Mikarrhea

Tracks of my tears

Back again. Emotionally ravaging few days. My mother takes pains to underscore for my benefit that last week -- her precious dog, recently paralyzed, put to sleep Monday, then my Wednesday-through-Saturday visit swept with tears-- was the worst in her eighty-plus years. Saturday, circulating around the airport, waiting for me to retrieve baggage, Leigh gets lost, finds herself shunted out an exit, and surfaces about ten miles away in Medford. Years later she manages to negotiate her way back and we go to Lucky's, where we meet really cool people, get bought a zillion drinks and are mushily in love. Sunday, horrible, screaming tearful argument ("self-absorbed prima donna baby princess with a fucking stone for a heart"). Monday, on my nominally comedic birthday (shared with Woody Allen, Bette Midler, Richard Pryor, Jonathan Katz Professional Therapist, and Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachesky), my ex calls, wishes me happy birthday, reveals my mom called that morning saying she's suicidal, and berates me till I cry. I call my mom and manage to patch things somewhat. We bond over our SSRIs. Preparing a class presentation, I watch the "Come With the Gentle People" sequence from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and it makes me laugh uproariously and scream and I can move. It's without a doubt the best quick-fix medication for depression I know. Watch it when you're completely flatlining and need to be recognizably human just for a couple of hours. It's totally Uma Thurman's adrenaline shot to the heart. Afterwards, nice classmates & professor take me out for martinis. Vernon makes funny jokes (upcoming release of The Hobbit Reloaded). Leigh & I bar hop till closing. Too drunk to be willing to drive (very rare state, for me), I cruelly jeer her inability to find Newton from Somerville. Pass out at home. Leigh bottoms again (wrists, razor, suicide note). Horrible hangovers all around next day. I sleep through noon flight to Dallas, cancel whole trip so as not to leave Leigh alone, lose various sorts of deposits. We spend most of the day nuzzling, inhaling each other, order pizza for dinner, rub lidocaine into cuts and watch Michael Almereyda's very clever and gorgeous nineties corporate Hamlet with slacker Hamlet Ethan Hawke (Claudius, Kyle MacLachlan; Ophelia, Julia Stiles; Laertes, Liev Schreiber; Polonius, Bill Murray!), which, inventive though it be, can't help but seem completely derivative of Baz Luhrman.