He did try, and he gave it his all. It just wasn’t enough. He got into college, a first in his family. From day one he knew he wasn’t cut out for it. He managed to pass the exams, just barely, but he couldn’t find any underlying passion or talent, and by halfway through the fourth semester his momentum had run out.

He hung his head and moved back in with his mother, to the old family house with its low ceilings, its cramped spaces, its regrets measured in silences. He thought he’d just push the pause button on his studies. He could recharge, refresh his mind, get some perspective. Of course it was a lie. Deep down he knew that he had actually given up, he had given everything up a long time ago, maybe even the moment he was born.

It was because of that town. The neighborhood, with the vacant lots between the houses, the roads full of potholes, the people in their misbuttoned shirts, the cheap cigarillos, the chemical-flavored booze, the lamps casting weak yellow light on the streets, the nighttime quarrels about money, the screeching rusty gates, the neglected gardens, the laughter ending in coughing fits, the smiles showing missing teeth, the barking of half-wild dogs, and the center of it all, the Outskirts Pub.

That town. That neighborhood. That pub.

Even as a child he knew there was no escape. If you were born there you would have to die there too because the town was a trap.

He was right, of course.

Gábor now worked loading sacks for below the minimum wage. It was simple manual labor that left plenty of time for thinking. Like a prisoner savoring his life mistakes, replaying them in his head to see if things might have turned out differently if he had made different choices. Maybe if he had read more, if he had studied more diligently, if he had chained himself to a passion, then maybe he wouldn’t have turned out to be such a failure. To make matters worse, his years at college had made him too polished for harsh physical work. Although it was his own choice to come back, he still felt humiliated. Each bag he loaded with cement was a reminder of those wasted years.

His thirtieth birthday was coming on quickly and one morning he made a snap decision, like steel breaking in the cold, that he would become an alcoholic. Once he formulated the idea, he made a plan and decided to get wasted every single day. Methodically, with determination. It was one thing he should be good at anyway, even if he wasn’t good at anything else. Most of the people around him were already alcoholics, or on the road to becoming one, but all of them drifted into that state, they developed the habit day by day without noticing. It came naturally to them. Not to Gábor; he didn’t drift into it. It was a mission.