Liger Rides

If desperation were a cat,

I would be a tiger. 

If eagerness could play pretend,

I would be a liger. 

If waiting is like eating

Then my daily bread feeds ten,

If dried fruit is all you’ll offer,

Best to hydrate before then.

If loving you means scorching pain,

Self-flagellation occurs daily;

Like a Muslim during Muharram,

My devotion is unfailing.

Because I drink from our cup every night,

Thirsty lips jut from my face

This lying liar lies to herself

Riding ligers in a daze.

Why We are Small

You’d want me to start by thanking you so

I’ll obey. Thank you,

For tucking us in with pomegranate-scented sheets,

And lining our cribs with imported expectations;

For hiding your inflated hopes 

Under our pillows, 

As they seeped into our soft skulls 

To guarantee:

They will be perfect.

Under the guise of tradition

You protected like wardens, 

You predicted like witch doctors, 

You brainwashed like imams.

We learned that good Persian daughters are small. 

With tiny waists and tiny hands, 

Clasping the tiny paint brushes you handed us,

Meant to color your bleak lives vibrant--

Is that why you made our cribs so small?

We grew only as big as our cages.

The paint brushes were your weapon… or your tool:

Cover the picture of mother,

Before she sagged into her gowns. 

Hide the image of cuckolded father,

The one mother created with broad strokes.

We painted over it with our chastity;

Taking cover, but no husbands.

While eagerly wondering,

Are we perfect yet?

Now, we are only part of a person.

Sadly for us, the remaining part--

The adult part, 

Our part

Was the part you stunted;

Sadly for you, that might have been the perfect part.

So, I won’t say

Your brushes were coated in failure.

I want to, but I won’t.

You taught us to be more obedient than that.

 

Seven Phones

When I drank, I clung to men. When I drank, I refuted religion. When I drank, I surrendered to any carnal whim.

The particular night I’m going to describe is when I drank and took my primitive understanding of feminism too far and called him….but I couldn’t reach him--instead I got a hold of his aloofness...and it broke me. When he hung up, I stared at the dot matrix screen on the Nokia thinking it would ring any second because maybe he’ll call back? He really wants to see me...he said that he just needs to check his schedule. 

When your self-worth is based around a phone call, things can get pretty dark, pretty fast. I’d been waiting for weeks. Had he thought about me even once since my hungover legs draped over his dirty bed in this dirty desert town? I mean, we had so many laughs, right? Every second looking at the puke green screen waiting for it to light up slathered hurt atop another layer of hurt...so, I hurt the phone back. I responded to its abuse and broke it into 7 spiky pieces of plastic--each piece telling me, in a very specific way, what a fantastic piece of shit I am. 

When my still drunk fingertips felt for the phone the next morning to check the time, I touched only the sleeve of an unwatched Netflix movie (DVDs?). Where’s my phone? Oh yeah, I broke it. The clock in the kitchen told me that I had hours before my teaching job (as a doctoral student in the Middle East Studies Dept, I paid my tuition by teaching Persian 101 to a bunch of Iranian jack-offs seeking an easy A). The day unfolded as usual; while on campus, I futilely reached for my phone to check the time, went to class and gave those dickbags their lesson on the Persian past continuous tense. 

Because of my untiring habit of checking the time, I realized the primary function of my phone: to display how many anxiety-filled minutes remain between “now” and “the next thing”. I appeased and contributed to this anxiety by asking strangers on campus for the time—scary and peculiar strangers. Yet, when I walked away from each of them (three total) I liked it. 

It was like we shared something--our world space interacted with our shared world time; right now, in this location, we are both here. You stand in front of me and I see you; I can touch you (but won’t), you can touch me (but don’t), if there was a flood we’d be washed away at the same time, if there was a car accident we’d probably see the same thing, if it started to hail, we’d feel it at once, and if someone was baking bread we’d smell it together. I can’t explain the solace I felt in that moment...or in those three moments, but there they were:  connecting me to people, even though we were just exchanging common minutiae. And I realized that THIS was the source of my ennui and isolationism I sought at the bottom of bottles or the mouths of fleeting and flittering men. I suddenly realized how lonely I had been and how filling it with dick and whiskey was making it worse. 

But the encounter turned sour; once the stranger told me the time, the power dynamic shifted. They had something I wanted: information. It belonged to them and meant so little that their offering felt like charity. I wanted to stop feeling this way, ashamed. Alone. And then I wanted my phone back.

But I didn’t buy a new phone for nearly two days. I liked the quiet and felt lighter. Those seven spiky shards of plastic were stepping stones...to a new me? I'll fall in love with myself now! Nah, shedding all this toxic humanism and weak attempts at self-love, I actually didn't buy a new phone because if it didn't exist, I wasn’t forced to see the zero missed calls on the screen from him, breaking my heart upon every screen unlock. I was able to delude myself into a power shift with the mindset that he's calling me every night; with no phone who’s to say I was wrong? It gave me relief, so I guess the demolition was worth it. Even just for a minute. 

When I got the new phone a few days later and saw two missed calls and three texts my heart jumped a bit with hope, and immediately plummeted with disappointment when I saw my father, sister, and former college roommate’s names on the Missed Call screen. What a funny little brain fuck is this thing we call perspective. Despite the lovely tone of my best friend’s voice or my sister’s dry wit and compassion, nothing but ugly and dark stomach aches circled my belly when I saw their names on the phone screen instead of his. In the company of my phone, I’m ugly, undateable, unmarriable, unwanted, and boring. That’s why I took a hammer to it, but then I bought another one and repeated the cycle, eagerly giving away my power...like a modern Mrs. Havisham...cell phone collecting dust next to the wedding china in that cobwebbed room. 

x

Bouncing off the dive bar

What we did at the bar was dumb--
(the floppy dancing and the singing,
the sloppy kissing then the fingering.)

I went outside
After learning your little name;
the sky in its Eeyore-gray,
was more interesting
than any stupid words you had to say.

You followed me out--
Mumbling something with your gin-laden mouth,
About small dippers and major bears;
While your salty fingers flailed about,
Making a poor man’s classroom of the starry sky.

I settled on Capricorn
when you wanted me to guess your goddamn sign...
No? Maybe Leo? Is Cancer streaming within?
It was definitely worming its way
In this conversation
So, I headed to the knotty-pine walls of the bar
To drink more gin

But before I got inside,
Other creepies emerged from your mouth,
Closed-minded creepies creeping about--
Keep those little creepers out!
Yet, you held them so close while outside,
Kissed them and offer them a ride.

Your fledgling world trumped
the tiny bit left of your flickering light.
Your mouth was, indeed, so stupid that night.

Why did I keep you around after that?
Watching you visibly molest
your ignorant creepers
In...
Plain...
Sight…

Book review: Native Son

Native Son by Richard Wright
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Not since Anna Karenina have my conceptions about a book been so mistaken (one that I definitely judged by its unwelcoming and intrusive cover). This went beyond a story depicting race relations in 1940's Chicago; Wright posthumously speaks to what poc deal with on a daily basis today, this one included.

I realize that as a Middle Eastern woman in the Bay Area I don't face the level of oppression as I would/did in the south, but there remains a haunting sense of self-loathing which penetrates the bridge between my olive skin and the white skin of others. A self-loathing captured in Native Son's jarring and disturbed main voice, Bigger Thomas. Wright's masterpiece is self-conscious without stuffing it down my throat; I relate to Bigger, even feel for him at certain points, all the while disgusted by his abject behavior. Zero sympathy, mild degrees of empathy. These are landmark feats.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes:

-The car sped through the Black Belt, past tall buildings holding black life.
-His being black and at the bottom of the world was something which he could take with a newborn strength. What his knife and gun had once meant to him, his knowledge of secretly murdered Mary now meant.
-This white man had come up to him, flung aside the curtain and walked in to the room of his life.
-Why this black gulf between him and the world: warm red blood here and cold blue sky there, and never a wholeness, a oneness, a meeting of the two?

Not Plath's Metaphors

I've drawn a picture….metaphorically speaking, 

Of the man who claimed my poetry 

was ‘neither good nor bad,’ 

and wrought 

with ‘typical metaphors.’

According to him,

I managed to say nothing

that 'hadn’t already been said.’

So, here are a few words about him--

That may not have already been said. 

He’s like...

A cigaretteI fixate on pressing my lips onto him, and make a worthless vow to stop once I do

A pillow

I can’t stand other people touching him

One old sockI keep him around, even after realizing that the defects from years

of wear-and-tear may deter his primary function of comfort and warmth...

hoping that his softer and lesser-used half may show up and create a whole 

Hands

I can't get him soft enough. No matter how hard I try

A telephone

Provides an outlet for exchanging communication,

but incapable of conveying actual feeling

A telephone call

I was excited by the promise that

it delivered when I first heard it, but disappointed when I heard what it had to say

A tear

He seemed cathartic, but just made my eyes red and puffy

A bruise

A destructive and painful event in my past that lingers on my personThe Italian language

I don’t understand him, but I’m convinced that my previous experiences and former training will assist me to do so (they don’t)

The province of Xu Xi

He’s distant and intangible

Hair gelHe seems like a good idea, but always ends up making me look stupid

Plath did this better

Doesn’t matter anyway.

According to him, 

I wouldn’t be able to pull it off.

Book review: Push

Push by Sapphire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've been going through a YA phase (you know, the Lemony Snickets and Harry Potters of the literary world), and decided to read something adult to shake things up a bit. WTF.

I'm still recovering. While being slightly tempted to call this book emotionally manipulative, all it really does is present the truth. I found Hosseini's Kite Runner far more manipulative with its provocations of false emotional response--making me feel terrible and sympathetic but leaving me curious as to whether or not those feelings were my own or just manipulated and elicited by the author. But this? "Precious" or "Push" or that other super long title it has...this shit fucked me up to my core. If you're in need of throwing a wrench into your literary fire, you've found the one. But stay away if you scare easy. These monsters don't have masks; they're all around you.

Sidenote: not since "Catcher in the Rye" have I read a book cover to cover in one day (and that was in high school-- a hundred years ago)


View all my reviews

Dog Days

For Iranians, forget about cleanliness being next to godliness; it's everything—God and the universe times infinity. Basic sterilization norms frame the daily routine: take off your shoes at the front door, never shake hands with the left (because that’s the hand you use…well, never mind), forbid ‘outside clothes’ on the bed, keep your pillowcase covered at all times—so as to rest your head on the cleanest surface possible—and never, ever allow animals in the house as they will burn all sterilization to the ground.

My parents knew two things: germs=bad and manners=good. They plunged me and my sister into the giant above-ground swimming pool of Iranian cultural expectations and social graces until our fingers got pruney. And we didn’t just listen, we fucking obeyed. I experienced the purgatorial trap that second generation kids encounter: I was never enough of one thing. Not Persian enough or American enough. With no sense of self, I suppose self-respect would’ve been a magical tool. But while enforcing house rules, like standing up when an adult enters a room, my parents forgot to teach me how to stand up for myself.

My lack of confidence left a hole inside which I filled with all the wrong things—during adolescence it was school, in my teens it was food, and in my 20s it became men and booze. And when those wrong things ended? Enter: suicidal thoughts. It came crashing down one night, after someone who I thought was the one broke my heart and I had to meet that post-dumped version of “me”. Since the first boy at age 15 (who I didn’t even like that much) till now, the routine goes that my world crashes when someone breaks up with me.

I let my friends drag me to a party that night becaus
e I knew it was better not to be alone. While outside with a glass of wine, cigarette, and misanthropic ennui, a white puffy creature helped itself to my lap and licked its paws. I looked down at this weird dog-creature and my self-pity slowly began to evaporate-- and in its place: a puffball with black buttons for eyes was making me feel something positive. I won’t call it hope because that’s bullshit. It was new (because literally this was the first time a dog ever sat on my lap) and it was real (because it was the first time any living thing had touched my body for weeks). I didn’t know what was happening but I can attest that the empty feeling was gone.

Is this what animals can do? Was I so inundated with sterilization propaganda that I’d been robbed of this connection (and perhaps so many other amazing things) for years? What else were my parents wrong about (spoiler alert: almost everything). That night I learned the error of my parents’ ways and got my own brain and set of standards. Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but that’s no god I want to believe in.

A few weeks after the party, I invited a scrappy Yorkshire Terrier into my life. I named her Eleanor Roosevelt to remember the words “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent”. How did I suddenly have the nerve to start sticking up for myself? Wanting better? Being worth it? Never had I understood the joys of motherhood until Ellen came into my life. I know this is not the same thing as a human baby. But considering my complete lack of interest in human babies because they’re gross, this is as good as it gets. And it’s pretty great. Women attest that motherhood made them stronger and more compassionate. That’s been my journey with this furrball.

I only thought about myself before, like what I’m saying, who I’m fucking, what I’m eating. Now I put a lot of this energy to...no, wait. I’m not going to write about how getting a dog made me into a goddamn saint. I’m still self-centered, but I’ve opened up parts of my heart sliver by sliver. The past has shown that I didn’t let people in because I didn’t know how to cope when they would leave. It’s cliche but it’s real. Ellen is the first--the very first-- unconditional love I’ve encountered. Things like vulnerability and the blanketed term “care” make sense now and my heart skips a little when she prances into a room. I completely let my guard down because I never had one up with her in the first place. Human rules don’t apply with animals. I couldn’t play games, shut her out, ignore her but secretly vie for her attention; I was just me. I loved without thinking about what I could get and I let her love me which is a first. I am valuable. She values me. Not only because I give her food but sometimes, yes, that’s why.

That’s how she gave me the option to get out of my own way. And wherever that empty hole was inside of me that kept me so meek as a child? She filled it. So, Eleanor and I sign off from my bed—in my pajamas, and definitely after I’ve had my bath. Some things don’t change. And that’s ok, too.

Letterman's Jacket

An object that anchors a memory, an idea, an obsession. That’s what this is about; an evocative object—turning and burning in my brain.

Part 1

Like many second generation kids, my adolescence was marked by unease towards my family’s foreignness; my immigrant, Iranian parents were the exact opposite of the American girl I so badly wanted to be. The differences in their speech, behavior, and overall mannerisms positioned them as the other and plopped me right next to them. I grew up embarrassed by my parents’ thick accents and my dad’s blackened fingernails from the oil changes he did at work.

The relational construction of identity-- American and Iranian, sometimes too little of one and other times not enough of the other-- produced a sense of shame as I constantly compared myself to the person I was not--unconsciously cataloging differences, which I defined as deficiencies.  Truthfully, I am no longer oblivious of the linguistic and cultural gift that my parents gave me through their enforcement of a “Farsi-only” household--but growing up, it was a nightmare. The cultural purgatory of Iran at home and America “out there” created a fragmented reality and a disconnect between me and the other kids; it seemed to me that they had perfect lives with white parents and orange cats and golden dogs. I had brown stinky kebab wrapped in tin foil between two pieces of tandoori bread packed by my doting father in the morning before fixing some rich guy's transmission. My frequent desire to be white had manifested from feelings of alienation and not belonging--feelings which followed me into adulthood. This self-loathing is the stuff of second generation kids.
I remember when I touched the fabric in the shop, I was transported to a different identity; the gorgeous, tall, and wanted All-American beauty queen. Yes, in the store, the jacket delivered a sense of whiteness and belonging; it was a beautiful emblem of the high school experience I always dreamed about. But this jacket in front of the Christmas tree depressed the hell out of me. That morning, I looked down at the gold accordioned fabric on the wrist and felt no urge to rub it the way I did in the store, because this jacket was not part of my fantasy. This was just a really expensive jacket my immigrant mother bought me with no connection to Johnny or my insane would-be popularity as his girlfriend. And the one time I wore it to school, people asked me why I was wearing a letterman’s jacket with no letter...as a freshman...who didn’t play sports. My response: school spirit. They bought it, but NEVER AGAIN I told myself.
The look on my mom’s face when I screamed “NO!” after she suggested I wear it again compounded misery upon misery.

I grew up watching Molly Ringwald struggle with crushes, body image, and popularity in the John Hughes cinematic classics...but when I was 14 I didn't handle it as gracefully as she did. The idea of high school--more than attending the school itself scared me. The pre-freshman doom and gloom encircled my head like a committee of vultures forever reminding me that I wasn’t ready, this wasn’t my time for high school--I didn’t know how to “teen” the way it was in the movies or magazines.

The fear manifested to full out terror at the uniform storm where i had to buy PE clothes for the ever-dreaded first day of school. But my excitement for what I saw next eclipsed the dread; there it was, hanging before me: a letterman’s jacket. Before that, I’d only seen them on TV donned by Johnny Football Hero or on loan to his beautiful girlfriend. There in the store, I could touch the coarse felt of the torso, smell the leather sleeve, rub the wrist ends between my thumb and index finger. I was enraptured by this symbol of all I wanted to be: Johnny Football Hero’s girlfriend. She was wanted and beautiful, and I...wasn’t. Because, you see, in this fantasy, I was white--the unPersian.

Part 2

Truthfully, high school was not the way John Hughes made it look--everyone was much shorter in real life and the cafeteria didn’t have a buffet. Also, I went to school in California which is way different than the snow-bound winters of Illinois. My high school looked like a bunch of cabanas strewn together in front of a forest. One thing that was accurate, however, was the prominent role of popularity and social status, of which I had none. I was a funny looking freshman and mercilessly bullied. Thus, my frizzy-haired and gap-toothed self was eager to enjoy three weeks off at Christmas. Like most Iranian families in the States, the holidays are celebrated with a tree and gifts because parents know that their children expect it. And when Christmas morning finally arrived, opening the big present under the tree was fueled couldn't have been more tragic....yep, the jacket. My mother went back to the uniform store once she had seen me admiring it 

Until that moment, I was accustomed to her ignorance to very American things like an Easter egg hunt or a debate on the 2nd amendment. But her obliviousness that this jacket has more meaning--that it wasn't something you just purchased-- depressed the hell out of me. Worse, her self-congratulatory state was heart-breaking. And it kept getting worse: my name stitched in cursive, and below it-- the word “Swimming. I tried to find humor and instead of horror thinking of that the moment when the clerk asked my mother what I had “lettered in.” I'll bet it was met with silence, because she doesn't have any fucking idea what it means “to letter”. 

To my mother, this thing had no context—she didn’t know why it was blue and gold or its self-aggrandizing purpose. The entire metonymic association of this jacket with lettering in a sport is nonexistent, let alone my fixation on it being a symbol of high school popularity. Whatever exchange those poor saps had in what I can imagine as an incredibly awkward conversation--it resulted in her understanding the question as ‘what sport does your daughter do’ to which she responded with something all Californian kids do in the summertime. But if we were simply talking about what I liked doing in swimming pools, it would have been more accurate to inscribe “handstands” or “Marco Polo.” I knew nothing about swimming. I mean, I wouldn’t drown if you threw me in water, but I didn’t know strokes or laps. Also, I hate being cold, the smell of chlorine, waking up early, and team activities. All in all, I'm the worst person for the swim team. In an effort to stray from complete self-abasement, I’d be great for a Marco Polo team. 

Struggling to accept my Iranian-American identity was exhausting but vital to the development of my self-concept. I have a handle on it today because I’m 40 and a product of therapy, self-help books, and meditation. But as a kid this duality was purgatorial.That jacket represented so much of what I wanted and verified so much of what I didn’t have: that American life. Chevy, Corvette, apple pie. And with it hanging in my closet, next to all of the clothes emulating all of those girls I was so far from being, the jacket transformed from a beacon of popularity to a prophet of guilt--they were companions now: the jacket and the shame. Inseparable. In my fantasy, the jacket evoked a childhood dream of Americana life. Today, it’s just a harbinger of shame.  Did a jacket ruin my life? Don’t be ridiculous, of course it did.

The Whiskey Fields

Once I was drunk for seven years: 2007-2014. Outside of a bravado-filled 46 days in 2009 proving my ability to quit “anytime I wanted,” inebriation welcomed me on a daily basis as did its hungover companion the following morning. I have since, on the counsel of friends and family, sought treatment for what I have come to accept as alcoholism. 

Among those seven years of blackout drinking, I had crafted a method to deal with my feelings: I suppressed them. The first few months of sobriety hurt because of this; as the newly sober can attest, I was suddenly forced to feel the feelings once quashed with wine, then vodka, then wine (I called it a vodka sandwich). In those months, emotions streamed through my detoxing body as tears poured out of it; years of suffocated or recklessly abandoned emotions from break-ups, missed flights, public humiliation, blackouts, fights with cabbies, and waking up with a stranger inside of me unleashed and tore through my body and were dying to get out...I was dying to get out.

So, it’s not new information--quitting drinking sucks. One of the biggest disappointments of early sobriety is getting hit with the reality that it doesn't fix all the wreckage I caused while I was out there disrespecting friends and family. There are some people who gave me more chances than I deserve, and others who will rightfully never speak to me again...but sobriety only turned me from a lonely drunk to a lonely sober drunk. At least at the beginning. 

All that changed when I walked into a dimly-lit, coffee-infused room. I suddenly became surrounded by more people, receiving more phone calls, and squirming out of more hugs than ever in my life. This was Alcoholics Anonymous. When attending meetings during the first three months of sobriety, I surrounded myself with a protective force field (manifested in a triple-sized hoodie) and sat in the back of the room assuming the worst in others and comparing my insides to their outsides. I fucking hated their outsides. I kept my distance from their freak show. Strange that after years of drinking with the lowest forms of companionship in the Western and Eastern worlds, the sober people in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous struck me as the vilest of degenerates. 

And while they did seem like nice enough people, they weren't really part of the plan; my goals in sobriety included (1) drying out for a while and (2) getting my friends back. Making new friends was not part of this sober life, let alone a fellowship of alcoholics. But the truth was rearing its annoyingly righteous head: my party-of-one handling of sobriety mirrored my self-inflicted isolation as a drinker. So, after months of aggressively seceding from all AA unions, I knew that I’d better start warming up to the fellowship and lean into their stupid hugs (I still can’t figure out why, but recovering alcoholics enjoy hugging on a macro-gigantic level when compared to the rest of the human race). The supportive nature from these crazy drunks benefited me greatly at the time, and as much as I hate to admit it…it worked. The loneliness, for the first time in years, was gone. They promised to love me until I could love myself and they kept that promise. And it was amazing.

That former isolated drunk with a vodka sandwich, was mingling with a group of grateful recovering addicts who understand and did not judge each other’s criminal records, toxic family histories, and self-loathing. Now I was with people who got me at a time I so badly wanted to be gotten. Five words I repeatedly heard offered the most salvation: “I know how you feel”. In our spiritually bankrupt and emotionally retarded outlooks on life, we maintained an honor among thieves; noble—though self-serving—people steadily moving forward.

Members of the fellowship boast that our program is “the great equalizer;” nowhere else in society would you find the bank manager sitting next to the bank robber on totally equal territory. And after three years, I’ve found that the sober level-playing ground results in a circus freak shit-show. Jungian archetypes should be refreshed, renewed, redefined, and reframed in the context of this program, because they offer a whole new set of specimen-- just as valid and consistent as the originals.

For those unfamiliar folks, Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung surmised that people fit into archetypes, or groups, akin to high school cliques such as ‘nerd’ ‘jock’ [see Breakfast Club]. Basically, and I don’t know if everyone fits into an archetype, but many people, behaviors and personalities fit neatly into these models. And not since high school, or should I say an 80s movie depicting high school, have I seen more valid clichés than in AA. 

I will begin to catalog those in my fellowship, but not before emphasizing the following very important point: while I appreciate all that Alcoholics Anonymous has done for me, I’m still me. I will criticize you and I will write about it later. Easy Does It, here we go.

The Whiskey Fields: the Neighborhood Soccer Mom

Continuing my categorizations of those nice folks in AA...

I mean, what was so bad in her life? It’s not that I think one has to lose everything and reach a certain level of demoralization to qualify as an alcoholic. But when a lady with diamonds surrounding her manicured fingernails shares her level of enlightenment from helping her kids with homework without needing a glass of merlot, it’s hard to relate. They always—seriously, always—have weird voices, their marriages were on the verge of ending but never did, their kids are in college but there’s always a younger one still turding along serving as the vehicle through which she can exemplify being an “awesome sober mom”. And these ladies never talk about the solution; terms like “serenity,” “self-care,” or “mindfulness,” are not common when they share anecdotes about how hard it was staying sober at their sister’s wedding at a winery. Listen Lauren, your anecdotes don’t reassure me that the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous are working. I’m not hearing the message. And it’s a good thing you’re practicing keeping your cool with the other soccer moms because someone will be moving your purse in Jazzercise 20 years from now.

The Whiskey Fields: the Criminal

Continuing my categorizations of the nice folks in AA...

He will casually share that he served time while awaiting all the respect the world has to muster; as if he paid his admission fee into the rooms of recovery behind bars. And now, much to the chagrin of everyone else in the room—there he is; one 30 day chip in hand with an even bigger one on his shoulder, anti-female terminology pouring out of his mouth when referring to women and, thus, serving as my greatest motivation to attend women’s meetings. While there are men who have served time and don’t talk about it, I wouldn’t know about that…which would actually be the point in our program hinging on humility and remaining right-sized. Eh, fuck it. He’s gotta feel good about something I guess. 

The Whiskey Fields: the Educated

Continuing my catalogue of those nice folks in AA

This is where I fit—my slot: the over-educated and neurotic individual intellectualizing a program which, ironically, urges us to “Take it Easy.” With so many anomalies, inconsistencies, plot holes, and illogical missteps beginning from and developing into the foundational tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous, it’s easy to get bogged down and forget the message. It’s easy to indulge in cerebral musings such as, “if the program is all about acceptance, why are Steps 6 & 7 asking me to change”? and “Why does the program paint such negative landscapes of the alcoholic? For example, why am I always bad in this program? And how come the good things in my life result from God’s will but bad stuff naturally and automatically result from my will?” These ramblings of a pedantic madwoman aren’t shared, nor do I divulge information about my PhD or world travels. This is why exclusive meetings for lawyers or doctors started: to speak freely without the fear of bruising egos. I often flirt with the idea of starting a smart people meeting, but, it’s too much work and I’m incredibly busy writing judgmental and self-important treatises about my recovery program.

The Whiskey Fields: the AA couple

Continuing my catalogue of those nice folks in AA

Recovering alcoholics are as insecure and dependent as teenagers. Our spiritual, mental, and emotional infancy decreases the ability to maintain individualism. When alcoholics can’t drink alcohol, they glom onto the next thing that gives them comfort…and nothing beats the comfort of companionship. I’m talking about the romantic relationships of the Alcoholics Anonymous couple. 

As individuals, they held a separate identity (obviously). But the AA romance-cosmos fused them together and they managed to defy mathematical logic by suggesting how 1 + 1 = 1. At meetings, they will always, without fail, mention the failures of their ex-spouses to further champion the superhero they have handpicked among the degenerates in the room. And even though—or maybe because—they’re hard on the eyes, you can’t help but picture them in the sheets—it’s like an MC Escher mind-fuck. 

The Whiskey Fields: the Teenager/Rehab Kid

Continuing my catalogue of those nice folks in AA

Wow! These guys are bad ass!...said no one. Decorated with a homemade Bugs Bunny tattoo on her ankle, this crusty girl traipses in with her crusty friends through the rooms with a “cool as fuck” look cast across her face. Shakespeare was onto something when he wrote--might makes right (a pedantic way of saying strength in numbers). Making their bad assness known through dark scowls and jangling wallet chains, these Juggalos forge a tactical surge on the cookies, as though their party-bus just stopped by the meeting and we’re not invited to their carnival of depravity.

During all this, however, if you look one of these dickholes in the face, their eyes flash fear. On the rare occasion they speak at podium level, and after the extensive rehashing of their addiction[s] to meth, heroin, and weed (sometimes all, but never alcohol), they give great accolades to the program, because the last three days of sobriety have been intensely rewarding. Bullshit.

Here's the thing: the requirements of determining whether or not one is an alcoholic materializes in two questions (1) Are you powerless over alcohol, (2) Has your life become unmanageable? If you answer yes to both of these then you join our club. But I don't care how unwelcoming, closed-minded or dickish this is: a 17 year-old can't know that much about life becoming unmanageable.  Seems to me like their parents failed, while their uncle succeeded in touching them in the bathing suit area. This ultimately scrambled their brains and they used the party as an escape. And they're here at my meeting because the party stopped being fun, and they were already fired from Carl's Jr, so they needed to get their shit together. I wish they’d go away and drink their 700 oz Rock Stars at a young people’s meeting. The adults are busy now, children. We’re recovering from a goddamn addiction, you turds.

The Whiskey Fields: the 13th Stepper

Continuing my catalogue of the nice folks in AA...

An Alcoholics Anonymous slogan I feel particularly neutral towards is “we are not a glum lot.” I understand it as a self-aggrandizing motto for the insecure...but let's go with it for a second. Among this "not-so-glum" shine some gems--I mean some really good people. Too, among this lot, slither in society’s innocuous perverts, preying on females desperately trying to stay sober one day at a time. These men don't come to the rooms of AA with lecherous intent, but while sobering/growing up they can’t help but seize the opportunity rearing its horny little head amid the land of vulnerable women. Binders full of women.

I learned this one sunny sober afternoon when a fellow recovering alcoholic revealed himself a predator. Using our membership in AA (a program of self-improvement) as a pass to my usual cautiousness, I exchanged a few texts with this snake. At other places (bar, party, work) I’m hyper-vigilant about men; my walls are way up. But in the “safe” rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, I let those walls down. So after confirming the meeting I was headed to, he asked whether I was going to "wear that sexy red lipstick from the other night.” This turd blindsided me rendering me helpless. Motionlessly staring at my phone, I tried to mind-will different words to appear on the screen. I instantly blamed myself for letting my guard down. This experience mirrored the the shame and blame shaping the narrative of many of my hungover mornings. 

Alas, in those safe rooms full of drunks there are daggers in men’s smiles—ready to poke and prod at the first opportunity. At last night’s meeting, I informed a sobriety brother that his AA is very different than my AA. While he can focus on recovery, I must exercise vigilance of the men lurking on freshly sober prey. And I seldom allow these perverted jags to derail my singleness of purpose: recovery. He didn't understand what I meant, and I hope he never has to; I doubt men in recovery could deal with the shit women go through in those rooms. We often say "the men will grab your ass and the women will save it". The necessity of this saying is depressing. 

The Whiskey Fields: the Betty Crockers

Continuing my catalogue of AA folks

These are the women who found recovery in the 1800s and still attend meetings. They wear Christmas tree broaches during the holidays and bring candy on Easter while smelling of old soup and musty perfume. Their shares to the group usually revolve around the frustration they felt when their purse in Jazzercise class (placed carefully on a chair at the back of the room), was moved to ANOTHER chair. Blessed are we, they wail, to have the tools and wonderful people of Alcoholics Anonymous to help through this life struggle. They also like to talk about traffic. Basically, these people have weaved the program into every iota of their life’s fabric and attribute all positives to the program and negatives to their own failures. And when they talk, it’s SUPER hard to relate. However, in my attempt to see the positive, Gladys and Beverly have taught me that it’s possible to live a full life without booze. After that, they can go suck eggs, devil them, and head to a dinner party that begins at exactly 4:00 pm.

The Whiskey Fields: the Salty Sailor

THE SALTY SAILORThis guy has stumbled out of every bar he's entered since the 1920s and licked his gums to pass those awkward silences on the bar stool vis-à-vis himself. Then, a few years ago, for whatever reason (free coffee, warm room, available toilet) he decided to transplant himself in the front row of my Wednesday night meeting. He doesn’t sit with the other pirates, because the meetings and the bar share the same social circumstances for this turd: loners are left alone. Salty Sailor drank himself out of the relationships he had, from family to work to friends to his landlord. That's why it’s easy not to feel sorry for this toothless asshole in the front row of my meeting; people don’t abandon people for no reason.

And you know what changed now that he’s at an AA meeting? Absolutely fucking nothing. This fuckball still smells, talks to himself, and sponges off of the establishment. Instead of polishing off half-empty beer bottles, while exhibiting a form of DTs which never went away, he mosies over to his chair with a handful of cookies while leaving a trail of coffee behind him. Then when he manages to pillage his way to the podium, incoherent drivel spews out of his gum-riddled mouth. But one thing he wants to make clear is this: his enlightenment is goddamn magical, his bottom really was bottom he earned his spot. According to him, you will never get it the way he does. Salty Sailor likes to inform the group that he was always drunker than we could ever imagine, his hangovers shittier, his drunken spins spinnier, and his relationships destroyed with a way bigger cloud of nuclear destruction than any puffs of trivial despair we may have encountered. His message is clear: you’re not enough of an alcoholic to be there. Get out and drink some more. Lose your house and your wits. Live on the fucking street and get AIDS before you enter another meeting you sober piece of shit. Walk the plank!  

The Whiskey Fields: Keep Coming Back

There are other types and there are other truths. This just happens to be my experience of Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s the best thing I have ever done with some of the worst people I’ve ever met. Some have magic in their hearts and love pouring out of their pores while others are authentic pieces of shit. In light of all this, I refuse to badmouth the program as a whole; AA saved my life. For a hazy seven years, alcohol was my best friend and the mother I always wanted: present, available, and comforting. Miraculously, the obsession to drown myself in booze lifted because of these degenerate and beautiful drunks who form my fellowship. I realized early on that the program of AA isn’t made up of bad people trying to be good, but sick people determined to gain mental, psychological, emotional, and spiritual health. For the sake of my recovery, and because Alcoholics Anonymous is the only thing that’s kept me sober, I take the good with the perverted bad. One can’t throw the baby out with the bathtub gin…I’m learning this one day at a time. 

My Frenemy

An essay about an alcoholic and her bottle

Portmanteau is a fancy word for mash-up, and I really want to use it, so I'll do it here with a seemingly self-revealing analysis of my abusive relationship with alcohol. 

Alcohol and I are frenemies – a portmanteau of friend and enemy which, however fortunate, lends itself to this melodiously mashed-up word. The term most often exits the mouths of teenage girls when describing a delightful-turned-demonic friend. Indeed, the progression from friend to enemy to frenemy is an unexpected mess; because I’m sure as those teenage girls would attest, my Frenemy was the perfect embodiment of something I loved and hated at the same time. Unlike these girls, however, my Frenemy was not a person, it was a bottle…well, many, many bottles; seven-years of one long drunk. And now that I’m sober-minded and spiritually-centered, I repeatedly ask myself the same question: How had I come to live under the thumb…or the bottle…of my dear alcohol Frenemy? Here’s our story.  

FRIEND
The first encounter between me and booze was chummy--that’s the best word for it. Although our compatibility was instant, I remained wary due to the many stories I'd heard of her destructive tendencies. I was careful getting to know her. Just a few months later, however, Frenemy was fully integrated into my life and [I believed] enriching my time with others. She accompanied me to parties, bars, work events, late evening-musings at the fireplace, phone calls with old friends, boring family functions, and dinners under starry international skies. As my companion and war-buddy, we decided to carpe every diem going forward. People liked us together, and…that’s how it got started. I felt beautiful, funny, witty...relevant. Finally. That empty space isolating me from others was filled. 

ENEMY
After a few years of [mis]using Frenemy’s talents, my head started getting scrambled. Our time together was never as much fun as it was in the beginning; those early days hanging out in the sunshine, with friends…when people still wanted to be around us. Apparently, she was bringing out the worst in me but I could never attest to what it was people were upset about, so I just apologized. A lot. After a while, I did what seemed right and began lying to everyone. Oh, nobody wants to be around us anymore? That’s fine. We’ll hang out alone. I prefer it that way. We could get as loud and silly as we want without any of my asshole friends judging us, is what I told myself. But the truth was that by this point, our relationship was very quiet. Very strained. We didn’t laugh anymore. We hung out mostly in my room alone with the tears and the tears and the tears. 

At some point, comments from friends and unbearable hangovers led me to pursue other things.  Getting distance isn’t ever easy with the bottle; she’s clingy and insists on accompanying me everywhere; lurking in my room, hiding in my car, sneaking in at the park, lingering around breakfast. While I wasn’t ready for a break-up, I suggested a break--the coward's go-to move when she doesn't have the self-respect to actually make a change. Change is scary. But I tried. Enter: compromise. I promised myself that this time I would really control her, because it was just willpower I was lacking. If she can’t keep her distance, and I can't seem to get away from her, then we'd only hang out on weekends… and for no more than two drinks. Except for special occasions—then no restrictions...And, maybe as part of our deal, we can spend a few hours together during the week—just a little while at dinner. Yeah, I just keep changing seats on the Titanic. Moving from the bow to the stern to the cabin...that ship was going down and I thought I just needed a better view. 

It's futile to make a deal with booze, because it doesn’t compromise. It always wins while letting you think you’re in charge. It’s part of the brain-fuck. So when she started showing up everywhere I went, this time I didn’t fight her off. Our prearranged “controlled” encounters resulted in a complete loss of control. Goals were dismissed, romantic relationships destroyed, and productivity recognized in the past tense.

FRENEMY

In her magical nature, and in a way only she was able, she convinced me not to judge myself and made it all seem OK. But, I starting hating her, and I needed her. She haunted me....but, keep your enemies closer, right?  As days, months and years went on this way, self-loathing seeped into all my pores. There is no level of verbiage capable of expressing how much I hated myself. But she loved me. Something loved me and present like mother never was, available like sister never was, didn't blame me for all the wrong things like father.  

I knew my time with Frenemy wasn’t healthy, worthwhile, or constructive. She loved me when I hated myself, but then made me hate myself for hating myself. I relied on her and ignored her wreckage; I gripped her tight while calamity spawned from our embrace. And despite any attempt at control, our time together always ended the same way: self-destruction in clouds of chain-smoked cigarettes and open legs welcoming the next bad decision.

BREAKING-UP
Even as a drunk, I was clear-headed enough to know that self-loathing is not a healthy result of friendship. Shame took over my insides. If everyone has a bottom, we reached ours. This came when I almost lost the thing that was more important to me than the bottle: my sister, who made me decide between her or Frenemy. Three years later, I know that dumping her was the best decision I ever made.

Our very tiny world thrived on one daily task: get as drunk as possible without anyone finding out. And small worlds belong to small girls. Indeed, my world grew expansive we parted ways. I pour healthier things into my body, heart, and mind while attempting to alchemize self-loathing into self-love—a seemingly impossible task with her at my side (or my insides). Although I think of her fondly sometimes and remorsefully at others (like any ex-friend), I recognize her as part of a history I can't change. A history that ends in the survival of a healthy woman as well as the divine death of a scared little girl.

Suppressed feelings because they didn’t know where to go

So they went down

And then i swallowed some more whiskey

So they’d go farther

Washed those feelings away.

Take another swig, says I,

We got another one creeping out