Fury, part 2

I started this entry on May 27th, three days after part 1, but kept sort of grinding to a halt, deleting, typing, deleting, putting it down for a bit, etc. I finally moved on and decided to trust that I would get back to it when I felt like I actually had something useful to say.

It’s stock to say that alcohol numbs you out and that you don’t have your feelings when you’re drunk most or all of the time. I think that’s not true, and I want to dig into it more another time, maybe, but for now I’ll say that we career drunks have plenty of feelings, in the moment and in hindsight. They are real and valid feelings. They are often appropriate.

What we rarely have is the motor skills to handle our feelings (good or bad) or the clarity to find something useful in them.

When I saw Professor Checkers at the Y, and said his name - - out loud, just like that, “Professor Checkers.” It wasn’t a question, or a greeting, just a cartoon balloon with his name in it coming out of my mouth - - and he turned toward me, I sort of braced for impact because I didn’t think before I spoke (multi-volume story of my entire life) and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be where I suddenly was.

It was immediately obvious that he didn’t remember me, which hurt my feelings, of course, but it’s been ~30 years, and those years happened to both of us, so it’s understandable. I told him my name, and how we knew each other, and he still didn’t really recall me, but there was a flicker of recognition when I mentioned my friend and co-editor, and the magazine. This hurt more.

Lately I’ve had the sensation in my sobriety that I’ve plateaued, in the same way people who diet may lose weight for weeks or months at a pace that feels like success only to suddenly and inexplicably find themselves working just as hard but with little or no change. Adding cigarettes to the list of things I can never ever do again has enhanced that sensation. Starting a big new activity, even one I love, has also enhanced it. It’s not especially pleasant. It’s like walking a hot mile in wet sneakers, which you would not do if you didn’t have to.

After the first halcyon years of sobriety, this plateau is shocking, but not surprising. There’s a reckoning to be met that involves revisiting seismic moments.

***

Where I keep getting bogged down in the telling of this story is that I want to relate all the details and turns so that you can see why I was so hurt, so you will be on my side, so someone will finally fucking understand me, so I can feel justified in my anger, so I can hurt myself with it all over again, but no matter how I tell it, it begins to feel petty and childish, and maybe the details of it are.

I even gave myself a little pep talk to make it okay to be petty about it. Maybe it IS okay to be petty about it!

One of my goals for this blog, however, is transformation. If the sharing of an experience through writing doesn’t offer me an opportunity for transformation, even a small one, then I need to keep digging.

So, while there are some juicy operatic tidbits I could pad this out with, there are other better ways to spend our time.

***

Last night, we watched “Brats,” Andrew McCarthy’s new documentary about the so-called Brat Pack. I don’t want to talk about it too much here, except to say that it inspired me to return to Fury, part 2, and also to view the events from my life 30 years ago, and how it all affected me, from a more forgiving perspective.

There are, however, some parallels worth mentioning, I think:

The young actors who were labelled as the Brat Pack, were in their early 20s, as I was when my tenure at Fury came to an abrupt end.

Most, if not all, of them felt at the time like something had been done to them personally and purposefully by people with more power. I certainly felt that way in my situation.

Most, if not all, reacted dramatically at the time and affirm a lifelong connection to it. I dropped out of school and have a 2-part blog post about something that happened THIRTY YEARS AGO.

***

I think I know the reasons why I did things I did, why I made some choices, why I’m not a person who fights to be in a room where I don’t feel welcome. I know that in that moment, that long crucial tumbling moment, I really needed someone to stand up for me. I don’t know that it could have been just anyone. It should have been one or both of my parents. It should have been one of those terrible boyfriends. It should have been a beloved and trusted advisor.

I don’t know why I let it nearly erase the good and meaningful experience I’d had the year before. I don’t know why I let it drive me away from doing something I loved. Maybe I would have found a place for myself in that field, but I don’t mean to be too precious about that - - I don’t think I was destined to be a world-renowned magazine editor, if only that bastard Professor Checkers had believed in me or given one shit about any of it. I do know I let it drive me away for the same reasons I let myself be driven away from dance, singing, theater, and music; why I let myself believe I’m not a good friend because one girl in the first grade thought you could only have one friend at a time, and she didn’t choose me; why I sometimes, often, think about quitting comedy.

I know the same reasons are behind all of those things, but I haven’t figured out yet what those reasons are, at least not all of them. Paradoxically, that is one reason I haven’t quit comedy, because it’s helping me explore my own motivations, how I see myself in the world, what kinds of things affect my confidence. (There will be more discussion of this at some point, to be sure.)

***

I feel like I witnessed transformation while I was watching that documentary about middle-aged people confronting trauma and coming to some understanding with it, even seeing it in a different way. I felt transformed, in fact, and had one of those rare moments when a wave of certainty crashed over me, and forgiveness.

I do hope that every person that worked on the magazine that year, the year I let myself be pushed away from it, felt the same joy and pride in it that I did the year before. Even the boy poet with whom I had a very VERY drunken one-night-stand the summer before, who told me that he loved me and turned out to be very VERY married. (PETTY. And funny, sort of.) And I’m glad, as much as it bruised my ego, that my encounter with Professor Checkers happened at a time when I am actively making amends to myself, when I have developed better skills for handling those big messy feelings.

Practice makes better.