Jul
21
Ten questions
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In the olden days, I used to get home late at night, drunk, smoking, still wearing my crumpled party dress, and ramble to my mailing list. Sometimes, the postings would be sanitized and later posted to the public site. I saved a bunch of them. They had titles like she hit him with that paper-weight eiffel tower and calling up a little girl with a bull whip.
I stopped posting those drunken screeds when my list crossed the 500 member mark. But I’m thinking enough years have passed that I could run some of them safely now.
As you guys might have noticed, I’ve been fumbling with this space for a very long time. Back in February, a longtime reader and fellow writer named Suzanne Clinton asked me if I’d be interested in an interview. I was.
The ten questions turned out to be both really insightful and incredibly difficult to answer. Suzanne managed to nail all the questions I’d been asking myself for a very long time, and suddenly I had to formulate answers. For her, and for me.
I sat down to answer them again and again. The first time, in February. The second time, in March, I tried again using Dewars as a lubricant. I got so wasted I ended up drunk-texting Skye, while he was on a ski trip in Canada. He took it with good humor. Then I fell down the stairs.
I stopped drinking altogether after that night.
The next time I tried again, months later, I was sober, and by that time I’d figured it out.
I’m not the same person I was in 1996, when I began this page. I’m not even the same person I was five years ago. There’s been a long, stripping-down sort of process going on while I figured out who I am, whom I want to be.
I peeled away the shock of blond hair, the New York, the Palm Beach, the sun-kissed skin and freckles, the beach, the parties, the cigarettes, the scotch, the men, the drugs, all the props I used to define myself until it was just me, alone in my head, and I was forced to finally focus. It was incredibly difficult. There was almost nothing left when I was done, but what was left turned out to be of critical importance.
Cigarettes turned out to be an enormous loss. I loved cigarettes. I loved smoke. I loved the way it felt– thick, curling, making everything seem blue in the mist. I loved the ceremony of pulling out a pack in a bar and having men light them and smile their little-boy smiles like they’d done something terribly clever. They were my best prop.
And New York. The New York I missed so desperately doesn’t exist anymore. It was the wasteland ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX New York of 1979, when my daddy was still alive and we’d go to Gimbel’s on a Saturday afternoon to the stamp department and he’d buy me a plate block and then we’d go to Peppermint Park for a hot chocolate. It was the New York of the communal Loehmann’s dressing room in Brooklyn with Nan and Aunt Ella.
But without all my extemporaneous bullshit, I had no clue what to write about. I don’t how to write Today I Went To The Bank and What We Are Having For Dinner and My Cat Is So Funny. When Skye and I were still together, one night near the end he asked are you going to write about me?
Every man I have dated since this page went up in 1996 has asked that same question. D’ya think they ask because they’re hopeful? Or because they’re afraid?
For a long time, I was occupying the space between my old life and the new. Now I am slowing down some. I turned 40 in February, and as a gift to myself I set down most of the baggage I was carrying. It occurs to me that if I live as long as my father I have twelve years left. Tick-tock. You wouldn’t recognize me now. Since I stopped highlighting my hair it’s now as dark as my gaze. My dad used to tell me I looked like Dondi. I assume he was referring to the black holes I have where other people have eyes.
I answered Suzanne’s questions.
Jul
16
Ten years after
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I wrote both of these when I was living on Palm Beach. The only place that could have made it worse, those terrible days before they found his plane, would have been on the Vineyard itself.
I don’t think about their loss as much as I did once upon a time. I’ve worked very hard at pushing all the dead people out of my head. They take up too much space in there, rattling around, distracting, reminding me of all the things I work very hard to forget.
Fawn and her husband always had the best parties, candy bowls full of pills on every available surface. They both ended up in rehab five years later, before divorcing. But they’re fine now, last I heard through the Palm Beach gossip.
July 18, 1999: Missing
July 20, 1999: Interlude | Vineyard
Jul
14
One AM
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Sleep eludes me these days. I spend too much time thinking about sacking out on a beach in Florida armed with a vodka gimlet, a cheap paperback, and a bikini that saw its best days in the late 1990s. I suspect I’ll be on an airplane very soon to visit.
I’ve grown accustomed to my tiny treehouse in Seattle. I’m not in such a hurry to leave, anymore. There’s something moving around on my deck right now. I am hoping it’s a raccoon and not a clown.
Frequently I steal away from the writing I’m supposed to be finishing to go to Green Lake. Lately it’s been 70 degrees, sun shining on the water, just perfect. I spent an extra half hour watching the ducks get all pissed off at a chocolate Lab playing fetch in the shallows. This was possibly the happiest doggie on the planet that day.
There were about a million turtles, and I saw some trout that were just freaking enormous. I haven’t been fishing since David was alive. I like watching the old men fish. I miss the old black guys I’d sometimes stop and talk with in New York, fishing along the East River. I used to run north, behind Gracie Mansion, up to this pier. And I’d sit for awhile on the pier with them and then either run or walk back, depending on how my knees were holding up.
The summer I left, 2004, when I knew my days in the city were numbered, I ran it every day. Sometimes twice a day. I had just quit smoking for the last time and I felt like I wanted to run out of my skin.I ran so far and so long with my ancient white brick iPod and one single playlist that I completely unbalanced my play counts in iTunes to this day. That was a good summer, and even though I still miss New York, it was good for me to get out. I was worried I was in a rut. Nothing was changing fast enough for me. Everyone was sad. I didn’t want to be sad anymore, and as long as I stayed there I would never get enough distance to get over what had happened to us.
I sold a short story recently, about that terrible time.
Selling that story to Random House made me go looking for the other entries I wrote over those days. I took them down shortly after; they were too real, too raw, too revealing. I have mixed feelings about selling this particular story.
Anyway, the East River, New York, that summer. My apartment was not in great shape. Entire swaths of plaster were peeling off the walls. I redid the walls in the bedroom and kitchen, patching the walls and repainting. As I wondered how the hell I could manage the living room, my next door neighbor stuck a note under my door asking to buy the place.
So I moved to Seattle. To this tiny townhouse in upper Queen Anne. I am surrounded by Craftsman houses and incredible, exploding gardens. Nothing is manicured here, it’s nothing like the neat little rows of tulips marching appropriately down Park Avenue. Here, it’s explosions of lavender and cabbage roses, spilling over the sidewalks. Moss gardens on giant boulders along the road. The flower mayhem, it’s incredible. I love the flowers.
When I drive down Queen Anne Hill towards downtown, the road crests over Puget Sound, and if I keep the windows and sunroof open on the Jag I can almost smell the ocean. I like getting stuck on the drawbridges all over the city. I like to sit in my car and listen to music and watch the boats on the water.
It’s restful.
Jul
6
Our very own (well, former very own, but still beloved!) stee wrote tonight’s episode of Weeds. Monday, July 6th at 10pm. WEEDS, on Showtime. Do not miss! I don’t have cable, so y’all are going to have to tell me all about it.
In other news, I was asked if I Twitter. I do, but not very well.
Jul
5
Looking for me on Facebook?
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There is a ghost of my old Sara Astruc profile floating around on Facebook. So if you’ve friended me and I haven’t answered, it’s because of that old duplicate I can’t access. If you’re looking for me, I can be found at:
http://www.facebook.com/astruc
Apologies if you think I’ve been ignoring you; I have not.