The Pee-Pee Palace

I heard that an old friend's dog died recently.

I knew that Diggity was sick. A mutual friend of ours called to tell me that the vet had found a tumor and had only given the dog a very short time to live. I said, "That's awful." I said, "I'll call." Our friend said, "Good. You should call." I didn't call. And now, through yet another mutual friend, I find out that Diggity went even more quickly than the vet predicted. Obviously, now, I can never call.Diggity and I were roommates a few years ago. I was living in the East Village and bartending around the corner from our apartment. Diggity was living with me because her person didn't have room for her at the time. Diggity and I lived in an old run-down tenement apartment my friends and I named The Pee-Pee Palace in honor of Diggity and her incontinence. The shower stall was conveniently located directly adjacent to the kitchen sink. The bedroom was a cave with one window that looked out over a bricked-in shaft of some sort. The superintendent of the building was a crackhead. Literally. (Smoking Baby rest his soul.) It was one of those places where you could clean for six hours with straight ammonia and still feel that it was dirty. It was one of those places where you walked in and immediately got an urge to wash your hands. I loved it.

I loved the rawness and the New Yorkness of it. I felt like Mimi in Rent minus the heroin addiction and HIV. I slept every day, I went out every night, I could get free drinks at loads of bars, I never paid a cover charge. Plus I was a bartender at a bar where we were encouraged to drink -- for free. Awesome.

In a lot of ways it was fantastic and a great time. And in a lot more ways, it was hideous. I slept until two. I chain smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. I drank non-stop and dropped thirty pounds. I had friends who called to make sure I was eating. And I lived in the Pee-Pee Palace with John the crackhead superintendent who I once found standing outside our building in the middle of about twenty bills wadded up around his feet. He was bent over with his legs spread apart to help him maintain his balance. He kept picking the bills up, wadding them a little more, putting them in his pockets then pulling them back out and throwing them on the sidewalk.

To be completely honest, my first thought was, "I could totally take all of that money and he would never know." But, instead I waited for his back to be turned just enough that I could squeeze past him and get my key in the door before he realized I was there.

This happened around the time that the lights went out. For three months.

I was renting the Pee-Pee Palace from Diggity's owner, Rose. We had a financial deal where I paid her rent, minus $300 a month for 24-7 care of her psychotic, cannibalistic pit bull, and she covered all of the utilities. For, I am not kidding you, three solid months I not only lived in a gross tenement apartment that smelled like dog piss, but I lived there with no electricity. Every time I ran into Diggity's owner she had a new excuse usually with some variation of, "ConEd is run by a bunch of fuck-ups and you should have lights back tomorrow."

And remember, this is around the same time I considered robbing my crackhead superintendent. I had no extra money lying around for things like electricity bills. Especially not ones that were overdue and accumulating.

I spent most of those nights in the bar alone watching TV way into the morning because I couldn't handle going home to that dark apartment. Some nights I'd go around the corner and bring Diggity back with me to keep me company and as a bodyguard. But most of the time I'd just sit there after closing and wait for dawn to show up so I could go home. Once I piled the clothes from the lost and found box on top of the bar and slept there.

In addition to all of this, about once every two weeks, I'd come home to an eviction notice taped to my door, meaning that the money I was paying over for rent -- in cash -- wasn't being paid to the landlord. I was a sucker. But I was also stuck.

I moved to the Palace after 9/11 and being laid off from my job. I had lost my apartment in Bay Ridge and I needed a place to stay quickly. Rose let me stay with her. And eventually she moved out and I had the place to myself. Plus, there's no way I would have been able to find another place in as little time and as little money as I had then.

Eventually, the lights came back on. And, preferring to suffer rather than to create an unpleasant scene with Rose, I just went on with my life, and our friendship, as if those three months had never happened. She and I don't see each other much these days, but when we do, we laugh and talk and reminisce. We always had a great time together. And although I was hurt and angered by what happened, I've been able to maintain that friendship in a peripheral way and truly enjoy it. There is something about her that allowed me to separate the asshole who could let a friend live with no electricity for three months and steal her rent money for who knows what, from the person who was fun to run into at a bar and chat with for an hour or so.

But I can't do it now. I can't separate the person who is suffering because she lost her dog from the insensitive, lying, stealing fuck that didn't pay the goddamn light bill. And I don't know if that's me being vindictive or me taking a stand and not feeling obligated to her.

And I don't care.

Shameful Truths

So, I'm reading Elizabeth Wurtzel's book, More, Now, Again. I picked it up off someone's stoop around the corner from my apartment. I was walking Chulo and Eliot, the Miniature Pinscher who shit all over our new rug this past weekend, and I saw this pile of books. Then I realize that it is the trash of someone with whom I could be very good friends.

I walked away with five books that day. Three of them were memoirs about drug addicts. The other two wore the Oprah sticker of approval. I almost grabbed one more because it was this mangled and obviously dog-chewed copy of Don't Shoot The Dog: The New Art of Teaching and Training and I thought it was funny.

I also think this is funny:

Anyway. I love this book. It's got super tiny print and it's making me crazy because it's the size of a book that I can usually get through in a day or so and this one is taking way too long. But not because I don't love it, I do. I really, really love stories about addicts and stories about addicts recovering ... or not, and stories of the outrageous things addicts do for their Drug of Choice. (It's an industry term.) And, as I was sitting here reading I realized that I have group therapy envy.

There's a passage about one of Elizabeth's first days in rehab where she's in group therapy and she describes the "feeling wheel". In group, you discuss your issues, but you can only use six feeling words: peaceful, mad, sad, scared, joyful, powerful. I love the idea of that. I love the structure of it and the idea that I could identify my basic emotions -- which I rarely do. Though I love sharing the gory details.

When I was younger I never talked to anyone about my problems. I'd cry to my friends about teenage dramas with boys I loved and who didn't love me back, but I never talked about not having a father or having a mother who slept most of the time. When I got pregnant at 19 and didn't know anything about the father of my fetus other than he was a sailor named Chico, I didn't tell anyone. But that all changed when I left home. No. When I left Georgia.

I started telling my stories to almost anyone who would listen. But, they couldn't be people who were too close to me. And they had to be what I considered worse than me. Or at least as bad. I could be really honest about my drinking, say, with someone who I believed to drink as much as, if not more than, me. But, with people who were casual drinkers or who never found themselves throwing up for the entire day after a night out (or two if it was from tequila), I'd play it down, or not discuss it at all. Basically, I edited my stories based on how I believed that my listener would react.

It didn't start all at once. I let things slip little by little -- testing my friends to see if they still liked me after they knew shameful truths about me. Once I did it a few times, and they did still like me, I couldn't shut up. I had packed in years and years of stories that I had covered up because I thought if anyone knew what a horror I was, they'd desert me. After that worked out, it was if I forced more and more terrible stories onto my friends as if I were daring them. Or as if I were pushing them to abandon me -- I'm not sure.

In group therapy I could tell my stories without any ulterior motives. I'd be surrounded by people just like me -- at least as far as our common issue goes -- and I could simply work it out. Erica's mom stayed with us this past weekend and we got into a conversation about group therapy after she overheard me suggesting to my friend D that he get a copy of, Co-dependent No More. Turns out she knows a great program in Pennsylvania that works wonders for the co-dependent lunatics. (I know that's redundant but I couldn't think of another way to put it besides calling them "co-dependents" and that sounded stupid. Okay. Who am I kidding? I meant, "besides calling US "co-dependents.")

I think I'm going. It's a week-long program full of emotional breakdowns and stories from other people who just might have more issues than I do. Who could ask for more? It's weird, but I get so excited thinking about possibly working through some of my shit. I mean, I've worked through a lot. Seriously. A. Lot. (You should have seen the list I had to get through ...) But there's so much more. And the thing is, now that I have worked through some things and I know how much better I feel about those issues, I just want to get on with it. Let's solve more problems! And if it takes two grand and a week off of work with a bunch of mopey co-dependents and living with a, (eek!) roommate, then by Smoking Baby let's do it.

Who I Am These Days

Know what keeps me up past 10 PM these days? Politicians. Politicians doing stupid stuff. Seriously. What the fuck?

It's the stuff like shooting friends in the face, or participating in outright sodomy in the Okahumpka Service Area on the Florida Turnpike. Am I up rioting? Am I up writing senators or rallying my never ending supply of politically radical lesbians? My friend Patrick has a blog and he is insane over this election. I'm encouraging all people on the planet I have contact with to please, please, please for the love of smoking baby, vote for Hillary. You see, I just re-united with Patrick after a seemingly great gig as a dancer on a luxury cruise ship turned into a trip to Devil's Island with aliens. And I don't want to lose him to the aneurism that will certainly ensue if Obama gets this nomination.

Patrick makes me feel ashamed. Not on purpose. But still.

I know nothing about these candidates other than the fact that when I took this online quiz on my political stance (weak as it may be) I was matched up with Kucinich. Who is Kucinich, you ask? I don't know. I didn't even bother to Google him until just now when I was making sure I was spelling his name correctly.

Yes. I checked my political views the way I checked to see which Spice Girl I would be.I didn't even vote in the New York primaries. Granted, I was in South Georgia dealing with what we fondly refer to as my mom's "recent illness." But still. The thing is, I don't want to put my energy into this corrupt, insane government. Like Mother Theresa was quoted as saying, "I'm not going to your anti-war rally, but if you have a peace rally, let me know." Or something like that. I kind of feel the same way about the elections.

I'm rationalizing. Because I feel guilty. Honestly, I used to be political. I used to be vocal and radical. I used to wear leather chokers and denim stilettos and not even start getting ready to go out until 11PM. And now, that same person who ingested more Budweiser than vegetables between 2001-2003, is struggling to stay up past 10PM so she can see what Jon Stewart has to say about Eliot Spitzer and his whores.