"Bimmy"/"Doshka": the nicknames, and the boy who drank his passed-out mother's vodka

texture · childhood, ~ages 10-11, B.S.

• When: childhood, ~ages 10-11 (recalled)
• What: Sober, his mother called him "Bimmy"/"Bim," not knowing the neighborhood cognomen came from an acronym for "Big Indestructible Moron" (his head huge and square since childhood, on which friends broke objects); drunk, she called him her "Doshka"/"Dochka," "good sir knight and last and only love," and asked him not to hit her. At ten or eleven Gately would take his passed-out mother's glass, cover her with the afghan, and drink her vodka himself — carefully leaving a wake-up swallow so she'd rouse and buy a new bottle that night. He scratched "Donold"/"Donad" into the Beverly dining-chair legs; the family cat was Nimitz.