Last week's notebook

7:15 on a Friday night, we're so old that we already ate dinner at the diner around the corner, where a couple had two children under the age of three, one of whom was barfing white fluid from its face and crying, so why didn’t they take him out of the restaurant? Why in the world did they linger, and let the child barf and cry, and not have one of the adults take the child away from the restaurant full of people trying to eat? And then the guy picked a fight with the waitress about something he felt he’d been overcharged for, and the kid threw up some more, and then Dad made the manager bring the ice cream tub from the freezer to show him that it was Haagen Dazs and not some child poison brand, and I hated them so much, so so much that if I wasn’t on my meds I would have been losing my mind. I would have said something, and part of the reason I didn’t was because I’m medicated, but partially because there was a table of cops right behind them, and I could easily see the husband and then the cops turning on me for telling the woman to take her barfing, crying baby outside, because cops are still mostly suspect to me.

Rage. Still there, underneath. But I am at least fifty percent less enraged these days, these days when I sleep for ten hours at a time, wake up, eat oatmeal, and lay back down. I feel like I’m trading furious for tired right now, and I’ll take tired. I feel like I’m a notoriously angry person, like I’ve embarrassed myself publicly so many times, shot myself in the foot. I was putting on lipstick today, trying to do it so it stays on, starting with this cotton candy flavored lip scrub to scuff off the ragged flesh I get from biting my lips, then using a pencil, lipstick brush, powder layer, another layer with the brush, and it’s no use, it looks gloppy and uneven, and I’m 41 years old, and I’m trying so hard not to be, with my tight t-shirts and jeans, and it’s just ridiculous. Bill came into the bathroom and I said, “I’m twenty-four! I’m twenty-four years old!” And he shook his head, not meanly, but definitively, side to side. No, you’re not.

Why that age, he asked, when I’d finally wiped off the lipstick and was ready to go. Why would you want to be twenty-four? Wasn’t that the worst of it? Yeah, almost. Twenty-five was the big one, the life changing one; twenty four was still the dark ages – thumbsucking, self-abuse, threatening everyone around me with suicide, shrinkless; so angry, so guilty, so full of shame. How I lay on the floor on 8th Avenue and wept, and the cats came over and nudged me, get up. But man, you should have seen me at twenty-four. The abs on me! The tits! The attitude! Diva! I quit Pussy Poets, I performed at Woodstock, I almost got arrested in Detroit for performing my poem “The Slut of Pascack Valley High” over an amplified sound system at Lollapalooza. (Leans on cane.) I tell you, I ushed to be somebody!

Ah, but today. I shot myself in the foot so hard at Lollapalooza, it hurts to talk about how many opportunities I blew back then, how grateful I am for the opportunities I still have.

Wait, Bill is talking to me. He does this sometimes, when I’m writing, and I’m like, ech hem. Writing here.

So, shooting yourself in the foot. I want to go back to twenty-four and make the right decisions this time. I’m willing to write off everything before that age as character building; god knows I wouldn’t take back leaving home, because then I’d have no shtick! But I want to re-do twenty-four, I want that body, that energy, that anger, frankly, which while it totally fucked me up, also drove me much harder than I drive myself these days. Which is not very far, in circles, etc., cliché, self-deprecation, milky vomit from a toddler’s gullet, aka, this post.

Comments

[Satia]

I'm trying to remember myself at 24. Mother of a 4 yr old and twin two year olds. Home all the time. Surrounding by kid powered chaos. Everyone potty trained and weaned. My mornings spent reading aloud from whatever book was handy or brought to me. My afternoons spent hoping all three would take a nap at the same damn time for once, thank you very much!

My life is so boring by comparison.

[frankie clinton]

HEY.... good one.... i can i.d.... the kid in the restaurant... just another event to validate my belief that most humans (particularly amerikan ones) are just selfish, inconsiderate cattle on two legs, who don't deserve the beautiful planet we have commandeered stewardship over...as far as blown opportunities in the days of youth (ah, sounds so romantic..)... i have long accepted the reality that given my propensity to abuse myself, had i achieved the type of success i would like to think i've always deserved back when i was 24, or even 34, for that matter.... i definitely would've killed myself in patterns of excess that i have come just as close to with NO success.... so, i can only IMAGINE what i would have done with a WHOLE lotta money and resources.... i mean, shit... i've been clinically dead several times as it is... i can't fathom that i would have survived fame and fortune at those times of my life....so, yes... as corny as it sounds.... yes, i DO believe everything DOES happen for a reason...

.....and, that SUCCESS thing..(?) well, ahem, i think i'm about ready for my closeup....

[LastChanceIVF]

Wow.
Just....wow.

You have lived, woman. At 24 I was in grad school, we were building a house in the suburbs (!!), I was married and we were madly in love but making a lot of mistakes, I was a teacher to teenagers who were pregnant and parenting and I was so overwhelmed and useless to them, I thought I knew so much, and yeah...I had a body that I didn't appreciate, that I abused with endless hours of running and starving and yeah, I was 24.

You are one amazing writer, but you already knew that :)

PS Note to self: If/when we finally get the kiddos, always ALWAYS take them out of public places if one starts barfing :)

[Marie]

You're more beautiful now than when I first met you, and you were beautiful then. NOT THAT IT MATTERS. You're beautiful inside too.

*RAGE!!!!!!* I has it too.

[Bill Scurry]

Hey, I'm talking here.

[Kirsten]

It precisely pieces like this one that keep me from even attempting to publish myself. You are so stratospherically brilliant!

[Will McKinley]

Yes.

[amy f.]

Take 2:
Making the right decisions at twenty-four guarantees nada. You can carpe all the right diems still feel like the only one who doesn't have the top-secret super-deluxe decoder ring.
Do you remember those toy soldiers kids from childhood? They had platforms to make them stand up. We have metaphoric platforms, built first from relationships with our primary caregivers. Those of us who don't have "good enough mothers" early in life have smaller, weaker devices to steady us. We can work hard to expand and strengthen our platforms so they are virtually indistinguishable from sturdier foundations, but underneath, our equalizers are a bit more vulnerable to being upended since our basic foundations are more tenuous. We have learned to balance on one leg with a sprained ankle leading sometimes leading us to be funnier, more creative and adeptly resourceful. Sometimes we just need a reminder that our square strength doesn't have to look like we assume all the other round pegs fit perfectly into their round slots. The grass is rarely greener...