naked. We were going at it again when, all of a sudden, I threw her off me, jumped up, and ran to the bathroom. I got on my hands and knees in front of the toilet and commenced throwing up like never before. When I was done, I climbed back into bed with Connie. She suddenly jumped up and ran to the bathroom to do the same. My aunt came upstairs to check on us. She marched right into the bathroom as Connie was throwing up and I was behind her, rubbing her shoulders while my aunt asked if everything was alright. We were both still butt-ass naked.

I said, We’re good, just a little sick.

Okay, let me know if you need anything, she replied.

The next morning around eight, I got back to painting grandma’s house with a pounding headache. Later on, around 4:30, they all left to play bingo. I invited Connie over, and before you knew it, we were going at it again, like rabbits. Oh, to be a teenager again. After bingo, my mom came to pick me up, and I asked if we could give Connie a ride home. She asked what she was doing there. I passed the same lie off to her as I did my grandma—that she was visiting relatives.

Oh, that’s nice, my mom said. I didn’t think she would appreciate it if I told her that we got drunk as hell and fucked all weekend.

That night, while I lay in bed, I thought about what we had pulled off. What a weekend, right? At age fifteen, my second week of my freshman year of high school, I got drunk for the first time and lost my virginity, and that feels like an understatement. Oh, Connie, Connie, Connie—how sweet she was.

Although we had that great, special weekend together, we drifted apart. We still walked down the halls at school together, holding hands and kissing each other before class. This was back in the day when couples could hold hands and make out in the hallways; the two assistant principals who were the disciplinary forces of the school were more worried about breaking up the fights. Not to mention, Connie and I played sports for the school, so that pretty much gave us a free pass on the small shit.

We would go to high school parties, where normally there was a big bonfire, beer, and music. There was nothing like going to a bonfire in the fall after a football game. The guys would wear jeans, flannel shirts, and work boots, and we all basically had mullets. The girls wore tight-ass jeans, and during football season, they had their boyfriends’ football jerseys on too. If we had a home game, the girls wore the away jersey, and vice versa for away games. It was the same old scene weekend after weekend. We would get drunk, Connie and I would sneak off to have sex, and the night usually ended with an alpha-male fight.

Back then, if you received a note from a girlfriend or boyfriend, that usually meant that they were breaking up with you. Well, I got my note from Connie toward the end of football season. It said that she still loved me and always would, but she wanted to go out with other guys. I was actually feeling the same way. Especially now that I had lost my virginity, I was curious about being with other girls. I’m convinced that this is normal at that age.

I approached her in the hallway, gave her a hug, and told her that I agreed and felt the same way. She actually got pissed off at me. Go figure. We didn’t talk for about a month after our breakup, but we both had a new girlfriend and boyfriend soon after.

The next semester, we had health class together. The first day, we were allowed to pick our own seats. I swallowed my pride and sat next to Connie. Surprisingly, she didn’t move. Instead, she asked how I was doing. I was relieved; I have never liked animosity in a breakup. Breakups often come with the famous Let’s still be friends, but I can honestly say that Connie and I stayed close. Like Forrest Gump said, We were like peas and carrots again.

Throughout high school, we hung out at parties, had classes together, and ate lunch with one another from time to time. We remained friends through graduation in 1990. Our senior year, she had a pretty steady boyfriend she had known throughout school: Chris. He was a year under us and thought he was pretty cool dating a senior as a junior, especially a pretty, popular senior who played volleyball and basketball and ran track.

She was known as a party girl. Connie often spent the night at the houses of friends who had cool parents that let them drink down in their basements, even on school nights. They would get drunk as hell on cheap vodka, get up early, and go to school. I had homeroom with her first thing in the morning, and occasionally, I smelled alcohol on her, even over the pot smell. Her and her friends usually burned a joint on the way to school. Hell, we all did.

She still did herself up real pretty every morning. You know, makeup, the ’80s poofy hairstyle, and tight jeans with flats. Us guys mostly wore tapered jeans and high-top white leather tennis shoes (usually Nike), and by my senior year, I had a different Metallica shirt for every day of the week.

Connie and Chris were straight up in love with each other. They both worked at Little Caesar’s Pizza. She had been working there since her junior year, and he started a year later, during the summer before our senior year. That’s where they started flirting with each other. She would walk by Chris, he would catcall her, and she would turn and smile at him with a wink. They soon started dating and having sex on a regular basis. Who wasn’t? By our senior year, at least four couples in school had babies.

Connie and Chris showed up at parties and before long would end up fucking somewhere in the house, either in the host’s bedroom or the parents’ room. If that failed, they would use the bathroom. Sometimes they got away with using the parents’ bed, but most of the time they got kicked out by the host: Hey, you two, get out of my parents’ fucking bedroom!

One particular house that we often partied at belonged to the parents of one of my best friends, Shannon. Shannon’s older brother, who was about five years older than us, was the enforcer. He made sure that no one got out of control, that the house was cleaned up the next morning, and that nobody entered their mom and dad’s bedroom. It used to piss off Connie and Chris. That’s when the bathroom came into play, but that pissed off everyone else at the party. It was a small, ranch-style home with only one bathroom. Shannon’s big brother didn’t want any of us pissing outside because that would irritate the neighbors and the cops could get called. When Connie and Chris took over the one bathroom, a line drunk of teenagers desperately needing to piss would form outside the door, forcing Shannon’s brother to eventually come knocking on the door, yelling, Let’s go, you two. Hurry up and get out of the fucking bathroom!

During the winter of our senior year, Connie experienced one of her scariest events thus far.

She had saved up enough money to buy herself a used ’78 Buick from an older lady in nearby Davison. It was pretty common to see older trucks and cars for sale in people’s yards in those days. I don’t think it’s too common today. Anyway, she was at a friend’s house on Lake Nepessing one day after giving this friend a ride home from school. Her father was up north deer hunting, so her friend broke out a bottle of vodka from his bar. It was only around three o’clock. She and her friend put on the Metallica …And Justice for All album and passed the bottle around until there wasn’t a drop left. Then they started on a pint of gin from the same cupboard. They killed that too.

It started to get dark early. There was about a foot of snow on the ground, and the temperature had really dropped. Connie had to leave because they had school tomorrow and she wasn’t going to be that girl wearing the same clothes two days in a row.

Home was about eight miles away. On the way home, she got on Oregon Road. It was completely dark by now. Well, anyone from Lapeer knows that on Oregon Road, there is a large hill with a swamp at the bottom, on the right side of the road. Connie temporarily passed out driving down that hill. She woke abruptly as her nose smashed into the steering wheel on the way through the cattails of the frozen swamp. Luckily, she regained control of the car and was able to steer back onto the road and make it to her parents’ house. She parked in the driveway, went inside the house, and opened up the refrigerator to find leftovers to eat.

When her mom came into the kitchen to talk to her, she screamed and began freaking out. Oh my God, oh my God! What happened to you?!

Apparently, Connie’s face was completely covered with blood. She lied and said that her car slid on the ice and she hit a fence on her way home. Her mom got her a washcloth and began cleaning her face.

You’re drunk, her mom yelled. "I can smell it