Adventures In Social Cocaine Use, Exhibit A

Those who know say that the number one symptom of addiction is denial. Those who follow those who know say that denial "ain't no river in Egypt." I've had the fortune to be able to very intimately explore and challenge this "knowledge," and to later write reams of confessional about these very experiences in an attempt to rid myself of the shame and earn the right to have the hole in my septum rebuilt. See future post entitled "Okay, Was That Considered A Nose Job?"

My place, in the '80s, where everybody knew my name, was on East 58th Street and First Avenue in New York City: Hartley, four-star dinner, five-star clientele, really big brass bar. Denial had me throw in the "'80s" part I'm sure because after all, didn't everybody do coke in the '80s? Certainly everyone I knew. Please see future post, "Everyone I Knew In The '80s Has Done Time."

This was back in the more social, ambulatory days of my use, when it still seemed to me that I was the coolest thing walking. Cocaine gave my ever-diminishing capacity to drink LEGS, and baby that discovery made me very happy. I appeared very happy back then anyway, and why not? I was living on the posh Upper East Side of Manhattan, making more money than g_d, with a quite obvious knowledge of the important designers to wear, people to know, places to be seen. In fact, I was certain that it was only a matter of time before I was discovered. For what, I don't know, because I didn't really do anything to be discovered for, but in my celebrity-dotted life and my chemically-addled haze it seemed certain and inevitable that someone would finally realize who I really was!

Friday night at Hartley: I had scored a particularly beautiful glassine envelope filled with the purest, pretty white snow from my favorite bartender. And I paid the last pretty copper penny I had for it too. Paycheck received that morning, paycheck gone that night. But, hey, you should have seen the outfit I was wearing. These things count when you're broke!

So I saunter back through the restaurant, wave to Max on my left, retort over to my right "Oh, Penelope, you're so bad!" etc., and head for the ladies room, psyched, yes pumped - I can't wait to get into that stall!

Ach! It's full! Well, I'm just going to unfold this little envelope at one end, kind of, hmmm, you know they don't really unfold except for in the middle, but maybe I can juuuuuuust scoop a little bit onto my mutantly long fingernail and get us a little toot while we're waiting, right? Maybe not.

First, can I describe the skirt I had on? Here it is, and although that is not me wearing it (long legs?) it easily could have been (flat stomach!):


Yes, it is important to the progression of the story: it was a hot little number, kind of a cross between Madonna-loose and the Thompson Twins-cute - tacky as hell, though not for its time. Notice it's velvet.

So I'm a bit "tipsy" and struggling to secret a little snort of the primo stuff up my nose while I'm waiting for the stall to open up and, oh my! Ooooops?! The whole envelope opens up and empties down the front of me. Crap!! It's snowing down the velvet!

Well, what does a girl do? It's early in the evening, I've spent everything I've got, I need to keep drinking even though I'm already drunk (please see future post "My Name Is ______ And I'm An Alcoholic") and I'm in dire need of a pick-me-up so I can go on looking "hot(?)" enough to get the bartender and other assorted persons to buy me drinks. Okay, the answer is obvious to me, but if it's not to you, I'll just tell you. I lift my velvet skirt up over my face and begin to snort it. Can you believe the luck of wearing something with such a dense and grabby nap to it on such a clumsy night as this?

The woman who was occupying the stall (remember I'm still out in the public part of the ladies room) comes out to find me leaning up against the sinks with my skirt up over my head, sounding like I'm taking a test for asthma. "Would you mind if I wash my hands?" I lean forward, peeking out from my skirt and say, "No, certainly not." Then I drop my skirt halfway down and offer, "Coke? There's an awful lot here!" I pull it back down completely to show her.

She smiles big, and without a word, drops to her knees and begins to snort and lick my skirt.

Yes, well, together we huffed up as much as we could, brushed as much more as we could back into the little envelope, had a bit of trouble leaving the ladies room for want of a break in our high-speed conversation which touched lightly upon just about every subject known to mankind - all this while women were coming in and out of same said ladies room.

What might this have looked like to them? Hmmm. Probably like social cocaine use. I'm sorry, did I mention this was the '80s?

Okay, so today I'm grateful for not cocaining anymore.

On Being (Somewhat) Passively Stalked

Wow, I'm crabby. I just told my daughter that even an ape can load a dishwasher the right way; you know, cups and bowls facing DOWN? Oy, just observe the sprayers!

Besides still having a bitchin' toothache and still no insurance, I am disturbed by this sense I have of being stalked. Like most things out here, it is being done in a way that is not direct - no bulb flashing, no obvious drive-bys during daylight hours, no screaming for my autograph or stealing of my garbage - wait, who am I? Oh, sorry, I get confused with the rock star I am in the shower.

No, this is stalking in the passive-aggressive style; the sending of semi-direct, in-the-know messages through shared electronic media and/or through having your own expressions spoken back to you out of the mouth of a friend, yet attributed to said "stalker."


This label makes me nervous, so let's call this entity Celery With the Fluffy Leaves On Top, or better yet, just Celery.

Remember in school when another kid would all of a sudden show up with your haircut (worse=color), your boots, or nowdays perhaps your tattoo? You go to the mall and, surprise, they're already there, shopping coincidentally in the store you were going to? Then they're in line two people back from you at the food court, because, hey, they like tacos too?

Well, okay, you decide why not? We can sit together. And because they tend to be so many places you go, you speak to them more regularly than you used to, and they seem to be okay. You hang on occasion until one day they come over to help you with your homework. This person likes to help your mom a lot, too, and finds reasons to help mom even more, later, making plans for another day in the future. Maybe your friends come over as well and now become acquaintances with this person.

Then one day, you are home alone and stuck - stuck on your final paper, supposedly your best of the year. Frustrated and feeling like you're worthless because this used to be your best subject but now, now you find yourself bereft of words that used to come so easily - argh - and this person just happens to stop over. And what do you do? You feel ultra-lost so you...let them read your draft. And then let them actually make comments. Little did you know then, that you were making a grave error in judgment. That this could be possibly misunderstood as copyright.

Several of your friends soon start to drop hints: "Did you know that you and Celery have the same jacket on today?" or "You know, I saw Celery the other day at Sports Authority buying night vision goggles." Or they come right out and tell you, "Hey, Celery froths around the corners of their mouth in your presence. That person's been known to froth excessively when they're about to have to move on to another city - again. No one knows why, exactly, but take good care of yourself. Just saying."

You don't really think too much about any of this (except to note that the tic in your right eye starts up again) until the day you see the froth for yourself. "Listen Celery, I think my term paper is getting a little too much spittle on it for comfort and I'm sorry, I know I listened to some of your ideas, but I did write it myself and, you know, really, it's mine."

Celery doesn't take this too well and stalks off. Stories start making their way back to you that you stole Celery's words away, promised a byline, reneged. And you need to look hard at this, because after all, you thought it was homework for god's sake, what have you done? Celery calls and makes grand references to books you've written together (not) in places you've never been, during years in which you don't remember ever even knowing Celery. Holy crap! Do you think Celery may be missing a couple of chunks?! Celery insists that it was more than just homework and that you know it. When you attempt to tell Celery that Celery should maybe just leave you alone for awhile, Celery dips, and jumps straight into the Ranch Dressing.

Am I getting whack here or what?

You try to be nice, but it just makes things worse and soon you've actually had to threaten to get a restraining order because Celery is just a tad scary at this point.

Celery is now a "friend" of several of my "friends" and continues to do and say things that Celery knows will reach me, or show up places that Celery knows I will be, believing that I will somehow accept that Celery, even with Celery's ever-evaporating H2O, is the vegetable I want to have in every salad.

And I say, "YO! CELERY! I DON'T EVEN LIKE SALAD!!!"

Which is why I am so freaking crabby - again, today, after observing something that was directed at me that wasn't directed to me. Alas, I believe I will have to be the bigger person here, say what I need to say when I need to say it and let Celery figure out that Celery wants a big salad-lover and not a writer-of-words like me.

Today I'm grateful to have dodged a bullet in human form. Hopefully.

P.S. Of course, I did apologize to my daughter...

Some Thoughts On Fallout From Militant Feminism

Although I do consider myself a feminist, feminism means something different to me than it did to the generation of women before me.

My mother literally burned her bra in the back yard (it was a Cross-Your-Heart, and only one of a vast, pointy collection of hers) as a sign of solidarity to The Cause. While I thought then, and still think now, that this was a groovy act, I also think the impetus behind it was a bit askew. Back then, in the early 60s, it was a sign of audacious rebellion (I guess because the inventor of the bra was a man, German Otto Titzling [yes, really!]). She even stopped drawing on her eyebrows for a month!

Before she burnt her bra and left off her ever-surprised, Joan Crawford brows, my mom performed in an absolutely fabulous, whacked-out way. Our house was so clean you could perform major surgery in any nook or cranny you could find. She wore her beehive hairdo complete with the right amount of AquaNet (A LOT), her starched Donna Reed dresses even while scrubbing with her hand-sewn aprons tied behind her, and her red (later Laugh-In pink) lipstick at all times. They had coffee parties every day at rotating houses on our block and all the women would show up coiffed with precision, directly after they had popped their "diet pills," which we now know to be dexadrine amphetamine (heh heh, it would get LOUD in there). Recharged and ready to go, they'd head back home to finish raising the 3-6 kids, make dinner and mix up the martinis for when daddy got home.

Honestly, other than the 3-6 kids part, it really doesn't sound too bad to me. I mean, I like a clean house if I got nothing else to do and I used to be a fashionista label-ho with a love of all things chemical (liquid, pill or powder). And martinis every night with a man I love who's bringing home the bacon don't sound like it would hurt much either. However, not everyone felt like that, and in reality, there wasn't a lot in the way of freedom to choose much else in them days, unless you wanted to be a school teacher. And for me, the freedom to choose, whatever the choice be, is what being truly alive is all about.


In my mom's time, in order to be Pro Women, you had to be Anti Men. Women needed a collective target to focus their inequality on, kind of like the U.S. needed Russia and the Communists during the Cold War. But I think man-hating (yet another Cold War?) was a continuation of a dangerous precedent for all Pro/Anti movements - and is something that caused women to have to pay dearly in our relationships. Why do we have to be Anti-something to be Pro-anything else?

These somewhat militant beginnings, even though we had to start somewhere, anywhere, to get the momentum rolling, have cost us the loss of a considerable amount of unconscious peace with our differences as men and women, which differences are so necessary for a well-rounded humanity. How about if we could have just owned our own "complicity," which alone would have begun that energizing empowerment that comes with owning your own crap, and "recruited" men to our unique way of seeing the injustices that inequality in pay and choices really creates? Sales in our favor couldn't have been THAT hard, especially if we approached it in a way that they could hear us, rather than pointing the finger.

I think love and family have had to pay an even greater price. But it's time to eat, so see future post, More Fallout From The Bitch Versus The Bastard Era. And, Why I Think Divorce Runs Rampant In America.

Today I'm grateful to be a conscious woman in my time. Next generation may be a little easier.

Life Amongst The Encapsulated, Part One

I'm struggling a bit with my compulsion to be pissed off at stupid people. Oh, yeah, and with telling them that I think they're dim in oh so many ways too.

It used to be that when I would finally express my opposing opinion to someone about something they had done, I would feel proud of myself for having "stood up" for what I thought was right. And it was a perfectly valid thing to kvell about, having not been able to say much for years (other than blurting what Elmo would not be allowed to express on Sesame Street), mainly because I didn't know what I thought - I just knew what I felt!

Blurting frustration was actually cool when I lived in Lower Manhattan, because there it was the cultural norm to let loose a torrent of expletives at someone, feel the catharsis, then move on - "next!" A friend or even non-acquaintance at work would yell at you at 4:00 and at 4:10 ask you if you needed a coffee because they were about to make a run downstairs. Life made so much more sense to me then...

But here in the Pacific Northwest? Not so much. Yet I have learned to adjust, and actually feel I have found a happy medium between yelling and politically-correct nicey-nicey. What triggers flipped this again-found compulsion to "tell it like it is," My Way?

One is that I got fed up with my ex-sister-in-law and finally expressed what's the what for me - because I became willing to totally burn that bridge if that's what was necessary to maintain my sanity. But instead of catharsis, I find myself triggered back into blanket resentment of all things passive-aggressive. And now I can see them EVERYWHERE (because I'm looking for them, right?). Sounds like my happy medium tool needs honing, doesn't it?

The other is that anyone originally from the East Coast can only expect themselves to be able to take so much of the detached, Pill People before having to spend a bit of time in the "Move It Along, Center-of-the-Universe Person" penalty box.

Tonight I'm at PCC after walking Greenlake with a friend. PCC is an mid-scale, public food co-op where everyone but me knows that you're not going to find beef chili in the soup aisle. Because PCC people don't eat beef, or if they do, they will not admit this whilst amid these four organic walls. So I walk, I look, I find other things I want, feel a bit silly for a moment for thinking PCC would carry Hormel Manly-Man Chili, and then get on line to pay. In the Express, Five Item lane, because I have five items and because I'm a little late picking up my kid.

And of course, tonight I find myself behind the most granola of women; younger than I am with wild gray hair, stuffed up under an undyed llama handknit cap, no make-up, Gortex organic compost farmer suit (complete with aroma) and all her own "Buy Local" recycled cotton grocery bags (which I have too, okay? I just forget to bring them with me!)

First, let me explain the aforementioned term "Pill People." Many times, everywhere certainly, but very predominant here in Seattle, one comes across people who appear to operate as though they are the only people on stage with no audience present. Much of what they do in public is done as though they live in their own capsule, that they needn't consider what affect their actions (or NON-actions) have on other people. They are encapsulated.

I won't EVEN get into the driving here - see future post Life Amongst The Encapsulated, Part Two.

Back to granola chick. She has four items - check - she bags them herself - check - in her own bags - check - should be an express transaction, right? Wrong. When she is done bagging them as though each and every item needs thorough inspection, followed by a little squeeze of grandmotherly affection and the arrangement and rearrangement of the balance of the sack, with the label facing toward the cashier, she pulls out a large cloth bag from under her coveralls, carefully unties the three different pull-ties she's got closing the bag and finally, after rummaging a bit, pulls out a little cardboard folder. This is where she keeps her coupons. It's thick as a brick. She flips through each and every one, individually, stopping to lick her finger after each, and finally finds one. Okay, not done. Flip, flip, ooo! Little appreciate noise with adoring look, flip, flip two. On and on, three, four, five. She has four items and five coupons. She puts the bag back under her coveralls and we think she's done. Even the extraordinarily patient organic cashier is clearing his throat and breaking a sweat at this point. She then begins to pat herself down in an attempt to find the pocket she left her PCC Member card in. There's a lot of pockets in a Gortex organic compost farmer suit. The cashier picks up the phone and calls for an express backup cashier. Doesn't phase our girl.

I cannot go on, seriously. I cannot tell you how she pays in cash and feels the itch to find exact change. Or drops it once she does. Or how I don't change lines because I know that once I do, she'll be done and I'll have waited and raised my blood pressure for nothing. And so I finally lose it and qualify for the penalty box:

"Move It Along, Center-of-the-Universe Person!"

You can hear a pin drop. No one agrees or disagrees, they all become still and stare. And there I stand, having busted their capsules wide open.

So I smile, because that's what my mom taught me to do when you don't know what else to do, and I leave.

But I did know what I wanted to do. Buy my groceries and go home. Times like this? I wonder where home really is.

Today I'm grateful for at least the IDEA of restraint and progress made thus far.

How Is It That Denial Got Such A Bad Name, Anyway?

Today I'm grateful for sleep.

Sleep is my drug of choice. I’ve often heard the expression, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” Okay, well I’d like to examine the “vitamins” they're popping. I also think it’s a matter of the luck of the swirl of your gene pool, or a predisposition to vital life forces. Maybe next incarnation.

Part of the wonderfulness of sleep is the time right before you fall and the time right as you awaken. Niiiiiiice. Cozy like the womb.


And One could say my love of sleep is simply caving in to my hankering for voluntary denial, which I’ll concede to. So I say to One, then you’ll have to add in your iPods and iPhones and eBooks and (some) sex, to name a few more avenues to inner space travel. None of which I have at the moment, but there's always hope...

Except for the eBook. Never! Please see future post, "My Love of Things Tactile."

I digress. Sleep worship abounds in my house, my bedroom a TajMahal to it. I have spent more time and money on the pursuit of REM perfection than almost anything else in my home. Tempurpedic mattress toppers, memory foam neck support pillows, high thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, poofiest Swedish comforters, FengShui-correct calm and creamy green walls with accenting very thick window treatments, Turkish robes and Saskatchewanian-made white noise machine - it's a veritable United Nations of yumminess.

Honestly, be not discouraged. Got a problem with sleep? Give me a call. But not after 11pm or before noon.

Let It Go, Loser

Today I'm grateful to be somewhat more sensitive to others than I used to be (a/k/a to not be an asshole).

When I think of the top ten things I've ever hated people saying to me, I think somewhere in the top two has got to be "Let it go."

I knew a Britishman in New York who used to encourage me to speak my mind only to turn around and say to me, "Oh, for God's sake, stop swimming upstream! Just roll over and float!" Even though he was a loathsome philanderer, albeit married to a bitter woman who refused to be happy, at the time he was my "friend," and I didn't know any better than to speak completely to anyone who asked me how I was. Later I learned the phrase, "Bite me" and I believe that ended our conversations quite thoroughly.

"Let it go" is not something you say to someone you care about. You may as well say, "What a stupid thing to think about!" or "I just asked 'what's up' because I want to LOOK compassionate, not really BE it." Or "I really just want sex - can you obsess on your own time?"

If, the next time you're listening to someone you regret having asked a question of, you find "Let it go" floating around your neural pathways looking for a place to exit, please, for the love of god, get creative - think of a preface before you unleash this cold and thoughtless phrase. Something like, "Wow, I'm sorry to hear about your predicament; sometimes we just have to try to find a way to LET IT GO eventually." Right?

Because I believe that if they could let it go, they would.