Romancing the Foam

When John Moriarty finally started his first book in 1997, it made sense that he’d want to write about his longest-lasting, most passionate love affair. The twist is that this wildly destructive relationship was with the bottle, “the lover I always really wanted,” he says, “and always escaped responsibility to be with.”

Liquid Lover: A Memoir is just arriving on local bookstore shelves, but it’s already scored positive national reviews (“It shimmers with universal truth,” says Publishers Weekly). It’s all part of the happy ending that concludes Moriarty’s personal roller coaster ride, which started with his first sip of beer at age ten. The following year, he was raped by his best friend’s older brother, which filled him with such shame that a decade passed before he revealed the story. This trauma, combined with the insecurity and shyness that most kids experience, formed a potent mixture that made alcohol Moriarty’s “unwavering ally” before he even escaped puberty.

“Later, I self-medicated with a full menu of things: alcohol, sex, drugs, spending money, traveling and food,” he reflects. Liquid Lover mixes and matches these in a variety of combinations — most often the combination of booze and sex. It’s so unflinchingly honest, one wonders how Moriarty’s close friends and family have reacted to his revelations.

“One of my sisters refuses to read the book because she fears it will make her sad. The other read it and cried because it did make her sad. And most of my friends just want to know how the book is selling, which I don’t know and don’t want to know,” he says.

Unlike most published accounts of love affairs with the bottle, Moriarty’s story comes from the perspective of an openly gay man: “Before I stopped drinking, I had read Drinking: A Love Story and had a moment of clarity. One of the reasons I wanted to write the book is that there isn’t a lot of information like this out there for a gay man.”

But Moriarty refuses to let his book be stuck in a niche. “I’m gay,” he says, “but I tried to make my story as universal as possible. It doesn’t matter what you are, the issues are the same, whether you’re gay, straight, male, female, young or old. Alcoholism is such an insidious disease. When I was writing this, I kept thinking, ‘If I can help one person to stop drinking, it will all be worth it.’ That’s why it wasn’t difficult writing about the really bad, embarrassing things. It was very cathartic and healing.”

The newly published writer isn’t resting on his laurels: He participates in the daily grind, writing corporate communications and public relations materials for local and national businesses. He wrote Liquid Love during weekends and evenings. With his hand loosened from the bottle, he’s working on his second book, a novel inspired by outlaws Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker.

“The funny thing,” he says, “is that I never imagined that my first published book would have been about the reasons I had never published anything else.”