I Don't Want Your Life

Out of the Races and Onto the Tracks

2010-07-18T14:12:00.008-04:00

"I can see you're a very happy girl!', Chimi exclaimed as she kneeled before me, rolling up the legs of my sweatpants and applying industrial strength paste to my skin. It took about forty minutes to get the barrage of wires and corresponding electrodes attached to my head, chest, ears, eyes and nose at the Sleep & Alertness Clinic (750 Dundas Street West, Suite 2-221, Toronto, Ontario).

As my Night Nurse shimmied from my left side to my right, lacing up wires in denominations of red, yellow and blue the 'Mission Impossible' theme inevitably ran through my head as I felt like a hostage situation gone wrong. Despite this being Chimi's full-time gig, she was not the slightest bit graceful or gentle as she swung the cords fastened to my body around like a rhythmic gymnast doing a floor routine on too many steroids, repeatedly knocking them off her desk and onto the ground.

Having spent most of my third year at the University of Toronto unconscious in redundant lectures on the intersection of race, class and gender or hopped up on prescription stimulants, my psychiatrist, exasperated after four years of trying to help me out of my permanent, low-functioning state, thought it would be in our best interest that I undergo a two day and two night all expenses paid trip to the Sleep & Alertness Clinic. My next-door neighbor on Night One was an obese woman ranging anywhere from 45-60 years of age, with scraggly grey hair. Before she fell asleep at 9 pm she kept moaning, 'Oh my God, I'm so tired' from her bedroom, less than 1 foot away from where I was quarantined. She would later awake me from my slumber some hours later by running out of her room and screaming 'I'm bleeding!', though it was never confirmed or denied if this was in fact a true statement or the consequence of a night terror as she was quickly ushered out of the clinic at the ass crack of dawn.

The only set of instructions I was given before I was put to bed at 10:30 pm like a colicky baby was not to get my wires wet under any circumstances or they would no longer be able to conduct the study. Thankfully, to prevent this sort of mishap, Chimi hastily scrunched up the 30+ mini wires and shoved them into my own personal pencil case that I got to wear strapped around my neck at all times. Chimi says it's better to be happy than 'seri', her abbreviation of the word serious, though it is hard to remain happy at the Sleep & Alertness Clinic for a solid 48 hours.

My parents had offered to drive me across town for my 8:30 pm check-in time at the clinic but a pay phone call an hour before our scheduled departure time, Mother alerted me that this would not be feasible. My parents were detained at the racetrack by a drunk driving accident, caused by my father.

Seemingly, Dave had too much to drink as per usual and collided into a bus full of veterans out on a day trip from Sunnybrook Hospital before my parents even made it out of the parking lot. After blaming my Mother for this misstep and allegedly mumbling 'if I had a noose right now, I would strangle you' in her direction, the nurse on duty emerged from the banged up bus and announced 'do you realize you just hit a bus full of veterans?' to which my father shouted back, 'I don't fucking care about that! I have to drive my daughter to a sleep study!'

After processing this information, direct quotes and all whilst last-minute packing my toothbrush and back issues of Rolling Stone from 1998 for my getaway, I was stunned to see my parents with shit eating grins plastered across their faces waiting for me by reception when I arrived at the clinic after my hour long Sunday commute.

My father greeted me with 'Hi, Sweets', a term of endearment that I asked him to refrain from calling me at the age of nine and I responded with 'you disgust me'. His eyes glazed over and I couldn't tell if that was from his high blood/alcohol level or if I had actually hurt him. In my lifetime, my father has only cried in front of me once, when he found out that Michael Hutchence of INXS had been found dead in a hotel room in 1997. I remember eating my cereal in the kitchen that morning while my father, completely choked up, attempted to read the news from The Toronto Sun, the local tabloid style paper that only requires a fourth grade education to understand. From that point on, any time 'Never Tear Us Apart' would play on the radio, my father would announce it was 'the greatest song ever written' and consequently, I want it to set the backdrop for the traditional father/daughter dance at my future wedding if he's still alive or fortunate enough to even be invited to this enchanted event.

Dave graciously handed me a crisp $20 bill out of his pre-accident winnings from the Queen's Plate and announced it was 'Tim Hortons money' for the coffee I wouldn't be allowed to drink for two days. Thankfully, I wasn't allotted enough time to be upset over the fact that my father had narrowly escaped jail time for the third time in his life for driving under the influence because Chimi whisked me away to my new bedroom and attached something to my thumb, my biggest finger, before forcing me to lie down.

She ran into the control center and through the PA system instructed me to blink my eyes, grind my teeth, snore, kick my legs and 'move my belly'. My belly-moving abilities were not up to her standards and so she demanded 'BIGGER! FASTER!' through the crackly speakers. I laughed so hard at this request that I shook with laughter and began tearing. My tears soaked through the pieces of tape underneath my eyes, holding a set of electrodes in place.

I was awoken the following day to 'Good morning, you dreamed!' in Chimi's cheeriest 8 year old girl voice before she yanked the tube out of my nose and ripped the thick strips of masking tape away with reckless abandon, like a painful wax job. At that point we realized I was either allergic to tape, paste, copious amounts of rubbing alcohol or a combo platter of all three and so my dressings had to be modified to not irritate the red, blotchy patches of skin that remained until my stint at the clinic was over.

It was outlined on the set of preparatory instructions for life at the Sleep & Alertness Clinic that you are encouraged to walk around outside and interact with the other patients. The first part is a lie, I was denied access to the outside world during the entirety of my stay. And the only opportunity I had to 'interact' with another patient was when a deaf man and his interpreter barged into my TV lounge during the last leg of the all-day Intervention marathon on A&E I had been diligently watching all day. The deaf guy and his interpreter sat on either side of me on the couch and proceeded to smack their gums as they mouthed words to each other in an over exaggerated fashion accompanied by what resembled instinctual ape-like beating of their chests, which I know is actually excerpts from the American Sign Language. The minute I left the room to be suited up for round II of torture in my hyperbolic sleeping chamber, the deafie or his helper changed the channel to Treehouse, the only type of programming the hearing impaired can understand without closed captions, apparently.

Six weeks later I was summoned back to the Clinic in order to receive my results and I learned that I wake up approximately 11 times per hour, whatever that actually means. To rectify this issue I have been prescribed the same brand of sleeping pills that my mother is too afraid to self-administer in the off chance she overdoses and never wakes up.

A Beary Good Story

2010-06-27T18:32:00.002-04:00

The year was 1991. I was four years old, 'Trompe le Monde', the Pixies last (but certainly not least) studio album was released that September and by the end of the year, my maternal grandmother, St. Monica, would be dead. My mother would pick me up from afternoon kindergarten every day in our red, 1987 Pontiac Tempest, and we would ride over to the oncology wing at Princess Margaret hospital, only stopping to pick up one large coffee and one 'Hawaiian' donut from Country Style along the way.

At age four I would pen my first short story, 'A Beary Good Story', transcribed by my interpreter/kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Childs, as my printing skills never properly developed. I can't say for sure whether or not this children's tale was written before or after The Change (Life After Monica: 12/12/91), but regardless, I seemed to already be a morbid child and it is still To Be Determined whether spending hours of my young life in hospital, running ragged down the corridors, fishing for treats out of vending machines, consoling my mother as she wept, pre-heating the in-car lighter for her round the clock chain smoking, hassling nurses or attending my first funeral with Baby Blanket in hand had any impact on my personality development.

While my classmates probably wrote about a quaint teddy bear picnic, I chose to exercise my flair for the dramatic and craft a vignette about a teddy bear jewel heist.

The Cardigans' Gran Turismo: Revisited

2010-06-16T01:13:00.009-04:00

As a bit of a reclusive tween, Tuesdays were always the most important day of my week as they were denoted 'New Release Days' in North America. Since I was born an Only Child to an Only Child, I was treated many of these Tuesdays to a new album or two without much arm twisting on my part. However, on one very important album release day of my youth, (11/03/98), I was stuck in a log cabin in an isolated part of rural Ontario, in a week long Wilderness Education program with my sixth grade class.

When you're first starting to learn the intricate details of human reproduction from a thirty minute a week Sex Education class with your giggly peers, it's important to take the opportunity to spread your wings and get your first real taste of 'independence' by 'experiencing nature' and playing Predator/Prey somewhere on the outskirts of city life. For my classmates and I, this happened at Lake St. George, not to be confused with Camp Kearney, where every other school went. As I imagine my elementary school must still be paying out of their ass for the drastic demolition and re-building that occurred when I was exiting first grade, as a result, everything we did as a school was both low budget and low culture, which was conveniently, the sort of lifestyle I became accustomed to growing up with my parents. There are exactly two pivotal moments that occurred within the last ten years wherein everyone remembers exactly what they were doing when the news broke, 9/11 (Never Forget) and Michael Jackson's untimely demise (Too Soon). While I was sitting in 9th grade 'enriched' geography class during the former, both of my parents decided it was in their best interest to ditch work that day to hit up the slot machines at Casino Rama. While they were being enthralled by the neon glow of the 'Blazing 7s', New York City was incendiary.

Gran Turismo, the Cardigans follow-up LP to the very poppy and accessible First Band on the Moon proudly holds a permanent spot on my Most Underrated Albums Ever shelf. While nearly everyone from my generation can at least hum along to 'Lovefool', I am often hard-pressed to find someone who appreciates the first single, 'My Favourite Game', from their most acclaimed album, to the same degree. This is probably the case because the leading track is quite a bit darker in comparison to past releases/the booty shaking beats were probably a little too 'fresh' for a year dominated by boy bands and I can say with confidence that the Thelma & Louise inspired music video was played less than five times on Canadian and American Music Television, combined.

Before departing for my first ever overnight stay away from my parents, I gave Mother explicit instructions as she was packing my oversized duffel bag with extra pairs of underwear and prescription nasal spray to pick up a copy of the album on its official release day, a promise she made good on. Unfortunately, not only was my Outdoor Education excursion overshadowed by Gran Turismo's release, it was also spoiled by puberty.

I opted not to shower at all during my entire five day stay at Lake St. George, which was a slightly bold, out of character move for me as I had begun slathering Lady Speed Stick under my pits in the third grade. That same year I also noticed coarse pubic hair growing in sparsely as I sat in my family's decrepit bathtub one evening. The amount of time I spent soaking in my own filth rapidly decreased after that moment, not because of my sudden growth spurt, but because the bathroom was nearly 40 years old at the time and slabs of the pale green tile wall would come loose and plunk into the water, startlingly me every time I was beginning to work up a good lather with unscented bar soap (I have sensitive skin).

I couldn't bring myself to enter the communal shower with the girls I had grown up with since kindergarten. I felt like it would be towing the line of a potential security breach if I hopped in there with them, so instead, I resigned myself to sweating/stinking the Wilderness Week out, thinking it would always be Better To Be Safe Than Sorry.

The members of my class were asked to acquire a one subject, spiral notebook in preparation for the trip so we would have ample space to record our observations as we became One With Nature. I'm not sure if my peers were utilizing their notebooks to describe the foliage or express their homesickness (2 of the boys on the trip bailed early on account of missing their mothers too much), but I only wrote one line during my confinement up North.

It was just before lights out one evening and one of my 'roommates' for the week had just come back from hitting the showers and was only sporting a beach towel around her budding, pubescent body. At the time, I thought this spectacle before me was absolutely breathtaking and so I scrawled with my HB pencil, 'if I were a boy, I would have a boner right now'.

It wasn't enough that I had to scathe a brand new notebook with this closeted tween lesbian sentiment, but I had to leave my mark on the very first page. Eager to get home and crank Gran Turismo on my portable CD player, I absentmindedly neglected to rip out and dispose of that torrid diary entry before my mother unpacked my bag and read it.

This wasn't the easiest subject to broach at 11 years old. "What do you mean, 'you'd have a boner'?" she asked me from across our kitchen table. I tried to hide from her gaze by sinking down in my seat and attempting to obscure my face behind the garish centerpiece comprised of artificial flowers. If memory serves, I started tearing to avoid delving any deeper into that mortifying unchartered territory. Mother relented but still acted totally shocked when I officially came out to her at the age of seventeen.

We were sitting in our dank basement with the 11 o'clock news on only to fill the silence in between my heaving sobs. At this point, I had recently dropped out of high school (for the second time), and I was wearing the same oversized, oatmeal colored men's long sleeve, waffle knit t-shirt day in and day out, going on two weeks. The anchor announced while I was in mid-sob that Hunter S. Thompson had been found dead in his home, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. This type of 'breaking news' made me wail even more violently and it was this most opportune moment I chose to tell my mother her only daughter was a lesbian.

In retrospect I'm not sure why Thompson's suicide upset me to that magnitude. I had read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas the previous summer but it had failed to leave any sort of profound impact on me. Mother very calmly and kindly tried to explain to me that I was not gay, just confused, and no wonder - I had a pretty major, debilitating chemical imbalance going on upstairs and already, more than two antidepressants hadn't worked their healing magic on me. I believed her at the time but her reassurance still didn't prevent me from my introduction to religious fanaticism: repetitively praying in the shower every morning to be straight like everyone else.

At eighteen, I met my first girlfriend and promptly stopped praying. I would come out to Mother again, this time with more certainty. The only difference being that on this occasion, it was her who sobbed all night alone in her bed.

IDWYL is the new FML

2010-06-06T17:29:00.007-04:00

The first time I kissed a man and admittedly, liked it, I was nineteen, manic and dressed like a low-grade Annie Lennox impersonator at an 80s themed college party. After I got my fix of table dancing for the evening, I exited to the backyard for some fresh air and that was the moment I first saw him.

He had artful stubble and was wearing a snug, novelty 'Free Winona' t-shirt. In my haze I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was about him that was so compelling but there was an unmistakable churning in my gut that said '[he] feels like home to me', to quote Canadian hero, Chantal Kreviazuk.

After a few minutes of conversing and juggling my 40 of 7.1% alc/vol. beer from hand to hand before the python girth of the bottle would slip out of my baby sized fists, I learned that he felt so safe and familiar because his mother was also bipolar.

He began recounting to me one of his mother's episodes in which she was having repetitive, intrusive thoughts that spores were growing inside of her face. Eventually this paranoia became so all-encompassing that she took a knife to her own flesh and 'removed' them herself. This was truly one of the only instances I've ever had the license to say to anyone, I Don't Want Your Life, so I said it the only way I knew how at the time: with my mouth on his in a sloppy, maniacal kiss.

For a few years after this encounter I regretted not going home with him that night, either out of curiosity or because I felt a little inaccessible the time I was referred to as a 'gold star lesbian'. It's probably fair to assume that the only time it would have been feasible for me to engage in the thrills/agony of PIV would be while undergoing a debilitating chemical imbalance. In my 'right mind', whatever that means, I would never have allowed myself to 'go there' with a man. My vaginal canal is so tiny the only thing I can safely fit up there is a gummy bear.

What was your definitive IDWYL moment? Knowing me personally or reading this blog doesn't count, sorry.

'I boo-booed. Everybody makes mistakes. Nobody's perfect... except Mom'

2010-06-04T09:33:00.009-04:00

Sometimes when my father speaks to me I feel like I'm in Angela's Ashes. And I do mean the film adaptation because God knows the Irish aren't a literate people. My father immigrated to Canada well over 35 years ago but his brogue remains incredibly bawdy and potent and consequently, he cannot pronounce anything with a soft 'th' sound (i.e. Nathan Lane), the words 'feces', 'prostate' or the name of his wife of 32 years.

A few winters ago I was sporting my father's Celtic Football Club scarf that he picked up for free as some sort of pity prize as a runner-up in a Win a Trip for 2 to Dublin! contest. Every time I would wrap it around my neck before leaving the house he would stop me at the door to give the same incoherent lecture: 'you have to be careful wearing that in certain parts of the city because if a Protestant saw that and didn't like it, he could beat you up'. Thanks for your concern, Dad, but in reality, I am more often persecuted for being read as 'visibly queer' rather than for my Irish heritage.

Due to the unfortunate combo platter comprised of my genetic makeup, short stature, baby face and the fact that I have grown from a tomboy into a lesbian, I never had a chance, basically. I understand I have agency in how I choose to manage my appearance but, let's face it: I'm An Ugly Girl. By some lesbian beauty standards, I guess I would weigh-in as average, but I've never been Top 5 material. I have the neck of a football player on steroids, a ladystache that still persists after seven rounds of laser hair removal at $200 a pop and residual acne scars caused from four years of Lithium treatment. The times that I have worn makeup in my life have always been met with the same response: 'you look like a drag queen'.

It's because of how I look that makes it okay that I've been gay bashed on more than a few occasions. I must have deserved to have pieces of trash picked up off the floor of that subway car and hurled at the back of my head to a raucous chorus of 'faggot'. I know I deserved my mother's initial reaction when I told her as soon as I made it home, 'maybe that wouldn't happen to you if you would shave your legs'. And it would be inevitable that my father would call up the employees only Toronto Transit Commission phone number to report that six men in their early twenties had encircled his only child and thrown garbage at her. Only he would omit the key element - the hate speech, because he was 'embarrassed' to tell his former co-workers that his daughter is gay.

Despite having enough seniority to refuse shifts, my father deliberately chose to work Christmas morning year after year with the TTC to escape from my mother's marathon crying sessions. Instead of listening to traditional Christmas carols, like 'Silent Night' or even 'Jingle Bell Rock', we listened to 'Unforgettable', a duet between Nat King Cole and his daughter Natalie on repeat for hours after I finished opening up my presents from Santa. It was understood that this song represented paying our respects to her late mother, my late grandmother. This ritual was repeated back-to-back for so many years that eventually the vinyl not only warped but our Zenith stereo cabinet from the 1970s also deteriorated from frequent use. To this day I can't listen to that song without crying as I was socialized to believe that was the only acceptable response.

I wasn't dating Nick Rhodes, I wasn't dating Roger Taylor, I wasn't dating John Taylor, I wasn't dating Andy Taylor, I wasn't dating Simon Le Bon

2010-06-03T11:13:00.006-04:00

One of the most eerie songs composed in the last century is Duran Duran's 'The Chauffeur'. When I caught their Toronto performance in December 2008 at the Air Canada Centre, they neglected to play it, much to my chagrin. Instead, they opted for for more upbeat, accessible, radio-friendly tunes that have brought them moderate success over the duration of their career such as 'Rio', 'Girls on Film', and of course, 'Hungry like the Wolf'. I suspect this is the case because 'the Chauffeur' is so creepy it probably gives Simon Le Bon night terrors.

The Air Canada Centre is Toronto's largest venue and is most often reserved for professional sporting events. I don't particularly like sporting events. Not because I lack a 'feel for the game' but because they bring back jarring memories of the time my father won a purple 1998 Ford Windstar minivan on live television at a Toronto Raptors game. I sat court side, watching this spectacle unfold and desperately wishing to be pummeled to death by the entourage of security guards belonging to Corey Hart of 'Sunglasses at Night' fame, who were sitting directly in the row in front of me.

Duran Duran could not even sell out half of the stadium. Make no mistake, I did not purchase my pair of tickets either. Though I'm only 22, I grew up listening to local radio 24/7, due to my father's rampant OCD and one of my favorite programs was always 'the lost 80s lunch', an all request hour, which was where I was inundated with my own personal Ongoing History of New Music [to me].

It was my father, resident contest champion, swindler, con man and the one who truly brings new meaning to the expression, 'bullshit baffles brains', who won these tickets and happily passed them along to me, on the condition that I would print off some contest release forms for him as he is 'not a techie person'.

Le Bon and the unrelated trio of Taylors were promoting their most recent release, 2007's Red Carpet Massacre which bears close resemblance to the title of Perez Hilton's first publication, Red Carpet Suicide. Duran Duran, however, have not been 'relevant' in years and probably haven't stepped foot on a red carpet in just as long so I really doubt that at this point in their washed up career they still have the ability to 'tear it up' to massacre-like proportions.

The highlight of that evening was the security guard who performed my regulatory bag check upon entering the building. I had my overpriced headphones slung around my neck and he asked me if I was a DJ. Flattered as I was, I have no DJ experience, save my exemplary tendencies to properly 'rock' an iTunes playlist.

Back in fall 2006, when I was briefly living in Montreal and manic, I was having delusions of grandeur and believed I had legitimate DJ skills. I pursued this endeavor feverishly until I landed two gigs, despite not even having 'a pot to piss in', let alone equipment of any kind. Fortunately, my mother retrieved me from MTL before my tragic debut and promptly introduced me to her Alma Mater, Lithium Carbonate. My moniker would have been DJ Manic! at the Disco.

I'm not drinking any more, but I'm not drinking any less

2010-05-18T07:06:00.006-04:00

There are two conversations held every day in my home on a loop. The first is regarding the degree of freshness of two barbeque chickens, simultaneously on-the-go, sitting in the refrigerator. 'Is this the New Chicken or the Old Chicken?', my mother will ask before she prepares a sandwich, or what my father will grunt at me after he returns home from the night shift at his 'concierge' job. The second running dialogue involves my father's drinking habit. After he cracks open his third beer before four P.M., my mother will say, 'you're not drinking any more are you?' To which he will perennially respond, 'I'm not drinking any more, [pregnant pause] but I'm not drinking any less' and crack up laughing as if we haven't heard that line uttered repeatedly since he sprung for an early retirement three years ago.

Maybe it's because my teenage years were so disrupted by patches of illness that I tend to valorize any film or television depiction of what it's 'really' like to be a high school student. When I was a teenager I had to drop out of high school twice, spend forty days in an outpatient program for severely 'mentally ill youth' and two painstakingly long hours locked down in inpatient, before signing myself out 'against medical advice' out of complete and utter fear of my flat-mates in the youth psychiatry wing.

Many speak fondly of their first time experimenting with alcohol as an adolescent, even if it resulted in bed spins and projectile vomiting with their friends. My First Time involved consuming multiple coolers my father purchased for me, his daughter (a minor), and watching the first twenty minutes of the movie Mad Love on the bastardized, Canadian version of the Disney Channel, better known as Family Channel. I would not make it through the rest of the movie, which was a fairly unrepresentative depiction of bipolar disorder, because I felt compelled to run from the basement, to the second storey of the house, screaming. My bipolar mother, who averages 1-3 hours of sleep per night, was predictably, already awake and leapt out of her bed, completely naked except for a pair of ladies Jockey briefs, snug across her FUPA. I can't recall much from the events that transpired afterward, but I will never forget the sight of my mother's breasts, swinging with abandon as she shot out of her bedroom to wrap her arms around me.

A true Irishman, my father saw nothing wrong with aiding and abetting his teenage daughter in her quest to shave a few years off her miserable life by plying her with kiwi-mango flavored alcohol. Compared to family drinking standards, I was already behind the learning curve. My father had his first taste of liquor at the age of five. He had been living with his aunt at the time because his mother was in hospital with 'tuberculosis' (read: receiving multiple rounds of electroshock therapy) when he happened to stumble upon a tiny bottle of whiskey, which he nursed until he fell asleep.

My parents thought that by chance, alcohol consumption could help to offset my out of whack brain chemistry, even though it serves primarily as a depressant. When our family physician prescribed me drugs earlier that year and told me he expected a recovery within eight weeks, I believed him. So, it was as much of a surprise to my parents once it really sunk in that there would be no 'recovery' period and they would spend the rest of their days caring for a dependent with career mental illness and 'hoping for the best'. I don't think it was poor parenting that lead to the serial purchases of cigarettes and booze or forbidding me to get my driver's license, thinking I was on 'too much medication' to get behind the wheel. It was some convoluted form of love.

Later, my father would earn the nickname 'whiskey nose' from his two best childhood friends. I would only come to learn of this moniker myself as for a moment in time, it was the password for his EZ Rock 97.3 FM online account and one morning, as I was answering the 'Daily Trivia' questions on his behalf, I made him explain the symbolism. While my father's old pals became architects and share a firm together in Dublin, my father is a glorified, part-time security guard, semi-functional alcoholic who resides with two generations of bipolar women. As much as I resent his daily intake of liquid hubris, the hundreds of times he's driven drunk and the equally as many times he has been banned from an establishment or shamed me publicly, I guess I can't really blame him. If your family winced when you opened your mouth to speak and you are still deluded enough to continue to ask your only child year after year if she will write an essay for a certain holiday themed contest entitled 'Why My Dad is the Greatest' and when she refuses, you write it yourself and forge her signature, your drinking problem is the least of your worries.

'Just want to get in a blisswave relationship with an authentic post-indie girl'

2010-05-12T03:59:00.018-04:00

As I was perusing Craigslist personal ads the other night (I'm Still Single FYI) I found myself paused on one specific post in the w4w section. An exasperated eighteen year old high school student expressed the sentiment "I just want to date a girl who likes good music for a change". To begin, I must ask how many broads were even 'open' and willing to 'date' you in high school? Are you some sort of lesbian savant? With ascribed Sullen Teen status under your belt, you really have not yet earned the right to be bitter over this issue, unlike certain other seasoned lesbians. Secondly, dating 'queer womyn' with 'good taste in music' is an impossible feat, unless, you define 'good' as any of the artists on the Lilith Fair tour past or present.

A few weeks ago I found myself in the presence of two couples. The first can only be described as Crazy In Love and the other, well, I just didn't 'get' them. The latter pair had brought along a little friend who was even more of a social anomaly. Because our presence as a collective third wheel was cramping the romantic vibes of both couples, I had no choice but to try to engage the other spare in conversation. From here on, let's call her Dum Dum Girl as I'm pretty sure if she were to ever stumble across this blog or acquire Internet access, she would not understand the reference.

As we're all meandering down the street to head to some glorified queer hole in the wall establishment, Dum Dum Girl appears to experience something resembling a psychotic break from reality and proceeds to burst into song and skip ahead of the rest of the pack. As she does this, her chartreuse corduroy jacket and matching beret (hiding an unironic mom haircut) seemed to twinkle under the rays of a nearby street lamp. Without any abashment, she began twirling and chanting the words to 'Beautiful Life' by Ace of Base. This behavior demarcated my one window of opportunity to really try to get through to this independent soul.

There are few people or things I am truly loyal to, so it is important to note I have pledged allegiance to Ace of Base ever since I got a copy of 'The Bridge' on cassette as a child. Not only are they one of the most successful Swedish pop acts of all time (sandwiched in-between ABBA and The Cardigans), their music is still 'culturally relevant' as exhibited in this blissed out cover of 'Don't Turn Around' by Candy Claws from last year.

Below is the conversation I had with Dum Dum Girl, verbatim, and it will become apparent by the end why I could no longer bear to talk to or make eye contact with her for the rest of the evening.

[Dum Dum Girl is still twirling and singing 'Beautiful Life' while no one pays attention except me]

Jonathon Moxon: They were really ahead of their time.
Dum Dum Girl: Who?
JM: Ace of Base? You were just singing 'Beautiful Life'?
DDG: Oh yeah? How were they ahead of their time?
JM: Because so many current electronic music acts are derivative of their sound.
DDG: Like Kraftwerk?
JM: Um, [trying not to laugh] Kraftwerk predate Ace of Base.
DDG: Oh. To be honest I've never actually listened to Kraftwerk.
JM [to herself]: No kidding.

Perhaps if Dum Dum Girl had chosen to belt out a different Ace of Base hit, things could have been different between us. Maybe I would have asked her out instead of systematically ignoring her. The thing is that the only Ace of Base song I happen to dislike is coincidentally, 'Beautiful Life', and only because of its pivotal role in the 1998 film, 'A Night at the Roxbury'. I loathe this film from watching it ad nauseam in elementary school as a form of babysitting in a diagnostic curriculum.

The 'school' I attended from kindergarten through 8th grade was in retrospect, breeding ground for bizarre behavior. Teachers frequently hooked up with lonely single parents. In music class, instead of singing, we were graded on our ability to prepare elaborate lip syncing routines (and when I say 'elaborate' I mean, one of my peers actually purchased a fog machine for one of his performances) and my decade spent at this place was topped off with a valediction speech, delivered by none other than your humble narrator. The principal said it was 'the best speech he'd heard in 25 years'. Clearly, he hadn't been listening. He was probably too busy staring down the cleavage of divorcees in low-cut sundresses to hear my vitriolic sense of humor developing at age 13. The speech was basically an inside joke - to myself. A large portion was dedicated to the most important thing I'd learned in history class that year. Canada's first prime minister, Sir John A. MacDonald (or JAM as I casually referred to him, as if we were old pals), had spent his time in office as a raging alcoholic. I finished off that portion with a direct quote from JAM himself, "I used to lay in bed with a bottle. Or two. Or three". Why I felt compelled to include this in my parting words of wisdom to the classmates I'd known since age 4, I have no idea. I am often resentful of the fact that not a single teacher ever picked up on my budding childhood bipolarity as there were plenty of red flags over the years but, as demonstrated, they couldn't even hold down a proper curriculum, let alone, recognize the signs of mental illness in their students.

In fact, it wouldn't be until tenth grade that a teacher would finally attempt to 'get through to me'. One day during 'enriched' science class, the teacher pulled me out in the hall to ask me if 'things were alright at home' and to inquire as to why I would always fall asleep at my lab post. This conversation would have been flattering if only the teacher didn't have a noticeable fetish for vulnerable young girls. I let him know I wasn't interested in his 'services' after he put his arm around me in a consoling manner and offered to 'work with me after school'. I had wanted a student-teacher relationship ever since I heard the words 'Mary Kay Letourneau' in 1997, but not with a man, and especially not with a man who announced to his class with laughter while conducting an experiment that 'Lithium is what crazy people take'. On a list of Top 100 pick-up lines to get into my pants, that doesn't even chart. It didn't help my cause that my lab partner was a boy who spent the hour long periods not talking to me, but drawing a series of portraits of me with a gun poised to my temple, blowing my brains out, all because I wouldn't go out with him. His favorite thing to ask me was, 'if I was Eddie Vedder, would you like me any better?', a line from the Local H song. If someone were to ask me that now, I would find this downright romantic, but in high school, the answer to this query was always a resounding 'no' as Pearl Jam were my least favorite band to emerge out of Seattle.

On par with the lip syncing competitions, another one of the alternative teaching methods the staff loved to pull in elementary school was 'Movie Day'. In fifth grade we were informed in our 'film studies' class that in school, only school board approved films could ever be screened. By seventh grade, we had burned through all of these approved films and had moved on to our teachers' personal collections. Enter 'A Night at the Roxbury'. To this day, I still believe Ace of Base's 'Beautiful Life' should have been listed in the end credits above both Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan as it is basically played on a loop the entire time and has more 'substance' than both of their performances combined.

Movie Days generally happened when it was 'too hot' to teach, despite that we were inside a newly constructed school with central air conditioning. It was during those sort of 'lessons' that I was introduced to movies like 'White Squall' (how homoerotic for elementary school), 'Drop Dead Fred' and our science teacher's favorite volume from the Indiana Jones series. However, I can't even describe what Indiana Jones looks like because I was unfortunately seated beside a developmentally handicapped boy, Ellery, during the film. Ellery spent the entire time lying face down and humping the carpeted floor. I was so fixated by this spectacle happening in front of all the students and Indiana Jones loving teachers that I missed the entire screening. Luckily, there was no Indiana Jones comprehension test afterward as I would have only been fit to describe what hips look like when gyrating through sweatpants. Once, in sixth grade, there was a Sarah Jessica Parker Before She Was Famous reading comprehension test. Instead of taking us to the theatre to experience 'culture' close-up, we learned the meaning of the term off-Broadway from a poorly written narrative about an actress none of us had yet to become familiar with.

The movie I have watched more times in a school setting (not counting 'Killing Us Softly 3', a film that must present the University of Toronto with monthly royalty checks as I've chuckled through it four times in three years of study) is Center Stage. For those who were not subjected to it year after year, Center Stage is a movie following a group of dance hopefuls in their first year at the American Ballet Academy. Every spring when it became time for our annual dance unit, we watched this film in preparation, as a warm-up to get limber for our rhythmless square dancing routines in the gymnasium. Early on in the film, one of the main dancers, 'Cooper Nielson', is seen stretching out his ripped body, wearing some pretty taut sweats that serve to accentuate his gigantic package. While it is adequate to say I have never been face to face with a penis 'in real life', even 12 year old me knew it couldn't possibly be that big on its own without the aid of at least two pairs of tube socks. And when this comically big cock came on screen, it never failed to elicit laughter, shrieking, and probably a few silent tears from the faint of heart or my Jehovah's Witness neighbor.

Those Who Can't Do, Blog

2010-05-08T21:24:00.016-04:00

Having intimate relations with someone for the first time, intentionally or otherwise, can be uncomfortable and a little nerve wracking. Too often the scene is set by a girl restlessly fiddling away on her MacBook, searching for the least offensive sound to fill the bedroom, hoping to create a certain 'ambience' for the upcoming, romantic experience. This loosely translates to Ani Difranco.

Despite years of practice, I'm still not good at faking - anything. My father started preparing me for all the ' bloody scammers' this life has to offer, when at the tender age of 7 he started honing my ability to deceive others. First on that father-daughter bonding agenda was learning how to play and win at poker. However, in all of our training sessions, we never did get around to mastering the quintessential 'poker face', which is actually a transferable skill away from a deck of cards and some folding chairs. Unfortunately, to this day, if I'm truly disgusted with you, I can't hide it. Instead, you'll see it written all over my face and in my body language. And if you happen to inform me of some 'shocking news', such as, it was actually your live-in ex-boyfriend who made the cinnamon buns we shared on our first 'date', or that this ex-boyfriend, is Ojibwe and used to sport a pink mohawk, based on experience, it's near impossible for me to fumble the appropriate face for the situation.

In one such instance, I was sitting on the edge of a different girl's tiny, childhood bed, regretting being in her presence. Her iTunes was set to shuffle and a Nathan Larson song began playing, which would be the first and last thing to impress me all evening.

Feeling queasy from her advances coming from the other side of the bed, and with an unmistakable snarl forming on my face, I did the only confirmed thing to turn a girl off. I cocked my head away from her and made a comment about her music selection.

I don't remember exactly what I said, feeling suffocated at this point, but it did involve mentioning Larson's old band, Shudder To Think.

She squealed.

"How do you know Shudder To Think?!?!", she asked.

'Um, Who Doesn't?' was the more appropriate response.

I was starting to think maybe we could potentially have - something, until she opened her mouth again and said "but, but... they're not a real band. They were created for Velvet Goldmine."

I may be gay, but I'm not a faggot, so that means I've never actually watched that definitive film about glam rock, but, I was truly insulted by her flagrant disregard for 90s music trivia in that moment. So insulted that my vagina actually went into a state of atrophy.

Shudder To Think, who for the record, did exist prior to their cameo in Velvet Goldmine were on the top of my Suicide Compilation List 2003 edition, specifically the song 'No Rm. 9, Kentucky'. Instead of going to school that year, I used to spend my days lying face first into a pillow in my parents bedroom, while my stereo in the adjacent room would play Pony Express Record, among other choice albums, on repeat, at high decibels. I preferred this set-up instead of the more straightforward approach, listening to music in the same room as the audio equipment. Doing it my way, things sounded further away and muddled, kind of like listening to music underwater and often I would fantasize I was drowning, tangled up not in faded, flowered bedroom sheets, but waves.

My Basketball Team's Name is Gay Human Bones

2010-04-29T12:47:00.010-04:00

Despite being named after an entry in the Beatles' lesser known songbook, I have no musical talent, whatsoever. However, this lack of ability doesn't prevent me from performing a shockingly accurate impersonation of Darius Rucker from Hootie and the Blowfish singing 'Only Wanna Be With You' in the manner in which it was intended to sound. Previously, I have actually been told that I am tone deaf but because of said impairment, I can neither confirm nor deny that statement.

The day labor was induced and I was born, (and it is important to note that I was two weeks late on arrival and any other fetal life conceived by my parents would have clung to the safety of that womb, too, or alternatively, aborted themselves like my two dead 'siblings' before me) the radio was playing in my parent's bedroom while my mother prepared for the momentous occasion at hand: giving birth to a daughter, finally, after two failed pregnancies. The radio was playing not because my parents are music fans, but because my father has been addicted to participating in contests and getting anything for free for as long as my parents have been married, 32 years. With the exception of his love of golf, all of my father's interests are tasteless and low class. When he's not pestering radio stations, he can often be spotted picking through garbage cans, searching for the stelvin caps from 2 litre pop bottles or, urinating in public places.

The disc jockey working on the morning of July 27, 1987, is the culprit I am holding most accountable for setting me up for failure since Day One. Not only did he play 'Michelle' but he followed up with his own asinine commentary and revealed that in his opinion, Michelle was one of the most beautiful names, ever. To top that off, my middle name is Monica, after St. Monica of the esteemed Dead Grandmother Seminary, which means my name is representative of tragedy on multiple levels.

Embarrassment aside, my birth name did instill some deep-seated music appreciation in me and I can say with confidence, I Know What's Good. Case in point, Harlem:

Harlem are a relatively new member to the Matador Records roster. And with the release of Hippies, they have so far managed to not do such a tremendous job of representing the major label to which they are contractually bound. Nearing the end of their completely impromptu set last night, Michael Coomers announced, "buy our records, but more importantly ... where's the party after this?" What I love even more than jangly guitar are musicians who don't take themselves seriously in the slightest and have a good feel for irony. The first time I visited the band's Myspace page and read their 'influences', I was immediately a goner, falling for lines saturated in hubris like this one: "the only band we like is nirvana. the only album we like is nevermind. the only song we like is smells like teen spirit".

For a trio of boys by way of Texas, they're totally infectious and when Coomers, from behind the drumkit, adorned a bedazzled headband, he eerily resembled a stoned Miss Cleo, if she were an adorable white, man. When he took over frontman duty, he was so into his methodical strumming that his eyes began to roll ever so slowly into the back of his head and looked as if he had been Touched By An Angel. I felt that vibe so strongly I had to whip out my pocket-sized notebook and jot my thoughts down furiously (for a reference point, see Crispin Glover/George McFly in Back to the Future).

The Crack Inside Your Fucking Heart is Me: An Ode to Marilyn Manson

2010-04-24T15:08:00.007-04:00

Marilyn Manson's 1998 album, Mechanical Animals was so far ahead of its time, I think it desperately deserves a 12th anniversary remastered and re-released special edition pressing. This concept album is basically what happens when Lady GaGa meets David Bowie and the two of them form a subculture of fashionable cannibals who eat queer, manic-depressive babies that should never have been born.

My mother bought this album for me as per my request when it dropped when I was only 11 years old, despite the 'obscene' cover art and the huge parental advisory sticker. The only CD she ever outright refused purchasing for her precocious child was Smash Mouth's debut, Fush Yu Mang as the clerk at Future Shop said that in his professional, minimum wage opinion, the lyrics were too explicit for a 10 year old. While this is definitely not the case, (e.g. Why Can't We Be Friends?), I have to thank this faceless employee for his paternalistic concern and inadvertently lightening my load for past annual Purge My Belongings/Sell My Old CDs For A Quarter A Piece events.

Like a moderately priced bottle of wine, Mechanical Animals is not only an acquired taste but the floral notes of drug use and suicide become more pronounced with age and every subsequent listen. Additionally, Billy Corgan is listed as a 'consultant' for this record and it's common knowledge that anything Billy touched in the 90s turned into a gem (Courtney Love knows this first hand).

The first Manson video I saw on television, his cover of 'Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)' both terrified and delighted my nine year old self. The only men I've ever truly been taken with in my life have always been androgynous, cosmetics wearing, brooding musicians (see also: Brian Molko of Placebo, Jay Gordon of Orgy, Brett Anderson of Suede), meaning that I've been gay since birth.

Now that I've again reached the pinnacle of contemplating my own demise, Marilyn Manson's entire discography has been somewhat of a refuge. I'm not sure when I first became conscious of the word suicide, although it was definitely prior to fourth grade, as that's when I first started uttering notions of taking my own life (sign #59764 that you're raising a bipolar child). In reality, it was probably after asking my mother who the guy with the long hair was hanging in various picture frame collages in our wood paneled, 1950s themed basement.

Four months before I was born, my mother's first cousin, Mark, committed suicide. It was March and he pushed his car off a gigantic cliff known as the Scarborough Bluffs and jumped in afterwards, drowning in the freezing water.

In the same way my mother can sometimes hear her father breathing, though he's been dead for 30 years, I sometimes feel that I'm the reincarnation of Mark and that his spirit crept in through my mother's navel while she attended his funeral with unborn baby in tow.

Mark's death destroyed his parents and unlike the typical behavioral pattern in this family, they don't keep any pictures of him, whereas my mother hoards all possessions belonging to her deceased parents. I'd like to think that if my grandparents were not buried over at Pine Hills with the ominous 'Til We Meet Again engraved on their joint tombstone, she would probably cuddle with the urns of their cremated ashes at bedtime.

Our Anniversary

2010-04-19T00:58:00.007-04:00

With my two year anniversary approaching in May, I have been doing some real soul-searching and trying to 'find myself' by means of alcohol consumption, sleeping fourteen hours a day and getting my jollies from movies starring a virginal Reese Witherspoon and a psychotic Mark Wahlberg. By two year anniversary, I'm not referring to sobriety or any other achieved status that implies stability. I'm referring to my relationship with my psychic, Jackie Lewis.

I came to Jackie's 'office' (a makeshift room at the back of a desolate bookshop partitioned off by mismatched curtains and bedsheets taped to a wall) in search of answers, guidance and a new lease on life. Upon peering into her crystal ball and massaging her healing rock, she noted that I would be free of financial struggles (as an only child, I stand to inherit a property that was won in a poker game in the 1950s), that I will allegedly write a book that will be published and that I'll eventually have two children via artificial insemination. This last part I disagree with. In the same way that abused Amish children try to 'break the cycle', I would rather take my own life than sire any doomed bipolar progeny.

After two miscarriages in one year, and desperate to carry on the family legacy of smothering mother-daughter relationships, my mother became pregnant with yours truly at the age of 35. Her psychiatrist in the 70s famously said that in his professional opinion, Mother would never be mentally stable enough to raise children. Even more famously, she mailed her by then ex-physician a picture of me after I was born, as viable 'proof' that she could do it, even against medical advice. If this psychiatrist were not dead, I would delight in sending him a current snapshot of his old patient's now twenty-two year old bipolar daughter. Despite her own setbacks, Mom did the best with what she was given in raising a manic-depressive teenager, going as far as letting me sleep in her bed with her for an entire year when I was too ill to go to school, and too afraid to be left to my own devices which included self-mutilation and making numerous compilation albums to soundtrack my upcoming funeral (as encouraged by my then psychiatrist). Though it means I would have never existed, I am still going to advocate that people with bipolar disorder should not have children. Your desire for companionship is not worth ruining another life with your toxic genetics. Get a cat or take solace in drugs, alcohol or gambling. If you don't heed my advice, here's an excerpt of what your future child's first report card will look like:

Jackie Lewis, psychic to the stars, made one other prediction of note. She stated in May 2008 that in three years time I would enter a 'serious relationship', whatever that means. By her clock, as of next summer I should be smitten with some mysterious suitor. At present, I have been single for nearly two years and I can't even remember when was the last time I had sex, though I do remember it was with a self-identified gaylord who admitted during the act she had never performed oral before.

Following that I went on a few fleeting dates with a 'musician' whose manager, financial sponsor, and roommate all happened to be the same person, her father. He offered me marijuana at one of her 'gigs' because her 'experimental choir' that sounded as if they were on the shortlist to soundtrack the Lord of the Rings trilogy, were just that bad.

After that experience I removed myself from the dating world in order to 'better myself'. As I'm having problems doing just that, I figure it may be nice to find a kindred spirit to suffer with me. However, would I be disobeying Jackie Lewis and all that is holy and spiritual if I attempt to date before I enter my future 'serious relationship'?

What I'm looking for in a woman isn't a tall order. All I'm asking is that she be blonde, funny, hetero, likes to drink and kinda maybe resemble/embody the looks and hilarity of these two specimens, Chelsea Handler and Iliza Schlesinger:

2010-04-05T02:46:00.001-04:00

Instead of sitting down to a traditional Easter family feast of ham and hot cross buns and then snuggling up to watch The Ten Commandments, my non-denominational family affair began by dumping out our take-out Chinese food onto plastic plates and parking our asses in our respective seats in our dank, wood-paneled basement to watch the nearly three and a half hour Sybil.

Sybil was one of the movies I was Divinely Inspired to download about a month ago and my mother refused to watch it with me as it is perhaps the most famous tale of dissociative identity disorder, ever, and this was shortly after I 'came out' about my compulsions to talk to myself. I can see how she would assume this film could possibly be 'triggering' as she is of the misunderstanding that I am an 'impressionable' person. In reality, I am pretty set in my sedentary, unadulterated ways and am not too fazed by my bleak surroundings.

My psychiatrist once told me that people with bipolar disorder have a hard time accepting change. This is an unequivocally true statement and was demonstrated during my failed attempt at moving to Montreal that resulted in a manic episode and my mother's unwillingness to stop mourning the death of her mother or clearing out her mother's old bedroom, 19 years after the funeral.

During the summer before ninth grade I went through my first type of depressive episode, which was diminutive compared to what would follow, and my family physician referred me to an elderly pediatrician to check out the functioning of my thyroid as a preventative measure.

In his office, which was decorated with 'fan mail' (i.e. pictures drawn by his regular clientele, children from the ages of 2 - 10), I described my inability to sleep, the lack of motivation to wear anything other than pajamas (even in public) and my reservations about starting high school. He gave little feedback but asked if I 'watched a lot of medical shows on TV', insinuating that my problems were the product of a morbid childhood imagination.

It was only when I was initially diagnosed with clinical depression and an anxiety disorder at 16 that my mother clued me in on some important family history, her lifelong love affair with Lithium. She was worried that had I known before the beginning of my own downward spiral I could have potentially embodied the disorder, due to my 'impressionable' ways.

I am pretty sure my entire life has been one gradual progression to a bipolar diagnosis and maybe a head's up from my one bipolar ally could have helped to manage my sometimes bizarre, adolescent behavior. I was told that I rarely slept as an infant and my mother enrolled me in an afternoon kindergarten class because she couldn't tame my erratic sleeping patterns. In fourth grade I had the foresight to pledge to some classmates that I would commit suicide at the age of 19, a promise that almost panned out. In seventh grade I had a faux-tortured relationship with my 7th grade teacher who I secretly wanted to bed. This didn't happen, but she did have flowers sent to me for my graduation the following year. And at 15, I was unofficially expelled/politely 'asked to leave' the high school I was attending after I went on a letter writing rampage full of scathing remarks that didn't bode so well with the school administration.

The real 'Sybil', Shirley Ardell Mason, went on to become an art professor (read: a real person, as if that is supposed to be a beacon of hope for me. During an exam I wrote last week, I was swayed by my own impulses to recite a prayer in my head before answering each multiple choice question. As there were 30 multiple choice questions, followed by two essay questions, this became a very inconvenient, time consuming ritual. My parents think I should focus my energies on the only career goal they deem suitable for their only child: collecting disability checks.

MY FATHER-DAUGHTER RELATIONSHIP IN PHOTOS

2010-03-31T00:33:00.006-04:00

Before I began seriously contemplating switching up my pharmaceutical regime, my psychiatrist asked me during one of our sessions if I had a father. Apparently, in the three years we had been seeing each other, I had failed to mention him. I shifted uncomfortably in the oversized chair in her office and said, 'um, yeah, I do have a father, actually and... I live with him. He's just not relevant to my life'. And then as if on command, the tears started, which adequately follows the father-daughter relationship trajectory as illustrated below.

Although my father, Dave, is not mentally ill in the traditional, diagnosable way that the women in the family are, he is, perhaps, the most unbalanced of the three of us. He has taken Celexa and Ativan (two drugs I used to be prescribed) since he had prostate surgery when I was in high school and I am often reminded that I neglected to visit him during his stint in the hospital. During post-op recovery, he felt 'depressed' because he 'could no longer have children' and our general practitioner wrote him a script for some habit-forming drugs he no longer needs as he's so fucking jovial he's teetering on senility.

A few years ago my father retired from a 31 year long career with a unionized company and after gorging on the black forest cake he was given as a thank-you for his years of service, he announced that he was now going to live out his lifelong dream - to be a concierge at an upscale condominium. Completely dumbfounded by his revelation, I quickly internalized the new family motto, Strive For The Absolute Minimum. Previous family mottos include: You Can't Trust A Soul! and Look Out For Number One.

Although I will never fully understand why, my father loves his part-time job. Frugal by nature, he especially loves when the residents at his building present him with free, borderline insulting items they no longer want such as: a bag of brown sugar, stale danishes and my favorite, a half-eaten bag of movie theatre popcorn. I can attest that the occasional free item is nice to come by, but I am afraid that this is a sign that we are slowly descending into legitimate poverty. While I cannot readily accept this, my father excels at interacting with the homeless, so he'll do just fine. Back when he still went to his 'real job', he used to leave for work two hours early so he could loiter in the neighboring McDonald's to drink coffee, read the newspaper and interact with his 'friends', the motley crew of hobos that assembled every morning to wash up in the public restroom. This unlikely companionship lasted until one of the McDonald's employees accused one of Dave's homeless friends of sexually assaulting her, after she invited him over to her apartment/crack den.

Maybe I need to revise the statement I made to my physician, my father is relevant to my life. If it weren't for him, there would be no laughter through the tears.

2010-03-30T03:39:00.001-04:00

This is my fortune from Sunday's family take-out dinner. To be determined whether this 'love affair' will be with drugs (serotonin–norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors) or with alcohol (drinking alone vs. 'recreational' drinking with my cat, Hank. I have him trained to meow for help if I am under duress or passed out).

I think it is important to take into consideration when getting acquainted with me that I have been taking psychotropic medications every day since the age of sixteen. Meaning, if you can't figure out who I am underneath the muddled brain chemistry, that's fine, because neither can I. What Is My Brain Like Not On Drugs? TV personality, Dr. Phil advocates that the brain continues to grow throughout the twenties and argues that the underdeveloped adolescent brain is to blame for the bad choices so many of his troublesome teen guests make, such as sexting or playing choking games. I feel that the prolonged heavy drug use throughout my formative years has shaped me into the snarky, disillusioned young adult I am today. And who am I really without that morbid sense of humor or those unusual quirks?

Previously, I had been the kind of socially maladjusted, suffocated child who was perpetually babied by parents (i.e. Only Child born to an Only Child syndrome). Fittingly, among the myriad things I could not do on my own, swallowing pills was one of them. My early adolescence was spent doubling up on the recommended dosage of children's liquid Tylenol whenever I had a headache, usually caused by my father thundering down the stairs to the basement in a race to get to the phone and dial CHUM FM in time to be Caller 10 and 'Beat the Bank'. When the option of taking Effexor at 16 was presented, I figured a liquid anti-depressant wouldn't have the same sort of artificial fruity flavor so I practiced swallowing pills in the same vein I had practiced everything else that hadn't come naturally to me - with shame and in secrecy. Notable other examples of this behavior would be attempting to put my hair into a ponytail that never looked quite right or learning to jump rope in my backyard at nighttime at the age of thirteen so I wouldn't fail the skipping portion of the physical fitness evaluation in gym class.

As of 2003, popping pills with ease has become one of my more refined skills. I've taken SSRIs, mood stabilizers, benzos, acne antidotes, iron, sedatives, stimulants, birth control and accidentally, calcium supplements meant for women over fifty. Toying with the idea of starting an SNRI for the first time this spring/summer does not bolster my spirits or provide the false hope of eventually having a Normal Life. Instead, I am going to write to the Make a Wish Foundation and ask for electroshock therapy for my 23rd birthday in July.

Reasons I should no longer be in school

2010-03-11T04:49:00.003-05:00

Titling an essay 'Meet Me At Tha Crossroads: Where Queer and Consumer/Survivor Identities Intersect'

Edit: I got an A- on this paper. Pure Pity Points.

2010-03-07T02:14:00.010-05:00

I have a feeling Xiu Xiu's first single 'Dear God, I Hate Myself' off their latest album of the same name will end up being my top Self-Deprecating Jam of 2010. After four years of being on the SSRI Escitalopram, I have made the perhaps foolish decision to wean myself off of it (under medical supervision). At present, I take such a hefty cocktail of medication (Lithium, Modafinil, Accutane, Yaz) at bedtime that often I vomit after ingestion. This Is My Journey...

A few mornings ago on the subway there was a dirty, homeless woman with matted dreadlocks and a pockmarked face parading up and down the car I was on, hitting up commuters for spare change. She made a point of asking everyone, except me. While at first I was relieved to be excluded, I realized she avoided me because I looked almost as sketched out as she did. Thanks to the symptoms of discontinuation syndrome, I was having the sensation that my chin weighed close to 200 lbs and was pulling my face down into my chest. I hadn't slept the night before, instead I had opted to watch the 2001 romantic-comedy, Shallow Hal because it 'spoke to me' so a ring the shade of a muted purple was forming under my eyes, I was strung out on Modafinil and feeling 'not present' and totally slumped over in my seat, head leaning against the window, talking into the popped collar of my jacket that doubles as a shield. This would be the same jacket with the ciagrette burn from ashing while disoriented and the mysterious hole growing in the right pocket that has served as a funnel for loose pocket change to enter the lining of the jacket. This means there are nickels and dimes circulating within my peacoat, meaning, I jingle when I walk. Basically, I should be a hobo's bread and butter. It would be so simple to jump me and then slash open my coat with a razor or a snaggletooth and pilfer the forty-five cents but they won't even go near me because they see themselves in my eyes.

Last week, while I was sitting in the waiting room at Sunnybrook's youth psychiatry wing, the first doctor I was ever paired up with who always ignores me, caught me ritualistically praying under my breath and seized the opportunity to speak to me for the first time in six years.

We had previously had a falling out that pretty much began at the beginning of our doctor/patient relationship. Bad blood stemmed from my decision to drop out of her research study on the effects of Celexa on mentally ill youth and her decision to hospitalize me because, according to her, "my mother needed a break".

As a tall woman, she took full advantage of patronizing me by crouching down to my level (literally and figuratively) to say in a baby talk voice, 'Hi Michelle! How are you?!' If I'm caught murmuring away to myself while waiting to see my psychiatrist, I guess I'm not doing too well, am I? Cheung: 1. McGlynn: 0.

Despite feeling incredibly ashamed, I 'grew a pair' and confided in my current doctor during our session about my relatively new, overwhelming, repetitive thoughts and urges to whisper to myself during the middle of lectures. I also mentioned my 'compulsions' to download a ton of movies that I'll never get around to watching, such as Varsity Blues, the inspiration for the theme of this blog. She thought that these thoughts of mine were "obsessive... but unusual" and maybe teetering on 'psychotic'. Maybe I shouldn't watch Varsity Blues, it could have the potential to push me over the edge.

Today was my father's 64th birthday, but it was overshadowed by my mother's freshly contracted case of conjunctivitis. I have theorized that she must have picked up this nasty eye infection at the casino, by touching slot machines thousands of other scumbags before her have touched, to potentially quell her 'problem gambling'. Instead, she's going to be vigilant about her health by wearing latex gloves when gambling in the future. My father, who doesn't care about anything other than contests, Internet porn and blowing $300 a month on lottery tickets, seemed legitimately bitter that his birthday was not joyously celebrated.
I had to endure a day of:
"my own daughter didn't even wish me a happy birthday"
"I'm 64 and there's no cake on my birthday"
"stock up the fridge with beer, it's my birthday" and my favorite,
"if all goes well, touch wood, this time next year I'll be collecting the old age pension".

The only downside to Dave turning 64 is that it gives him license to sing The Beatles' horrific, When I'm Sixty-Four whenever he pleases. He had been practicing his rendition of this song in the months preceding his birthday, but today signified the official kickoff of the Year of When I'm Sixty-Four, much to my dismay. I hate the Beatles so much that I resent being named after one of their songs. They're not even Irish. They could have at least named me something culturally relevant, like Bono. Or The Edge.