Gappy Tales

And now I have returned. The same but different. Five weeks spent in a drug and alcohol addiction treatment facility will do that to you.

I have returned (god damn it) with more addictions than I went in with. Turns out I am a Poly-Addicted Person as opposed to ‘just’ an alcoholic. I know. Go me. I have also (you’ll be pleased to hear) acquired lots of new skills and ideas, a twenty a day Marlborough Red habit (what, WHAT? It’s better than drinking) – and some brand new jokes. Ahem. Wait for it…

Q: How many old gits doped up to the eyeballs on Librium does it take to insert one bloody seat belt?

A: Quite a bloody few.

Hmm. I think perhaps you had to be there. I laughed like a drain, which wasn’t very kind really, but what can I say? You had to take your kicks where you could get ‘em in that place.

But seriously. Now I am home, having changed on a fairly fundamental level I think, only to discover that everything else has remained the same. I don’t know what I expected. But deep internal shifts notwithstanding there is still the washing to do and the post to be opened and the weather to be discussed. And suddenly I am lost at sea. I can’t seem to adjust back to normal conversations. I mean non addicts discussing the weather? Why do they do that?

I am full of self pity, I know. Because I never asked to be an addict. And of course in an ideal world I wouldn’t be one. Oh poor me, poor me, (pour me another). Such a mountain I have to climb. Sometimes I just want to talk about the weather you know? Like normal people…

“Oooh yes, looks like rain this afternoon doesn’t it? No, no wine for me thank you, I’ve an early start tomorrow. As for any mainlining, snorting, or random sex with strangers, no I couldn’t possibly. But thanks all the same! Ta-ta for now – and don’t forget your umberella!”.

You see the thing is, this isn’t about drink or drugs or sex or gambling or anything else external. It’s about the illness that is addiction. And unfortunately addiction is an internal condition of which the substance of ones choice is merely a symptom.

I say unfortunately because if recovery was as simple as merely putting the substance down, us addicts would all be laughing. Because the majority of us can stop, for a time at least. I know I’ve stopped a million times. A trillion times. But we cannot stay stopped – even when it has become imperative that we do so – and it is this that separates the addicted from the so called ‘normal’ population.

The story goes something like this: The addict begins to use his or her substance of choice to cope with life because they find life – for whatever reason – to be intolerable. The substance makes things bearable until the consequences of indulging become intolerable in themselves. The addict is then stuck between a rock and a hard place. Continuing in active addiction has become too painful and obviously unsustainable, however life without the substance is still just as intolerable as it ever was (perhaps even more so due to the consequences of active addiction) and so to just give up and face things sober is unbearable also. There appears to be no acceptable solution.

So what is to be done you may well ask?

Well, what I now believe is that in order to survive and achieve any sort of long term meaningful and contented recovery, we have to learn how to think, feel, and therefore behave differently. We addicts literally need to re-learn how to live. In other words we need a new programme for life. Our old ways of being and thinking have failed us and led us repeatedly to disaster. We have shown ourselves unable to handle life on lifes terms. And so we must change on a fundamental level. We must question everything we once thought we knew. We must accept our powerlessness over our addiction and *most importantly become willing to believe that there is then a power greater than ourselves that can guide us and restore us to sanity*.

Now when I first heard that solution I said what any self respecting newbie recovering addict might. I said:

“FUCK THAT, NO WAY, YOU BIG BUNCH OF CRAZYS!”

I’ve since calmed down a smidgeon, but still… that’s a tall fucking order man, to change completely. And the truth is that most of us don’t make it. We die. We are killed by the poisons we put into our body. We are killed in accidents resulting from our intoxication (which almost happened to me). We commit suicide because we cannot live with or without the substances to which we are addicted.

But. And it’s a BIG BUT. Recovery is there for anyone who wishes to grab it with both hands and take the action necessary to achieve it. Any of us can choose to take that leap of faith at any point.

And you know what? I’m taking it. I’m leaping.

Because I want to live.

P.S. Here are some links anyone affected by this post may find helpful:

   Narcotics Anonymous

Cocaine Anonymous

Spiritual River To Recovery

Find a Rehab Online

P.P.S. Fuck, maybe now I’m sober I’ll even be able to construct proper sentences that don’t start with ‘Because’ and ‘And’. Here’s hoping eh.

*For those people reading this who wish to recover from their alcoholism and/or addiction, but who are put off by the religious undertones of the twelve steps – I hear you. That was me too. I have always identified as an atheist and I initially found that element of the programme really difficult. But coming to believe in a power greater than yourself doesn’t have to have anything to do with religion, I promise. It’s a spiritual concept and open to personal interpretation. Trust me, if I can work a twelve step programme, anyone can!* 

I wish I was a vicars wife

Or at least how I imagine one to be

With a little floral pinny

And an endless pot of tea

I’d sit on all the committees

And smile benevolently

And every year I’d win first prize

For my quince and courgette chutney

I’d have sensible hair and angelic kids, and I’d never once say Fuck in public

I’d polish my staunch moral code til it shone, while basking in all things domestic

I’d day dream of ways in which one could save the hopeless and hellbound heretic

And I’d smile and I’d sigh and I’d feel sorely blessed, for a life so damn near to perfect.

Oh I wish I was a vicars wife

At least how I imagine one to be

With my ladylike glass of something

At the vicars party tea.

I’d just drink on special occasions

My limit would be three

And I’d go home with all my pride in tact

Plus my knickers still where they should be.

I’d never obsess about how to get paraletic with nobody knowing

Wouldn’t hide in my house with the phone off the hook, before passing out full of self loathing

Wouldn’t drink wine for breakfast and not go to work, always terrified of facing others

And I wouldn’t drive straight into lorries, damn near robbing my kids of a mother.

Last night I watched a film on BBC3 entitled: Me Facing Life – Cyntoia’s story.

Made by producer/director Daniel H Birman, it tells a harrowing tale of the life of a sixteen year old girl from Tennessee who came to be found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to a life time in prison.

Cyntoia Brown had never sought to deny that she had shot and killed her 43 year old male victim. She is shown in her first police interviews looking weary and confused, her curly black hair scraped back from her face in a ponytail. There is no solicitor or any kind of representative present. She looks closer to twelve than sixteen.

We are shown snippets of her in court, and also in interviews with forensic psychiatrist, Doctor William Bernet, recounting past events from her life and the circumstances leading up to her crime. Again her tone seems weary, occasionally angry, but often deadpan as she recounts horrific stories of physical and emotional abuse, and of rape and forced prostitution.

Cyntoia had been living in a hotel with an extremely violent and sexually abusive man named ‘Cut’ who would often force her out onto the streets in order to “get money.” She left the hotel on a summer evening in 2004 with the intention of hitching a ride to the local red-light district, when a 43 year old man pulled up alongside her in a truck and enquired as to “how much?” After a degree of haggling, a price of 150 dollars was agreed upon and, despite Cyntoia’s suggestion they go back to her hotel – which was after all just down the road – the man insisted on taking her instead to his home.

Cyntoia recalled being frightened by his talk of how he was an expert marksman who owned many guns and had spent time in the army. He had seemed angry at women too, telling her bitterly that they only ever wanted him for his money. She is shown in court attempting to describe the lead up to the shooting, her often expressionless face suddenly showing uncomfortable and scared as she tries to articulate quite why she had felt so threatened. “Because he discussed guns and being in the army?” the prosecution lawyer asks incredulously. “And the way he was acting” comes the reply.

According to Cyntoia she had eaten some food and watched some television at the mans house before telling him she was tired and needed to sleep. They went into the bedroom, he undressed, and once in bed grabbed her violently between the legs whilst looking at her, “with a real fierce look on his face.” He then turned over with his back to her, appearing to reach for something. Convinced he was reaching for a gun and that he meant to harm her, Cyntoia grabbed a firearm out of her bag – given to her by Cut for protection – and shot him in the back of the head. Terrified of returning to her pimp empty handed, she then grabbed two guns from the mans house and sped away as fast as she could in his truck.

Despite her tender years, Cyntoia Brown was tried as an adult and found guilty of first degree murder, felony murder, and aggravated robbery. She was sentenced to a minimum of fifty one years in prison.

Her story broke my heart, not least because she is clearly an extremely bright and articulate young woman whose future may now be entirely laid to waste, but also because all through the film you are continually struck by a horrible sense of inevitability – a terrible feeling that all along, history was simply grinding inexorably on, intent on repeating itself.

Cyntoia’s biological mother, herself drug addicted and with a history of working as a prostitute, was unable to care for Cyntoia and gave her up informally to a local family when she was just a baby. Still only in her early thirties when her daughter is first arrested for murder, she is shown at her trial sitting anxiously in the courtroom, a tattoo spelling out the word suicide in delicate caligraphy across her right upper arm. As a girl she had witnessed a relative shoot themselves right in front of her. Many female relatives had committed or attempted suicide. Her own mother - Cyntoia’s grandmother – has her own story to tell, and speaks of a pregnancy as having resulted from a violent rape perpetrated by a local thug at the instigation of her own husband. A dreadful history of sexual abuse and mental illness runs back at least three generations through Cyntoia’s biological family, perhaps giving some genetic clue as to why she herself was diagnosed as suffering with a personality disorder while still a child.

As far as social background is concerned, Cyntoia’s adoptive mother seems to have been committed to her care, however her husband was known to be physically abusive, both towards her and Cyntoia. At the age of twelve Cyntoia disclosed to a member of staff at her school that he had also raped her. She later withdrew the allegation and continues to maintain to this day that it was never true, but her adoptive mother (who is now divorced) has since stated that she has never been fully able to discount the possibility.

Certainly Cyntoia was an extremely distressed and traumatised child. As she approached her teenage years she began to commit petty crimes, display violent tendencies and experiment with drugs. As she got older she would disappear from home for days on end, and in the months leading up to the shooting she was victim to multiple acts of sexual violence, at one point being drugged and raped over a period of two days in a motel room by a local drug dealer.

One can easily see how a young girl subjected to such atrocities might assume the man who had picked her up in his truck and taken her to his home might mean to harm her. But none of Cyntoia’s history was ever revealed in court. Dr William Bernet, the forensic psychiatrist to whom she had told her life story, was never asked to testify. The jury never got to hear any of the wider context in which her crime was committed. As far as they were concerned, the shooting had occurred in a vacuum. The prosecution then went on to portray the victim as a good samaritan whose only wish had been to help Cyntoia, despite the fact that he had been found naked in the bed and a witness had also come forward to give evidence that he had once raped her. In such circumstances a guilty verdict was always going to follow.

Cyntoia Brown’s case is to be reviewed in the Autumn, and I for one hope very much that she is finally given the shot she deserves at living a free and productive life. One notices throughout the film that shots of her in prison often show her writing, and at the very end we get to hear her read out some of her thoughts regarding her life sentence and what it might mean in terms of her future. Her obvious writing talent and philosophical display of magnanimity belie her years. I hope that a system which failed her utterly in the first place does not compound its failings by letting the whole of the rest of her life go to waste.

Yeah yeah so I have a confession to make.

But before we begin, may I suggest that if you’re not a fan of being in receipt of too much information you click away right about now…

Still with me?

Ok. So I once went for a Brazilian wax. I know. What can I say? I was curious, a friend had shared a rather, um, compelling reason as to why it might be a very good idea, I was due a trip away with a new man, and I am no more immune to social pressures than anyone else, so to my eternal shame I indulged my inner lemming and booked an appointment at the local beauty salon.

Fucking hell. NEVER AGAIN.

Talking purely in terms of sheer unpleasantness it is right up there on a level with cervical smears and persistent thrush. For a start it is horribly undignified. One is required to remove their underwear in front of a total stranger (in my case a very brisk looking woman in her mid-fifties), don strange paper knickers that look as though they belong in a psychiatric institution, and lie down on what looks like a thin hospital bed while said total stranger moves said paper knickers this way and that in order that they might better access your most intimate parts and smear hot wax on them. Comfortable it is not. I shudder to my very depths just thinking about it. And not in a good way.

Then of course there is the pain. I had been advised to take two paracetamol an hour before my appointment. A bottle of whisky may, on reflection, have been a better option. It is a shocking sort of pain. A tearing. One that makes you gasp, breathless, your mouth gaping open to form a traumatised O. Pubic hair is not designed to be ripped out at the roots. In fact I’m rather surprised that imaginative dictators the world over have not co-opted the ‘intimate wax’ as a particularly nasty form of torture.

Lastly, we have the resultant look. Odd, like a plucked and strangely juvenile chicken. Like a mannequin. As though I were made of plastic, the normal boundaries and demarcations of my body had become blurred and the woman staring back from my mirror looked unreal. Like a sexless doll. A blank.

And in that moment, I felt suddenly ridiculous. Why had I done this to myself? Why did we do this to ourselves? I had spent what was hardly an insignificant amount of money, only to be embarrassed and physically hurt, and for what?

I never did go on my weekend away.

But the whole episode has made me think a little deeper about the trend for pubic hair removal. And I have come to wonder – if we are prepared to put ourselves through that – whether there is anything that women will not do for male approval. Do we really covet male desire to the extent that we will torture and degrade ourselves in a bid to elicit it? And if so, is it any wonder that a proportion of men view us so contemptuously? If the pornographic industry, and therefore men, decided on a whim that it was desirable and attractive for women to begin having enemas in public, would we all do that too?

I imagine interviews being conducted with famous actresses and models declaring how liberating they found having a public enema. How much cleaner and fresher they felt afterwards. How it made them feel sexy and empowered. Entire industries could spring up around the administering of such public colonic irrigations. Women would be filmed on the news queueing to get theirs done, giggling nervously in anticipation with their friends. Enema parties would become popular for hen nights. Nuts magazine would run articles stating that modern men were now refusing to date women who had not been recently flushed, and giving advice to their readers as to how they might go about “sensitively” persuading a reluctant girlfriend to give it a try. Marie Clare would run articles stating that truly free thinking, open minded women should guard against simply dismissing the idea of public flushing out of hand, especially if they expected to be able to hold their mans interest for any length of time.

You can call me ridiculous and say that it all boils down to personal choice. But it doesn’t. Because personal choices are not ever made in a vacuum. Context is everything. Do we imagine great swathes of women would “choose” to have their pubic hair painfully ripped out at the roots if bare vaginas had never featured in pornography, and men claimed to find them disgusting? No. Of course not. Are huge numbers of men to be found spending their hard earned cash on humiliating and painful procedures in the vain hope that we women might deign to give them a few crumbs of our attention? No! Men are far too busy pursuing their own goals to devalue themselves en masse in such a way.

The main point I’m trying to make is that we don’t have to do this. We can say no. Just no. No, we won’t have our pubic hair pulled out, because it is unpleasant and we’ve better things to spend our time and money on. No, we won’t be subservient to male ideas of how we should groom and decorate ourselves. No, we don’t care if you won’t sleep with us or marry us as a result – if you want a woman who looks as though she is made of plastic, go buy yourself a blow-up doll.

Women of the world, hear my call. When it comes to wax, just say no.

So I am going to start this post with a confession. I haven’t actually finished reading Fifty shades of grey yet. No indeed, there is a small part of that particular experience still left for me to savour. I’ve probably read enough though, to be frank… And yet…

I mean please don’t get me wrong; it’s awful. As in properly awful. I always feel faintly embarrassed whenever I read it – not because I’m nuts deep, so to speak, in a ‘mucky boook’ as I like to imagine my Scouse mother in law (if I had one) might call it – but because the writing is so mortifyingly bad, so unimaginative and ridden with cliche, that I’m never quite sure whether to laugh or cry.

And yet… having said all that, I can’t put the buggering thing down.

The plot of course has been done to death: young, naive, mousy virgin falls for powerful, handsome, ‘brooding’ man, and a darkly flavoured relationship develops. It follows very much in the tradition of mainstream romantic fiction in that respect, and certainly the sado masochistic sexual power-play between the submissive ‘Ana’ and the dominant ‘Christian’ seems often in the book to play second fiddle to the examination of the relationship dynamics as a whole. In other words, for a novel deemed to be pornographic, there could have been far more fucking in my humble opinion.

The sex scenes that do exist however, are nothing short of hilarious. One wonders at times if the book can really have been written by a woman. We are, for example, expected to suspend our disbelief and just roll with the idea that a virgin who has never so much as masturbated herself to orgasm, achieves her first ever climax as a result of having her nipple sucked for all of three seconds. Also that whilst administering her first ever blow-job she discovers she is, conveniently, sans gag reflex and so can effectively deep throat with the best of ‘em.

Call me cynical if you like (shrugs), but it just seems unlikely to me.

Nevertheless, despite a main female character who habitually uses exclamations such as, “holy cow!” and, “Oh my” with a straight face, and insists on repeatedly channeling her “inner goddess” for fucks sake – plus a deeply unconvincing male dom who I personally find a bit wet – there is something about Fifty Shades of Grey. It’s a page turner, pure and simple. The Dan Brown of the romantic/erotic fiction world. A guilty pleasure like Chris de Burgh (um that was a joke.)

So would I ultimately recommend Fifty Shades of Grey? Yes, despite everything, I would. It’s very easy to read, pure escapist, often unintentionally funny, nonsense. And so far I’ve rather enjoyed it. So sue me.