At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life -- and death ›
Reading this story broke my heart and stirred up all kinds of feelings. I’m torn about how I feel about the wet house concept. On the one hand, they do provide a sense of belonging and humane treatment to a population considered to be social pariahs. On the other hand, there is a part of me that agrees with the idea that there is always hope of recovery.
When I read this article, there is a part of me that is uncomfortable with the objectification of these people. People suffer from alcoholism. Alcoholism is a disease that is systemic in nature. It harms not just the individual, but anyone close to him or her. Alcohol serves to soothe the pain of existential problems - loneliness, lack of meaning in life, physical conditions. I know first hand because my father has been self-medicating with alcohol for as long as I can remember. In the last year, I have finally been candid with him about how alcohol has affected our family and my concern for his health. I pleaded with him to consider giving up drinking so that he could increase the chances of walking me down the aisle or meeting his future hypothetical grandchildren. All he could do was apologize and say, “I’m sorry, my darling. This is how I am. It’s my disease.” My heart broke for the thousandth time, but at least we had an understanding.
This piece bothers me because it talks about providing these people with humane treatment, yet the characterization provides little insight into who they really are as people. Who is Mr. Britton if you take the label “alcoholic” out of the picture? What were his hopes and dreams? Who mattered to them before this current life of isolation? I would have liked more information on the demographics of these facilities, which seem to be overwhelmingly occupied by men….which in itself is an issue worthy of dissection.
People often wonder why I am always at the Vegas Lounge. It’s a townie bar with lots of older folks who are there almost every day and almost always drunk. The other night, even I had had enough as I tried to have a conversation with a gentleman that kept going in circles because he was clearly too intoxicated to know right from left. You’ll find people who are drunk at any old bar in Northeast, but at the Vegas Lounge…there are the drunk people who also really love to sing. It doesn’t take Freud to make the connection with my own original karaoke idol, my father. When my father is singing, I don’t think about the familiar Heineken smell in the air or all the times that he couldn’t come to one of my choir concerts because he was drinking. I hear the sadness in his voice as he sings about love lost. I feel the power harnessed in a Neil Diamond tune that is not possible in his every day life where he is reminded that he is an immigrant and does not belong in this country. That is humanity.
For all those who feel that these institutions enable alcoholism, sure that’s true if you’re simply looking at the behavior and taking a completely individualistic “the person is the problem” approach to the disease. From a more holistic, humanistic point of view, I think they’re doing more good than harm. The people who work at the wet houses have incredible compassion. Given my history, I don’t think I could ever work in that setting.
Well, I didn’t intend for this to become a personal confession. But that’s what the piece set off for me. Wow, this is like TMI Tuesday.
1 year ago on February 22, 2011 at 12:15pm
Shoeless
One of the many recurring dreams I have had since adolescence involves me finding myself in the middle of the day at school or work without any shoes on. Not in that I-am-gonna-slip-my-shoes-off-under-the-desk way. Like, somehow I walked out of the house and went to work without any shoes on. I start to freak out, wondering if I might step on one of those rusty nails that I was warned might be laying around - or worse, that others around me noticed this lapse in basic adult human functioning.
Being as repressed as I am, I dream vividly. I dream in ways that allow my Unconscious to direct scenes in which my anxieties, fears, and truths are able to take center stage. Just like the great psychoanalysts proposed, the more threatening the intuition, the more veiled the message.
Maybe that’s why I could never figure out what the deal was with the shoes.
Then last night, a twist: I dreamt I had signed up for a running race with all my oldest friends. Something like a ten-miler course around this giant mall in Gurnee,IL. I start running withmy friends then about a half a mile in I TAKE OFF MY SHOES, strangely thinking to myself, “I am not going to make it the whole way so fuck it, I hate wearing shoes and am going to take them off.” I quit, essentially.
I see all these people I know passing by in the race. I start to think, what the hell-I like running. I can finish this. Just do it (tm Nike). So I start running again. But I am still shoeless. I keep going cause I figure I am already so behind in the race, I would have no time to go search for my shoes. Blisters form. Pain. I stop and go backward to find my shoes I had tossed somewhere on the trail. Shit, now I am super behind. I get to the end of the course eventually just as they are closing down the race. “wait!” I yell, panting and running for my life. The judges spot me and say , “alright, you are close enough.” so I cross the finish, the last in place and with a time that is pretty unbragworthy.
Holy moly. It doesn’t take Freud to see my constant pattern of self-sabotage in that dream. Now how do I stop taking off my shoes when I am already in the race?
1 year ago on October 21, 2010 at 08:42am
Fish and chips, one day you will be mine (when our time comes).
For the third time, I tried to go over to Anchor Fish & Chips to satisfy a fish and chips craving. Thrice, I have been met with a sorry scene of chairs overturned on tables and a cook scrubbing his grill. Every time, I have been in various states of inebriation, resulting in a spectrum of disappointed responses:
Fish-and-Chips Denial #1 - In an alcohol-induced fit of mania, I started yelling, “ohmygodiwantfishandchipsSOBAD. ifidon’tgetsomefishandchipsrightnowi’mgoingtofuckingKILLsomeone. literally end. someone’s. life.” (Alcohol brings out the most repressed of emotions, and apparently one of mine is homicidal hunger).
Fish-and-Chips Denial #2 - “GODDAMN IT,” I say aloud to myself.
Fish-and-Chips Denial #3 - “GODDAMN IT,” I silently say to myself. I proceed to sullenly bike around the neighborhood and then go home to engage in harmless, but ultimately regressive behaviors (e.g., looking up exes on Facebook). Whether this is an act of masochism or perhaps counterintuitive psychology in which I am reminding myself that being denied something is often to your benefit, I do not know.
Moral of the story: It would make much more sense for me to get an iPhone so that I can look up Anchor’s hours or else you may read about me in the Strib one day for a series of crimes incited by fish-and-chips-fury/sadness.
1 year ago on October 08, 2010 at 04:11am
Goodbye to Love - The Carpenters
A year or so ago, I told myself that I would never sing this song again. The Secret instructed me to purge negative thoughts, negative songs, negative people from my life because they would only attract that valence.
Yet, this song has long been one of my favorites. I was always drawn to the melodramatic self-pity and frustration (“I’ll say goodbye to love, no one ever cared if I should live or die. / Time and time again, the chance for love has passed me by”) juxtaposed by layered harmonies and a killer guitar solo at the end that say to the world, “I’m fine! No, really!” I would sing Goodbye to Love in the shower when I knew that my roommates weren’t home, catharting my own hopelessness to an aquatic audience of metaphorical tears I could not cry in the open with family and friends who looped a chorus of “You are amazing. / You will find someone someday. / He will come along.”
I shared this song with one of my past failures, M. We argued, as we often did with fiery passion, about the message of the song. I insisted on suicide-inducing despair, he said he thought it was a song of hope. But…there are no tomorrows for this heart of mine!…Loneliness and empty days will be my only friend! I chalked it up to his eccentricity and naiveté.
Recently things clicked for me: loneliness is a fact of life, and I would rather make friends with loneliness than be in a less-than-awesome situation. When Karen says “Goodbye to Love,” she is saying goodbye to something that she hasn’t truly known, though she’s tried so hard to find: “All the years of useless search have finally reached an end.” An ideal that may never be found. The song is not a resignation, but an acceptance of our existential isolation with faith (and yes, hope!) that there will come a time of relief - just not now:“Surely time will lose these bitter memories and I’ll find that there is someone to believe in and to live for, something I could live for.”
And so, like Karen Carpenter, I am embracing loneliness and saying goodbye to “Love,” whatever the hell I thought that was. Instead of searching or waiting, I will accept and recognize all the love that already exists in my life. I will continue to practice the art of loving, giving without fear of not receiving it in return.
1 year ago on October 04, 2010 at 10:41am
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Title: Once And Never Again
Artist: The Long Blondes
31 plays
Once and Never Again*, The Long Blondes
The Long Blondes’ album Someone to Drive You Home came out in 2006, the year of the last breaths of my relationship with J. He sent me this album with a note that said, “I think you’ll like this.” Of course, he was right. He always was about those things. After all, what good does it do to date someone for eight years if you cannot predict what kind of music your partner will like.
At the time J gave it to me, the circumstances of the situation made me into a jerk, as often happens when one wants out, and the other has a hard time accepting that reality. Ugh, another gesture of love! I listened to it once and then not again for three more years. It was an act of rebellion against my history of relying on men to introduce me to music, from the Dave Matthews phase thanks to a high school crush to Iron & Wine via my college crush who was into Asian girls (but not me) to my dad’s oldies to basically everything else I listened to thanks to J. I resented owing so much of my identity to others, namely men. (In hindsight, perhaps that was the ultimate reason I broke things off with J).
Even now, I have trouble letting a guy into my life through music. Several have come and gone, leaving behind songs and albums that act as vestiges of the ambivalence inherent in every foregone relationship. The emotional connections cut too deep. (After a particularly abrupt and painful breakup, I couldn’t listen to Bjork for almost a year because of our shared affinity for that awesomely crazy lady).
Back to the Long Blondes. I’m finally able to listen to the album and appreciate its feminist power, its danceworthiness, the way that it taps into the part of me that wishes I were talented enough, riot grrrl enough to lead an all-female rock band. I am glad I waited years to revisit the album, knowing that I like it because I like it. Not because my musically savvy boyfriend likes them and thinks I would like them. Don’t get me wrong. There’s something very special about having someone know you so intimately that they can reliably predict what music you’ll like, what food you’ll order, whether or not you’ll cry at a movie. But at this point in my life, I find it stifling at the same time. I want to figure out myself, for myself. I know that it’s not a terminal process, but I don’t feel that I’m totally there with my self-integrity. I’m close. Or maybe I’m just scared. Who knows. Send a music recommendation my way, and we’ll see.
*I originally posted “Giddy Stratospheres”, but this song seems much more fitting.
1 year ago on July 12, 2010 at 08:50am
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Title: La Isla Bonita
Artist: Madonna
33 plays
Wednesday Morning Dance Party: Madonna - “La Isla Bonita”
This song is better than this one, and they’re both scorching my brain like my minor sunburn.
This is the song that was playing on the radio during my first kiss, age 16, and in the plush red front bench seat a Ford Taurus station wagon. Just as ridiculous now as it was then.
Reblogged from fightwithknives/Originally from fightwithknives
2 years ago on May 19, 2010 at 11:19am
