How to Grow Up (25 page)

Slowly, through copying people and dabbling in health kicks, I learned how to feed myself. And I found that being in a healthy relationship makes me
want
to
feed myself. I jumped three dress
sizes in my first few months with Dashiell, because I was happy, and I wanted to eat delicious food with her, to cook for her. The more we were together, the more I ate—no more creepy, lonely snack dinners. Now, as a married person, I cook our dinners every single night. It made Dashiell nervous at first. “I don't want you slaving away for me every night,” she said. “We can just make some pasta.” Left to her own devices, Dashiell eats pasta the way I eat cheese and crackers. Specifically, she eats “herbal pasta,” a delicacy from her childhood consisting of pasta, butter, and, I think, paprika. But I love cooking for Dashiell, for a whole lot of reasons. I love that I have become skilled at something—skilled at anything—in my later life. I've always feared my laziness. I don't like learning new things; I get frustrated very easily and want to cry.

But cooking. I'd mastered a skimpy handful of dishes once I'd gotten sober and realized I had to eat; gone were the days of claiming that beer is bread and having a Guinness and a bag of SunChips for dinner, or passing a Bloody Mary off as a salad. By the time I connected with Dashiell, I was dying to impress her with my skills in the kitchen. Don't get me wrong—they're not all that. I'm not a creative cook; I can't raid a pantry and whip together something intuitive and marvelous. I painstakingly follow directions, often making mistakes due to my difficulty painstakingly following directions. But when I am able to bring out some steaming squash-kale casserole, or some flavorful roasted vegetables, or chicken that's been stewing in the Crock-Pot all day, I feel like a hero. I'm so proud of myself it's stupid.

Occasionally, when something very cool has happened to me
career-wise, my mother will cluck her tongue and say, in a mixture of admiration and awe, “You're just a girl from Chelsea. Can you even believe it?” Like—how the fuck am I not on welfare with three kids and a shiftless, alcoholic dude on my couch? How did this
happen
? I get that feeling myself when I do something like bake a dozen onion bagels from scratch, which happened last month. A friend of mine had blown my mind years ago by baking her own bagels. Bagels?
But bagels are something you buy at the store!
Eight-year-old me rose up in anxious confusion. Um, no. Anyone can make bagels. And so I did. The tangible result of them, all burnished and fragrant and plump and delicious, astounded me. I made that! I
am
teachable!

I also like cooking dinner because it is a relief after working on the computer all day. From sunup to sundown I am in a little room with my head shoved into my laptop, maniacally typing away. That's my job. Sometimes I take a break and talk to my sister on the phone, or field a few texts from friends, though this, too, is disembodied. I walk the dog, but picking up a pile of steaming poo isn't how I want to be brought back into my body. Cooking is. Beholding the perfect butternut squash, both slender and fat, and putting my muscle into chopping it up; stirring stuff together—tamari with ginger with wine with oil with some seeds and ground up this and that, toss some honey in, maybe some apple cider vinegar—it reminds me of being a kid, playing witch in the bathroom, when I took all my mother's beauty products and dumped them together into a bowl to make a foul potion. Only this potion is amazing! By the time Dashiell arrives home I have shaken out of the strange zombie state a day at home alone
on the computer leaves me in. I'm a person, a person with a body, a person with a body who wants to sit down and eat with another person with a body. The meal I've prepared is an offering of love, to myself for the work I've done all day, to Dashiell for her own time on the clock, for this time we have to come together as the sun goes down and reconnect and enjoy this life we're so lucky to be building together.

When I'm cooking, I guess I feel whole—body, mind, and spirit all engaged in the creation of something beautiful and temporary. It's rare that my creativity isn't tied to my income, my self-esteem, my persona. This raw little bit of play is allowed to be imperfect. The food is only for me and my beloved, and Dashiell is so happy to not be eating herbal pasta, she'll heap praise on almost everything I bring, unless it's a serious fail, like the too-sweet Indian rice or the too-sour blue cheese pasta. But in the rare case that a recipe's a dud, there's always popcorn with nutritional yeast for dinner. And that's a serious step up from a crusty bowl of Top Ramen.

Sometimes I get a little nostalgic for the trashy food of my childhood, and think it would be a transgressive treat to indulge in some processed food from the big chain grocery store I try not to shop at. And almost every time it's a revelation, though not in the way I thought it would be. I simply can't eat the garbage I used to. And if some MSG-laden McFood manages to trick my tongue into thinking it's tasty, I will soon thereafter feel barfy as fuck. I've trained myself out of being able to tolerate food that isn't good for me, much the way I've trained myself out of being able to put up with relationships that aren't good for me. And the more I think
about it, the more connected these things are—food and love, my love for my physical self, my love for Dashiell, what I refuse to put in my body, and, um,
whom
I refused to put in my body. I truly believe that when you start a revolution in one area of your life, prioritizing true health and well-being, that excellent intention spreads to other areas of your life, places where maybe you didn't even know there was a problem. You start to spoil yourself with the better things in life—non-dysfunctional love affairs, French cheese—and suddenly the two-bit Romeos and their Velveeta equivalents just don't cut it anymore. You get used to feeling good in your mind and your body, and so you notice a bit faster when something is making you feel lousy. Through trial and error, you keep coming back around to the stir-fry of bok choy and chickpeas, keep coming back around to the person who is actually nice to you, who knows how to love. Every day I end my hours of work with the perfect, lucky confluence of the two: food that will make me feel awesome shared with a person who makes me feel awesome. What is more awesome than that?

I'm So Vain

W
hen I learn that a person I'm talking to—an adult, sane, together-ish person who manages to make herself breakfast in the morning and leave the house without toothpaste smeared across her face—does not moisturize, the world freezes for a second. Everything I think I know about this person goes tilt-a-whirl. One such incident happened recently, while getting a coffee with two friends, both athletic types who run marathons and whatnot. One makes her living as a life coach, gently and enthusiastically ushering people through nutritious cleanses; the other makes her living by fermenting cabbage into award-winning sauerkraut. (Yes, there are awards for sauerkraut. It's a great big world out there.) These are people who prioritize being in touch with their bods. And yet, the conversations went thusly:

Me: Oh man, I forgot to put on sunscreen again!

Life Coach: Oh, I never wear sunscreen.

Sauerkraut Champion: Yeah, I don't wear sunscreen, either.

Me: Really? But, like, don't you just have a moisturizer with sunscreen in it?

Life Coach: I don't moisturize.

Sauerkraut Champion: Yeah, I don't moisturize, either.

Me: What? Really? Are you serious? But—your
skin
! Your
face
!

Although similar freak-outs have inspired other of my friends to break down and buy their first bottle of Retin-A night cream, the coach and the champ were unmoved.

“I don't have the money for that,” the coach said. “I'm just going to have to get old.”

Well, we're all getting old, whether or not we're slathering glycolic acid on our faces every so often (or every single day), but to me moisturizing isn't so different from putting turmeric in my rice to give my joints a boost, or exercising to help my ragged brain make new cells. Aging deteriorates every single part of us, and I'm into easing the wear and tear wherever possible. I do the work to help other beloved things hold up against the rigors of time in our material world, so why would I deprive my face—my
face
—of the care I'd give to my computer? (And, for the record, a good drugstore cream doesn't actually cost all that much.)

Back when I was a total drunk I had a friend named Nicky who was also a total drunk. Arguably, Nicky was an even worse drunk than I was, but all that means is her behavior was a little more unruly while she was loaded. A drunk is a drunk is a drunk. Regardless of how much booze she'd downed, how many Oxys popped, how many nights spent lolling in the drunk tank for slapping the cell phones out of the hands of businessmen, Nicky
always looked sort of soft faced and innocent. My own skin was splotchy red with dehydration and the various toxins being pushed out my pores; some patches were scratchy dry, and others were pimply oily. Nicky's secret? She moisturized.

“What?” I remember asking. “Are you serious?” Imagining rough-and-tumble Nicky pampering herself was almost comical. But she explained to me that her mother—a single mom, fairly impoverished, working as a librarian in a small town—had always insisted she take care of her skin, going so far as to buy her the complete Clinique cleansing system once a year on her birthday.

“Yeah, you know, it's not a big deal.” Nicky shrugged, spitting a spurt of chewing tobacco from her never-chapped lips.

When I finally got sober, I wasn't looking too hot. My hair was so parched it no longer could hold any color, and was a dull, washed-out shade of dark nothing with odd highlights of yellow, green, blue, and red. My skin was lizardy. My first encounter with a pack of sober alcoholics left me flabbergasted. Their skin was
so good
. They had a glow about them, and while much of it was an inner glow from having awesome higher powers and being off the drug train, some of it was just that their skin was really great because they were no longer dumping toxins into their systems. I wanted what they had—nice skin, a face that glowed and smiled. In a state of confused desperation, I flung myself on the mercy of these people, and believed what they told me, because I needed to: that I could stop drinking, that I would still have an interesting life and be an interesting person without booze, that the compulsion to whoosh doctored-up battery acid up my nose would fade. And that if I stayed away from the stuff that had been
tearing me down, not only would my life clean up; so would my complexion.

Not spending my money on cocaine and liquor certainly freed up some cash. I spent it on cosmetics. Not makeup, per se. I've never been very good at makeup, though I've figured out how to utilize the basics in a passable manner. What I binged on was creams, serums, toners. A day cream with sunscreen, a night cream with retinol. Something nice with glycolic acid. An eye cream. Lip balms—oh my God, I started a lip balm collection. Vitamin C serum. Vitamin E oil. Tinted moisturizer with SPF. My tiny shelf in the bathroom sagged with the weight of my products. I found a scrub made especially to sand away those little dry bumps I always had all over my arms and legs. I found lotions that smelled like cocoa or fig or verbena or lavender. My ruined hair, my tarnished crowning glory, went into rehab. I splurged on shampoos only sold in hair salons, rich conditioners, oils to smooth my unruly locks. Face scrubs! Body scrubs! I even made one of my own, from olive oil and oatmeal and lavender and powdered goat milk. It looked like I'd taken my breakfast into the shower with me, but my skin felt so nice and soft and it was fun to have made it in the kitchen.

Caring for my body had a very practical purpose: to coax it back to where it would have been if I hadn't spent the past two decades tearing it down. But it was also a metaphor, a ritual, a physical affirmation of self-love. I'm worth caring for, and I'm capable of doing it. It's a reminder that beauty matters, that beauty and I are not separate, and I do not need to banish the concept from my heart. The time I spend lathering and lotioning
in the bathroom, time spent alone with my literally naked self, often praying or making gratitude lists in my head, made me imagine exalted lady cultures that probably never existed, priestesses shaving their legs together in worship of some hot goddess.

Vanity is underestimated as a motivator for getting sober. I had an eye on the drinkers who'd come before me, and the ones who were still holding down their end of the bar were looking greasier and greasier as the clock ticked on. And it wasn't just their skin that the chemicals were taking a toll on—alcoholism was ruining their fashion, too. I like to play a game with the people closest to me, especially those who never knew me as a raging, fight-starting drunk. The game is called That Is Who I'd Be If I Hadn't Gotten Sober. We'll be out at a bar or an event, and I'll spot her. Her skin looks kind of mottled and her hair has been stripped and dyed so many times it looks flammable. Her makeup sits strangely on her scaly skin. She's wearing something that was certainly amazing when she first put it on in 1997. Alas, she got so drunk in the intervening years, she forgot to take it off. There she is in her fake-hair scrunchie with the pink streaks, a pair of faux-fur chaps buckled over her latex pants, a studded dog collar tight around her throat. That's who I'd be if I'd never gotten sober. The girl in the hand-bedazzled T-shirt that says
GIRLS
ROCK
!

My impulse toward cosmetic self-care began while I was still drinking, but I was too much of a mess to really follow through. I couldn't help but be alarmed at the deteriorating condition of my skin and hair, but I couldn't deal with the thought that it was my drinking that was the problem. In all problem-strewn areas of
an alcoholic's life, they
never
want to admit it's the drinking. When you're in the throes of if, having your face prematurely decay into a scaly, splotchy, hideous mess is preferable to contemplating a life without drinking. I tried to chip away at the problem, buying an antiaging moisturizer from the Body Shop or a bottle of deep conditioner for my raggedy locks. On the last day of my twenty-ninth year, realizing I looked more on the verge of forty than tipping on thirty, I even got myself a facial, my first facial ever.

Where does one even go for a facial, I remember wondering, baffled. With no Internet in the house during these days before Yelp, I pulled out the Yellow Pages and stared blankly at the listings. How did one know if it was a good or bad facial joint one was phoning? What did one look for in a facial, anyway? I phoned a friend who worked in a hair salon, a part-time makeup artist who looked like she regularly indulged in the beauty arts. She gave me the number for a salon and told me not to let them do extractions. Okay, no extractions. What the fuck were extractions? Were they going to pull my teeth or something?

Surprise—the recommended salon was booked for that evening. In fact, salon after salon was booked, because the bazillions of women who
do
get facials on the regs have their standing appointments, or they book in advance. They aren't sitting on a moldy carpet with the Yellow Pages on their laps, needing to make an appointment
right now
because it is the eve of their birthday and if they don't do it
right now
they might lose the nerve it takes to go into such a place—a beauty salon, a place they feel too dirtbaggy to visit—and spend the money it takes to
have a professional slap products onto their skin. This whole outing was so far out of my comfort zone, the only way I was getting through it was knowing it was in celebration of my
thirtieth birthday
. I had to do it now, before the moment passed and scarcity issues took over.

I wound up at Elizabeth Arden's Red Door salon. It didn't seem like the place for me—too matronly. My grandmother had Elizabeth Arden products, and the perfume smelled like the urine of an overly pampered French cat. But they had the opening, and so I went. I remember exactly what I was wearing—a Mötley Crüe concert T-shirt that had been so sliced and diced it was a wonder it hung on my body; a thrifted sequined miniskirt whose sequins had long ago dulled and were falling off the elastic, leaving a trail of scales behind me like a molting amphibian; ripped-up tights (not deliberately—tights just ripped, right?) and motorcycle boots a bit too wide for my chicken legs. I felt tense and defensive, ready to be treated badly. Only, I wasn't. The ladies spoke to me in the same soothing spa voice they used on the respectable females, offering me delicious little cups of spa water flavored with cucumber and lemon. They kindly showed me to the locker room and gave me a robe to change into. I was happy to peel out of my street clothes. All snugged up in the fluffy robe, I was just like any other woman enjoying an afternoon of pampering. Except that my hair was blue and dry as straw, my face a mosaic of drug-induced splotches.

The Russian woman who tended to my face told me to relax, and it is hard to disobey a commanding Russian aesthetician. I relaxed. I found that I loved getting a facial. It was so nice to lie
down, eyes closed, and feel the helpful hands tending to my face. When she told me she was going to do extractions I felt the awful hot and cold flush of being bizarrely unable to advocate for myself in a service situation. This conflict really interfered with the peaceful relaxation I'd just been experiencing, so I decided to hell with my friend's advice and let the Russian woman extract away. Apparently, there was, like, gold or something buried in my pores, because the Russian woman dug and dug and dug until tears sprang to my eyes. My facial had ceased being relaxing, but I was not unaware of the maxim “No pain, no gain,” so I figured if something hurt that bad it must be really necessary, must be doing something really great for my face.

And maybe it was. I'll never know, because after my first facial I went out to celebrate my thirtieth birthday by drinking a ton of cheap well vodka at some long-gone dive bar, following it up with a cocaine bender at a friend's house. Any good the facial had done was obliterated as I snorted bump after line after rail of gasoline-soaked, heavily processed, cut-with-baby-laxative, what-once-was-a-leaf up my nose and out my pores. I wouldn't return to such a salon until I finally gave up chemicals once and for all, years later.

On the eve of my fortieth birthday, when I'd been off drugs and alcohol for almost eight years, I had another cosmetic reckoning. In many ways, this birthday was a reverse of my sad thirtieth. At twenty-nine, I looked into the mirror and saw someone who looked practically forty. Now, at thirty-nine, in many ways the face looking back at me could pass for thirty, depending on the lighting or how much sleep I'd gotten the night before—or
how much of my forehead was visible. If the lighting was harsh or I was a tad sleep deprived and my forehead was on full display, it wasn't so much that I looked my age as I looked like Johnny Cash. The resemblance struck me especially hard after seeing the results of a photo shoot I'd done for a literary journal that was trying to up the cultural capital of the humble writer by pairing us with bona fide fashion photographers and doing glamour shots. Mine was expected to be on the cover.

The photographers posed me in the marble interior of San Francisco City Hall in black lace; by a stand of leafless trees in a crazy pink dress; in my own bedroom, topless, with my arms crossed over my chest. When the photos came back I had the same dissociative feeling I always do—
Oh, that's what I look like? I felt so much prettier taking the pictures! Oh well.
But it was compounded by,
Holy shit, what happened to my forehead?
I looked sort of amazing in the photos, in a haggard, cowboy kind of way.
Like Johnny Cash
, I realized. I liked it, and I didn't. I can imagine a woman who, through aging, comes to resemble Johnny Cash in a way that is very handsome and attractive. She is the kind of woman I would have dated, not the kind of woman I would want to
be
. A very forbidden thought occurred to me:
Maybe I'll get some Botox.

The first time I ever heard of Botox I was on a Sister Spit tour with a dark-humored writer. “Did you hear,” she gasped over one of the tabloids she bought in bulk at every gas station stop, “that people are injecting
botulism
into their faces to kill their nerves and stop their wrinkles?” She let loose in an amazing cackle. This was the sort of bizarre news she delighted in. “That's sick,” I
breathed. I was in my twenties, and thought plastic surgery of all kinds was bad and wrong. I once got into a fight with a gay male comedian who was talking about “getting some work done” in order to keep up his professional appeal. “You're selling out to ageism,” I said haughtily, a decade younger than he was. I had no idea what it would be like to watch yourself start to fade and crease in the mirror, how the desire to engage with that process is more gentle, less violent, than I had imagined.