The Lost Weekend

Well, the whole thing wasn’t lost, but much of it was unaccounted for, with less showering and meditating than usual, and considerably more orange soda and Ruffles and soy frozen dessert, eventually superseded by the hard stuff, Ben & Jerry’s vanilla ice cream. Let me pause and recommend Natural Ruffles, which have less fat and are actually tastier than regular Ruffles. Plus the package informs you that Natural Ruffles are free of all kinds of horrible things you never had any idea were in regular Ruffles! They do stop short of eschewing GMOs, of course.

This weekend I was mainly extremely, extremely sad. I think I’ve arrived, via 20 years off and on of therapy and particularly, I think, via mindfulness practice, at the proverbial “core stuff,” which is the same as it always was: I want my mommy! Now I’m slapping my forehead, wondering what possessed me to leave my hometown in such haste, so I got out my journal and saw that I was in a relationship that was causing me much anguish, with constant breakups and getting-back-togethers. I saw that the time elapsed between it crossing my mind to move to California and getting in the car and driving off was two weeks! I was 20. That’s still my saddest memory, the moment I drove off. When I turned the corner from Vinewood onto Washtenaw, in the rearview mirror I could see my father standing in the middle of the street waving.

I wasn’t actually living at home when I left but with my good friend Chet, who had two small children. I was sleeping on a mattress in the living room on the shag carpeting. Due to the food dropped by the kids into the carpeting, we also had roaches. When we turned on the iron, they would clamber out of the steam holes. When I left, Chet said, “Remember, you can always come back.” I said, “You mean I don’t have to be macho?” “God, no, don’t do that,” he said.

The relationship woes continued after I got to San Francisco, just more expensive now that they were being conducted via long-distance. I found a place to live, with three lesbian law students. I worked as a temp. I met Alix and Dot. I took a class called Industrial Maintenance Mechanics and then went to work for PG&E as an apprentice in the substation construction department and then in the line construction department. I fell off a telephone pole. I got my own apartment. I got a degree in creative writing. My father supported me while I did that. There I met Elea. I got Thelonious the cat, most recently seen sitting by the radiator when I left for work this morning.

I went to work as the editor of a magazine for recovering alcoholics, still the best job I’ve ever had. There I met Lisa M. and Carol Joy. I drove and took the train back and forth across the country several times. I started playing the trumpet again and got a degree in music. I taught trumpet and played in all sorts of bands. I did PR for a statewide nonprofit that helps abused and neglected children. I joined the Bike Coalition. I met Tom and David and Lisa. The dot-com boom happened. I went looking for a technical job I could get without going back to school. I succeeded. Here I am.

A technical recruiter helped me rework my resume to get that first job, and then I met my Fairy Godmother, Ben, who has been an extremely kind and patient mentor for an amazingly long time. I have the job I have now because he decided to teach it to me years ago; as recently as Friday, he was helping me implement Log4perl in a Perl script.

Anyway, that’s more or less the story of my last 24 years, the framework of it. Of course there is much more that could be said but I must mention that on Saturday night, Tom and I went to see The Glass Menagerie at the Berkeley Rep. His mother had tickets she couldn’t use and kindly gave them to us. It was really wonderful. The actor who played the mother was particularly good. Looking through the program at intermission, I discovered why she was so good: because she was Rita Moreno! So that was a big treat.

Another pleasant thing that happened was going out to lunch on Monday with my coworker, Bill, who lives in Arizona and his girlfriend. I have been following the saga of their relationship for a year (“We had a fight!” “We got back together!” “We had a fight!”) and so was particularly interested to meet his girlfriend. I really liked her a lot, and our visit was very pleasant. Bill treated us to lunch at Henry’s Hunan and then we embarked on The Great Carrot Cake Caper, finally locating some in the Ferry Building.

After several quarts of orange soda and a bucket or so of tears (yes, I was also pre-menstrual; if actual menopause is going to be worse than this, I think it’s going to be too hard), I hauled my little TV out of the closet, walked around the corner, got a membership at the appropriately named Lost Weekend Video, and came home and watched two DVDs back to back, like everyone else in the world, for lord’s sake.