Day 79; Be Brave Project; Tits Out and Eyes Lowered

It's been an anxious weekend, and entirely, entirely due to the BBP. Not one moment of the holiday weekend was without a sepia soaked edge of anxiety. On Friday I went for my first mammogram--and it was not a good experience.

I arrived a bit late and flustered, having wandered around 8th Avenue thinking it was Broadway (Columbus Circle always confuses me a bit), signed into the building and took the elevator up. The West Side Breast and Heightened Anxiety Clinic--perhaps not its real name--was on the 9th floor. There was a high dark red counter behind which two nurses sat, their heads visible only from the bottom lip up. I gave my insurance card, filled out the forms, and gave them back. Then I was called back up to the desk, asked if my mammo was diagnostic or baseline. I didn't know. They said that my doctor had felt a lump, and asked where it was.

I answered, and said that that is why she wrote "sonogram if necessary" on the paper, so we could get it checked out fully. They appeared somehow dissatisfied with this answer, and I returned to my seat for thirty minutes. I was called back up and given a questionnaire. I sat back down and looked at the couple opposite; the man was Hispanic, in his fifties. He wore sweatpants and a look of discomfort. His wife looked horribly underslept--or ill. She sat very still, her eyes closed and her hands crossed on her lap. They made me anxious, and I was relieved when she was called in by the technician. More time passed.

A middle-aged fire plug of a technician came out and called my name--she reiterated the question about diagnostic or first-time mammo--I answered. She asked if I'd used talcum powder, deodorant, perfume or lotion this morning. I said, nope. I was led to a small sock-shaped room where two women were sitting, one of them the weary woman from the front room. There was no eye contact. I took my clothes off, put on the robe, and had to carry my clothes with me in a bundle back to sit in the sock-shaped room with the women. No one spoke.

More time passed, and I bundled my clothes more tightly. The woman two chairs away from me moved her handbag so I couldn't reach it. There were pictures of rock stars on the walls, and small placards talking about the photographers. Fire Plug came back in, called my name, and we went to another room with a big stand-up machine. I was pressed into it closely, closely, my feet wedged in uncomfortably beneath it, and a big plastic guard above sticking into my face. Fire Plug started turning a lever and a plate came down down to painfully press my breast. Fire Plug kept turning the lever. . .kept turning it until I thought I would scream. Then she stepped back and told me to stand still--lower eyes, don't breathe.

This went on and on, and the disconcerting thing is that she kept taking images of the same breast, the right one. 4 times, each more painful than the last. She looked silently at the images, and, while I was standing there in my disarrayed robe, clutching my damn bundle of clothing like a fucking refugee, I asked, "Is everything all right?"

Sharply she replied, "I'm not a doctor!"

Oh, fine. Not feeling good, though. She said I shouldn't put my clothes back on, but go back to the sock-shaped room and wait for a doctor. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck, have I quit goddamn drinking only to get a horrible terrifying life-threatening disease?? Oh God, Oh God.

Sat back down in the sock-room, and the lady moved her handbag even further away from me. After a while Fire Plug came in and said, "Your doctor's office is closed today. So just put on your clothes and go." I looked up at her, pale in my frightened refugee status, and waited for something more. Some word of explanation as to why I had been asked to wait for a doctor, why my own doctor had been called, what was up with the continued shots of the right breast. . .

I got nothing. Except that I'd know in one week.

As I walked out, a nurse called to me, "Don't forget to fill out your questionnaire!" And believe me, I filled it out.

Then I went straight to an AA meeting, where I met a lady who had had breast cancer, and who said that my experience used to be the norm when getting mammos--but wasn't any more. That next time I should ask for a different location, and make sure that I would walk out with the results. . .she gave me her card.

The weekend contained some heroic eating, much television watching, and epic levels of worry.

Be Brave Project, Day 33: A Busy Day for Liquor Stores

It's impossible not to add to the 9/11 media onslaught: Last year the anniversary seemed to glide ghostlike by me, I felt only lightly brushed by tatters of fear and nervousness and memory. Twelve months ago I was less than a month sober and consequently a bit stunned; plus, I am fortunate enough not to have known anyone who had died that day. I'm sure people talked about it in the rooms of AA, but I simply do not remember.

This week the anniversary has loomed large, and it's been both interesting and unsurprising to hear the alcoholic's take on the day. One woman, Alice, has commemorated each year by holing up in her apartment and getting drunk while the name roll call has taken place--Alice is dark haired, smoky voiced, and from the outer boroughs, where many of the restaurants' employees and building operators and staff worked. She knows many people who died that morning. This is Alice's first year sober, and she went down to the liquor store on the ground floor of the building last week to talk to the owner, a guy who sold her a lot of booze over the last 15 years. "I quit, Tom. I'm in AA. And I'm scared about next Thursday, so please don't sell me anything." He hugged her, and said he wouldn't ever again, he was happy for her--and that he wanted to quit smoking but couldn't do it. Could she help?

Alice is still scared about this anniversary today, but as she keeps saying, "The people I know wouldn't like the fact that I was commemorating them by taking the day off to drink."

Christine was in the WTC that day. Christine is ash blonde with white skin that's so unwrinkled it's almost egglike; to me she looks more like an Upper East Sider, but she attends West Side meetings so I give her the benefit of the doubt. She was shaking as she spoke at the Women's meeting yesterday, she was shaking with rage. "All of my security in life was taken that day. I'd worked so hard to put it together, and in one day it was gone." She fought her way back uptown and, of course, into a liquor store. She bought a bottle of vodka and, with grim humor, a bottle of champagne. The clerk told her that she was mixing drinks, but she shoved them in her bag and went home to her high-rise studio, where she could see plumes of smoke rising from the south.

That night is when Christine turned to alcohol full-time. For the next three years she went back to that liquor store daily (unusual, because lushes usually will walk miles to get to a store where people don't know them). She drank, literally, until her bones began to soften and her teeth to loosen. She was attacking her own infrastructure.

Right now it is 9.17 in the morning, on another sunny early-autumn day. Wall Street is already reeling, Columbia University is on a deceptively casual alert, mid-town is as usual bluffing it out and pretending things are business as usual--but every siren is a moment for pause. Inwood's retreating to a safe pretense of suburbia, Dumbo's hipsters, who were still in high-school, look across the East River at a city that--to them--looks normal.

Day 27, Be Brave Project: Hello, My Parqueted Darling.

Absolutely exhausted today. How people function on very little sleep has always been beyond me; in my drinking days it took me a solid 12 hours of recovery time + then a torpid roll in the sack with those devilish twins, diet coke and Big Mac, before I could face the world with any kind of decisiveness.

And I had very little sleep last night.

Yesterday I walked up Columbus Avenue at around 1.30, on my way to meet Rebecca at the Columbus Cafe on 87th street. Columbus Avenue is. . .oh, it's fine. Loads of lovely restaurants with awnings and a single rose on each table; boutique shops whose windows dance with 'back to school' sales; elegant stationary shops and very, very serious organic drycleaners. Yummy mummies shout into cell phones as they one-handedly push expensive strollers up the street, the infants within bald and serious as Churchill in his War Rooms. Shopgirls with piercings beneath lace tops. Shouting tourists heading towards the NYC Historical Society are quickly subdued by reproachful glances from the older ladies of the Upper West Side.

Rebecca was at the cafe already, and within minutes we were at The Building. As she opened the front door, R. unnervingly said, "That's Angie at the desk--she's mean." A moment later she was giving Angie a picture drawn by Maggie, Rebecca's 8 year old child; within the folded drawing there was also a $20 bill. "That's from Maggie's own wallet," R. says . . ."So be sure to have fun spending it!" Angie takes the picture and says she'll put it up on her "Turin Baby" cork board. I am introduced as Rebecca's cousin, and we are in.

Do children tip concierges in NYC? I didn't have the cojones to ask.

The building is modern, built in 1972 after someone decided to raze some beautiful brownstones: It's 18 stories high, and all of the apartments within are duplexes. In the 80's these condos were sold as middle-income housing, with the understanding that they cannot be re-sold until 2012. After 9/11, in some form of anti-terrorism paranoia, it became forbidden to rent the condos. Consequently a very NY situation was born: Condo owners whose families have expanded cannot sell, but also cannot afford not to rent. A loophole is therefore created, in which the building supers and doormen get a lot of $20 bills thrown their way, for turning a blind eye when 'cousins' move into the building.

We took the elevator to the 16th floor, walk down a darkish hallway, and R. opens the apartment door. My first thought was, "Hello Darling!" Parquet floors! A Japanese style room separator between kitchen and living area. The kitchen is small but clean (dishwasher!) The main room downstairs is well-shaped, and has a small marble table and cast-iron chairs. "We can move that, if you like." The windows look North, towards the jagged skyline of Morningside Heights.

But oh my Stars--I fell in love with the bathrooms and the closet spaces. 1 and 1/2 baths, looking like proper clean modern rooms, not worrying damp seep-holes. A full sized bath! Immaculate looking medicine cabinets, and towel racks and hooks and lovely clean clean white tile floor without the cracks and chips mine has. And 4 closets. 4 closets, big bold lovely closets, about which I cannot write with sufficient reverence and enthusiasm.

So. Semi-legal tenancy. In a clean, safe unit. With utilities included. I would save $4300 in a year's rent. And leave my beloved ground-floor tenement style housing with the un-lockable front door: But I'll have to leave here next summer anyway.

I think it's a no-brainer. I'm moving.

And, sadly, I did nothing Brave yesterday--just walked around in a daze.

Be Brave Project, Day 20: 9 out of 10 Wise Guys Agree: Take Your *%#@! Beta Blockers!

Thank God for the days off from Being Brave! I've come to realize that Being Brave produces an odd combination of feelings, none of which are comfortable: Anxiety, embarrassment, boredom. . .and the constant nagging thought--Have I Been Brave yet today? Oh, crap--would that count as being brave?

What's become clear is that, in many instances, what I call "Being Brave" is what other people would think of as basic self care. Taking care of your credit, tending to your career, maintaining contacts, taking proper care of your body and its necessities.

An example: For some reason I kept procrastinating a very simple call to my cardiologist in Chicago (I like my cardiologists the way I like my bankers: Handsome, Midwestern and Jewish). For some reason Duane Dumbass Reade, the pharmacists here in NYC, hadn't understood that my prescription was supposed to have re-fills. I've taken these pills since I was diagnosed at the age of 20, and believe me, sudden withdrawal from beta-blockers is no one's idea of a fun afternoon. The tightening of the heart, the shaking of the hands and the sudden sweating, all exacerbated by the worry that very soon one might just pass out. . .it's no good. (Though I did publish a piece in The Guardian about a ghastly withdrawal I went through in Paris one year, and was paid in Lovely Lovely pounds sterling).

Anyway, why procrastinate that phone call? Did I imagine the cardiologist's people would say, "Sweat it out, beta blocker bitch--no pills for you!" Did I think that my need for these pills would suddenly go away, like a yen for pesto or the urge to see a mid-week matinee? No. I didn't think any of these things. I just didn't feel like calling to ask for help. Knowing, as I did, that eventually I would have to call, I decided to just put it off. . .

That is just a little example of how an ex-lush, however fit and trim and nowadays filled with broccoli and calcium, can casually create a little drama and chaos in her life. And for some reason it requires an act of consciousness, and of bravery, for me to place a necessary call. I think that we have successfully established that I don't like authority figures, which is rather bizarre because I used to feel I WAS one. Ah well, the many complexities of Woman.

Yesterday I placed a lot of phone calls/emails in the morning. I emailed a former employer, a Web Publishing company for whom I wrote/edited/worked as consultant, to ask for copies of my tax information. Haven't heard back. I called Jefferson Capital Systems about 14 times to find out why they have placed negative information on my credit report when I signed up to make payments on an old debt the minute they contacted me, and have made my payments on time every time. I did the word count on a Self essay, and realized I have to cut over a page from my submission. Ouch! I also have been combing that brilliant credit site to find out about the world of credit and how to 'diversify my portfolio'.

Ooh that sounds so knowledgable and sexy! I also learned about off-shore phone calls being a sign of sub-prime cards, and that it's a good idea to get a card from a Credit Union. Which I think I shall try to do.

Went to an AA meeting yesterday and IT finally happened. The thing that any NYC lush dreams of: The man who spoke was connected. As in a Wise Guy. Fantastic stories of having no social security number, but owning these lush places on Long Island and the Upper East Side, of the girls and the drugs and the DUIs, of dropping an envelope off here and picking up some money there, 'helping some guys out'. . .Most excellent. The guy even had eyes like DeNiro--the sad humorous look under a twisted brow.

Damn, I love New York City.

Right now my neighbors are cooking bacon and it smells so good I could gnaw my way through their wall. And my landlords actually put a lock on our front door! Living large.