I’m sitting on Jimmy’s porch, smoking a cigarette and listening to his story of a co-worker’s t-shirt featuring Mr. Snuffalupogus, Big Bird’s imaginary friend. “I had an imaginary bodyguard when I was a kid.” I say, and then realize what it must sound like. It sounds like I had a horrible childhood, full of God-knows-what dastardly abuse. “It’s not like that, “ I say to Jimmy, who has obviously been jolted out of his beer/weed/sex haze. “My childhood was fine!” I’m giggling now. “But I used to get so mad when he wouldn’t talk to me!” Jimmy is shaking his head in disbelief. “I’ve got to write about the gorilla,” I think. I spend the night with Jimmy. It is one night that I am not alone.
My bodyguard was a large, purple-furred gorilla. He was not cute and cuddly, but he was not scary either. He was business-like, a gorilla who could get things done. I take it for granted that his inspiration was the cartoon character Grape Ape, but I fear that if I google Grape Ape to confirm this, I will find my hazy memories of my bodyguard entirely remade in the cartoon’s image. I fear that Grape Ape might have sported a bowler hat—an indignity that my silent, stoic bodyguard would never have suffered.
I remember my bodyguard best in my father’s house, following behind me on the stairs at night. I was never afraid of the dark, but he was always there anyway, mute and
unmovable. He certainly was not there for my amusement; he refused to speak. But he was there, in the night, when I was alone.
I do not remember how old I was when my bodyguard appeared, nor do I remember how old I was when he finally failed to appear. For most of my life he has been reduced to an anecdote, a one-liner thrown out for laughs whenever the conversation turns to childhood imaginary friends. I do not remember when or why I needed him.
I can barely remember the questions I used to ask him—Who are you? Where did you come from? Why are you following me? I remember my frustration at his unwillingness or inability to answer me. I do not remember being calmed or comforted by his presence. I only remember my acceptance of the situation, tempered by a mild irritation.
I do not remember, was not capable of articulating, what my bodyguard was there to protect me from. I can guess, of course. To have the monolith of “my parents” split into two uncertain people, with previously sublimated needs and wants, raises spectres of loss, loneliness, passion, and struggle. New adults with their own selves and histories would come and go with little regard for the small girl who talked out the side of her mouth, like a bum with a stogie, and trailed an invisible gorilla behind her.
Now a divorced mother myself, I have a new invisible bodyguard. She is real this time—my friend Donna, a large, solid woman with a reckless love of power tools and has the truncated finger to prove it. She and her equally imposing girlfriend are the self-appointed watchdogs of my safety as I sow my long-delayed wild oats. Before I meet a new man, I call Donna to say where I am going and whom I will be with. Before I go home with him, I call her again to give her his address and arrange a time to call in the morning to report that I am still alive. We have a code question I will ask if I ever feel unsafe—an inquiry after one of her dogs is the signal for the avenging dykes to come to my rescue. So far, this has not been necessary.
What I feared as a child, I am living now. I have left the airless desperation of a dying marriage and barely survived the inevitable, unsuitable rebound man. I have gone home with the inexperienced but tenderhearted techie, the guitar player who made me scream like a banshee, the ex-Satanist who missed his ex-girlfriend, the lonely man with cats, the dude who owns more pairs of shoes than I do, the New Orleans hippie with paint peeling off his walls like a neglected fresco, the ex-army man now growing his goatee to his waist, the guy from Jersey with the little blind dog, and Jimmy, the scrawny kid from Kansas with crates full of vinyl. I am not afraid of men, or what they do, in the night, when we are alone.
The truth is that the only danger I face is that which blossoms within me. The neurotic tendencies I was born with, the anxiety and sorrow planted in my childhood, have bloomed into a chronic state of dread and self-loathing that informs every waking hour, often leaving me gasping for breath. The chaos and loneliness I feared as a child surround me now.
There are scars beneath my clothes— each a reminder of a terrible night. The Y-incision of an autopsy bisects my torso. One foot reads “no more velveteen rabbit,” the other says merely “everyone lies.” Xs are carved over my heart.
The only one who touches my body with intent to harm is me. I’m dangerous at night, when I am alone.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
This Is What I Got Out Of Tooth School (second draft)
I have known you for years. I know the sound of your laugh and what it looks like when you cry. I know, if not every inch of your body, at least most of them. I know the smell of your neck. I know how your voice sounds muffled when you talk in your sleep. I know your past and what little plans you have for your future. I know the feel of you in my arms as you move inside me. I know you better than anyone else does. But sometimes I wonder if I know you at all.
My first thought, on meeting you, was “He doesn’t look as stupid as Star says he is.” You were leaning against the front of the lab, smoking. Your face had a slightly ferrety look, your hair was slicked back, and you wore a long chain on his wallet. I didn’t know it yet, but over the coming year, I would get great amusement from watching you lurch and reel as the chain caught on your chair.
For the first few months we worked together, you were silent. Then one day you cracked, into the existing conversation, a joke so clever and so foul that I found myself looking at you for the first time all over again.
Soon we went to lunch together, awkwardly at first, and then more naturally. “This is no good, she is married,” tutted our Armenian boss. We protested our innocence-- “We’re just friends, Raffi.”
Cleaning day was the point of no return for me. After dousing the wax-covered floor in lighter fluid and setting it on fire, we snuck away, without clocking out, to the bar down the lock where we sat and talked and drank. I saw you backlit by the winter sun, your hair falling over your forehead, and I realized that I liked you way too much.
I took a picture on my phone to save the moment when my life changed forever. I lay in bed with the flu, weeks later, and looked at the picture, furtively, as a lifeline. Like a dream
Sunday, June 05, 2005
I dreamed of you last night....
Instead of running away to Mexico, like we joke about sometimes, we went to the Enchanted Forest. I'm sure you've never been there, being from California and all, but I went there a lot as a kid. It was different, of course, in the way of dreams, darker and more disturbing. We were the only ones there, besides the shadowy staff, and we wandered in a maze of half-finished exhibits with puddles on the floor until at last I could stand it no more and kissed you.
And then I woke up sweating, sick with longing and horror.
I very nearly kissed you Friday, at the end of the day. Everyone else had gone home, and it was just the two of us. You have no idea how I long for those occasions. I was watching your hands as you worked, fixing my mistakes. I studied your fingertips, blunted and square with the cuticles sneaking up the nails. I watched your hair fall over your forehead. I almost reached out to you.
I'm crying a little now, as I think of it. I never wanted to be this woman- fat, old, pathetic. I never meant to lose interest in my husband. I never intended to fall for a man who is so clearly unsuitable, who reminds me so much of my father, who doesn't even read, for christssake. I never meant to be here. So of course, here I am.
I wonder sometimes how much of this you're aware of. On the one hand, you are terrible at figuring out women. On the other hand, you've shown a knack for figuring out me. It's a dangerous game. I often wonder if you find me attractive. I have no idea what I look like anymore.
All I know is that I want you. I don't want to walk away from my life and ride off into the sunset- I could never abandon my child, and I don't even think we'd last very long as an actual honest-to-god couple. I just want to be able to put my hands on you, to kiss you, to sneak off on our lunch break to fuck in your car. I want you to call me on the weekends and tell me you miss me. I want the rush, the adrenaline, to feel alive again. I want to feel like I'm not so alone.
Things changed at the lab. Raffi, the sweet, naïve, fatherly Armenian, left for California. Rick, the provocateur, collected his porn, sabotaged the machines and left to marry his Muslim lawyer girlfriend. Soon it was the two of us against the world. I was not alone.
I snatched every moment I could to go to work. To escape from my collapsing marriage and troubled child, to watch the man I loved and hope that no one noticed. “This is just between you and me,” Michael in shipping said as he related a piece of gossip. “And I know that between you and me also includes Zach.”
I got up early, waiting for the bus as the first light seeped in. Sometimes I got to work to find you still there, working, from the night before. Every day we went to lunch, I drinking a vodka tonic, you taking quick hits of weed in front of an empty storefront. We talked of our childhoods, painful past and present relationships, and sometimes sat silently, filled with thoughts that could not safely be said. Once I asked you "Which one of your ex-girlfriends' hearts did you break? Which one still thinks "Damn you, Zach!"
"All of them," you said.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
I'm so confused.
I decided that I want to stay married. I really, truly do. I know that I will never find a better man than my husband, and I know that if you and I ever were to try, god help us, to have a relationship, that we would end up horribly reenacting the hideous dramas of our childhoods, but none of this is any help in making me stop wanting to kiss you.
All the time.
When you get to work in the morning fresh out of the shower with your hair combed back, I want to kiss you. At lunch, when you have salad dressing on your chin, I want to kiss you. I want to kiss you when you're sighing over the new cases, taking a drag off my cigarette, talking to doctors on the phone, running your hand through your hair, when you're looking at me because you just heard something you know I'll think is funny, and most of all when you've got a thin dusting of acrylic on your cheekbone.
I wish I could tell you how cute you are. How sexy your hands are, with all the calluses and your knuckles just the right amount of knobbly. How adorable it is when you get agitated and your hair starts sticking up. How much I like your laugh.
You're not even that good looking.
I just don't know what's wrong with me.
Nearly a year after Cleaning Day, we were fired- a combination of a stupid prank and management’s maneuvering. A week later we sat in a different bar and I said, my heart beating wildly, “I love you. I can’t see you anymore.” “I understand,” you said. We did not speak for six months.
Friday, September 23, 2005
I don't know how to get through this night.
I wish so much I could call you. But if there's one thing I've learned, it's that you can't count on an Aries when the chips are down. You don't want to see me cry. It would just make you squirmy and then you'd run.
But I don't know how much more I can take. My life is getting so awful so fast. I don't know how to live through this, and I don't have anyone to turn to.
Years went by. I convinced myself that it was an aberration, merely a symptom of other conflicts. We met and parted, with various degrees of conflict, never speaking of that which drew us together and kept us apart. We went out to nightclubs and drank too much. We lied to ourselves, to each other, to everyone.
One night, again in the winter, after too many Cosmos, you sat down beside me in the booth. I leaned against your shoulder. You put your arm around me and trailed your fingers along my back. We sat like that for a long time, everything of seemingly endless significance, the remains of a sesame cracker clutched, forgotten, in my hand.
Later we would argue, and never resolve, who had moved first. However it happened, we were kissing, while around us our lives shifted into new configurations of uncertainty, fear. and hope. Later I would remember the toast I ordered and then was unable to eat, the newly naked and vulnerable look on your face.
At home, I lay on the couch for two weeks, as if fevered. I slept and ate very little, losing nearly ten pounds. When I arose again, my marriage was over.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Is it possible for a memory to become grubby and indistinct from over handling? I know we talked for hours that night, but I only remember a half-hour's worth, tops. I want to remember every word.
I went out last night with my brother and his girlfriend. We ended up at a bar, and it was horribly noisy and crowded and they seemed to know half the people there. Small fucking town, I guess.
That's only the second time I've been out of the house since the last time I talked to you. Both times I ended up in bars smoking and staring at my drink while someone says "Shit, man, that sucks. I don't know what to tell you."
I don't know what to tell me either.
I can't believe how much it hurts. I want so badly to call you, to tell you I can't do this. I want to see you again, to kiss you one more time. I want it to not be over.
Underneath all the pain, in spite of it all, a tiny part of me is happy. I never, ever thought I'd hear you say you loved me. It's thrilling and dizzying. It means everything to me.
But then I remember that I may never hear it again, and I curl up into a ball and cry. And I'm irritated at you, which is totally unfair. I want you to love me, I always have, but finding out that you actually do has made my life REALLY FUCKING HARD.
Finally, it was a real relationship, open, acknowledged, honest. But it didn’t take long for things to go sour. I had never lived alone. You knew nothing else. I was raised with constant, heavy drama. You fled from any sign of emotion. I cried. You withdrew. We broke up. We got back together. Horrible things were said.
The next winter, always in winter, we broke up for good.
Monday, December 1, 2008
I’m feeling very anxious just now.
I’m alone in my apartment. I haven’t been really alone in days, and I don’t like it. I don’t quite trust myself.
I miss you too much. I want desperately to know that you haven’t given up on me, that when I come out the other side you’ll still be there. And I can’t know. It’s dreadful.
I haven’t any food in the house, except some oat biscuits that I’m too troubled to eat. Terrible stenches are coming from the garbage, and there’s cat shit on the floor, and I can’t bring myself to do anything about it. I want to cry. The hope I felt earlier is gone, replaced by a grim emptiness in where I imagine my stomach to be.
I know that I ought to be concerned with getting better for my own sake, for my son’s sake, for the sake, God help me, of the work I have yet to do. But all I care about is getting you back. I know it’s wrong, but I’m powerless to change it. I don’t feel the anguish I often do, when it feels as though my chest is going to rupture from the ache and the longing, but I feel a deep, grinding, hopeless resignation.
I’m not proud of any of this, you know.
I was going to buy berry pop-tarts, but then I saw the orange cream. I knew that they could be really good or really bad, and I would never know which until I bought them. From behind the counter, Mel called “You know you want to try them!” I did.
The night before, the man I slept with most often had told me that he couldn’t go on having sex with a woman that he didn’t love. I agreed that it was time for him to move on, and wished him well, even though I would miss him. The next morning I saw him posting in Casual Encounters. I was angry and hurt.
Seeking comfort, I called you and badgered you into letting me spend the night with you, watching TV and getting high. I took the pop-tarts with me.
The smoke filled my lungs, tasting faintly of mint and dirt. I coughed and gasped for breath. When the drug hit my bloodstream, I relaxed for the first time all week and reached for the first Pop-tart.
The filling was runnier than I expected, and it was a pale, almost sickly orange. To my surprise, the grainy sweetness tasted exactly like St. Joseph’s baby aspirin. I said so to you, but you had never known there was such a thing as baby aspirin.
We smoked and watched cartoons for hours, lulled into finally feeling at home in the world. Your hair had grown too long. Combined with the glasses that you seldom wore, it made you look every day of the forty you were about to turn. I ate my way steadily through the Pop-tarts, washing them down with lukewarm diet Coke. We talked about whether it would be okay to have sex with a cartoon dog if he talked, drove a car, and smoked cigarettes.
Eventually, we drifted to bed. I could still taste the gritty orange in the teeth I was too lazy to brush. I ran my hand under your shirt, marveling anew at how hairy your chest was. You slept, murmuring fretfully.
I leaned my head against yours and breathed in each of your exhalations. When awake, you held yourself back from me, determined to never fully commit. Asleep, unguarded, for a moment you were mine. The smell of your breath was sweet, despite the years of meth damage to your teeth. It was the same smell I discovered the night you first kissed me, the night that killed my ailing marriage. The acridity of your beloved weed was mellowed by the journey to your pores. It was sweet and woodsy, like sun-warmed trees.
You stirred briefly and kissed my shoulder as I sunk gratefully into sleep.
I dreamed last night that I finally found a real boyfriend. He looked like Paul Rudd, and was a painter who dabbled in musical theater. It was one of those mega-Hollywood stories—we had met somewhere and talked for hours, made a connection, and somehow lost track of each other. After some time, he tracked me down at a raucous but unfulfilling party. We hurtled into each other’s arms and I knew we would be together for a long time. He went off to get a drink, and as I woke up, I was looking for him to ask “Hey, it’s ok if I still sleep with Zach sometimes, right?”
I will move on, but you will always be with me.
* * *
My first thought, on meeting you, was “He doesn’t look as stupid as Star says he is.” You were leaning against the front of the lab, smoking. Your face had a slightly ferrety look, your hair was slicked back, and you wore a long chain on his wallet. I didn’t know it yet, but over the coming year, I would get great amusement from watching you lurch and reel as the chain caught on your chair.
For the first few months we worked together, you were silent. Then one day you cracked, into the existing conversation, a joke so clever and so foul that I found myself looking at you for the first time all over again.
Soon we went to lunch together, awkwardly at first, and then more naturally. “This is no good, she is married,” tutted our Armenian boss. We protested our innocence-- “We’re just friends, Raffi.”
Cleaning day was the point of no return for me. After dousing the wax-covered floor in lighter fluid and setting it on fire, we snuck away, without clocking out, to the bar down the lock where we sat and talked and drank. I saw you backlit by the winter sun, your hair falling over your forehead, and I realized that I liked you way too much.
I took a picture on my phone to save the moment when my life changed forever. I lay in bed with the flu, weeks later, and looked at the picture, furtively, as a lifeline. Like a dream
* * *
Sunday, June 05, 2005
I dreamed of you last night....
Instead of running away to Mexico, like we joke about sometimes, we went to the Enchanted Forest. I'm sure you've never been there, being from California and all, but I went there a lot as a kid. It was different, of course, in the way of dreams, darker and more disturbing. We were the only ones there, besides the shadowy staff, and we wandered in a maze of half-finished exhibits with puddles on the floor until at last I could stand it no more and kissed you.
And then I woke up sweating, sick with longing and horror.
I very nearly kissed you Friday, at the end of the day. Everyone else had gone home, and it was just the two of us. You have no idea how I long for those occasions. I was watching your hands as you worked, fixing my mistakes. I studied your fingertips, blunted and square with the cuticles sneaking up the nails. I watched your hair fall over your forehead. I almost reached out to you.
I'm crying a little now, as I think of it. I never wanted to be this woman- fat, old, pathetic. I never meant to lose interest in my husband. I never intended to fall for a man who is so clearly unsuitable, who reminds me so much of my father, who doesn't even read, for christssake. I never meant to be here. So of course, here I am.
I wonder sometimes how much of this you're aware of. On the one hand, you are terrible at figuring out women. On the other hand, you've shown a knack for figuring out me. It's a dangerous game. I often wonder if you find me attractive. I have no idea what I look like anymore.
All I know is that I want you. I don't want to walk away from my life and ride off into the sunset- I could never abandon my child, and I don't even think we'd last very long as an actual honest-to-god couple. I just want to be able to put my hands on you, to kiss you, to sneak off on our lunch break to fuck in your car. I want you to call me on the weekends and tell me you miss me. I want the rush, the adrenaline, to feel alive again. I want to feel like I'm not so alone.
* * *
Things changed at the lab. Raffi, the sweet, naïve, fatherly Armenian, left for California. Rick, the provocateur, collected his porn, sabotaged the machines and left to marry his Muslim lawyer girlfriend. Soon it was the two of us against the world. I was not alone.
I snatched every moment I could to go to work. To escape from my collapsing marriage and troubled child, to watch the man I loved and hope that no one noticed. “This is just between you and me,” Michael in shipping said as he related a piece of gossip. “And I know that between you and me also includes Zach.”
I got up early, waiting for the bus as the first light seeped in. Sometimes I got to work to find you still there, working, from the night before. Every day we went to lunch, I drinking a vodka tonic, you taking quick hits of weed in front of an empty storefront. We talked of our childhoods, painful past and present relationships, and sometimes sat silently, filled with thoughts that could not safely be said. Once I asked you "Which one of your ex-girlfriends' hearts did you break? Which one still thinks "Damn you, Zach!"
"All of them," you said.
* * *
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
I'm so confused.
I decided that I want to stay married. I really, truly do. I know that I will never find a better man than my husband, and I know that if you and I ever were to try, god help us, to have a relationship, that we would end up horribly reenacting the hideous dramas of our childhoods, but none of this is any help in making me stop wanting to kiss you.
All the time.
When you get to work in the morning fresh out of the shower with your hair combed back, I want to kiss you. At lunch, when you have salad dressing on your chin, I want to kiss you. I want to kiss you when you're sighing over the new cases, taking a drag off my cigarette, talking to doctors on the phone, running your hand through your hair, when you're looking at me because you just heard something you know I'll think is funny, and most of all when you've got a thin dusting of acrylic on your cheekbone.
I wish I could tell you how cute you are. How sexy your hands are, with all the calluses and your knuckles just the right amount of knobbly. How adorable it is when you get agitated and your hair starts sticking up. How much I like your laugh.
You're not even that good looking.
I just don't know what's wrong with me.
* * *
Nearly a year after Cleaning Day, we were fired- a combination of a stupid prank and management’s maneuvering. A week later we sat in a different bar and I said, my heart beating wildly, “I love you. I can’t see you anymore.” “I understand,” you said. We did not speak for six months.
* * *
Friday, September 23, 2005
I don't know how to get through this night.
I wish so much I could call you. But if there's one thing I've learned, it's that you can't count on an Aries when the chips are down. You don't want to see me cry. It would just make you squirmy and then you'd run.
But I don't know how much more I can take. My life is getting so awful so fast. I don't know how to live through this, and I don't have anyone to turn to.
* * *
Years went by. I convinced myself that it was an aberration, merely a symptom of other conflicts. We met and parted, with various degrees of conflict, never speaking of that which drew us together and kept us apart. We went out to nightclubs and drank too much. We lied to ourselves, to each other, to everyone.
One night, again in the winter, after too many Cosmos, you sat down beside me in the booth. I leaned against your shoulder. You put your arm around me and trailed your fingers along my back. We sat like that for a long time, everything of seemingly endless significance, the remains of a sesame cracker clutched, forgotten, in my hand.
Later we would argue, and never resolve, who had moved first. However it happened, we were kissing, while around us our lives shifted into new configurations of uncertainty, fear. and hope. Later I would remember the toast I ordered and then was unable to eat, the newly naked and vulnerable look on your face.
At home, I lay on the couch for two weeks, as if fevered. I slept and ate very little, losing nearly ten pounds. When I arose again, my marriage was over.
* * *
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Is it possible for a memory to become grubby and indistinct from over handling? I know we talked for hours that night, but I only remember a half-hour's worth, tops. I want to remember every word.
I went out last night with my brother and his girlfriend. We ended up at a bar, and it was horribly noisy and crowded and they seemed to know half the people there. Small fucking town, I guess.
That's only the second time I've been out of the house since the last time I talked to you. Both times I ended up in bars smoking and staring at my drink while someone says "Shit, man, that sucks. I don't know what to tell you."
I don't know what to tell me either.
I can't believe how much it hurts. I want so badly to call you, to tell you I can't do this. I want to see you again, to kiss you one more time. I want it to not be over.
Underneath all the pain, in spite of it all, a tiny part of me is happy. I never, ever thought I'd hear you say you loved me. It's thrilling and dizzying. It means everything to me.
But then I remember that I may never hear it again, and I curl up into a ball and cry. And I'm irritated at you, which is totally unfair. I want you to love me, I always have, but finding out that you actually do has made my life REALLY FUCKING HARD.
* * *
Finally, it was a real relationship, open, acknowledged, honest. But it didn’t take long for things to go sour. I had never lived alone. You knew nothing else. I was raised with constant, heavy drama. You fled from any sign of emotion. I cried. You withdrew. We broke up. We got back together. Horrible things were said.
The next winter, always in winter, we broke up for good.
* * *
Monday, December 1, 2008
I’m feeling very anxious just now.
I’m alone in my apartment. I haven’t been really alone in days, and I don’t like it. I don’t quite trust myself.
I miss you too much. I want desperately to know that you haven’t given up on me, that when I come out the other side you’ll still be there. And I can’t know. It’s dreadful.
I haven’t any food in the house, except some oat biscuits that I’m too troubled to eat. Terrible stenches are coming from the garbage, and there’s cat shit on the floor, and I can’t bring myself to do anything about it. I want to cry. The hope I felt earlier is gone, replaced by a grim emptiness in where I imagine my stomach to be.
I know that I ought to be concerned with getting better for my own sake, for my son’s sake, for the sake, God help me, of the work I have yet to do. But all I care about is getting you back. I know it’s wrong, but I’m powerless to change it. I don’t feel the anguish I often do, when it feels as though my chest is going to rupture from the ache and the longing, but I feel a deep, grinding, hopeless resignation.
I’m not proud of any of this, you know.
* * *
I was going to buy berry pop-tarts, but then I saw the orange cream. I knew that they could be really good or really bad, and I would never know which until I bought them. From behind the counter, Mel called “You know you want to try them!” I did.
The night before, the man I slept with most often had told me that he couldn’t go on having sex with a woman that he didn’t love. I agreed that it was time for him to move on, and wished him well, even though I would miss him. The next morning I saw him posting in Casual Encounters. I was angry and hurt.
Seeking comfort, I called you and badgered you into letting me spend the night with you, watching TV and getting high. I took the pop-tarts with me.
The smoke filled my lungs, tasting faintly of mint and dirt. I coughed and gasped for breath. When the drug hit my bloodstream, I relaxed for the first time all week and reached for the first Pop-tart.
The filling was runnier than I expected, and it was a pale, almost sickly orange. To my surprise, the grainy sweetness tasted exactly like St. Joseph’s baby aspirin. I said so to you, but you had never known there was such a thing as baby aspirin.
We smoked and watched cartoons for hours, lulled into finally feeling at home in the world. Your hair had grown too long. Combined with the glasses that you seldom wore, it made you look every day of the forty you were about to turn. I ate my way steadily through the Pop-tarts, washing them down with lukewarm diet Coke. We talked about whether it would be okay to have sex with a cartoon dog if he talked, drove a car, and smoked cigarettes.
Eventually, we drifted to bed. I could still taste the gritty orange in the teeth I was too lazy to brush. I ran my hand under your shirt, marveling anew at how hairy your chest was. You slept, murmuring fretfully.
I leaned my head against yours and breathed in each of your exhalations. When awake, you held yourself back from me, determined to never fully commit. Asleep, unguarded, for a moment you were mine. The smell of your breath was sweet, despite the years of meth damage to your teeth. It was the same smell I discovered the night you first kissed me, the night that killed my ailing marriage. The acridity of your beloved weed was mellowed by the journey to your pores. It was sweet and woodsy, like sun-warmed trees.
You stirred briefly and kissed my shoulder as I sunk gratefully into sleep.
* * *
I dreamed last night that I finally found a real boyfriend. He looked like Paul Rudd, and was a painter who dabbled in musical theater. It was one of those mega-Hollywood stories—we had met somewhere and talked for hours, made a connection, and somehow lost track of each other. After some time, he tracked me down at a raucous but unfulfilling party. We hurtled into each other’s arms and I knew we would be together for a long time. He went off to get a drink, and as I woke up, I was looking for him to ask “Hey, it’s ok if I still sleep with Zach sometimes, right?”
I will move on, but you will always be with me.
My Best Friend and Other Animals
My best friend is a man. More specifically, my best friend is a man I used to date. The breakup story we have come to agree on is that I was crazy and he was an asshole. This is not always the most comfortable kind of best friend to have.
The other day we had the following text message conversation:
Me- Today [my son] stole a screwdriver and took it to school in case he needed to escape. Then he knocked a kid’s tooth out with a bowling pin. Can we hang out tonight?
Him- Not tonight please.
Me- I am so sad and scared, and it’s hard when you don’t seem to care.
Him- Why do you need someone to care?
Me- Fuck you straight to hell. That is the second nastiest thing you’ve ever said to me. You don’t deserve to have any friends.
In the morning, it occurred to me that maybe he actually hadn’t meant to be an asshole. So I called him. Sure enough, he had been genuinely baffled as to why it was important to me that someone care about my feelings. “Because that’s what people do!” I sputtered. “Not me!” he said smugly.
The whole thing left me wondering just how typical this exchange is. I was raised in a family with a high capacity for empathy and an even higher one for drama. We tend to feel—and express—our feelings thoroughly. My friend was born with a little less empathy than most, and was raised (as an only child, no less,) by an emotionally unavailable father and a demanding, manipulative shrew of a mother. (I’m not just taking his word for it. I met the woman.) Is it any wonder that we didn’t last long as a couple? And yet we are still friends.
According to the text, men seek out friendships with women as a place for emotional disclosure and empathy. We had some of that in the beginning, certainly, but it seemed to have been derailed by that whole dating thing. Hmmm. I text him again:
Me- Why are you friends with me when me=girl with feelings and shit? Looking for pithy quote for paper.
Him- Pity.
Well! I admit it has been my annus horribilis, but dang, that’s cold. So I call him up and after we talk for several minutes about the crucial difference between “pity” and “sympathy,” he agrees that the dating relationship did disrupt our earlier friendship, and that we had not quite regained that quality of friendship. “So why do you still want to hang out with me?” I asked. “Inertia,” he said.
Fair enough.
The other day we had the following text message conversation:
Me- Today [my son] stole a screwdriver and took it to school in case he needed to escape. Then he knocked a kid’s tooth out with a bowling pin. Can we hang out tonight?
Him- Not tonight please.
Me- I am so sad and scared, and it’s hard when you don’t seem to care.
Him- Why do you need someone to care?
Me- Fuck you straight to hell. That is the second nastiest thing you’ve ever said to me. You don’t deserve to have any friends.
In the morning, it occurred to me that maybe he actually hadn’t meant to be an asshole. So I called him. Sure enough, he had been genuinely baffled as to why it was important to me that someone care about my feelings. “Because that’s what people do!” I sputtered. “Not me!” he said smugly.
The whole thing left me wondering just how typical this exchange is. I was raised in a family with a high capacity for empathy and an even higher one for drama. We tend to feel—and express—our feelings thoroughly. My friend was born with a little less empathy than most, and was raised (as an only child, no less,) by an emotionally unavailable father and a demanding, manipulative shrew of a mother. (I’m not just taking his word for it. I met the woman.) Is it any wonder that we didn’t last long as a couple? And yet we are still friends.
According to the text, men seek out friendships with women as a place for emotional disclosure and empathy. We had some of that in the beginning, certainly, but it seemed to have been derailed by that whole dating thing. Hmmm. I text him again:
Me- Why are you friends with me when me=girl with feelings and shit? Looking for pithy quote for paper.
Him- Pity.
Well! I admit it has been my annus horribilis, but dang, that’s cold. So I call him up and after we talk for several minutes about the crucial difference between “pity” and “sympathy,” he agrees that the dating relationship did disrupt our earlier friendship, and that we had not quite regained that quality of friendship. “So why do you still want to hang out with me?” I asked. “Inertia,” he said.
Fair enough.
Confessionals
There isn’t a lot of variety in the m4w ads, so when there’s something even slightly out of the ordinary, I tend to pay attention. Titled “Does this really work?” and containing the obligatory dick pic, the text of the ad said “Do women actually get turned in by looking at pictures of penises?”
Since this is something I feel strongly about, I posted my own ad saying “No, it doesn’t! I’m a woman, and I will not answer any ad that includes a picture of your junk.”
I received as few emails in response to that ad. Most were uninteresting, but one had pictures of a very cute redhead. I’ve always had a weakness for redheads.
I wrote him back, and we exchanged a few flirtatious emails and arranged to meet at a bar on Alberta that neither of us had been to before. It turned out to be swanker that the dives I usually frequent. I saw Nick in the foyer, looking as out of place as I felt. We were very nearly the only ones there.
We talked about the usual things- where are you from, what do you do, how long have you been on Craigslist, etc.
Nick clued me in to the way men operate on Casual Encounters. They usually have a canned response ready to cut and paste to any ad that sounds like a real woman and not a bot. Often men will flag a real woman’s ad, figuring that the fewer responses she gets, the better his chances are.
Nick had spent his last few years traveling, snowboarding and getting laid. When I asked how many women he’d had sex with, he though for a minute and hazarded “Maybe 75?” (At this point, my lifetime total of men was 4.)
I finished my whisky and diet, he finished his daisy-shaped polenta cakes, and we decided to head back to my place. As we left, Nick’s phone rang. Her told me his roommate had locked herself out, and he needed to go let her in. I gave him my address and he promised to come over as soon as he could.
I walked the two miles home, tipsy and feeling very pleased with myself. Nick was very appealing, and almost ten years my junior. Pretty heady stuff for a newly-single woman pushing 35.
At home, I had another stiff drink and puttered around my apartment. After an hour, I began to get impatient. I had another drink. When two hours had passed, I sent an angry text message- “Did you decide I was too ugly to fuck?” No response.
Eventually I went to bed, drunk, angry, horny and humiliated. But after a couple of days, I got over it. Plenty more fish and all that.
Months later, my son and I were at the bus stop on our way to his school. It was cold and rainy that morning, so everyone was bundled up, but I saw something familiar in the profile (and dark red hair) of a bicyclist also at our stop. I wasn’t sure, but then I saw him trying to pull his collar up to hide more of his face. Bingo.
I pretended not to notice, but that night I placed an ad in Missed Connections- “Cute redhead who stood me up a few months ago- w4m- (waiting for the 72). Yeah, I saw you. It was pretty funny watching you try to hide from me. Sure I was pissed for a day or two, but I got over it. What did you think I would do, bitch you out in front of my kid? He’s too young to know his mom’s a slut.”
That night I got an email from Nick- “I owe you an apology. I know you saw me and I felt stupid.”
I wrote back “No worries, I don't hold grudges. I would like to know why you stood me up, though. Even if you did just decide I was too much of a heifer or something equally unflattering, I still crave narrative closure. I know I'm not everyone's cup of tea, and I'm cool with that, so don't worry about hurting my feelings. "
We exchanged about 50 short emails over the next two days, him pushing for another chance or at least dirty pictures, me trying (unsuccessfully, I’m sure,) to knock him down a peg. Then the emails stopped. I never did find out why he stood me up that night. If I ran into him again, would I give him another chance? I honestly don’t know.
* * *
Jack described himself as good-looking, successful and 32. He was most of those things. When we met at the Orange Julius, he told me straight off that he was actually 34, which was no big deal to me, and that he was married. Well. That one was kind of a big deal.
I had already told him that I wouldn’t be putting out that day, and since I didn’t (at that point) have an official policy on married men, I decided we might as well hang out for a while.
We went to a nearby bar to drink and smoke. We talked about our kids, his wife, my ex-husband, where we grew up. When the subject of Craigslist came up, I discovered that Jack had placed the “Does this really work?” ad. “So you’ve already seen my junk,” he said. I replied, truthfully, that when you saw as many pictures as I did, they all blend together.
There were many things I liked about Jack. We drank the same cocktail, shared many of the same views. He complimented me often, which I have never been accustomed to. His fingers were wide-knuckled without seeming coarse, and when he put his reading glasses on, I felt a little weak.
We talked for a few hours, and then he walked me home. I thought for a few days, and decided that no, I couldn’t knowingly fuck a married man. I sent him an email saying so, and that was the end of Jack.
I still see ads sometimes that I’m pretty sure are his. I don’t answer them.
Journal Fragments
I often wonder what it would be like to see the ocean for the first time. The beach is the only place I have ever seen the horizon—so long and deep and eye-foolingly large.
I cannot remember a time when I did not know the smell of the sea, the feel of damp sand under my feet, the rounded roughness of a wave-tumbled rock, the harsh and plaintive cry of a seagull.
I have always loved car trips. Aside from the desperate waiting for a rest stop, I can think of nothing better than to sit in a cozy place, with books and snacks and nothing expected of me. I love the views out the window—herds of placid cows, mist circling pine trees, old barns listing to the side and just begging to be explored. And then, after the snacks are reduced to crumbs and I have begun to read the least interesting book, the road swings out wide along a cliff and we can see—and smell—the ocean.
As I got older, my grandmother got weirder. I became less cute—buck teeth, acne, a persistently flat chest—she became more critical, more apologetic in front of her friends.
I began to be aware of how critical she was, how intolerant of anyone who “let themselves go.” She hated the long, ridiculous German name that came with her second husband, but claimed she couldn’t go back to her beloved maiden name because “people would talk.”
Eventually I realize that as a child, I was harmless. I could be loved. Now that I am a woman, she is torn between love and competition.
My father’s sister Linna was one of the boys. She protected her little brother from the high school bullies, and taught herself to pee standing up. Growing up, I knew I could never be as tough as my aunt.
Certainly my mother could not. Raised in an intellectual, declining-middle class city family, she was never able to fit in with my father’s rough-and-tumble, relentlessly rugged tribe. She was considered, as I later would be, weak and over-emotional. My father wanted a wife who would boss him around like his sister had. My mother was not ideally suited for the job.
The first time I slept with a stranger, I was drunk. Two Irish Coffees and two Coronas drunk, if memory serves. I was carefully dressed in a short skirt and tall boots, and I was very, very nervous.
(We didn’t actually have sex that night, but not for lack of trying. Will was a virgin, very nervous and somewhat drunk himself.)
Will’s ad was the first Casual Encounters ad I had ever answered. I’d found jobs on Craigslist, photography models, and a few things from the virtual free pile. I sometimes read the “Erotic Services” ads for a giggle. But it had never occurred to me to do anything like this before.
December ’08 was, at that time, the lowest point of my life. I had left my husband of 15 years for my best friend a year ago. Now that friend had left me, leaving me mourning the simultaneous loss of boyfriend and best friend. I was also very nearly out of the money I’d received in the divorce settlement—money I’d been living on while trying (and failing) to make a go of it as an artist.
As my money dwindles, I started looking for a job, only to find that the country had entered a recession while I wasn’t looking. I landed exactly one interview, with Macy’s Santaland. The interviewer told me that over 1000 people had applied for this part-time, minimum wage, temporary job. Needless to say, they were not interested in hiring someone with the complicated schedule of a single mother. I resigned myself to moving back in with my parents as soon as my lease was up.
So there I was, alone, broke, and heartbroken, drinking whiskey and Ovaltine in front of the computer. I needed something to distract me, something to make me feel wanted.
My stepmother’s sigh is the default weapon in her arsenal. Deprived of any autonomy in her childhood, she is determined to grasp it as an adult—whatever the cost. Any disagreement, any contradiction is met with a heavy, accusatory sigh and its accompanying eyeroll. Heavy footsteps, slamming doors, and angry finger jabbing in your face, all are anticipated in the exasperated sigh.
She has never understood me, and now I hate her.
I would be dead by now if it weren’t for my son. Sounds nice and inspirational, doesn’t it? A troubled life turned around by the love of an innocent child. But that’s not the way it really is. It’s really just that I can’t bear to fuck him up any more than he already is.
I’m not much use to anyone right now. I’m a force of chaos, and everyone wants me out of their immediate sphere as soon as possible. Most of my friends have deserted me, others I’ve pushed away, trying vaguely to protect them. I try not to let anyone know how bad its gotten, but at the same time, I want everyone to know just how intolerable my life has become. In class I read stories of when things began to fall apart. People say how hard it must have been. It was, but it is nothing compared to how hard things are now.
I know that I am wallowing in self-defined victimhood. What I do not know is how to get out of it. A way of thinking can be as addictive and resistant as a drug. Except that there is no rehab for addiction to self-hatred. There is no 12-step program. There is no federal funding, no on-campus support group, no way to give yourself over to a process put in place to wean yourself off of a terrible illness.
All you have is you. And you are the last thing you want. Today is the first day of the rest of your life—a life that is more painful than you ever could have imagined. Today is the day you wake up and wish you hadn’t. Today is the day that you will shuffle through hopelessly, with pain and fatigue in every part of your body. Today is the day that you will walk among strangers and try to convince yourself that every one of them is a caring being, with their own struggles and triumphs, but today is the day that you will fail miserably. Today is the day that you will not reach out for help because you know that there is no drug powerful enough, no friend patient enough, no bestseller inspirational enough to save you from your own crooked thoughts. Today, like every day, there is only you. There is only you, impaled on the entomologist’s pin of your own destructive thoughts. You cannot squirm away from your own self. Not today. Not any other day. Not for the rest of your life.
Your friends, your family, your spiritual advisers, the therapists, the clinicians, the authors, the old lady in line at the bank: they will all be able to tell you how to fix things, And they will all say the same things and they will be right. All you have to do is stop being a victim. Stop blaming the bad luck and unforeseen circumstances that brought you to this pass. Stop dwelling on the poor decisions that put you here, and start making better ones. Don’t be so selfish; take other people’s needs into account. Take care of yourself—eat right, exercise, don’t get self-indulgent. Remember that everyone has their own problems. No one wants to hear you whine. No one wants to feel like they have to take care of you.
Keep a stiff upper lip. Loose lips sink ships. Keep calm and carry on. Hang in there, little kitten, and
“thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.”
I cannot remember a time when I did not know the smell of the sea, the feel of damp sand under my feet, the rounded roughness of a wave-tumbled rock, the harsh and plaintive cry of a seagull.
I have always loved car trips. Aside from the desperate waiting for a rest stop, I can think of nothing better than to sit in a cozy place, with books and snacks and nothing expected of me. I love the views out the window—herds of placid cows, mist circling pine trees, old barns listing to the side and just begging to be explored. And then, after the snacks are reduced to crumbs and I have begun to read the least interesting book, the road swings out wide along a cliff and we can see—and smell—the ocean.
* * *
As I got older, my grandmother got weirder. I became less cute—buck teeth, acne, a persistently flat chest—she became more critical, more apologetic in front of her friends.
I began to be aware of how critical she was, how intolerant of anyone who “let themselves go.” She hated the long, ridiculous German name that came with her second husband, but claimed she couldn’t go back to her beloved maiden name because “people would talk.”
Eventually I realize that as a child, I was harmless. I could be loved. Now that I am a woman, she is torn between love and competition.
* * *
My father’s sister Linna was one of the boys. She protected her little brother from the high school bullies, and taught herself to pee standing up. Growing up, I knew I could never be as tough as my aunt.
Certainly my mother could not. Raised in an intellectual, declining-middle class city family, she was never able to fit in with my father’s rough-and-tumble, relentlessly rugged tribe. She was considered, as I later would be, weak and over-emotional. My father wanted a wife who would boss him around like his sister had. My mother was not ideally suited for the job.
* * *
The first time I slept with a stranger, I was drunk. Two Irish Coffees and two Coronas drunk, if memory serves. I was carefully dressed in a short skirt and tall boots, and I was very, very nervous.
(We didn’t actually have sex that night, but not for lack of trying. Will was a virgin, very nervous and somewhat drunk himself.)
Will’s ad was the first Casual Encounters ad I had ever answered. I’d found jobs on Craigslist, photography models, and a few things from the virtual free pile. I sometimes read the “Erotic Services” ads for a giggle. But it had never occurred to me to do anything like this before.
December ’08 was, at that time, the lowest point of my life. I had left my husband of 15 years for my best friend a year ago. Now that friend had left me, leaving me mourning the simultaneous loss of boyfriend and best friend. I was also very nearly out of the money I’d received in the divorce settlement—money I’d been living on while trying (and failing) to make a go of it as an artist.
As my money dwindles, I started looking for a job, only to find that the country had entered a recession while I wasn’t looking. I landed exactly one interview, with Macy’s Santaland. The interviewer told me that over 1000 people had applied for this part-time, minimum wage, temporary job. Needless to say, they were not interested in hiring someone with the complicated schedule of a single mother. I resigned myself to moving back in with my parents as soon as my lease was up.
So there I was, alone, broke, and heartbroken, drinking whiskey and Ovaltine in front of the computer. I needed something to distract me, something to make me feel wanted.
* * *
My stepmother’s sigh is the default weapon in her arsenal. Deprived of any autonomy in her childhood, she is determined to grasp it as an adult—whatever the cost. Any disagreement, any contradiction is met with a heavy, accusatory sigh and its accompanying eyeroll. Heavy footsteps, slamming doors, and angry finger jabbing in your face, all are anticipated in the exasperated sigh.
She has never understood me, and now I hate her.
* * *
I would be dead by now if it weren’t for my son. Sounds nice and inspirational, doesn’t it? A troubled life turned around by the love of an innocent child. But that’s not the way it really is. It’s really just that I can’t bear to fuck him up any more than he already is.
I’m not much use to anyone right now. I’m a force of chaos, and everyone wants me out of their immediate sphere as soon as possible. Most of my friends have deserted me, others I’ve pushed away, trying vaguely to protect them. I try not to let anyone know how bad its gotten, but at the same time, I want everyone to know just how intolerable my life has become. In class I read stories of when things began to fall apart. People say how hard it must have been. It was, but it is nothing compared to how hard things are now.
I know that I am wallowing in self-defined victimhood. What I do not know is how to get out of it. A way of thinking can be as addictive and resistant as a drug. Except that there is no rehab for addiction to self-hatred. There is no 12-step program. There is no federal funding, no on-campus support group, no way to give yourself over to a process put in place to wean yourself off of a terrible illness.
All you have is you. And you are the last thing you want. Today is the first day of the rest of your life—a life that is more painful than you ever could have imagined. Today is the day you wake up and wish you hadn’t. Today is the day that you will shuffle through hopelessly, with pain and fatigue in every part of your body. Today is the day that you will walk among strangers and try to convince yourself that every one of them is a caring being, with their own struggles and triumphs, but today is the day that you will fail miserably. Today is the day that you will not reach out for help because you know that there is no drug powerful enough, no friend patient enough, no bestseller inspirational enough to save you from your own crooked thoughts. Today, like every day, there is only you. There is only you, impaled on the entomologist’s pin of your own destructive thoughts. You cannot squirm away from your own self. Not today. Not any other day. Not for the rest of your life.
Your friends, your family, your spiritual advisers, the therapists, the clinicians, the authors, the old lady in line at the bank: they will all be able to tell you how to fix things, And they will all say the same things and they will be right. All you have to do is stop being a victim. Stop blaming the bad luck and unforeseen circumstances that brought you to this pass. Stop dwelling on the poor decisions that put you here, and start making better ones. Don’t be so selfish; take other people’s needs into account. Take care of yourself—eat right, exercise, don’t get self-indulgent. Remember that everyone has their own problems. No one wants to hear you whine. No one wants to feel like they have to take care of you.
Keep a stiff upper lip. Loose lips sink ships. Keep calm and carry on. Hang in there, little kitten, and
“thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.”
Friday, June 5, 2009
Brave New World of the Brain
In April of this year, I read a New Yorker article by Margaret Talbot entitled “Brain Gain.” The article examined the growing trend of using prescription dugs and over-the-counter supplements for neural enhancement. I was aware of the widespread use of stimulants by college students, but the fact that other people were seeking to enhance their brainpower was new to me. As someone who has struggled with depression for many years, I have devoted a vast amount of time, energy and money to normalizing my brain. The thought that one might go beyond normalization was thrilling, and maybe just a little bit alarming. I began looking into this phenomenon, and found that one of the first drugs used in this controversial way was Prozac.
Prozac was, both chemically and culturally, an entirely new kind of drug. For 30 years, the standard pharmacological treatment for depression was tricyclic antidepressants such as imipramine, amitriptyline and desipramine. These were considered “dirty” drugs—affecting many systems at once. The tricyclics, along with the MAOIs more commonly used in the U.K., had side effects that often led patients to conclude that the cure was worse than the disease. Prozac was the first “clean” antidepressant, and its relatively benign side-effect profile led psychiatrists to prescribe it far more often than previous antidepressants—most significantly to patients with milder forms of depression.
Peter Kramer, in his highly influential book Listening to Prozac, recounts his increasing awareness that not only was Prozac successfully treating his patients’ depression, it was also, in many cases, altering what they had thought of as their personalities. One patient reported that although his sex-drive was undiminished, he no longer found himself drawn to hard-core pornography. (Although he continued to view it, rather than admit to his disapproving wife that he had lost his taste for it!) This patient described himself as not only cured, but “better than well.” Other patients found themselves become less compulsive about household tidiness or more assertive in their personal and professional lives. Kramer began to wonder—at what point does personality become a treatable condition?
Hippocrates taught that man was ruled by humors: phlegm, blood, yellow bile, and black bile. An excess of black bile was thought to produce a “melancholic” temperament. The idea of the melancholic temperament has persisted throughout history. Until the melancholy of an individual interfered with his daily functioning, this temperament was considered within the expected normal range of behavior. Indeed, there has been a persistent link in the societal imagination between melancholy and creativity, even genius.
For the first time, Prozac gave us the means to change this basic personality type. Humans are enhancement-driven animals. We have become accustomed to altering not only our environment, but also ourselves—both in important and trivial ways. Our tireless efforts at self-improvement have altered our bodies: we live longer than our ancestors, reach puberty earlier, and enjoy better health. We alter our appearance as well, with cosmetics, hair dye, flattering clothes, and even cosmetic surgery. It seems both natural and inevitable that we should seek to transform our minds as well.
Altering our brains’ functions with drugs is, of course, nothing new. Coffee, tobacco, coca leaves—all have been used for centuries, and are still used, to “speed up” the mind and enable us to think more quickly and clearly. For several years now, we have heard stories of neurotypical college students popping illegally obtained stimulants such as Ritalin and Adderall to enhance their ability to concentrate. A 2002 study at one small college showed that more than 35% of its students had used stimulants in this manner during the preceding year.
Off-label stimulant use is not without risk. Amphetamines like Adderall can be highly addictive, and possibly lead to serious cardiac problems. Additionally, a student taking high doses of stimulants may not take adequate care of his body, neglecting to get sufficient food and sleep. More important, perhaps, is the societal implication: if half of your fellow students are artificially enhancing their ability to study, where does that leave you? You must decide whether to jump on the bandwagon and accept the possibility of side effects, addiction, and illegality, or abstain in the knowledge that you are relinquishing what may have been a crucial competitive edge.
Students seeking enhanced cognition through drug use are not confined to college. Middle and high-school students taking legitimately prescribed stimulants report being approached by fellow students wishing to buy their medications. And while the use of the stimulant caffeine to improve alertness and cognition is a time-honored habit of adults and adolescents, the relatively new delivery systems such as energy drinks and caffeinated gums and candies are bringing caffeine to younger consumers. KickStart SMART™ is a drink containing 60 mg of caffeine per serving (20 mg less than a serving of Red Bull) that is marketed for use by children as young as four, with marketing copy that includes phrases like “enhances mental energy and focus.” It doesn’t take much of a leap to imagine a child whose intake of these drinks is unregulated consuming a dangerous amount of caffeine. If our hypothetical child does continue to grow and thrive, he will no doubt have a wicked caffeine habit. And what kind of competitive environment will he and his peers find themselves in as adults?
Neurologist Anjan Chatterjee wrote in a 2007 paper, “Many sectors of society have winner-take-all conditions in which small advantages produce disproportionate rewards.” In 2008, Nature took an informal online poll to see if its readers used stimulants such as Ritalin and Provigil to improve their “focus, concentration, or memory.” 20% of responders said they did. If half your colleagues are artificially enhancing their ability to work longer and more productively, where does that leave you?
Unlike the ethical questions posed by still-in-the-future scenarios like cloning and “designer” babies, the questions raised by cosmetic psychopharmacology cannot be put off to a later date. The neural revolution is upon us, whether we like it or not. Regardless of our approval, elementary students are, aided by coaches and parents, using caffeine to enhance their performance in sports and studies. Older students are using illicitly obtained stimulants. And adults are using not only off-label prescription stimulants, but also supplements such as piracetam, which is not FDA approved for any condition, but which users believe improves blood flow to the brain. Due to the proliferation of prescription-included drug purveyors and supplement suppliers online, it would be impossible to keep people from obtaining and experimenting with these substances.
There is an undeniable glamour to these “psychonauts.” Humans have always been explorers, and what could be more exciting to explore than the marvelous complexities and potential of the human brain? I do not believe can honestly say that they would not want any improvement in their cognition, their speed, or their memory. How can we say that people should not be able to choose to alter their brain chemistry? Surely there is nothing that belongs to us so completely and exclusively as our minds.
But as utopian as that might sound, the growing popularity of neural enhancement has the potential, in my opinion, to ultimately weaken us at a societal level. Kramer’s Listening to Prozac received a great deal of criticism. There are those, who Kramer calls “pharmacological Calvinists,” who revere the “natural” state of the human brain and feel that it ought not be tampered with when avoidable. This is not, however, my concern.
My fear for us is that we are concentrating too much on one particular kind of enhancement. Unlike the psychedelic drug experimenters of the 60s, we are not seeking new ways of thinking and seeing. We do not seek to expand our consciousness, but rather to enhance one small area—productivity. I do not wish to live in a society that values rote productivity over creative advancement. (I do not use creativity here to mean solely the arts, but to also include the types of creative problem solving that lead to advancements and discoveries in physics, chemistry, education, etc.)
If we become more productive in existing tasks, the primary beneficiaries are our employers. While certainly it is a good thing to perform one’s job well, surely that should not be humanity’s ultimate goal? I fear that cognitive enhancement will come to be encouraged, even expected by employers. I fear that employees who comply with that expectation will find themselves valued for what they do over who they are even more than is now the often regrettable case. I fear that anxious parents, eager to give their offspring every possible advantage, will come to see dosing their children with “good worker drone” drugs as normal, even admirable. I fear that in our quest to become more, we will end up becoming less.
Do I think that cosmetic psychopharmacology should be banned? Ultimately, I do not. Despite the high potential for abuse, on both personal and societal levels, I believe that my brain belongs to me. Just as I have the right to abuse my brain with potentially harmful legal drugs like alcohol and caffeine, so I must retain the right to choose which functions of my brain are most important and useful to me, and the right to act accordingly.
In conclusion, I would like to quote Ray Fuller, one of the developers of Prozac:
“If the brain were simple enough for us to understand, we would be too simple to understand it.” We must continue to explore our brains, but we must not do so without examining what we learn in all possible contexts. We must strive to be less simple.
Prozac was, both chemically and culturally, an entirely new kind of drug. For 30 years, the standard pharmacological treatment for depression was tricyclic antidepressants such as imipramine, amitriptyline and desipramine. These were considered “dirty” drugs—affecting many systems at once. The tricyclics, along with the MAOIs more commonly used in the U.K., had side effects that often led patients to conclude that the cure was worse than the disease. Prozac was the first “clean” antidepressant, and its relatively benign side-effect profile led psychiatrists to prescribe it far more often than previous antidepressants—most significantly to patients with milder forms of depression.
Peter Kramer, in his highly influential book Listening to Prozac, recounts his increasing awareness that not only was Prozac successfully treating his patients’ depression, it was also, in many cases, altering what they had thought of as their personalities. One patient reported that although his sex-drive was undiminished, he no longer found himself drawn to hard-core pornography. (Although he continued to view it, rather than admit to his disapproving wife that he had lost his taste for it!) This patient described himself as not only cured, but “better than well.” Other patients found themselves become less compulsive about household tidiness or more assertive in their personal and professional lives. Kramer began to wonder—at what point does personality become a treatable condition?
Hippocrates taught that man was ruled by humors: phlegm, blood, yellow bile, and black bile. An excess of black bile was thought to produce a “melancholic” temperament. The idea of the melancholic temperament has persisted throughout history. Until the melancholy of an individual interfered with his daily functioning, this temperament was considered within the expected normal range of behavior. Indeed, there has been a persistent link in the societal imagination between melancholy and creativity, even genius.
For the first time, Prozac gave us the means to change this basic personality type. Humans are enhancement-driven animals. We have become accustomed to altering not only our environment, but also ourselves—both in important and trivial ways. Our tireless efforts at self-improvement have altered our bodies: we live longer than our ancestors, reach puberty earlier, and enjoy better health. We alter our appearance as well, with cosmetics, hair dye, flattering clothes, and even cosmetic surgery. It seems both natural and inevitable that we should seek to transform our minds as well.
Altering our brains’ functions with drugs is, of course, nothing new. Coffee, tobacco, coca leaves—all have been used for centuries, and are still used, to “speed up” the mind and enable us to think more quickly and clearly. For several years now, we have heard stories of neurotypical college students popping illegally obtained stimulants such as Ritalin and Adderall to enhance their ability to concentrate. A 2002 study at one small college showed that more than 35% of its students had used stimulants in this manner during the preceding year.
Off-label stimulant use is not without risk. Amphetamines like Adderall can be highly addictive, and possibly lead to serious cardiac problems. Additionally, a student taking high doses of stimulants may not take adequate care of his body, neglecting to get sufficient food and sleep. More important, perhaps, is the societal implication: if half of your fellow students are artificially enhancing their ability to study, where does that leave you? You must decide whether to jump on the bandwagon and accept the possibility of side effects, addiction, and illegality, or abstain in the knowledge that you are relinquishing what may have been a crucial competitive edge.
Students seeking enhanced cognition through drug use are not confined to college. Middle and high-school students taking legitimately prescribed stimulants report being approached by fellow students wishing to buy their medications. And while the use of the stimulant caffeine to improve alertness and cognition is a time-honored habit of adults and adolescents, the relatively new delivery systems such as energy drinks and caffeinated gums and candies are bringing caffeine to younger consumers. KickStart SMART™ is a drink containing 60 mg of caffeine per serving (20 mg less than a serving of Red Bull) that is marketed for use by children as young as four, with marketing copy that includes phrases like “enhances mental energy and focus.” It doesn’t take much of a leap to imagine a child whose intake of these drinks is unregulated consuming a dangerous amount of caffeine. If our hypothetical child does continue to grow and thrive, he will no doubt have a wicked caffeine habit. And what kind of competitive environment will he and his peers find themselves in as adults?
Neurologist Anjan Chatterjee wrote in a 2007 paper, “Many sectors of society have winner-take-all conditions in which small advantages produce disproportionate rewards.” In 2008, Nature took an informal online poll to see if its readers used stimulants such as Ritalin and Provigil to improve their “focus, concentration, or memory.” 20% of responders said they did. If half your colleagues are artificially enhancing their ability to work longer and more productively, where does that leave you?
Unlike the ethical questions posed by still-in-the-future scenarios like cloning and “designer” babies, the questions raised by cosmetic psychopharmacology cannot be put off to a later date. The neural revolution is upon us, whether we like it or not. Regardless of our approval, elementary students are, aided by coaches and parents, using caffeine to enhance their performance in sports and studies. Older students are using illicitly obtained stimulants. And adults are using not only off-label prescription stimulants, but also supplements such as piracetam, which is not FDA approved for any condition, but which users believe improves blood flow to the brain. Due to the proliferation of prescription-included drug purveyors and supplement suppliers online, it would be impossible to keep people from obtaining and experimenting with these substances.
There is an undeniable glamour to these “psychonauts.” Humans have always been explorers, and what could be more exciting to explore than the marvelous complexities and potential of the human brain? I do not believe can honestly say that they would not want any improvement in their cognition, their speed, or their memory. How can we say that people should not be able to choose to alter their brain chemistry? Surely there is nothing that belongs to us so completely and exclusively as our minds.
But as utopian as that might sound, the growing popularity of neural enhancement has the potential, in my opinion, to ultimately weaken us at a societal level. Kramer’s Listening to Prozac received a great deal of criticism. There are those, who Kramer calls “pharmacological Calvinists,” who revere the “natural” state of the human brain and feel that it ought not be tampered with when avoidable. This is not, however, my concern.
My fear for us is that we are concentrating too much on one particular kind of enhancement. Unlike the psychedelic drug experimenters of the 60s, we are not seeking new ways of thinking and seeing. We do not seek to expand our consciousness, but rather to enhance one small area—productivity. I do not wish to live in a society that values rote productivity over creative advancement. (I do not use creativity here to mean solely the arts, but to also include the types of creative problem solving that lead to advancements and discoveries in physics, chemistry, education, etc.)
If we become more productive in existing tasks, the primary beneficiaries are our employers. While certainly it is a good thing to perform one’s job well, surely that should not be humanity’s ultimate goal? I fear that cognitive enhancement will come to be encouraged, even expected by employers. I fear that employees who comply with that expectation will find themselves valued for what they do over who they are even more than is now the often regrettable case. I fear that anxious parents, eager to give their offspring every possible advantage, will come to see dosing their children with “good worker drone” drugs as normal, even admirable. I fear that in our quest to become more, we will end up becoming less.
Do I think that cosmetic psychopharmacology should be banned? Ultimately, I do not. Despite the high potential for abuse, on both personal and societal levels, I believe that my brain belongs to me. Just as I have the right to abuse my brain with potentially harmful legal drugs like alcohol and caffeine, so I must retain the right to choose which functions of my brain are most important and useful to me, and the right to act accordingly.
In conclusion, I would like to quote Ray Fuller, one of the developers of Prozac:
“If the brain were simple enough for us to understand, we would be too simple to understand it.” We must continue to explore our brains, but we must not do so without examining what we learn in all possible contexts. We must strive to be less simple.
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