addictions

If I could wish anything for you guys, I would wish you a couple of siblings like mine. 

My younger sister is enough like me to hold my interest (what?) but shows me all the potential available to me if I suddenly get a bug up my ass and decide I want to be a better person. 

It seems our DNA, after seeing what it created the first time, with me, rearranged itself…to try again…to do better…in both my brother and sister. 

She is a much kinder and more generous being than I could ever pretend, even on my best day of pretending—to be.
So much so, that she had the two kids, a boy and a girl, that I could never be bothered to have—and then raised them better than I ever could have, all the while teaching them to love their “auntie”.  For over two decades she has freely shared them with me and my love for them is limitless. So much so that now, on my best pretending days—I pretend they’re mine.

My brother has a heart the size of an Amazon warehouse and we share the same twisted sense of humor. He’s actually made me snort-laugh coffee out both nostrils. If I had the presence of mind to record everything he says, which I don’t—because

1. My last name isn’t Parnas.
2. I’m usually choking with laughter (and swallowing my gum). But if I did I could fill stadiums full of hysterically laughing fans, hire an assistant to steal all of his material, AND chew my gum for me.

He’s also a teller of truths and “asker of the hard questions”.  

The other day, in between yucking it up, when I was complaining about my husband doing some shit that seemed to me to be detrimental to his health and well being, my brother, a card-carrying member of #teamhusband, drilled down on me with one simple sentence, “Well, don’t you have a vice?”

Gulp.

I stuttered and stammered for an uncomfortable amount of time, “Sure, I mean, no, I mean, I don’t know.”

Vice—A vice is a moral failing or a bad habit.  (Because I looked it up) 

What I think he was really saying was: Jesus, Janet, cut the guy some slack.

But I took the question to heart. A moral failing? I don’t think that’s what he meant. I think he meant more like a guilty pleasure, only on steroids. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m as deeply flawed and hot messy as any of you, it’s just that at the ripe old age fifty-eleven, I’ve had enough therapy, woo woo voodoo, and spiritual interventions to leave most of that vicey behavior in the rear-view mirror— along with my delightful disposition and perky tits.

Let me also state right here, that I’m in no way trivializing addictions or vices for that matter. I’ve seen both up close and personal and I cannot express how INCREDIBLY grateful I’ve felt my entire life for being blessed with a non-addictive personality.

I don’t know who to thank for that, I only know that if the opposite were true—I’d weigh five thousand tons and be in jail. 

Anyway, he’d made his point, loud and clear, so after we hung up I crawled off my poor husband’s back and decided to go deep diving into my seemingly vice-free life and what I found there was a (wait for it) a vice. (Are you surprised?)

To make the term vice more relatable I kinda re-framed it as “a behavior that we do even though it makes us feel bad or is bad for us.”

Cut to: Last Friday night after Trump’s Impeachment acquittal.  I poured myself the rare glass of whiskey and proceeded to get shit faced. Then, I drunk texted my Bff, barfed up a really nice dinner, and ruined most of my Saturday with a wicked hangover. 

WTF?

Remember me? I’m not a big drinker, ask anyone. I am not who you call to tie one on. I’m the one who drives everybody home and cleans the bathroom.

So, back into my deep “Vice” dive, I dove, looking at exhibit A — Friday Night Drunkenness. What had prompted me to go past my limit? 

Sadness? Yes. 

Hopelessness? Yes. 

Anxiety? Yes. Yes. Yes.

And why was I feeling that way? 

Cable TV and FUCKING TWITTER!

Oh, sweet Jesus Christ on a cracker.

Cable TV—The 24/7, home-delivered, IV drip of fear and outrage. And outraged fear. 

Twitter—240 characters of pure, unadulterated, who gives a fuck what you think? 

Those two things had become my heroin and I mainlined them every day—all day. And like most addicts, I hid it well. I was high functioning. I wrote, and grocery shopped and ordered stuff I didn’t need online. But I also had news and twitter alerts going to my watch and my phone literally (Because, Trump) minute by minute. And like any good dealer they didn’t think twice about interrupting my writing, my peace of mind, or my life.

Especially, that rat fuck Twitter! I don’t say this lightly, but I think Twitter needs to shut down. I mean what is it good for besides sowing division, fear, and outrage and giving certain bullies a way to exercise their “power”? Tell me, I’d love to know how we’re better off with Twitter in our social discourse.

I can’t believe it happened to me! (I know, beyond cliche) I’m sooooo late to the Twitter party! I don’t post and I don’t really read anything but politics (NEVER the comments, the comments are the third rail of social media) that being said—that shit is TOXIC.

Twitter says we’re in a Constitutional crisis. Twitter says it’s 1933 Germany all over again. Twitter says it’s just like the fall of the Roman Empire.

It’s poison. All of it. And I’m addicted. I’m addicted to poison. (Sounds like a vice to me.)

It all started a year and a half ago (a simpler time) with the political screenplay I was writing. I needed to keep myself well abreast of current events and Trump creates those like sixty times a… Blah, blah, blah! There I am, making excuses about why my vice isn’t really a vice.

So I deleted it. I deleted Twitter on Sunday. That’s when the twitching and reaching for my phone every six seconds began. At least that’s when I noticed it.

Don’t be fooled the detox is real. But don’t worry about me. I’m taking it slow. I only look at half of my news alerts.

But then…Shit went down at the DOJ yesterday and I wasn’t sure what level of outrage to feel. Because we’re always at DefCon 5. What did Twitter have to say?

I unconsciously reached for my phone. Put it down. Did it again. And again. And again. Like those rats who push the button for a fix. After a minute, it passed. The twitching, the wondering, all of it. And I have to say, so far, day three, I feel better. Calmer. Like the world won’t end if I don’t “like” a tweet.

Hi, My name is Janet, and I’m a news junkie and a recovering Twitter addict. And I’m better when I’m not marinating in fear and outrage. I’m smarter, more strategic and able to make clearer decisions about what happens next. 

Carry on,
xox

cheers!

Love, lust or any other addiction.

It hijacks the brain and its ability to reason, the mouth and it’s ability to bargain, a vagina for obvious reasons; and is apparently able to override a fear of heights.

In the mid-eighties, I left my husband. We had a perfectly lovely life — just absolutely NO sexual chemistry…and I wanted some. BAD.

I read about it in books. I saw it in the movies. I dreamt of it and fantasized about it; this elusive beast, and being that I was in my twenties, I was damned if I was going to live a life without it.

Cut to 1985 — I’m sharing a dive apartment in drug infested hookerville with my little sister who had just left our father’s cushy home to find her way out from under his thumb and forge her own independence.

It was Flashdance meets Friends only without the great clothes, the sexy dancing and the killer apartment.

My sister had moved a saltwater fish tank up two flights of stairs only to have the summer be so fucking Africa hot on the second floor; in the Valley; with no air conditioning; that even after trying to cool it off with trays of ice cubes — eventually, all the fish cooked.

Later, after she’d emptied most the water and cleaned the green slime off the glass, and since we had no entertainment budget, we organized races with little plastic wind up swimmers from the novelty stores on Ventura Boulevard.   Frogs, Snorkelers, a fat man in an inner tube whose legs furiously tread water; even an alligator doing the backstroke.

These were real races. Beers were guzzled. Bets were placed. Money may have exchanged hands.

I’m tellin’ ya it was the wild west inside that toasty little shit-hole with the sticky green shag carpet in North Hills.

After the Feds shut down the toy races, we floated three basketballs in the tank.
It was art.

Speaking of art, one morning when I was getting my fried, I mean permed, blonde hair nice and Bon-Jovi gigantic, my blow dryer gave out from exhaustion. The eighties were a rough time for blowdryers and a boom time for hairspray. My sister and I could go through a case of Aqua Net a week.

Anyway, my blow dryer started throwing blue sparks, and inside of a small unventilated bathroom full of Sebastian Hair Fix fumes, well, the whole apartment could have ignited — blowing us all to kingdom come.

Since only half my head was coiffed, I finished with my sister’s very upscale blow dryer and hung my little flame thrower from a plant hook in the corner of the dining room.

At night we would turn off all the lights and plug it in; then sit and watch that thing shoot blue sparks into the air — because it was art.

It was beautiful and dangerous art. We just had to be diligent about keeping our hair a safe distance away.

How we’re not both dead is beyond me.

Which leads me to the window in my room.
It was rectangular, running from floor to ceiling and narrow, about the width of an average person. Because it was so freakin’ hot, even with my fear of heights, I would sit on a towel (there was no way I was going to let my ass touch that disgusting carpet) next to the window at night and read, paint my toe nails, or talk on the phone.

I talked on the phone a lot.

You see, I had fallen hard for a much younger boy/man who had lived with us for one glorious summer and then gone off to college (yes, that young). I pined for him something awful, so we’d talk on the phone late into the night, he from Cal State Long Beach and me in front of that window, smoking cigarettes, searching for a breeze.

That window became like a portal.
All sorts of weird shit happened around that window.
It just so happens that there was a street light directly below, one of the few in the hood that hadn’t been blown out. I always tried to park my car under that light, you know, for safety, although thinking back I’m not sure why I bothered. Anything valuable had been stolen off of, or out of, my piece of shit Mazda within the first month we lived there.

Parked under that very street light — in full view of that window.

Late one hot summer night, the three of us were startled awake by the sound of shouting and car engines. Of course we went to the window to see what was up. My sister soon joined us, all the noise had woken her up but she couldn’t see the activity from her uneventful, non-portal window.

Our three sleepy, middle-of-the-night faces were now wide awake and fascinated, silently poised right above all the action as we watched more and more police cars surround a vehicle with two men inside. Soon a police canine unit and tow truck joined the crowd. “Drug bust” my boy-toy whispered.

We watched for hours as they carefully and methodically stripped the car down to its skeleton. The seats, the dash, the inside liner — they had this down to a science.

We got snacks—we took potty breaks—all the while staying quiet enough to be eyewitnesses to a potential drug bust. Then, just as we were beginning to lose interest, and it seemed as if the drugs didn’t exist, we heard a cop yell, like they do on TV, “Bingo!” and fifty cops descended onto the metal frame, like ants at a picnic. There it was, bag after bag of some illegal substance, hidden in the dark recesses of that car’s guts. They hauled the two guys away and it was all over in fifteen minutes as if it had never happened.

Yeah, I know, great neighborhood. Not really, it was the site of drug deals, used condoms and hookers, Oh My!

Another evening, as I waited for my sister to get home with pumpkin pie (we both worked at Vons at the time, so we’d call the one who was working late, right before their shift was over, with junk food cravings), I was sitting next to the window, writing a letter to my beloved — yes, with paper and a pen — when I thought I heard moaning.

Now, moaning was a regular occurrence in our apartment. We had a couple with a very active sex life that shared a wall. She was a moaner and he had white-boy rhythm as evidenced by the intermittent, uncoordinated frenzy of headboard banging that used to make us howl with laughter.

But this moaning sounded different — like a wounded animal.
I turned down the TV that was always on to keep me company; and listened. Just below the window was a balled up something on the dead, dried up grass under the street light.

I decided to investigate.

I put on my dime store flip-flops, took my keys to the security gates with me, and walked down two flights of stairs to the street below. It was just slightly cooler outside than inside the apartment but still around eighty degrees — an Indian Summer night in the Valley.

As I slowly closed the gate by hand behind me so it wouldn’t slam (a habit), I could still hear a low moaning. Walking slowly toward the street light, I still couldn’t figure out who or what was there. It was rolled up tight into the fetal position, small, like a dog… or a child? I remember it was beige, the color of skin. Could it be a person?

“Hello?…are you okay?” I ventured closer.

“Do you need…” I screamed and reflexively jumped back.

“Oh my God…” I kept backing away slowly, terrified and unsure of what to do.”I’m, I’m, I’m going upstairs to call 911!”

Her face (I didn’t know it was a woman until later), looked up at me, toward the sound of my voice. Her ear was missing, replaced by shredded skin. I knew she couldn’t see me, her eyes were purple and swollen shut, and her face didn’t resemble anything human. It looked like a hideous Halloween mask.

I ran so fast I flew out of my flip-flops.

No such thing as cell phones in those days, so I sprinted back up to the apartment, made eerie by the juxtaposition of the TV laugh track and the scene on the street below as I dialed 911. The phone was on the floor in front of the window and I watched her like a hawk the whole time. I was shaking so hard it took me three tries to dial 911 correctly.

A squad car pulled up before I even had a chance to speak. I hung up, turned off all the lights in the room and watched from my second story perch as they slowly, cautiously, got out of the car and walked toward her. One cop poked her with a stick and when she moved and looked at up them — even they flinched. The other cop was calling it in as his partner crouched down to talk to her. The paramedics and a fire truck were there in minutes and I watched, nervously biting my nails, from my dark window as they took her pulse, assessed her injuries, loaded her almost totally naked body onto a gurney and took her away.

My sister got home just about that time, “What’s all the commotion down there?” she asked.
It took me a minute to gain my composure. “I’ll tell you over pie” I replied.

As the story goes, and I can’t quite recall how we got this information; the woman was a regular at one of the local dive bars peppered throughout our neighborhood. The drunker she got the more she bragged about getting a big bonus at work. As she bought round after round of drinks, she exposed a thick wad of bills that was like fresh meat to the low-life wolves at the bar. Apparently, as she walked to her car, under the safety of the street light, two of the animals beat her in order to get her purse (which she fought to keep, ladies, don’t ever do that, just let them have it). She fought so hard they practically pulled her clothes off — both of her hands sustained multiple fractures. The last I heard she was hospitalized with a cracked skull, and in need of massive plastic surgery.

It happened right under my window, under the street light, and I never heard a thing.

Why didn’t we move?

Last but not least is the story about the time I jumped out that window. That second story window. To chase after a boy.

“I loved him somethin’ awful” If someone says that, believe them. It was awful.

I had, at long last, found me some chemistry. It burned hot, and was highly combustible, constantly boiling over like those science experiments gone awry.
My whole body was on fire. I was consumed by lust which I was calling love, because honestly, I didn’t know any better.
My brain went offline.
My mouth said things that still, to this day, make me cringe. It bargained and begged.
I was reduced to a writhing pile of pheromones and sex organs. He was a beautiful disaster.

When this boy/man said he had to leave after spending three days straight in bed with me; well, I went a little berserk. I couldn’t see my way clear of the crazy.
I stumbled to the window over the dirty dishes, coffee cups, food scraps, and piles of clothes that had surrounded and sustained us that entire weekend.

It was over and he had to go back — to school — cringe.

I heard his car pull away as I got a running start and literally flew, in one giant leap, through the screen and out that portal/ window without thinking.

“Noooooooooooooo! Don’t go!” I screamed in mid-air. The large rectangular screen made it to the ground first in a twisted mess. I managed to clear a shrub and stick a nice tuck-n-roll landing, but that still didn’t bring me to my senses.

It’s amazing I wasn’t hurt; clearly people that stupid are indestructible — That does not bode well for the gene pool.

My screaming continued to echo outside and around the block.

“Don’t leave, not yet!” I got up as fast as I could and ran out into the street, where I could barely see his tail lights at the corner.

“Waaaaaait!!!!!” I wailed at the top of my lungs and sprinted as fast as could after his car and right out of my flip-flops. (What is the deal with that?)

I’d obviously lost my sanity AND my shoes, and now I was losing my voice but it didn’t matter, I continued to scream his name at the top of my lungs until I saw him pull into the Seven Eleven parking lot around the block — the one just before the entrance to the 405 freeway.

When I saw his face I knew I’d gone too far.
Who was I? What had come over me?
I was bent over, trying to catch my breath while he sat in his car looking stunned.

When I could finally manage to speak all I could say was, “I’m sorry…I just…this is so NOT sexy, right?”

He shook his head slowly, got out of the car, gave me a mediocre hug, got back in the car and drove away.

As I took the slow walk of shame back to the apartment I could see the crumpled screen lying dead on the sidewalk, but there was no sign of my flip-flops.
Someone, some other size seven, had stolen them while I’d made a fool of myself — chasing after a man in a car — barefoot — for no good reason other than addiction.

That stunt shocked me…finally!

To say it was not my proudest moment is an understatement.

I learned so much about myself that day. What I was capable of, how, if I let my vagina make all the decisions I could really get hurt since in her narrow-minded focus on chasing desire, she had little regard for my personal safety — and that we needed to get the hell out of that apartment.

It changed me, I started thinking about self-worth, boundaries, and personal responsibility so that nothing even remotely like that would EVER happen again.

I blame that fucking portal/window.

Okay. So who here hasn’t done a crazy-ass window jump in one form or another in their life — show of hands? Uh-huh, I thought so.

Tell me about it below.

Carry on,
xox