Day Eight: Sober Since 2005

A few years ago, after moving to Georgia and living alone a few months, I became addicted to television. Up until that point, I had always been fairly balanced in my TV viewing habits, carefully picking and choosing TV fare. And there was a lot of great TV in the 90s—The X-files, Seinfeld, American Gothic, Buffy.

I used to plan my clubbing around Twin Peaks. Sure I could have taped it, but no one went out before 10 PM and chances were I’d overhear someone at the club talking about the plot revelations of that night’s episodes. No, I had to see the episodes fresh. Besotted by Kyle McLaughlin, I’d sit in the floor with friends, pulling on fishnets, applying eye liner & white powder, sucking in each episode. Once that night's episode was over, only then could I go out. At the club I was then free to dish with the drag queens and art boys about “what a genius David Lynch is.”

What I really think is Good Television is not, well television. Sure it may appear weekly, like Twin Peaks, but Good Television is when each episode feels like a movie, not TV. Good Television defies the gruel on the other channels that is marketed for, as my mother would say in her lovely Southern lilt, The Masses.

But in 2003 when I moved to Georgia and lived alone for the first time in ten years, I got sucked into television. I would lie on the couch all weekend and soon every weeknight, becoming increasingly anesthetized at whatever came on VH1, HBO, or TBS. I almost missed a Christmas party after a day-long investment in an America’s Next Top Model marathon.

After a VH1 Behind the Music on Vanilla Ice, I called up my More Than Sister and recounted in what was probably a tedious amount of detail the faux rapper’s rise n’ fall n’ redemption. It was at that moment I began to wonder if I had a "problem."

“Can a person become addicted to television?” I asked her.

She paused. I could hear her over the phone thoughtfully inhaling her cigarette. “Well there have been studies that after hours of television viewing over a long period of time, the visual stimuli and editing techniques does something to the brains of lab rats and children, so yeah, I think it’s possible.”

A month later my cable company called to tell me they were upgrading my service.

Did I have a choice?

No.

So I acquiesced, knowing that my basic cable had only been the gateway drug for the crack heaven that they would happily deliver straight to my house and into my frontal lobe.

Luckily, living in a rural area became a blessing.

The company wasn’t local, and I had so many problems coordinating the installment time. Then there was the sizably increased bill, and my concern that this was more TV than what I had ordered. Over the course of many phone calls I made trying to sort my service out, I became increasingly pissed off. Eventually I called to cancel the service.

“You want to do what?” the service woman asked me over the phone.

“I want to cancel.”

“But that means you won’t have any television service! This package is your only option.”

“Oh yeah?”

At the time I thought I would just eventually get satellite or something when I had time to investigate my options. But I was busy. And the options were complicated and after a brief uncomfortable period of withdrawal, I gradually began not to mind the silence in my home, the books I read, and the really great movies I watched instead.

And if I want to watch Good Televison there are always episodes on DVD—whole seasons can be mine to binge on or I can parse them out over six months or a year—commercial free!

I have been TV-free since spring 2005. Only recently have I started to wonder, could the One-Eyed beast be allowed back into my home? After all there is BBC America, The History Channel, Turner Classics, and the ever-soothing Muzak-drenched Weather Channel.

But then can I be trusted? Can addicts ever be allowed to indulge, just a little?

Day Seven: February, Teflon Month of Love

I have not had a Valentine’s-Day-boyfriend since 1982. My freshman-year high school steady, The Earnest Piano Player who wooed me with a pretty-good version of “Moonlight Sonata” in between games of Dungeons & Dragons, sent me an FTD bouquet with one red rose, in a planter shaped like a little white teddy bear.

Let the record reflect that the saccharine planter was not why we eventually broke up. Now that I see how rare Valentine’s Day boyfriends have been, if possible I would slip on leg warmers, an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt, and jump into a time machine, traveling back to 1982, and confront my 14-year-old self: “Hey Self! He is actually kinda thoughtful and sweet. Maybe you should keep him around for awhile.”

Freshman-year[oops! See author's footnote*] in college was the next boyfriend I happened to have during February. But there were no teddy bear planters from The Future Film Director. And no flowers, not even a card on Valentine’s Day . . . or Christmas . . . or my birthday. Future Film Director was also a Marxist, “and gift-giving holidays are a bourgeois conspiracy constructed by a capitalistic society.”

Translation: He was lazy, cheap, and self-centered.

After Future Film Director was fired by me, the Gods of Love (who must love Woody Allen, and therefore Future Film Director), cursed me for my hubris and turned February into The Teflon Month of Love, repelling boyfriends for that one month a year.

Living in Louisiana I had actually been fine with a cupid-free February. Besides the insane pressures of graduate school, early teaching jobs, and the distractions of friends, Mardi Gras often fell in February, or at least the Mardi Gras season began that month. February was usually festooned in tacky beads, buried in King Cakes, soaked in bourbon and beer.

Only if Mardi Gras came early, like this year, and the beads were swept up by Lent, would February begin to suck. Papers to grade, students to handle, bills from Christmas to pay, student loans, exams and the dissertation, all would become stark realities.

Eventually I moved to a Mardi-Gras-free-Georgia, and February, still Teflon-coated, became even bleaker. Mardi Gras was just another Tuesday, and, damnit, I had to go to work. While I was not exactly at Bridget-Jones-level depression, I became quite Blah! in February.

I would tell myself, “Self, wasn’t Future Film Director (kinda) right? Isn’t Valentine’s Day really just a Hallmark holiday? Isn’t it just a commercial excuse to sell over-priced roses, Jewelry from Kay, fattening chocolates, Kissy Bears, colored-condoms, schmaltzy cards, and tacky heart-shaped everything?”

Yes it is.

Except this year.

This year the clichés unraveled. His impulse and the roses were sincere and beautiful.

I had told him earlier this week what I thought of February, and he told me that maybe he could see if at least one day could be saved from the month.

It was. And maybe a few more days will be too.

[Author's note: My More-than-Sister commented on this entry that Future Film Director was actually sophomore year of college. She is correct. I had forgotten that freshman year was spent by me wallowing in angst over H.S. Senior Year Love-of-My-Life coming out of the closet. Right. Cheers. Thanks alot. But that's a future blog]

Day Five: I "Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans"

Twice I was nudged by New Orleans today. In the middle of my busy day at work, an ex-boyfriend-ish person called me up to say he had gotten a free Southwestern Airline voucher and was going, on a whim, to New Orleans and wanted to know what to do, where to go. What I gave to him in part, I will give to you, dear readers, in full: my Top Twenty of What to Do in the Big Easy:

1. Stay in the French Quarter—The Hotel St. Marie, The Andrew Jackson, The Cornstalk Inn—three great hotels.



2. Eat at Cafe du Monde for breakfast, Commander’s Palace for Lunch, and Irene’s for dinner.



3. Go to Pat O’Brien’s and sit out on the patio and have a Hurricane. Go inside to the piano bar & drink whatever a soldier buys you (that goes for you guys too!).



4. Take the streetcar into the Garden District and go see where Anne Rice and Trent Reznor used to live. Go back into the French Quarter to Royal & see where Nicholas Cage bought and will probably never live. Ignore where Brad and Angelina live.



5. Stop at Court of Two Sisters for a Mint Julep.



6. Go to various voodoo shops—you’ll probably bump into people who claim to know Angelina.



7. Go to Peligro on Decatur Street to look at the expensive "folk" art. Window shop the Blue Dogs back on Royal.



8. Stop at the Napolean House for the delightfully snotty waiters and a Pimm's Cup.



9. Go to Jackson Square for the street theater. Talk to the fortune tellers and artists.



10. Stop in Pirate's Alley for faux Absinthe and a first edition at The Faulkner House bookstore, then find cheaper books in a used store on Dumaine.



11. Take a street car to City Park and go to the New Orleans museum to see the permanent collection.



12. Take a picture of the dueling oaks in City Park.



13. Take the street car back to Canal. Avoid Harrah’s and cross back into the Quarter. Stop
    at the Monteleone Hotel bar. Sit at the rotating bar and drink with the spirit of Tennessee Williams.



14. Go to The House of Blues if Marilyn Manson or Peter Murphy are playing. Tell people you are a teacher and get free drinks.



15. Go to Snug Harbor for jazz if anyone is playing.



16. Take a Haunted History tour.



17. After tour, follow street kids to a goth club.



18. End the evening on the Moon walk.



19. Have hang-over breakfast at "That Breakfast Place" with the Lace Balconies.



20. Walk everywhere and absorb the humid and fetid atmosphere.
    

My second New Orleans nudge came at tonight’s poetry reading. Stephen Bluestone read a poem about the 9th Ward, the 1924 flood, and Katrina. At the end of the poem, Bluestone tells us the river will always win.

Perhaps it has already won. I give you this list constructed from memory and hearsay; I haven’t been back since Katrina, but several of my friends either still live in Louisiana or have ventured back for brief visit. Some say New Orleans is a resurrected city, some say she is slipping into further decay. But isn’t that the beautiful and terrible paradox of New Orleans?

Day Four: "Empires Crumble"--Dance Number!

I admit I have a phobia of intrusive people in restaurants. Not loud drunks at the next table or the bickering couple in the booth behind me, but specifically wandering mariachi bands, waiters who slide into the booth next to me when they take my order, and belly dancers. I just want to eat my food, drink my adult beverage, and indulge in conversation with my dinner companions. Unfortunately I love exotic food, and with that love, I often pay the price of a little dinner theater that can cut into or completely halt conversation. I particularly love Middle Eastern food and have learned not to go on a Friday or Saturday night to a Middle Eastern restaurant.

I went this past Friday night to a Middle Eastern restaurant.

It was Belly Dancer Night.

The dancer was beautiful--Middle Eastern Barbie--not exactly normal entertainment when one is on a date.

And the music was loud.

Really loud.

Lean-forward-and-shout-at-your date loud.

But it was hilarious--a techno-traditional fusion with a little Arabic rap thrown in for occasional street cred, and who knew that Evanescence was traditional belly dance fare?

But my date kept smiling and laughing and so did I. He said that he loved it when a film director halts the action and throws in a dance number, like the director feels that the characters and audience should have a little fun--Goddard's little line dance in Band of Outsiders or Tarantino's jack rabbit twist in Pulp Fiction.

The belly dancer somehow fit into the milieu, and in the midst of the evening, I remained strangely phobia-free. I had this wonderful feeling that if my life was a movie, this was the musical interlude--weird, surreal, loud, fun--what should have been uncomfortable was somehow not.

Maybe it was the company.

Day Three: Playing House

I'm having a party tomorrow so naturally I tried to buy new furniture today, actually this afternoon. I had bought a new couch last month, but it has yet to arrive despite the fact that the credit card charge got here two weeks ago. So people are coming over and they will see the Striped-and-stained Monstrosity that clashes with everything, the couch I dragged from Grad school in Louisiana to Adulthood in Georgia.

The Better-half of the Volleyball Couple told me that home ownership does not make one fully an adult. No, one cannot truly be an adult until one has bought a brand new couch, she declared! Used couches do not count, even if they are purchased.

Two summers ago I was forced to buy a house because the rental I was living in went on the market--when I was out of the country for a month. Being that the rental market is tight in this small town and that I was staring at 40, I decided to buy a house.

Last February my writer friend, who also happens to be a great decorator, declared that it was time for me to embrace being a Homeowner, an Adult, no longer a Grad Student, a Child. She said I needed to mark that passage by having my friends come to my home and paint at least one room in my house. So paint we did. This summer I got carpet to cover up the particle board that was exposed when I had taken the carpet up off the supposedly "all wood" floors.

Still there is much to be done. But the procrastination comes not because I am overwhelmed at the number of task, rather, I can’t believe I’m doing this, buying stuff, fixing stuff, like a real grown-up.

Furniture just adds to the complications.

I sometimes hate furniture stores because they are the realm of couples all whispering and exchanging secret couple code about what they can afford, cannot afford, what they both like, or one half of the couple likes and the other does not. When I have shopped for furniture with a boyfriend in tow or alone, I’m often surprised at the weirdness I begin to feel, like I'm playing house or I've escaped from a novel by Sartre.

So I never make purchases until I have to: a house, the washing machine, new paint, chairs, I never buy for the joy, but rather out of my American definition of necessity.

Couches, beds, end tables, area rugs, all form a psychic map pointing at the weird choices I have made in my life that led me to that moment, standing in Haverty's staring at a $1,500* couch wondering at such a thing that could cost that much that I'd even think of buying alone.

*[Author's update: Since several of my friends have commented on the price of the couch, let the record reflect I only contemplated the $1500 couch; I ended up buying a $579 couch--no tax & free delivery. The couch may be new but the budget is still grad school!]

Day Two: "The Donkey"

"The Donkey"

When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.
With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil's walking parody
On all four-footed things.
The tatter'd outlaw of the earth
Of ancient crooked will
Starve, scourge, deride me, I am dumb
I keep my secret still.
Fools!For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet

--G.K. Chesterton

I have more than my share of pride. I'm learning this. Oh, I'm a progressive academic. I strive to be color-blind, non-gender judgmental, and open minded to all orientations; it’s part of the job description.

What a lie.

I have pride in a multi-pack: Pride in my intellect, pride in my accomplishments, pride in my social class, what I’ve achieved. I write this not boasting, but with an edge of nausea. I fool myself that I'm a nice person. What a shock when I realize that’s not always true.

Tonight after work I went to a charity meeting. I hadn’t wanted to go. I only went out of obligation, a promise made in a moment of weakness.

Once there I sat off to the side, sighing with my date book open on my lap, feeling far too busy for all this, far too important. I looked around at all the "salt of the earth" people and thought, “I am not like them.”

As the meeting progressed, and I heard what many of these people had accomplished for this charity and how they interacted with each other, I realized I'm the one who is lacking here. Not them. I felt my pride deflate, and I felt ashamed.

In “The Donkey,” G.K Chesterton shows us that at our most significant moments the most insignificant amongst us may hold true power. Paul tells us that each of us carries both the death and life of Christ inside us, and that gives us all a great power, but he warns us against pride, telling us we carry this power in "clay jars." By accepting that we are only fragile clay, we learn what grace really is: Not booming spectacle but the still small voice. And if we can quiet the din of our pride, we just might hear it.

Ash Wednesday

I went to the grocery store to buy beer after attending Ash Wednesday services at the local Episcopal church. I stood in the checkout line, knowing that the kids working behind the counter were actively ignoring the fact that I had a black cross smudged across my forehead. I could be a crazy lady who doesn't know she ran out the house with dirt on her face, so desperate she is to buy alcohol! English teachers! In Louisiana the cross and the beer wouldn't raise an eyebrow. In this small southern Protestant town, both raise eyebrows, and combined I lose all eye contact from the good teens working at the local Harvey's.

I'm not Episcopal. I'm not Catholic, but I have attended various Methodist churches that indulged in ashes, or at least a beautifully dour Ash Wednesday service. But First Methodist in this small town only has a Wednesday night fellowship, just like every Wednesday night that I don't attend. I'm usually hanging out at my friends' house. With a Wednesday after-work beer in hand, I watch as my friends (AKA the Man Candy) wind down their weekly volleyball scrimmage, and I gossip with the "better half" of the host volleyball couple and the other women there about work, shoes, who's hotter--Alan Rickman in Diehard or Alan Rickman in the Harry Potter films (an issue still not completely resolved to date).

But we didn't have our weekly game. The couple took off to visit family out-of-state. So I went to church instead.

Lent has historically been that downer post-Mardi Gras time in cold February or early March where everyone I know spends too much money in an attempt to fight seasonal depression (I include myself on that list of offenders). Or more piously, it is the season awaiting Christ's resurrection when believers work on personal penance. At tonight's services, however, I was reminded it is also a time when one may prepare to join the church or even more fitting for me, it is the time when she who has fallen away from the church works her way back.

Am I a prodigal daughter?

How cliché.

When I first moved to Georgia, to a town that is seriously the smallest place I had ever lived or even thought I would live, I was lonely. I would call my best friend who still, at the time, lived in Louisiana, and I would joke, "Jesus is my roommate. I just wish he'd pay rent."

Years later I have many friends, some who have become family, people I choose to love and not because of the accident of birth.

The first step of this return began about two weeks ago with an experience that I still can't interpret. Out of town for a meeting and alone in hotel room, I spent almost three hours one night trying to download my email on the slow hotel wireless while I also absorbed Celebrity Rehab on a marathon run. Because I don't have cable at home--only PBS--and thus no resistance, I was sucked into the prurient human multi-car interpersonal pile-up that is this kind of realty television. I then topped off my binge with a bonus episode of Plastic Surgery Obsession. When I cut off the TV and brushed my teeth, I started thinking about what depressing toilets we have made of ourselves and of the world. But I wasn't even depressed by this; I just felt it like gravity. Then I got in bed, cut off the light, and stared into the darkness.

That's when I felt something. A presence. Something or a Someone who said, "It's OK. I'm here."

I didn't actually hear those words BTW. I just had a feeling that I can only loosely translate into those words.

Since then I have been slowly trying to figure out what that experience meant. I've had a feeling that something more must be with us, but it was never that . . . personal.

But what did that experience mean that night? What does it mean now? I suppose the Lenten season is as good a time as any to try and figure it out.

At least I might learn why I have always loved John Donne's "Batter My Heart Three-Person'd God." http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/sonnet14.php