OJ in the white suburban barreling down the highway. We are convinced we are in the right, but we’re heading for disaster—just hopefully not jail.
And, as much as my relationship with this boy was already fraught with soap operatic drama, betrayal, tears, and several broken curfews and promises, I was convinced I could not live without him.
All of this was pretty normal for a sixteen year old. However, I also couldn’t live without straight A’s, first chair in band, a perfect pre-SAT score, a tiny body, and angst. A lot of angst. I had angst so hot-wired into my system that I even brushed my teeth with a sense of ennui.
One night, my mom found me out on the back porch pacing in circles. I was circling that porch like I wanted to drop and take a nap, like our dog Jake did for endless rotations before he finally flopped down. I was muttering and crying. My mom tried to interrupt my orbit. “What is wrong? Aren’t you coming in for dinner?” I walked faster and heard her sigh.
“I can’t right now. I just have to figure all this out,” I waved at the air as if whatever was bothering me were circling my head, like angst-driven gnats. It was very possible it was just a geometry test the next day that had turned up the crazy in me to level red. Or maybe it was that I tried to kink my hair, and I now looked like the bride of Frankenstein and no amount of butterfly clips was going to fix it. I just remember that I had no idea how to stop walking in those circles, and that I felt like I might stop breathing at any moment.
“Meatloaf?” My mother lobbed her best weapon for compliance and comfort. Her meatloaf with the Heinz 57 glaze and a side of mashed potatoes could possibly fix all my problems. It really is so good I’ve joked that they should serve it at the United Nations. But that night I shook my head. I had piled on so many expectations of myself that I was imploding and if I stopped walking in circles, I would fall away from the earth, untethered and alone.
My mom left, and I continued my revolutions until it got dark.
This behavior, of course, continued. I graduated with honors. I was the first in my class to land a teaching job. I bought a house in my twenties. I fell in love with men who were impossible so I could fix them. I just had to be the best. And when I wasn’t, the world would tilt, and I would feel like someone was trying to scrape me off it, into the trash, where I belonged.
I know there’s a God because during this whole mess, I never did a high dive into alcohol. I didn’t drink until college, and even then I didn’t drink excessively. Sure, there were many parties with me and the red Solo cups, but for the most part my drinking was average. There were no blackouts, no puking, no sinister men, and no dastardly behavior. Not once, not once did I dance on a tabletop. I’d always wanted to, but doing so would mean I’d had to be the best tabletop dancer ever, and I wasn’t willing to throw my hat in the ring on that one. I regret that. If there was one thing I wish I had tackled back in my drinking days, it would have been a good bit of shimmying on a tabletop somewhere. I imagine I would have slipped and ended up doing the splits, a great finale but a difficult dismount. So it is a small miracle, I guess, that I never had enough booze in me to attempt it.
The other miracle here is that if I’d started drinking excessively in my twenties, I would probably be dead.
Rather strangely, my own addictive personality was exactly what kept me from binge drinking in the first place. There was simply no way I was going to be a drunk because that would mean failure, and that was not possible. I would sit at the Blue Moose with my boyfriend who one day, I was sure, would be my fiancée. (He did not quite see it that way.) I would tilt my head toward the people who were slurring, laughing too loudly, or leaning over too far. “Lush,” I would whisper as I delicately sipped my martini. I never drank so much that if I was wearing heels I’d wobble. In my life, I didn’t wobble.
Yet, always there, alcohol would patiently sit with me and say, “It’s okay. I can wait.”
TOP TEN WAYS TO DANCE ON TABLES WITHOUT HUMILIATION
1. Travel to Europe by yourself. Don’t think too much about it when you book the tickets. Try not to go into too much debt to take this trip. Just take it.
2. Run a race. Maybe even a long one that seems impossible at first. Don’t think too much about it when you register for it. Just do it.
3. Have a four o’clock, Pandora 80s singathon in your living room every day. Don’t think too much about how your children and animals scatter whenever this starts. Just hit that vibrato.
4. Sign up for a poetry reading. The kind where you are actually reading. Aloud. Don’t think about it too much as you write your name on the sheet. Just go.
5. Start telling really bad jokes all the time to whoever will listen. This is amazingly effective at making you look like a fool but in a highly approachable way. Don’t think about it too much when no one laughs. Just laugh a lot anyway.
6. Take a cooking class. Learn how to make croissants. Or chocolate mousse. Don’t think too much about posting well-lit pictures of these on Pinterest. Just eat.
7. Stand up; just put one foot on the chair and then one on the table.
8. Look around you. Get your bearings.
9. Take a deep breath. Step up onto the table.
10. And then, dance.
I Fall in Love, so All My Problems Are Solved I Fall in Love, so All My Problems Are Solved
I saw him from across a crowded room. I really did see him standing there. Something was a small flutter in my stomach, and a voice in my head said, See him? That’s the man you’re going to marry. Now get over there. You should at least go and say “hi.”
I did say hi. I even gave him a hug. He told me later he thought I was cute in my pigtails and baseball hat. He was wearing a T-shirt from NASA, and I inquired, of course, if he worked there. He just smiled and said it was from the gift shop. I was not deterred. Much later, after we’d been married quite some time, I told him that upon meeting him that night I put him down for a late afternoon wedding, a small, simple affair. His eyes got a little wide, as if to say, “I am married to a scary woman. But evidently, I had no choice.”
Previously, dating had been a nightmare. I would wait grimly for whatever victim would be showing up at my doorstep, always a chilled glass of something strong in my hand. The fact that I could not go on a date sober was one of those red flags that waved at me from time to time. But the ritual remained: the date would start around 7:00 p.m. At around five o’clock, I would start pouring ice into a large tumbler, adding lime and then sloshing in a generous glug of Tanqueray. I would add a bit of tonic, stir, and then wait for that first drink. Condensation would form, and when my anxiety level seemed to be tipping me into a different stratosphere, I’d take a dainty sip. Waiting for a good twenty minutes, after I made the drink, to start slurping it, made it okay. Making sure it was a mixed drink, with separate parts and steps, made it okay. Buying only expensive gins and vodkas, never anything in a plastic bottle, or,
