Side Effects May Include...

My fiancé Preppy had a friend in from out of town, so a group of us headed out to a pub to toast her visit. The liquor we managed to stockpile at our recent engagement “stock the bar” party has kept the two of us close to home of late, so being out in the world was a lovely change of pace.
“Gimme your shot glasses,” our friend Janet instructed after we’d all done a round. She pulled a bottle of Jagermeister from her purse, and passed overflowing shots to the table.

I can’t do that anymore.

At some point in my mid-twenties my reaction to shots of that sticky sweet evil licorice liquor abruptly changed. It went from being a guaranteed night of delighted debauchery to a guaranteed night of blubbering and hugging the toilet. But I’ve made my peace with it- I had fun while it lasted, at least according to the vague, fuzzy memories I have of those nights.
But everybody else was doing it. So, okay, one shot. Or four. Preppy reminded me that I haven’t drank much since I started taking meds for my ADD, and I should be careful. I dismissed this. I felt fine.
Time and experience eventually reveals what kind of drunk you are. I am not a mean drunk, for which I am grateful. I am a sappy, silly, chatty drunk, which is fairly benign by comparison. As long as I’ve got a ride home, it’s not a big deal. But sitting in the pub that night, I was feeling neither sappy nor silly. I was feeling concerned.

I was becoming increasingly certain that Janet wanted to sleep with my fiancé.
As I watched the two of them laughing and hugging, I wondered how I’d never seen this before. My guard must’ve been down because she was a girl. But just because he’s not attracted to females doesn’t mean a female wouldn’t make a move. I realized, sitting there fuming, that I must be able to spot the warning signs now thanks to the magic pills. I couldn’t focus on these little details before, because of all the bright, shiny objects distracting me. Fuming, I did another shot and considered what else I might have been missing.
Preppy works retail, and has to do a lot of overnights at his job. But what if... WHAT IF… All those times he said he was doing overnights he actually had this whole other life I didn’t know about? What if while I’m on the road he’s living it up, having a blast? And here I’ve been looking like an idiot, feeling awful because I thought he was working so hard?

I decided not to say anything, to keep my own counsel here because I’m so much more perceptive than I ever was before. I could talk to my sister about it, except… I realized when I call her for advice, she’s secretly mocking me. Sitting at home with her little perfect family, her little perfect life, making fun of her faggy brother and all his faggy problems. I thought I had this amazing support system, but the more mulled it over, I realized I was totally alone in this world.

Why had I never seen this before?
At this point, I’ll go ahead and note that the most common side effects of mixing my new drug with excessive alcohol consumption are paranoia, anxiety, and psychotic episodes. But I did not consider that at the time. Nor did I think about it in the three hours that followed, after we’d returned home. I was enraged. I revealed everything I’d figured out to my very confused fiancé. I knew I sounded insane, and he certainly reinforced that point. He suggested this might be a drug/alcohol thing, but I dismissed it, because everything I was saying made so much sense in my head. I felt it so deeply. It had to be true. When I was too tired to scream anymore, I fell asleep.
The next morning, I remembered every word I’d said. I. Was. Mortified. I called my aunt, a doctor.
“I had the strangest experience last night,” I said. “We went out and had a lot to drink…”
“Oh no,” she said. “You shouldn’t do that on your meds. Did you go crazy?”
It’s an odd feeling, knowing I’ve surrendered my brain to a drug. In the last few weeks I’ve experienced so many of the intended results; it stands to reason that I’d also experience the worst-case scenario side effects. I never believed that would happen to me. I thought I would have more control, and be able to spot trouble before it hit. Never mind that the whole reason I started taking the drug was because I thought I was maintaining a level of control I didn’t actually have.
A major step in improving yourself is establishing boundaries. That night I learned a very clear one for me is when the bottle of Jager comes out of a purse. But beyond that, the harder lesson that has nothing to do with the medicine or the booze is that sometimes the people who love you can see you more clearly than you see yourself, and you have to learn to trust that.

They don’t make a pill for that one.

Interview with Topher

A little off topic from the usual posts- An interview from darynkagan.com (great website, you should go see.)

Earning My Keep

“I came up with a great way to make some extra cash before I go back on tour,” I tell my sister Shannon on the phone. “You know how I had to study massage techniques back when I was in school?”
“No, I did not know that. You went to art school. Why on earth would you study massage?”
“Dance classes, movement classes, we had to learn massage. It was educational.”
“Your school was so fucked up.”
“Will you please listen to my idea? Preppy went to massage school, years ago. He’s still got the table and all the supplies up in the attic. I could be a traveling massage therapist! Spend my day going to houses, helping folks release their tension.”
“Topher. You have to be accredited to do massage therapy. Even on Craig’s List you gotta put your license information in the ad.”
“That’s only if you’re claiming to be a certified therapist. I think they call it something else if you’re not certified.”
“Yes. Prostitution.”
“Well… crap. Okay, then I don’t have any ideas. It’s a shame, too. I think I’d be really good at helping folks get rid of tension, even if it is illegally. I have large hands.”
“And you’re creative enough to be a good drug mule, but I wouldn’t recommend that either. I know times are tough, baby bro, but let’s stay inside the law here.”
I’m home for another month before the play I’m in goes back on the road. I’m enjoying being back, but the delight is dampened by the fact that I’m earning virtually no money while I’m here. I’ve managed to pick up some odd jobs here and there, but these are harsh economic times. I’m competing against people who have things I don’t, like education and experience.

I always meant to get those.
So I’m at home with plenty of time to write, which is fun but not a quick way to earn cash. I also have my schedule clear to closely observe the effects of the medication I’m now taking for Attention Deficit Disorder. And lemme tell ya, that’s been an adventure. Three days ago I decided to clean the bathroom, which I never do, and I noticed how dingy our grout is. After scrubbing the floor with pure bleach for twenty minutes, it was still a yellowish-gray. Puce, maybe? I forget what color puce is, but I think it was puce. Undeterred, I found a white paint pen, and for the next four hours, I repainted every line of grout on the bathroom floor. It looks fantastic in there now. I mean, that floor sparkles like it’s in a Pine-Sol commercial. I can’t decide if I was admirably thorough, or dangerously unhinged.

I suppose it’s possible to be both.
The next day, I accidentally left the back door open, and a squirrel got loose in the house. Let me repeat that: There was a goddamn SQUIRREL in my house. Thing one, those bastards look three times bigger when they’re not outside. Thing two, even though it was the squirrel’s choice to enter my house and it could have easily left the way it entered, it began to freak out run amok in my very clean kitchen. While I was profoundly disturbed by the event, I still was able to formulate a plan for its departure by building a maze out of Christmas decoration boxes and suitcases, then shooing it out the door with a broom. I was impressed with my own level-headedness. I think my little orange pill might be working.
Another benefit is that I’m rarely hungry on the drug. I feel this is me contributing to our financial state, since now it costs much less to feed me. And thanks to a recent engagement party where the theme was “Stock the Bar,” Preppy and I have enough vodka from our friends to last us the entire Obama administration, including if he’s re-elected in 2012.
So I am doing my part, as best I can. Granted, it’ll be better if I can figure out a revenue-generating enterprise soon. But in the meantime, I keep the grout clean and the house rid of squirrels, don’t eat much, and try to be ready with a cocktail whenever my breadwinning fiancé comes home.

If I can’t help strangers alleviate their tension, I can still try to reduce his.

On a Very Special Supernanny...

My fiancé Preppy will tell you it’s no cakewalk trying to live with a writer. Every moment of our shared life holds the threat of becoming art. Preppy has endured the surreal experience of watching actors reenact our arguments for paying audiences. He has discovered his supervisors at work read about his sex life in a weekly magazine. He has sat smiling at book signings as I demonstrate what his snoring sounds like.
Dating a writer ain’t for sissies.
In my defense, he was warned. Early in our relationship, I gave him a binder containing all of my columns, with the explicit understanding that he’d be signing up for a life of full disclosure, told from the perspective of a crazy person who would always cast himself in the role of the hero. That’s an important element to consider: You’re always getting my side of the story, where every action is, if not defensible, at least explicable. I don’t pretend I’m faultless, but I suppose I’ve reached a point where I accept there are things about me that aren’t likely to change. I am well-intentioned, yet hopelessly scatterbrained. I’m devoted, but unreliable. Caring, but self-centered. My mind works funny, but the positive spin is that it helps me see the world in an interesting way.

And isn’t that worth the hassle?
It was a Friday night, and both of us were on the sofa with laptops in front of us, working. I’d disabled the wireless internet on my Dell so I couldn’t fall in a Facebook or YouTube K-hole and inexplicably lose six hours of my life. Supernanny was on. I love that show. A solidly-built British nanny named Jo is calls upon American households, where she observes for a few days and then explains in a stern but loving voice why the parents are unfit to raise children. It’s delightful.
In this episode, the parents had the most severely ADD child ever to walk the planet. They’d chosen not to medicate him, which is fine, but they also had made no provisions whatsoever to deal with raising a hummingbird on crack. Nanny Jo found this “totally unacceptable” and commenced working her stern but loving magic.
“You know, I was diagnosed ADHD when I was in my teens,” I said.
“I do not find that at all surprising,” said Preppy. “Were you on meds?”
“Yeah. Ritalin. High dosage.”
“Again, not surprising. Did it work?”
I thought back for a moment.
“You know what?” I said. “It did. That was the only time in my life I was a good student. I made it through Chemistry and Spanish II in a month of summer school, with A’s. Then I got back to school and by the end of first semester I realized I could sell it and make some decent cash, especially during exams. So I stopped taking it, and then I dropped out…”
This gave me pause.
“Do you think I still have it?”
“Yes,” he said without the slightest hesitation. “You absolutely still have it.”
“Well, even if I do, I’ve found a way to deal with it.”
“I guess so,” he sighed. “God knows I’ve had to.”
It’s been thirteen years since I sat in a psychiatrist’s office, sobbing in confusion and frustration over my impatience, procrastination, and insecurities. I remember the overwhelming sense of relief my parents and I felt when the evaluation gave it a name, something we could examine and attack. I still had that assessment in a box of old paperwork from the 90s. I found it, and re-read it.
Every word of it was still true.
I went online and started reading about Adult ADD, how it can impact everything from communication in your marriage to car maintenance. I felt violated reading the personal accounts- every one of them seemed lifted from my own life. I considered my last desk job, where I would sit in my office paralyzed by inaction and never able to understand why. My boss and I would fight constantly. He saw me as unconcerned. I knew how hard I was trying, yet had little evidence to show for it. I’d have the same conversations at home, when it took me nine hours to clean the kitchen. I cannot count the number of times people have come to me bewildered, wondering why a seemingly capable man could not accomplish the most basic tasks. I’ve been accused of not caring, of being lazy, of being unreliable. Deep down, I feared it was true, despite my intentions.
And all this time, I had an answer. I’ve had an answer for thirteen goddamn years, and I’ve done nothing about it. I was too ADD to deal with my ADD.
Three days later, I took care of two long-overdue tasks: I wrote a letter of apology to my former boss. I didn’t go into an explanation of my psyche. I just told him I was sorry, and that for the first time, I could see his side. And then I made a visit to my doctor.
There’s a lot of things I’ve asked Preppy to accept in our life together, and he has done so with grace and aplomb. Living with a man who has given up on improving himself shouldn’t be one of those requests. The little orange pill is just a tool- the work falls in my hands, and I intend to try. I believe Supernanny would be very proud.

Sick Day

As difficult as it may be to imagine, it’s actually much harder to take a sick day when one works from home. It’s enough of a challenge for me to convince people I’m actually working when I’m at the house, because I get to wear my jammies and take lots of smoke breaks.

Also because no one actually pays me TO write, they pay me when I’m FINISHED writing, the pressure’s always on to get to that completed product as quickly as possible. It’s a dicey proposition. My friend Steve Yockey, a very successful playwright, appears to have a new script ready for production every month. I average about one a year. And it’s not like he’s writing crap, they’re really good plays, which makes me hate him. I’m trying to become more prolific, devoting a minimum of five hours a day to being imaginative. I’d been making fairly decent progress on a romantic comedy this week… and then I got sick.
I woke up this morning around four, all sweaty and icky, so I went to the kitchen wanting peanut butter and some milk. It’s a habit my sister and I share- an unexplainable need to get out of the bed in the middle of the night and have peanut butter and milk, naked in the light of the refrigerator. Just to be clear, we’ve never done this together. Neither of us even knew the other did it until she was oversharing on the phone one day and I fell over from shock.

I had no idea anyone else in the world did this, let alone that it was a family trait. She squats on the floor while having her snack, but I stand. If I squatted, my balls might touch the linoleum, and that would be cold. I’ve warned Shannon that she has to stop this before her children get old enough to go wandering late at night. If I’d ever seen my mother crouched naked on the kitchen floor with a spoonful of peanut butter and a glass of milk, I would have blinded myself with the nearest convenient sharp object. I expect her kids would have the same reaction.
Normally my little late night forage does the trick and I feel right as rain, but I had an inkling there was trouble brewing in my body. I woke up at seven feeling like I’d been hit by a train. Coughing, hacking, fever, pounding headache, the works.
“Ugggggh! Baby!” I called out, but there was no response. My fiancé was already at work. Damn it. Don’t you hate it when you feel like hell and there’s no one around to watch?
I stumbled into the bathroom, searching for the leftover mega-strength Ibuprofen I’d gotten from my dentist a few months ago. I found it, choked down four, and laid on the bed, waiting for sweet release.
That’s when I remembered we’d run out of those Ibuprofen back in October.

So what the hell did I just take?
“You’re up early,” said my best galpal Slutty Mandy when I called.
“I think I just took a drug overdose. Tell Preppy I love him and I didn’t do it on purpose!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I thought it was Ibuprofen! Quick, get some paper, I have to tell you how my romantic comedy is supposed to end. Make Steve finish it. He works quickly.”
“What did you take?”
“Four muscle relaxers.”
“Oh, please, Topher. I could take four muscle relaxers and go to a spin class.”
“I don’t have your freaky drug tolerance!”
“You survived chemo. You’ll survive this. Just get back in bed and sleep it off.”
“Are you sure?”
“You’ll sleep like a rock. Oh, make sure you pee first, you don’t want to deal with the consequences of that one.”
I fell into a fitful sleep and dreamed about the play I wasn’t writing. I wish I could remember details, because then at least I kinda would’ve been working. When I woke up a few hours later, I was groggy and it felt like a muskrat had taken up residence in my mouth. I was floppy and couldn’t move. This happened to me the last time I smoked pot. We had a houseguest who broke out a gravity bong, and I wanted to show I was hip and could be part of the fun. I lost a whole Sunday as a result, lying on the bed convinced that I had actually damaged part of my brain. The room swirled in and out of focus for an entire afternoon, as I slowly returned to sobriety and accepted that I’m simply no longer a party boy.
Now the bedroom was once again spinning, but I’d painted since the last time, and the green made it much more pleasant. I tried watching TV, but abandoned it when I couldn’t take Kathie Lee Gifford for one more second. When and why exactly did they unleash her on the public again? She’s a horrible, horrible woman. I think she really tries to make her guests feel uncomfortable. I’ve got a cousin who does that. I thought about calling her and telling her off. The cousin, not Kathie Lee. I don’t have Kathie Lee’s number.

And it’s a good thing I don’t.
I drifted off to sleep again, and dreamt of Kathie Lee Gifford interviewing me while I ate peanut butter. This had nothing to do with my play, but was certainly imaginative, which was all I’d wanted out of the day in the first place.