The Miracle Whipped Trickster: Eminem coming May 19

The Miracle Whipped Trickster: Eminem coming May 19

I’m sorry that Bobby won’t be with me to usher in the new Eminem CD next Tuesday. We had so much fun cranking King Mathers’ tongue-twisting lexicon while vacuuming or making pancakes (among other things.)

I hadn’t really given Marshall a fair chance until then- I was just never dude enough to swallow the pejorative bitter brew. But then fate brought me an even hotter mess than me, with biceps and abs I’ll never ever forget, and suddenly the white hip hop look was fever pitch in my mind, as  Bobby bopped through the house drumming Em’s beat with two wooden spoons against his knees.

Needless to say, it wasn’t long before I saw what I’d been missing, and dissing. Eminem made my manic periods look like Snow White’s long slumber- and he was comedic, pure genius. The stories were intricate, detailed, fuelled by the most satisfying and sometimes shocking rhymes, clicking into place like puzzle pieces, a Rubik’s cube. He rhymes sounds and syllables and similars and words he makes up as he goes along. He’s quick on his feet, that’s for sure. The man has a way with words.

This was circa Curtain Call, and I refused to believe the curtain had been called. I didn’t think he would stay behind the scenes, though he said he was through. As much painful energy as centre stage might take, I knew he’d heal from grief, madness, rehab, whatever and the rhymes would start spinning right round baby. As an artist, one of the world’s most brilliant, he’d be driven to work again, and not just in production. The scars of stardom, childhood, poverty, riches, white trashiness, divorcing Kim twice- shit, it’s a lot… the kid worked his ass off through it all. Then it was white heat rocket into superstardom. The greatest rapper in the world, period. That’s what everyone was saying. How do climb out of that? Where do you go from there?

Even while tragedy is tearing apart the average family with none of the pressures of Detroit and superstardom, people are whispering about Eminem’s recent opening up about his drug addictions. Okay, let me get this straight- people are SURPRISED?  You didn’t figure this out for yourself before? There’s no way a man could talk that fast unless his mind raced a thousand times faster than yours or mine. And that would drive you crazy. And crazy people take drugs. And so do normal people. And people who lose their closest beloveds to suicides and murders and drugs take drugs.  And crazy people who also happen to be rock star and genius and white trash and rapper, a rapper who sings about drugs on a regular basis- what, none of this gave it away?

“I was born with a tick in my brain, yeah fucked in the head- is he nuts? No, he’s insane.” It won’t get any more clear than this- but I’m afraid Em’s audience is even dumber than he already thinks.

Well, Bobby didn’t make it, and that is a hole in my heart that will never heal over. But Eminem did make it, and I’ve got my tacky-ass faux-diamond big backward E around my neck, in case anybody was unsure I’m a fan, but also just to decorate a memory of a tragic but stunning love. Not everyone can make it through this life alive, but Bobby got me hooked on Eminem and I’m ready to shake my booty in his memory to the badass beats as soon as they hit the airwaves.

Now everyone knows Eminem couldn’t get famous until he spewed out on purpose the shadiest shit he could think of, which says way more about his audience than it did about him. He called that alter ego Slim Shady, the persona of an insane white man who was bad, mad and dangerous to know, to quote Lord Byron’s lover.

So what’s with Nick Cannon getting his panties in a bunch because Marshall raps about Mariah? I know, I know, it’s not all that nice to call someone a whore, it isn’t. But in rap’s theatre of the absurd, is Eminem supposed to be the only player who doesn’t use foul language about bitches and hos? Every celeb who has ever made the tabloids is fair game in these rap attacks. Now, if Nick had just said “Yo, pipe down on my woman,” fine.

But he wrote this:

“A mediocre (at best) Eminem record that sounds like it was written in 2001,” Cannon blogged. “At first, I thought it was old material that had been dug up from when dude ‘fantasized’ about having a pretend fling with Mariah. … But all of a sudden I hear my name in the verse! My first reaction was like, ‘This is his new shit? Wow, that’s too bad.’

Okay, thing is Nick, I didn’t even know you were a rapper until this hit my Perez-radar. So thanks to Em for putting you on the map for me.  I thought you were Mariah’s boy toy, and wondered why a rich babe like her couldn’t choose someone hotter.

Then I looked you up on Wikipedia and found out you had a #46 hit. And you sang something about being a new cat on the block, being bigger then Elvis. I listened to two numbers on iTunes and thought it must be 1982- no, I’m serious…and what’s this Nickleodeon business? The Pops don’t like me number was kind of cute, I confess, but nowhere near the mastery of tongue twisting rhyme, or the depth and breadth of mister white bread emmie.

It’s fine to stand up for your wife- but it’s just not entirely wise for a not so big shot producer to talk down about the work of a serious big shot rapper/singer/songwriter/producer. You know, the cunning linguist who has won more than 100 prestigious awards for his music, including an Oscar.

Anyhow, while I was on Limewire I thought I’d see if I could get lucky and find the verboten Mariah number. It was just my luck that the net was leaky at that moment and soon I was blasting one of Eminem’s nastiest and best vernacular jungle gyms. On top of the witty explosion of rhymes matched perfectly to the beat, the backdrop to this mad rap is bagpipes, and some kind of Mirwais-y production noise that moves your feet against your will.  This number’s a mind-bending bundle of tumbling rhyme, maybe one of his best…sorry, “illest.”

I don’t know about the rest of the album, but Bagpipes is a long way from Nick L. Odeon’s kiddie-cinema-popcorn heap.

“Locked in Mariah’s wine cellar… all I had for lunch… was red wine more red wine and Captain Crunch… red wine for breakfast and for brunch… ms. hello kitty satin bedspread with satin funk… You can be a permanent fixture …in my lyrical mixture…I’m the miracle-whipped trickster…”

Oh, dear, and then darling Nikki  started babbling on about how dissing the Butterfly Effect was racist, ‘cause Mariah is the same racial mixture as our President Barack Obama, you see.  It’s just…arrogant….to pull the racism card for the little skinny white boy from Detroit who braved the mean streets with nothing but his quicksilver wit and then won the respect of the biggest and best black men in rap and hip hop music because, in their words, not mine, he is the best there.

Sexist, no doubt about it, but not racist. Shit, how about: what a clever, awesome song, but my wife’s not a whore. Even Elton John is man enough to take a diss but not me, so can you rewrite that totally-ill-Grammy-written –all-over-it number without my wife’s number?

I had wondered if the climate toward the new album would mix near-religious devotion with snide and fickle snickering about the washed up addict man, with no regard for the man behind the mask’s private pain and right to recluse. Because people are quick to fickleness, screaming sell-out even if their shopping bags are stuffed with chart toppers.

But now I predict something different entirely: what will happen next is Bagpipes from Baghdad will go onto  become one of Eminem’s most massive hits, pervading the airwaves until kingdom come,  in no small part to Mariah’s jealous two-“hit” wonder.

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

The Long Goodbye

(Here’s something I pulled out of the archives for the great many of you who have expressed being moved or inspired by my writings on addiction)

One reason that it’s difficult to communicate about addiction is that so much of the ‘support’ literature might read like an alien phone book to an addict. It took me way too long to figure shit out for myself. After all, I didn’t think stuff was ruining my life until people started dying and I began to feel my liver ache.

There’s obvious veracity in Hans Moleman’s explanation for his early- aging: “I’m 31 years old. Alcohol has ruined my life.” But not every alcoholic is deformed or destitute. Most of them just look like people who have a lot of fun. There’s nothing dark about it, but it’s still destroying their bodies and brains.

There are tracts and brochures that call out to the sick, the frightened, the confused. You can give it up! they chirp merrily. Keep coming back! You don’t have to shame yourself anymore, hiding vodka from your kids and driving home from work shitfaced, wrote fitness and lush guru, Susan Powter. Newsflash: not everyone who needs a change is out of control. If you’re at rock bottom, you might check it out. By then it may be too late, but let’s be optimistic.

Thing is, no one talks about the obvious thing. That it’s hard to say goodbye because we don’t want to. Who would? We love our drugs of choice, or choices. And it’s not always making you do shameful, embarrassing, violent things. It probably isn’t. You may feel pleasure and comfort and have fun, but you know you’re poisoning yourself and that’s the only reason in hell you’d even consider giving up something you love. Every single smoker knows what I’m talking about here. Would a single one of you have quit if it were really healthy for you?

Shocked? I hope not. I hope you enjoy your wine, your grass, your T3s, your Scotch, your Oreos, your blow. It would be horrible if you were not enjoying them. If you didn’t enjoy it, you wouldn’t do it. It’s not like broccoli or fish- you know you should and so you do. A few of you can say “never me” and mean it, but anyone else in the normal over-14 population has enjoyed something from the list. Dr. Siegel, a renown scientist who has observed animals and cultures worldwide using chemical alteration, says this pursuit is the Fourth Drive. Yes, that’s right: Food, water, sex, and getting high. Is ‘everybody doing it?” Yes, yes, yes. Even insects and reindeers. And guess what? Our fuzzy friends, from rats to monkeys, like the same stuff we do: tobacco, cocaine, alcohol, and opiates top their list of thousands of selections in the natural kingdom. This is why, the good doctor surmises, that the war on drugs is about as useless as a war on food or outlawing sex. It’s IMPOSSIBLE. It is NATURAL.

So what comfort would it be to you- as an ‘addict,’ as a social enjoyer, as ‘undecided,” as proud functional user/drinker, wherever you are right now- if right now, for whatever reason, I dropped a bomb. You can NEVER have it again.

No beer, ever again, you’re gluten intolerant. No gin, ever again, allergic to gin. No Belmont Milds- they stopped making cigarettes. No nothing. No nothing. No nothing.

Do you see where I’m going with this? It would sure suck. And no one in their right mind would want to steer completely clear of the salves of this cruel world. They fulfill a lot of sensations from comfort to festivity to mourning to celebrating to pairing perfectly with the seafood. So why should that be happy news to an addict? The person who needs it most? If you can take it or leave it, and you take it, how do you expect the person who can’t leave it to do so? Get off of your high horse.

I’ve made the point before to people who were shocked that someone I loved was addicted to methamphetamine. Several people. As if it were that alien phone book, not an epidemic democratically sweeping populations from dieters to truckers to Thai manufacturing plants to Midwest farmers to gay sex party animals.

It’s not just something that happens to ‘those people.’ Alteration is a spectrum. Most see the scruffy panhandler twitching around and yelling as someone else entirely. It’s disconnected from the French restaurant where the wine pours freely. It’s apart from the cocaine parties in the corridors of higher education, where George Bush cheerfully inhaled. Really, the only difference is how functional a person is from another.

After all, none of us know when we’re crossing that line. We all do it, whatever it is, because we love it. It’s hard to get healing or even want it even though your liver is begging for relief. Why? Because it’s a long goodbye. How do you say goodbye to the friend that makes you laugh, the shimmer of a dream world? What about the warmth of a good bottle of aging scotch and a cigar shared with your father?

There’s no real answer, because just say no is not the answer. Or would you say you think prohibition is a good idea? Sure, anyone who says yes even once is technically in danger. But then, all the ones they’ve banned are still best sellers. Most people just say yes sometime along the way, from Mom to the President.

Saying yes many times through your life may or may not tip the balance into poisoning. When it starts to ruin your life or your liver, you have to stop, like it or not. Or choose the negative effects, a choice many make and die with. But it’s hard to say goodbye. Who wants to live their life without a crisp gin and tonic or ten? No one, except the ones who never drink, and they are all raving sugar addicts. Same thing, my friends- but booze is more fun.

Of course, there’s always the grim side of the story, selling yourself for crack, breaking tequila bottles in alleys and stabbing people, kidnapped sex slaves. But next time it snaps through your head that you have more ‘self control’ or whatever than an addict, try instead to acknowledge that you yourself are just on different rungs of the spectrum.

So should we all just say no, from the very beginning? Let’s get back to reality. It would be audacious to say no grown men should be allowed to go for beers, though this would save the world from an awful mess of immature antics and cheating incidents and bar room violence.

Should we say no one should ever smoke a joint? Well, we did say that, and people are still smoking pot. No one should use cocaine. But half of South American history is in coca. Shall we ban all painkillers, too, and let people suffer after surgeries or accidents? Addiction to prescription medicine is mindblowingly common! Shall we revoke driving rights for anyone who drinks at all, just to make sure the very common drunk driving accident doesn’t happen?

We all imbibe something, unless we are rare. For a long time, we thought this was human uniqueness. A few weird animals liked to get high. Now science knows most animal species like it just as much as humans, and access is their only barrier. The stuff they like, they’ll take it if it’s there.

My cats love catnip. And I love gin. It’s not some shameful secret. Should I be ashamed, or should the slick ad promising class, taste, and celebration be ashamed? Or should we blame the time-honoured tradition and recipe and wonderful ingredients?

The right answer is, of course, none of the above. It would have been wise if I’d given my liver a few fewer parties, sure. At least I quit smoking. I quit drugs. I quit sugar. I quit wheat. As Bessie Smith and Nina Simone sang before me, just give me my gin. Clothes? Pork? Give me gin instead. Sister Courtney Love also tells it like it is in her song All the Drugs. “With all, all of my love, with all, all of my money, It doesn’t feel as good as the drugs.”

Besides, what if after a few months or years or decades of nothing, the party girl’s liver rejuvenated, the old compulsions gone, she decides it’s safe to celebrate at special events. She doesn’t want everyone taking pictures of her having a beer, the way they do of Drew Barrymore, who kicked cocaine twenty years ago. What if she finds a harm reduction model useful, a guideline for safer indulgence that seems to be very effective. Is that okay? or will she be scrutinized at every sip just because once she announced she was getting help to keep control over her drinking? Now everyone’s looking at her and not at you. How convenient for you as you pop your seventh codeine of the day. Bad back, yeah.

Drugs can be a nightmare, as your health turns on your best intentions, your money disappears, and people you love die from their inability to snap back from la la land. It’s also a nightmare to give them up. Some people were appalled that some people were using drugs and alcohol at Marko’s funeral. Don’t all funerals have drugs and alcohol? What, Aunt Rosie’s not on ten valiums? No one’s throwing back the vodka? Of course, no wake ever happened with beer, and no Hollywood funeral ever took place with the fine white stuff and silver straws.

Of course, there wouldn’t be any of that at a wake for an addict! Thing is, a good handful of people embarked into recovery but they sure as hell didn’t do it that night, when they were open and scared and raw and hurting.

See what I mean? It might be a big fat relief to know you might break free. But it’s a nightmare, too. What will you use to obliterate the pain if your husband or child drops dead tonight? Trust me, you’ll use something. Ativan, rum, grass, you better believe it. But going lighter, how the hell is a person going to celebrate their child’s marriage? How many stone cold sober weddings have you been to? And how would you date? A glass of chilled white is just what the grape gods kindly stocked up on for situations just like these.

Quitting is traumatic because it will mean deprivation. It doesn’t matter if that deprivation hits hard at weddings and funerals, or every night when you no longer head to your favourite bar.

I love how I always hear that an intoxicant user should ‘face her problems.’ It is true that you and she both use alcohol or drugs to face your problems. Maybe she just has more problems. Maybe you have more restraint. Maybe you have more restraint because your body deals better with the alcohol. Maybe alcoholism runs in her blood and not yours. Maybe you are an alcoholic- I mean, you do drink every single day, but it’s only two or three little glasses of wine. Maybe you drink too much but no one notices and you pass for pretty straight. Classic. Classic. Maybe you don’t even know. Maybe you aren’t facing your problems and that person is, but in ways that you can’t see. Maybe you don’t know the half of it.

I won’t give you a laundry list of the things that are on that ‘must face’ list. But let’s just say it’s pretty dramatic. I admit I haven’t even begun to wrap my head around the fact that my friend/sister hung herself over Thanksgiving. It’s only just beginning to really sink in. I’d like to sweep it away and pretend I’ve dealt with it, but only time can deal with something this harrowing. Now raise your hands if something like this has happened to you- it’s horribly common. Yes, and so, what did you use, gin or Valium? Face my problems? I’m working on it, dude. When seven close friends drop dead in five years, from cancer to overdose to suicide, it’s hard to face. Then there’s the poverty, stress, alienation, isolation, broken dreams, work troubles, family madness- you know, the stuff of everyday life. Everybody knows the trouble we’ve seen.

Trust me, buddy, I’m facing my problems. I’ve had rewarding therapy in my life, great yoga, hell, I’m going to church at least once a week and it’s freaking out my friends. I’m working shit out in circle and learning about tools to moderate my depression and map my impulses. I’m producing more writing and acting with more focus than I’ve ever had. It’s been more than a dozen years since I spent a couple on the street, drifting. I haven’t been clubbing since Pride. I go to bed after the ten p.m. Seinfeld.

But guess what, I still drink too much, and my liver has asked for a nice break.

I’m just telling it so you can understand, why many addicts never change and get worse, why some manage their lives by going off and on, why many others who get healthy will always miss it.

You might, too- but you don’t have to quit, and I do.

Loretta Has Two Daddies!

Who would have guessed that after my wild days of yester-yore, what I look forward to most in the week is church on Sunday?

Some Sundays, feeling particularly gluttonous, I attend two services.

Yesterday was Father’s Day, and I spent some quality time with my heavenly father, sure to make my earth dad a happy man!

Sure, Dad’s an old-fashioned fundie at heart, and the Metropolitan Community Church’s feel-good brand of Bible is a tad disconcerting for him. “Progressive Christianity” is certainly an oxymoron for old-schoolers steeped in rigid mores. But Dad knows that I like sheep had gone astray, and now I’m happily home with that good shepherd. He’d rather see signs of faith than of none.  I’ll never believe what Dad does- I can’t swallow the historical Catholic or Protestant hatred of women, heathens, or the body- but that said, Dad trained up a child in the way she should grow, and now that I’m old, I have not departed from it.

I’m one of those deeply neurotic people who carry endless wells of anxiety within, despite Christ’s soft admonishments not to worry about tomorrow. If there’s a storm, I worry about floods and getting struck by lightening. I worry about the future, about starving to death in war, or being amputated by a falling branch. I worry that the lady from the video store might not be talking to me, or that the assignment I sent by email didn’t make it and my editor will think I’m late. I worry that the crackheads next door will smoke the building into flames. I worry that my friends might end up in a car accident. When I was a teenager, I worried that I would get pregnant and be disowned by my family, despite understanding perfectly the logistics of science and hence, the virginal impossibility of such a plight at that time.

This propensity to fret fueled an alarm clock neurosis that I know I share with quite a few- Jerry Seinfeld feared his friend might miss a race, and suggested Elaine set up a dozen alarms clocks to ascertain his rising. I would go a few steps further if tomorrow’s task were of any import – anticipating the possibilities of power outages, at least a few clocks should be set with batteries. More than one, of course, in case the batteries were bought low! This special neuroticism was passed to me from the most tremendous worrywart of all time, my grandmother. My brother and nephew got a good dose of it, too, and often worry about being kidnapped, though their parents have no resources to make them a likely target!

Yep, war, unrest, crisis, hurricanes- the fearless bravado anyone might see in my work is not necessarily false- but it’s only one aspect of many! Inside, I’m a quivering bowlful of jelly who still finds it mildly disconcerting to ride a streetcar with strangers. At the very least, I don’t have to take special medication anymore just to get to class. Still, half my life I’ve obliterated those fears through chemical festivity. Anyone who has gone there knows that just brings a whole new slew of hells worth worrying about- very real ones. The past few years I’ve worked toward a healthier relationship with abstinence, rejoicing that today’s drug of choice is yoga. And chardonnay. And gin. There will come a day soon where I won’t need the Hemingway-ian cup o’ ice and gin in hand to feel like a writer, or drown my various distresses. One day I may be teetotally clean before my lord, but today I stand occasionally half-crocked.  Whatever: did the good Lord not send wine to celebrate the big occasions and to comfort those who mourn?

In any event, the transition from party girl to reasonably mature may never be complete, but Saturday night is no longer the star of the show- Sunday morning is where most of my spirits come from nowadays! I couldn’t be more blessed to call Rev. Dr. Brent Hawkes my teacher. A more sincere, down-to-earth, honest, selfless man I’ve never met. Every single week Dr. Hawkes addresses the realities of his congregation, rather than some archaic fairy tales that are irrelevant and ludicrous. And while my Dad can rest assured that the good doctor has a more literal belief than most of his flock, I find Hawkes’ guidance relevant and refreshing right here in my real world. It’s true that my real world has not included immaculate conceptions, kidnappings, or life-threatening alarm clock issues. But it has included a massive dose of grief and loss, poverty, addictions, confusion, relationship and family dysfunction, illness, and distress- you know, everyday life. I have to admit I have never been happier than returning to the comforting spiritual rituals and laying these things out before the Lord.

The twist, of course, is that the MCC tries very hard not to puppet people’s fears, anxieties, hatreds, prejudices, angers, and delusions. Other spiritual homes seem to simply be a mirror of these base, irrational qualities, and talk about judgement and punishment and hell and how people born female or gay (recall how ‘coloured’ was on that hell-bound list not that long ago, despite the obvious impossibility of choosing one’s biology) were immoral savages. Dad would argue that sin and accountability are central doctrines, and I wouldn’t disagree. But I don’t think nature is a sin – I think it’s sin to lie and cheat and hate and pollute the earth and be greedy and rape and allow poverty and drive people into misery and suicide and despair for things that they were born as. Sin is war and hunger and wife beating, not our normal, healthy drives or gender or skin colour or orientation. The whole of religion has been so hung up on sex because of its hatred of women that stems from foolish millennia-old fears- fears far more ridiculous than mine.

At my church, women and gays are allowed to pray and don’t have to ask their husbands before speaking in church. At my church, depressed people or addicts or immigrants are treated with equal respect, just as Christ treated them. Yesterday Pastor Brent said MCC “is not about telling you what to believe, it’s about raising questions, honouring your intellect, and giving hope.” Instead of pushing our anxieties deeper until we kill ourselves or abandon God, the source of comfort, our church lifts the spirit. Instead of pushing people away from the source of light because they have come out of the desert and the dark ages and exist in the knowledge of modernity, our church encourages intellectual growth and an appreciation of science and discovery. We can’t go backwards, so let’s go forward.

Reverend Jo Bell’s sermon last night was about our often-injured relationships with our fathers, and how that sometimes translates into a difficult father-child relationship with Our Father Who Art in Heaven. Ma Bell and me both have an affinity for bringing up the feminine aspects of the divine whenever relevant, to make sure women’s contributions are celebrated and not denigrated. But I’ve never had issue with saying “our father’ instead of “our creator.” Because Dad was just so amazing and cool and kind and supportive and authentic, despite our obvious differences in opinion and spirituality, I’ve always been able to take comfort from the masculine side of God.

Only tyrants and insecure egos must resort to an all-blustering, power-hungry fire-breather who does nothing but smite. Sure, a father has to discipline a child when he has lost their way, but it was never lost of me that the sky-god stories of the old testament patriarchy are just that- patriarchal, archaic stories that show the experiences of those people through that historical lens.  I thank my father for showing me the gift of God’s love and for loving me through various hells that hurt like hell, so that I could come out on this side.

And I thank God for my father, to whom I have always turned since I was a little girl when I had one of my neurotic worry spells. Dad always had an answer, slow and certain, without making light of my very real if irrational anxieties. I am blessed to have two heavenly fathers!

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.

Further Lamentations

That’s just the thing, then, with sorrow, and living with it like it’s an old friend. And it is. The sadness can surface at any time, crumpling you momentarily. It doesn’t matter if it was an inconvenient moment for a shot in the heart: the blows come when you least expect them, and sometimes when you do.

It’s not often when your entire relationship with a person is all-encompassed by a knowledge, present from the first moment, that he is going to die.

That’s how it was here. It was not a place I wanted to be in, and nor did he. I can tell you that being witness to the madness of methamphetamine is beyond your most macabre inventions about it. Marko was the first man down in that circle caught in meth’s trap. It came and went like wildfire through him, less than a year from trying it until dying. I was so shell-shocked and naïve about meth that I promised Marko I would ‘be there’ for his friend, who was also ill.

They all fall down. Where the hell do I go from here? When I went to see Bobby, to tell him his best friend had overdosed and died, he had been in prison on minor possession charges for a few months, and was clean, sober, sparkling with hope. He spoke valiantly of opening a ministry in Marko’s name, to reach out to the tweaked out, used up masses. I thought I could save the world and dreamed it with him. Our terrible story could inspire others to get help. We could fix everything, we could put it back together, and God would bless us.

It’s too nightmarish and too personal right now to go into the strange sorrow of meth’s descent, and into the hundreds of hours spent searching for resources, for a rehab or program or bed or shrink who could help him. The cycle was endless, at its’ beginning, filled with hope, then swiftly filled in with defeat, psychotic frustration and disappointment, shame, terror of cameras and charts. Suffice it to say, during that part of the struggle and maybe all of it, Bobby lived in hell. The Crystal Inferno would make Dante’s seem like a sitcom.

I was so filled with joy and hope to hear that Bobby was better, about half a year or so after he left. It was news I got a lot, in between. And every time I hoped.

Two handsome, bright, beautiful, boys, best friends, partners in crime, brothers. Both gone. All I can feel now, despite the heartaches and hell this special and loving friendship brought, is these were all innocent people. From the day Marko introduced Bobby to me years ago, all I ever saw in between relapses was this person looking for help in the yellow pages, willing to try anything at all again to get better. Filling up with hope if he went a couple weeks or months.

I feel like poor Bobby was just dropped into a cruel video game. Here, try thirty years of torture, and see how you won’t ever make it. I always used the word ‘elegant’ to describe Bobby, from the start. It was a little poetic for a roughneck east coaster, but it was absolutely true. A polite, bright, gorgeous young man with a quick wit and the same longing for understanding as every other human being. Even when he was most broken, I could depend on his love. He loved me unconditionally, his brother’s wife, and helped me when I was most emptied of everything. He was there for me when I was emotionally bankrupt, with nothing to offer. He said he would walk a thousand miles for me. He nearly did, to visit me last summer, three beautiful days that we spent listening to Johnny Cash and watching Simpsons and even going to church. How I hoped there that he was freed! He was so filled with light and a potentiality of happiness.

Not that long ago, Bobby had sent me an email. It said simply: “Woman, sometimes I wonder what I would have done without you. much love, B.”

But what am I going to do without you? It isn’t fair.

In case any of you underestimate this methamphetamine shit, or think all addicts are just weak people, you should know that three from that circle died. Bobby took the longest. Three totally different demographics, three totally different, promising lives.

Bobby is survived by many who loved him, several girlfriends who will never get over their scars, childhood friends, family. He loved doing special things for people, giving them a small gift that he knew they would find special, a small trinket of some magic weight. His quick smile or intense stare let you know he was with you in the moment. You knew he wouldn’t let anyone hurt you. He stood up for you.

Where do I go from here? I don’t know. I’m less and less sure of the ways in which I used to make sense of the world. I feel like everything is a cruel joke, and that’s a far cry from the stance I had not long ago that refused defeat: my last art show, which Bobby paid a surprise visit from the east coast to see my book launch- proclaimed in huge paint “if this heart is gonna break it’s gonna take a lot to break it.’

Thing is, it was then, already broken. And I think me thinking I had a hold of it, that I could stay together after witnessing Marko’s descent and then the loss, after witnessing the descent of Bobby and the pending loss, that the work I’d done to conquer my own demons and habits and failures, that the mistakes and tragedies I’d witnessed or been a part of had made me stronger: I think it was delusional to think I could keep it together. I feel Bobby’s life was a cruel joke on an innocent man and it touched me irrevocably, but was that all he was here for, to touch a handful of people? What about the things HE wanted? It makes me angry at God, not a place I can afford to be right now, honestly.

How the fuck am I supposed to keep on accepting the things I cannot change? All I’ve got left of that part of my life is a bunch of ‘therapeutic’ paintings, a few love letters, a few photographs. I don’t even have my husband’s ashes. Nothing.

So what happens now? Those of you who know, know. There’s the odd lucky one like one friend I won’t name. After losing everything- her business, her truck, her health, her esteem, her looks- she did spend two years of torture cleaning up and is healthy now, doing baby steps to put her life together. Sadly, three of her best friends are dead. Her ‘triumph’ feels like garbage. Is there life after meth? Some- not much.

Feel free to contact the writer to share your story, inspiration, or outrage. If you’ve found any helpful resources or inspiration through methamphetamine, I’d love to share them with others.

There is Nothing New Under the Sun: Britney, Babylon, and the Modern World

Like everyone else on the planet, my addiction to celebrity addictions has reached a crescendo. It’s all consuming. Picture a group of four civilized thirtysomethings gathered in the big city for a night of gourmet Thai food and a good catch-up. Two girls, two guys: could be unused Will and Grace footage. Except the hairdresser is leaning intently over a tabloid that features a close up of Michael Jackson’s latest facial bandages. The restaurant manager reaches for Ebony- it’s got the MJ makeover pics, and we decide that’s probably as good as Mikey’s ever gonna look. The actress is circling all the known addicts in Life and Style with a purple Sharpie. The writer muses out loud that even squeaky-clean Nicole K’s husband is an addict. None of that, of course, is anywhere near as important as the story of the century- the public downward spiral of Brit-Brit Spears. This week’s latest chapter has us on the edge of our seats: did Brit’s mom really sleep with K-Fed and the new sinister-looking Arab hottie? Cause if it’s true, it would explain just about every damn thing that’s wrong with that poor girl.

Sure, I’ve been worried about my escalating compulsion to watch the latest breaking stories of Hollywood’s filthy fallouts on late night TV. Worse is the guilty knowledge that even the cheapest glossy rag is a waste of my hard-earned money. But I’ve already given up drugs and sugar, so I cut myself some slack- so long as I am still stopping by Book City for fresh Canadian poetry volumes, Discover Magazine, and cookbooks, so long as I am completing my non-celeb writing assignments, so long as I am eating and sleeping and taking regular baths and changing the kitty litter…

I’ve railed against a machine that drove Diana into the long tunnel from which she never emerged. I’ve lambasted a world that thinks it’s okay to take zoom shots of Britney’s panties, which prove, evidently, that the girl is not, today at least, pregnant with Adnan’s baby. But I’ve also defended the insatiable public appetite for destruction, for who wore what when and where, who took what drug at which party, and who is zooming whom. I agree with Camille Paglia, though I am not nearly so articulate as she, that the stars are the stars: humans always have a pantheon of gods and goddesses, from antiquity into the modern world, who reach unknown heights and plunge to sordid deaths. Greco-Roman mythology reads like the rags read today: Hercules was insane and murdered his wife and children. Arachne hanged herself. Zeus kills Semele while Dionysus is still in her womb. Murder, suicide, madness, incest, torture, revenge, drugs, secrets, prostitution: it’s all there, and it’s there in every mythology of the world, not just the much-studied classics. It is no mistake that Diana is another name for Artemis, Goddess of the moon, the hunter and the hunted one. Celebrity is our modern day mythology. It isn’t going to go away.

Camille said, “Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which so much art and intellect now flow. It is our imperial sex theater, supreme temple of the western eye. We live in the age of idols. The pagan past, never dead, flames again in our mystic hierarchies of stardom.” Whether or not it’s reprehensible, it is absolutely human. The gods are half human, and half celestial. With one foot on earth, and the other in heaven or hell, we look to them to play out the psychodramas in our own life, not, as many assume, to revel in their lives because we do not have one of our own. And perhaps this familiar tendency is not unique to humans, but to other animals. I’ve long believed my cats talk about my peeps and me when I’m not home. Surely I’m mad, but scientists have discovered that dolphins gossip- no joke. See, I told you I’m still reading some science here and there!

Perhaps at this point in history, post-Diana, where paparazzi is a household word and a lucrative career choice, where we are practically standing in gas-station bathrooms with a woman named Britney that we don’t even know, it would be a good time to stop berating ourselves for our very human hunger and see if we can create a future direction for our celebrity addiction. Can awareness of our need for this kind of theatre help us create a better world?

We feel guilty for our rabid obsessions with the mad, the mental, and the maxed-out. We shake our heads and say, ‘Why can’t they leave that poor little girl alone?” The nastier among us may think, “Crazy rich bitch, who cares.” I’m not down with that- though I might trade in my humble rental for a couple of million, I’m sure that a few good friends and a few peaceful hours to read a novel might be everything in the world that Britney Spears wants tonight. Still, if her world changed tonight, if she left her house and there was nobody outside, no cameras flashing, no headlines, the shock would kill her. We malign her for seeking out that attention, but we are all victims of our environment. The Amish children who leave go back home for the most part. People commit suicide when they lose a shitty dead-end job they’ve been grumbling about for years. We know what we know. Britney knows nothing else. It is not her fault that she has fed on the flash and the adrenaline for so long.

Regardless, the media vulture is not going to go away. If it did, Britney Spears would drop dead. It seems we are waiting with bated breath for that to happen- there is more than one contest up and running where whoever guesses the date and time of that event wins. Humans are a corrupt and bloodthirsty lot. We love a car crash; we love a bullfight, boxing, wrestling, and movies like Hostel. We love war. We are greedy and fat and neurotic and we beat our wives and children. We keep slaves and we sell our daughters. This bloodthirstiness is nothing new. It’s a given. I find it horrible and disgusting and sick and sad, but it has been true from the very beginning. While I applaud every single action anyone makes toward peace, goodwill, equality, generosity, and compassion, none of these noble gestures erase the fact that we are rotten to the core. We can’t afford to be sentimentalists: realism gives us a better foothold for change. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And even that glory, if you learn about Him in the Bible, is a vicious, savage glory, warmongering and smiting left and right.

Perhaps there is the other side to the story. The side that has to follow every anguished cry of Our Lady of Madness because her cry is ours. Perhaps we are hoping for her to ‘get help’ because it illustrates our own struggle, the fumble to find ecstasy, or just peace of mind for crying out loud. In the midst of success, we may feel isolated. In the midst of marriage, we may be terrified we made a poor choice. We may fear our parenting skills. We may be scared of our drug use. All these stories do is play out on a large screen scale the same trials and woes we all have. From what to wear to dinner, to whether or not this week’s shrink appointment is going to make a rat’s ass of difference to the astonishing emptiness we feel. Britney was crying in the chapel, and so are we.

While the narrow philosophies I was raised with would tediously refer to Hollywood as ‘glorifying sin’, perhaps instead it illuminates the best and worst of our obsessions. We sneer this week about how ‘everyone’s going to rehab since Heath jumped ship.” Did you ever think that the public travails of Anna Nicole Smith and Lindsay Lohan made it amazingly easy for the rest of the world to start tossing up the word ‘addiction’? I think it’s amazing that in the fall out of this particular tempest- the unexpected death of a very talented actor, and our fear that brilliant new songstress Amy Winehouse is at the edge of that abyss, people are looking at their own issues and saying “no more bullshit. I’m going into rehab.” We can only try. Trying is everything. Maybe rehab won’t work out for Winehouse, or for Eva Mendes, or for Delta Burke. But maybe it will. Maybe Winehouse hopes to make an even better album instead of dying. I sure hope it works out for her because I’d love to hear it.

The thing is, there is no specific solution. It’s romantic and naïve to think humans have ever had one. We are incredibly contradictory, and though solutions have been thrown around since the beginning of time, (some of these bright ideas have included exterminating the race of enemies, bringing slaves to build our countries, torturing mental patients, castrating women…) we don’t have any fucking solutions. We only have our tricky history of violence and obsession, mixed with our amazing contributions and discoveries. We will never evolve to our full potential, because, just as technology has made us into magicians who can chat over breakfast with friends across the world, our natural greed has scourged the earth. On the smaller scale, we must have witnessed in our own life that sometimes finding Jesus worked, and sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes therapy or rehab worked, but sometimes we lost the fight and buried a loved one. Sometimes a new medical breakthrough saved the life of our child or gave us back mobility. Sometimes it didn’t, and helpless, we watched cancer or AIDS or diabetes take someone from us.

We can’t know how things will work out. It isn’t personal- when a hurricane sweeps through a city and demolishes it, it isn’t personal. I wasn’t a better person just because the hurricanes have not so far struck Toronto. You aren’t a better person than Britney just because you take your Prozac like a good little girl. Don’t be so sure that nobody at your church knows about your secrets. They do: if only because they share them.

It all takes us back to square one. We are going to do what we are going to do. Good and evil will always rival inside of us, a tug of war that never finds resolution. So that means we keep on striving to become better, but don’t fall off an imaginary pedestal when things- big surprise- don’t necessarily work out. We can’t stop war, but we keep trying because it’s the right thing to do. We can’t stop every violence or poverty in the world, every disease or despairing heart, but we can help one child, we can give one homeless man a banana and a coffee. We can’t win over all of our bad habits, but we can probably change a few of them. We can’t eradicate all of the darkness inside of us, but we can strive for light. After all, as Oprah said, to do less than your best is a sin.

www.thegirlcanwrite.net
Lorette C. Luzajic

I hope you will visit my site above and explore my writing. If you think your friend will like me, please pass me on! You can order my poetry collection, The Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos online through indigo or amazon.

Hope for the Flowery (while listening to Elton John)

You know it’s a melancholy day if you’re listening to Elton John at five pm. It might even be the kind of night that I shut off all my phones and my Mac, the kind of night I stay inside and read Cooking Light in the granny chair. Hell, somehow I’ve acquired an afghan this winter…yeah.

Seriously, I’m really feeling the lull of Elton’s gorgeous schmaltz. Elton annoys me, overall, ever since he recycled Marilyn’s song and dedicated it, along with that England’s rose tripe, to poor Diana. Did not the Great Huntress and Hunted deserve her own exquisite lullaby? He ruined a moment, but hell, no one seemed to notice but me. I can’t doubt that the grief he was experiencing at the time made him crazy, but certainly you could have come up with something just for Diana? You’ve got to wonder why he forewent the chance to earn another zillion when my trashiest girlfriend, Anna Nicole Smith, tripped the light fantastic last year. And he mustn’t miss the Britney opportunity ahead!

I must forgive any of this cheese, for the madcap genius and originality of his better numbers. There’s something so old-school about the EJ experience. I must forgive the man for thinking he was locked in a closet- anyone who wears such outlandish, garish, exquisitely flaming clothes is definitely making a statement. Loud and clear, sister. And on top of all of that amazing gaiety, there are the odd moments of musical brilliance and those soaring, friendly, sad-tinged happy vocals. Certainly as an entertainer, El is absolutely, well, entertaining.

I’m not super versed in the man’s magic- I’m scared off fast by shit like Blessed and Can You Feel the Bile. It’s not cruel: if I’m a harsh judge, it’s only because of the moments when Elton gets it. Those moments are pure artistry. Creativity and originality at their apex, with a stellar set of pipes and a stunning engagement, intensity and depth. I’m talking about Rocket Man, Sacrifice, about Benny and the Jets, I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues, Sad Songs. Operatic, but easy going. So what’s going on when dude sells out to this kind of Lion King ballad pap? I don’t know, man, I don’t know.

The very gay bravado of his cinematic selections and collaborator Bernie Taupin’s thoughtful songwriting make sketches of kooky people we might even know. Elton’s blend of swishiness, sentiment, and madness is a very unique brand. He’s just the epitome of flaming, in the most grandiose and chummy ways possible.

And then he might make smarmy, poorly thought out barbs at Madonna, who made a world where he’s allowed out of the closet, but I guess that’s just him being the cranky old queen that he is now. He ain’t getting any younger. My bravado lies largely in my youth, also, as is the way for nearly every sentient being.

Still, for both of us I hope our best is yet to come. A fine moment like Nikita can be a nostalgic trigger for a finer moment, just as velvety, and darker. And pure, polished bubbles of tremendous joy and shininess like Don’t Go Breaking My Heart may be a glossy memory next to another frivolous morsel of sweet nothingness. Despite that my heart was broken by such predictable consumerist slickness as that Lion King debacle, in truth that was something of the comeback to respectability EJ had to have after a rattling career. Recall how many queens hid behind Glam Rock, as if no one could tell. The flamboyance we now revel in, the Gok Wans and Co Jos, all owes a debt of heritage to Elton John. All this ridiculous movie soundtrack balladry just proves that the wildest of us will mellow out in middle age. It’s true that the stress of being forced to admit he was bisexual in the mid-70s closed off the brightest chapter of his career, and from then on was a struggle. He even married a woman, an act I might call cowardly with my cavalier attitude of the Free to Be generation. But I can’t know what it’s like to be afraid your career will end because you are gay. Of course dude had cocaine and alcohol problems and an eating disorder. So did Elvis. Under the stress of fame, a girl needs a little something-something, and how easily that spins out of control as you become a spin-off in our disposable world.

It doesn’t matter if I feel ready to hurl when I hear songs like Tiny Dancer and Circle of Life. There are dozens of shining gems and hundreds of perfectly good rhinestones: I can leave the plastic on the shelf for someone else to coo over. I also have to respect the man because I know he tries to be flexible. He’s been brave enough to bridge the flaming arts with the testosterone riddled fury of gangsta in unusual creative endeavours like Ghetto Gospel. He bravely moved on from the hissy fit (so did Moby, still waiting for B y George to come around) and performed with Eminem in front of the world at the Grammies. This is what I love- to be surprised, to have the unexpected happen. Stan is one of the more unusual chunks of collaborative genius out there. This kind of spectacle is truly diversity. Rumour has it that he’ll be on Eminem’s next project, as well, and that his upcoming solo album might be hip hop. This is THEATRE , dahhhling.

It’s not just limited to the hot and tragic hip hop boys, either. There are more dazzling surprises: Kate Bush changed Rocket Man into a crisp, icy blade, it’s own ethereal world, clean and fantastical. Take three, Baby Stewie. I know the day that Stewie reads my poetry is the day I can say I did what I set out to do.

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Order my book The Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos at indigo.ca or amazon.com.