Back again..

It's been quite a while since I posted on this blog.

It's been a busy interim, to say the least Let's see -- planning and executing a cross country move, getting my 18 year old off to college, seeing my husband and family through his new job and subsequent layoff after two months, taking a depressing low paying retail job to pick up the slack (I'll have to speak about that experience at some point), understanding working poverty all too well, recovering back into the professional class, getting my new life into gear, etc. etc...

But the worst experience, by far, has been losing a lifelong friend.


Chris and I were boyfriend and girlfriend in college, but our friendship managed to surpass the trauma of our eventual romantic breakup, and we remained close friends over the years. He was the one person I could always really talk to -- I knew that when he called me up every few months and asked, "What's up?" I could really tell him. He'd always have some unique insight that would make things seem ok, or at least less bad.

When I felt like my marriage was probably kaput, he was the one who told me to hang in there, and he would always give me the male point of view. He would listen to my songs and my crazy ideas and opinions, and he'd always manage to make me laugh at myself, or at him. He was the best kind of friend -- he kept it real, but he'd make you feel better about it, no matter what was going on..

Unfortunately, he was also a heroin addict.

He managed to keep his addiction hidden from me for several years. He had traveled out to San Franciso with a group of our college musician friends to play in a band and live. They were folks who never, ever said no to drugs, and they were eager to explore the myriad opportunities to try heroin that existed in San Francisco.

When these friends tired of the lifestyle, they left. Chris, however, stayed behind, and got hooked deeper and deeper. I didn't realize the depth of his problem until I had occasion to visit, and he refused to allow me to stay at or see his place, insisting it was too messy. This was odd, considering that he was always somewhat of a neat freak, and usually kept a really tidy place.

After he came back to New York, his addiction became more obvious, to everyone. He finally leveled with me about it, and what he had gone through to try and get clean - at that point there had been several attempts. During subsequent years, there would be more relapses, rehabs, and perhaps most heartbreaking, the onset of mental illness - bi-polar disorder - that seemed to fuel his need for self medication. He hated the lithium they gave him for bi-polar - "It kills my creativity" was his complaint, and the rest of his life became an endless cycle of depression, mania, heroin and alcohol, breakdowns, detox and rehab, taking meds and 12 stepping for a while, stopping his meds, depression, mania, etc.

He was from a wealthy family and could have lived comfortably on a trust fund for the rest of his life, but they cut off most of his income at some point, probably to keep him from OD'ing.

His calls became less frequent - instead of months between our conversations, it became years - and the last time he called, it was obvious he was in a really bad way. He was ranting and raving in a way I had never heard, and while he had previously taken great pains to only call me when he was straight or clean, it was pretty clear that straight, clean and sane were no longer part of his existence. To realize that a guy of his intelligence, wit and creativity was so far gone was hard to for me to deal with. I didn't know what to say, so I just let him go on.

At one point he stopped, and said, "Am I scaring you?" I replied evenly, "Well, you're not making a whole lot of sense." He apologized, and told me of his struggles with his illness. Before we hung up, the last thing I said to him was, "Chris, you know I love you and I'll always be there for you." He did not say much in reply. It turns out to have been the last thing I ever said to him.

His family informed none of his old friends of his death. Some of us later surmised that at that point, after dealing with his addiction and bi-polar issues for the better part of 12 years, they probably had no idea who was a true friend and who was just a crazy junkie, although they had known me for several years when we were together.

I guess in a way, Chris himself was the one to tell me he had passed on. Out of the blue a couple months ago, I dreamed of him. It was a vivid dream, and unsettling. He was younger, looking like a rock star with blond streaked hair. He was searching for something - I never did quite find out what - but it was obvious that I was there to try to help him find it.

The dream stayed with me all day, as did my unsettled feeling. Finally, I sat down at the computer and googled his name along with "obituary" and "death notice." This was a morbid practice I had taken to at various times during the four years previous, when he had remained out of touch after that final conversation. (I never knew how to get in touch with him, as he rarely had a phone number and his addresses changed frequently.)

This time, however, the horrible reality was staring me in the face from the computer screen: a stark listing from a funeral home that gave his full name and date of birth and death. I remember letting out a scream - I was home alone at the time - that was more like a a wail that overtook me and would not let go. It was like a knife through my heart. There would never be that phone call from him again, never the communication I had hoped for - "I'm finally clean, I'm ok." He was gone, forever, one of my dearest friends in the world. I would never see him, never hug him, never talk to him again.

It was some comfort to subsequently find out that he had died of a heart infection that had come on suddenly. He had been living with his mother for some time when it happened. At least he didn't just OD in some squalid apartment, surrounded by junkies, or worse, alone.

I sent a long condolence letter to his mom -- she never replied. I guess she lumped me in with his "bad" friends, or maybe she was just too torn up or out of it herself to deal with it (she had been an alcoholic for many years). I wrote to his sister, care of his mom, but the letter was returned.

A few of us are planning a memorial in the spring, in our old college town, when the mountains in upstate New York come back to life, and the ground and air turn warm. We will play his songs and share funny remembrances and probably laugh and cry and hug each other -- the gathering of those who loved him that we haven't yet had. Maybe it will help.

I have a feeling his spirit is OK. For weeks after, his name kept popping up, repeatedly. I was working at a bookstore at the time, and customers with his name would come in to pick up books on hold, or I would grab a book off the shelf - one time one actually fell off a shelf - and the author's name would be the same as his.

And then one night, very late, I was driving home from work, along a deserted rural road. I said to the emptiness, I just wish I could have some sign that he is OK. And this old song came spilling out of the radio into the Texas hill country night:

If you had not have fallen
Then I would not have found you
Angel flying too close to the ground
And I patched up your broken wing
And hung around a while
Tried to keep your spirits up
While you were feelin' down
I knew someday that you would fly away
For love's the greatest healer to be found
So leave me if you need to
I will still remember
Angel flying too close to the ground
Fly on, fly on past the speed of sound
I'd rather see you up
Than see you down
Leave me if you need to
I will still remember
Angel flying too close to the ground

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Blind dates, dogs and dildos

I was always intrigued by the idea of a blind date – until I actually went on two.

During a dateless period of my single life, I allowed my co-worker Leana to set me up on a blind date with a friend of her boyfriend's. We decided a baseball game would be fun, and she and her boyfriend would come along too.

I was mildly intrigued, since it was my first blind date. But Blind Date 1 or BD1 - was short (sorry, I'm not, and I don't like dating guys shorter than me), humorless, and we had zero chemistry.

BD1 didn't seem interested in anything, including me, and I sure wasn't interested in him. At one point he told me he would soon be traveling to Tahiti.

"Wow," I said, "That's really exciting."

"Yeah - I guess so," was BD1's brilliant response.

I found him so irritatingly boring that I became a bad girl. He told me he hated smoking, so I lit up a cigarette. I drank lots of beer. I made fun of him with Leana when we had retreated to the food stand for more beer, cigarettes and girl talk.

"I'm so sorry!" she said. "He was nice when I met him before!"

When BD1 dropped me off that night, I nearly leapt out of the car. "Bye!" I shouted over my shoulder as I raced for my front door. I'm sure he was just as happy to see me go.

Turns out that BD1 had been recently dumped by his longtime girlfriend, which accounted for his moroseness. Nasty me surely didn't help, but I wasn't in the mood to be his shrink. I had also recently suffered through the first of three breakups with my Torturous Moody Boyfriend. I had just wanted a good time, some diversion. I resented the fact that BD1 couldn't supply even a little of that. After all, I was trying!

My second and last blind date was also to a ball game (I should have known!). My friend Sue told me that she had met a friend of her fiancée's at a party, and she thought we would get along. He was a journalist in another city, and smart and funny. Hmm, sounded promising, and as I was in the midst of breakup #2 from Torturous Moody, I figured why the hell not.

On the morning of the game, I got a call from Sue. She was at her fiancée's apartment, and BD2 was there as well.

"Uh, hi, are you still planning on coming to the game?" she asked.

"Sure!" I replied, "I'll see you there."

Stupid me. I didn't get that she was trying to warn me.

The perk of this blind date was a luxury box at the stadium, courtesy of Sue's employer. Food, drinks – lots of beers! – and best of all, a private bathroom. Cushioned seats, too. What more could you want?

I was introduced to BD2. "Hi," he said tonelessly, holding out his hand to shake. I looked down in horror, as I realized he had warts on his fingers. Now I can tolerate some odd things – facial tics, baldness – but warts just give me the heebie-jeebies. I must have given him a limp fish shake as I attempted my best fake smile.

It was kind of downhill from there. The guy was another morose, monosyllabic bore.

I don't remember much of the game. I think I ate and drank a lot. That part was good. At one point, Sue and I took a walk outside of the box.

"I'm so sorry!" she laughed, trying to keep a straight face. "I tried to warn you when I called this morning! When I met him before at that party, he must have been drunk – he's really boring when he's sober!"

Ironic – I had spent 2 years trying to deal with Torturous Moody's overindulgences – cocaine, alcohol - and this guy was actually worse sober than drunk.

For some reason, I did not feign a headache or a family emergency after the ballgame. I actually went back with the three of them to Sue's fiancée's apartment (I was used to being a somewhat of a glutton for punishment in those days). We entertained ourselves playing with his collection of odd wind-up toys, including dentures with legs. Someone had the great idea of going to a movie. Seemed ok to me – air conditioning (it was hot, hot, hot out) and a chance to see the then-new Spike Lee film, She's Gotta Have It. Well, why not, I thought. Maybe he'll relax, and I'd wanted to see the movie anyway.

The movie theatre was really small and cramped. The seats were miniscule. I had to tensely hold my legs together to keep them from bumping into BD2's (at least he wasn't short). If' you've ever seen She's Gotta Have It, you know that the first scene is a close-up of a guy's tongue on a girl's big tit. Then the movie proceeds to one sex scene after another. In between the sex scenes are scenes of people talking about sex. Great stuff to watch when you're sitting next to a blind date that you wouldn't want to naked wrestle with for all the vodka in Russia.

I forget the rest of the evening. Somehow I got home. BD2 gave me a ride, which was at least polite. I already had a hangover from the baseball beer. I think I said something lame like, "Nice meeting you!" as I again bolted for the door.

Post-date findings for BD2 were frighteningly similar to BD1's: recent bad breakup. Depressed. Miserable. My blind date M.O.

I never went on another blind date after that. I figured if I wanted bad dates, I could arrange those myself.

I do have a good friend who actually met his wife on a blind date. Amazing. And she has no warts, either. So it does work for some.

But my sister has the all-time best blind date story.

She realized within minutes of meeting her blind date for lunch – we'll call him Dave for some reason – that she would never, ever kiss him and never ever, ever sleep with him. He just wasn't for her. I think on blind dates there should be some 10 minute grace period where either party can say, "I'm sorry, this just isn't working for me," and you can call the whole thing off, no hard feelings.

But there isn't, and she had to be cheerful and date-like for a few hours. Dave and she went to lunch and then were going off to some event. She needed to stop at her house on the way.

"Great!" he said. I think he was actually hopeful of a little action, even if sis only wanted to change her shoes.

She introduced Dave to her animals – she has many – and went outside to check on her semi-moronic large dog, Trixie. Trixie had dug a giant hole in the yard, and came gleefully bounding over with something in her mouth – buried treasure, now unearthed! Too late, sis realized with horror what Trixie was clasping in her jaws: a huge foot-long black dildo! (Sis was only renting the house, and the previous owners had been interesting, to say the least).

She grabbed a paper bag on the patio and was trying to wrestle the dildo out of the dog's mouth when Dave started coming over.

"What's that she's got?" he asked. "Can I help?"

Similar to the situation of me pinned in a seat next to BD2 at a sex film, the last thing Sis wanted to share with Dave was the discovery of enormous sex toy – dug up in her own back yard, no less!

"Oh it's nothing!" she assured him, as she continued to wrestle the dildo away. "

Bad dog, bad dog," she hissed to Trixie under her breath. She finally grabbed Big Black Dildo free and shoved it in the paper bag as Dave approached.

"Let me just throw this old bone out and we can be on our way!" she chirped.

Had any good blind dates?

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Jane gets racy

Now this looks like fun - after all, don't most Jane Austen fans secretly wish that there had been a peek into the bedrooms at Pemberley?

An author named Arielle Ecstut published this in 2004, announcing it on April Fools Day on the radio. Here's the premise, courtesy of Amazon.com:

Synopsis
In 2002, two amateur Jane Austen scholars, while staying at a Hertfordshire estate, stumbled upon a hidden cache of manuscript pages and made an extraordinary literary discovery - lost scenes from Jane Austen's novels that reveal an altogether different dimension to her oeuvre. Hidden by Jane Austen's younger sister Cassie in 1818, these missing pages throw an entirely new light on all of Austen's work making explicit the latent and repressed sexuality that underlies much of her fiction. The discovery also forces new assessments of Austen herself. For along with these pages they found letters to her editor, Thomas Egerton, and her sister arguing and anguishing over the extensive cuts that she was asked to make in order for her novels to be seen as acceptable and decent to her publisher. Pride and Promiscuity is a landmark publication of indescribable importance.

Apparently, many folks took it seriously! Now of course, I have to find it and read it.

Here's a very funny article about it.

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Childhood trauma - Image #1

I came across this photo while searching for "scared" images.

It reminded me of my own personal Department Store Santa traumas (there were more than one). I feel the pain of the youngest in the green coat. "Mommmmmm! Get me outta here!"

More on that later - I've got a pile of work today. For now, I'll just share:

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Brilliance

Just thought I'd put in a plug for Gallery of the Absurd. One of the funniest blogs ever. Sheer genius!

Here is the artist 14's rendering of Britney Spears:

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Random observations

I recently had the unsettling experience of having four separate people tell me I look like Katie Couric. This is disturbing on several levels:

I am not cheerful.
I am not perky.
I have lips.
Katie Couric has zero sex appeal.
I don't like Katie Couric.

When I was younger I used to get "You look like Carly Simon."
Now Carly Simon back in the day had mondo lips and sex appeal. She was an artist. Married to James Taylor when he was uber-handsome and singing songs like, "Hey baby, I'm your Candyman." She used to pose provocatively in skimpy outfits for her album covers. Guys I knew used to drool over her. So I always kind of liked the comparison.

Have I somehow morphed from sexy lush-lipped singer/songwriter to annoying thin lipped tv puff-journalist? And if so, how did this happen?

Hey you know, Carly still looks pretty good. Her current husband bears more than a passing resemblance to James Taylor, though.

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Moonmaid has landed

There will be no age, location or identifying details about me. Just random thoughts and bits. Cheers!

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