Wishful Drinking

10 THE NEWLY MADE BYSTANDER

I didn’t realize I actually had post-traumatic stress disorder at the time, but why would I think I had that? Anyway, how would I know which was post-traumatic stress, which is addiction, which is bipolar, which is Libra? Also, I thought you had to go to Iraq to get post-traumatic stress disorder—and you do—but you can also just come on over to my house!

Anyway, a few months later, I guess my friends were getting worried about me because I wasn’t talking—and most people know that I’m essentially voice activated—and I was smoking like it was food, so I finally agreed to go to this grief counselor they’d found for me.

And my favorite thing this woman said to me was, “I’m so sorry we had to meet under these conditions.”

Hello!? You’re a grief counselor! What other conditions would we meet under?

Then she says, “I can’t even imagine what you’ve been through.”

You can’t!? Well if you can’t then I’m really fucked.

Anyway, a couple of weeks later, my daughter, Billie, who was about thirteen at the time, tells me that she wants to be a neurologist with a specialty in schizophrenia when she grows up.

So I say, “Why not be a grief counselor? We’ll see each other more.”

My daughter, Billie, is incredible. Even though she’s a teenage girl and they so often end up thinking their mothers are lame and/or insane (and in Billie’s case, she’s not completely wrong). She’s so pretty (she looks a lot like my mother) and she’s a straight-A student—except for chemistry and when’s that gonna come up? And, she’s a great writer and has a wonderful singing voice. (Where’d she get that?) And she just got her driver’s license so pray for me.

Anyway, once, when Billie was about four we were driving along in Florida and she sees this church and she points to it and says, “What’s that?”

So I said, “Well, baby, that’s where people go to worship God.”

And she says, “God, like the God Bless You God?”

Like that’s his main claim to fame.

I took a job at one point when Billie was about three or four with a magazine who would send me to different places with her and one of her friends and then I would write about it. I wanted to call it “Billie’s Holiday,” but they ended up cleverly calling it “Travels With Billie.” So we got to go to all sorts of places. One time, we went to Vegas and visited my mother’s hotel where there were actually slot machines that, in order to win, you had to get three faces in a line of my mother’s smiling face but no matter how many times I tried to get a jackpot with my mother’s head, I never seemed to be able to win. I couldn’t hit the jackpot with my mother’s smiling face! If I’d dreamt that, a shrink would have a field day analyzing its deeper meaning.

Billie has always been a very verbal and watchful child. And you know what’s terrible nowadays is everything that is on TV and the internet. You know, you get movies that are rated PG or PG-13, but it’s not a system that accurately indicates just how sophisticated or explicit these films are. Anyway, one day, Billie and I were watching Muriel’s Wedding, and I was thinking: Well, this is okay, right? I mean, why shouldn’t she see this? I didn’t remember it as anything inappropriate, so I’m sitting there with her and suddenly one of the girls in the movie says: “She sucked your husband’s cock.” And then another woman responds: “Oh, well, she also sucked your husband’s cock.” Now, I’m sitting there next to Billie and I’m devastated. What do I say, if anything? She’s about seven at the time.

So I say, “You don’t think people actually do that, do you?” (Great! There’s a brilliant point.)

And she looks sheepish and says, “No.” Then about six months later, we’re watching yet another one of these movies that I think is totally fine, when it happens again! Another actress makes a reference to going down on a man.

So, I say to Billie again, “You don’t think people actually do that, do you?”

I don’t know what she’s been exposed to between the internet and school—no matter how diligently I try to monitor it.

But this time she responds very quietly, “Yes.”

I’m totally unprepared for this so I say, “But you don’t think men actually like it, do you?”

And to this, she emphatically shakes her head No.

So, you can see how great I am with training with my daughter. I did tell her about the birds and the bees, but you kind of have to move really fast because of what kids are exposed to now. The weird thing is when kids see porn before they have sex and ugh… well, actually, I’m a fine one to talk because when I was fifteen, I was in the chorus of my mother’s show (like most teenagers) and the gay guys in the show showed a movie called Sixteen Inches in Omaha to either shock me or watch my reaction.

As you can imagine, this is a wonderful introduction into the male anatomy. So subtle and nuanced.

Anyway, more recently Billie told me that she’s changed her mind—she no longer wants to be a neurologist with a specialty in schizophrenia, now she wants to be a comic. (which is kind of a natural progression if you think about it).

So I say, “Well, baby—if you want to be a comic, you have to be a writer. But don’t worry, you have tons of material. Your mother is a manic-depressive drug addict, your father is gay, your grandmother tap-dances, and your grandfather shot speed!”

And my daughter laughs and laughs and laughs, and I say, “Baby, the fact that you know that’s funny is going to save your whole life.”

Now, if you had a daughter that great—you don’t, but if you did—wouldn’t you want to do something nice for her? Well, I did. I wanted her to have some normal Mommy memories of me. Not just memories of a mother who got tattooed and hid Easter eggs in July. So I learned to cook. And it turns out I’m a pretty good cook. I mean, I make most of my meals at about 11:00 at night, but they’re very, very delicious!

But when I first learned to cook, my mother flipped out. It was like I was violating a family code or credo—I didn’t even know we had those things.

She would say, “Carrie’s in the kitchen… cooking.”

Like she was saying, “shaving her head.” And what a weird thing to do in the kitchen, by the way.

So, one night, I’m at her house (I told you we live next door to each other) and I say, “I’m going back up to my house to make Billie dinner.”

And she grabs my arm and says “Nooo! Why are you doing this?! Please let me send Mary to make her chicken crepes.”

But I’m pleased to report that, over time, my mother has become more accustomed to my cooking so now she says, “You know, dear, we had an Uncle Wally in the family who was a good cook.”

So, if she can see it as a talent—especially one from her side of the family—she’s cool with it.

I heard someone say once that many of us only seem able to find heaven by backing away from hell. And while the place that I’ve arrived at in my life may not precisely be everyone’s idea of heavenly, I could swear sometimes—if I’m quiet enough—I can hear the angels sing.

Either that or I’ve screwed up my medication. But one of the reasons I think my life is going so much better is that having originally done Wishful Drinking (the show and now the book) as a singles ad—a really, really detailed personals ad—I think if I attract someone from one of my audiences or one of the readers of this book, he’ll never be able to say, “You never told me you were a manic-depressive drug addict who turned men bald and gay,” like men say to me now. Because I am no different than any other single person (all three of them). I also want someone to love and treasure and overwhelm—oh, and disappoint!—especially disappoint, I find that so erotic. Anyway, the ad worked! Because when I did my show in Santa Fe, I received in the mail a marriage proposal.

Now, I told you I was a manic depressive, right? So you know I have lousy judgment—so I was hoping that before I take such an enormous step, I could run the proposal past you and get you to somehow weigh in on it. Okay?

Keep in mind—I’m not getting any younger.

So, what do you think? Should I marry him? Are you an optimist like Marie McDonald?

Come on, I want to get old with someone—not because of them—and I already have such a huge head start!