Wishful Drinking

by Carrie Fisher

  THE NEWLY MADE BYSTANDER

  I didn’t realize I actually had post-traumatic stress disorder at the time, but why would I think I had that? Anyway, how would I know which was post-traumatic stress, which is addiction, which is bipolar, which is Libra? Also, I thought you had to go to Iraq to get post-traumatic stress disorder—and you do—but you can also just come on over to my house!

  Anyway, a few months later, I guess my friends were getting worried about me because I wasn’t talking—and most people know that I’m essentially voice activated—and I was smoking like it was food, so I finally agreed to go to this grief counselor they’d found for me.

  And my favorite thing this woman said to me was, “I’m so sorry we had to meet under these conditions.”

  Hello!? You’re a grief counselor! What other conditions would we meet under?

  Then she says, “I can’t even imagine what you’ve been through.”

  You can’t!? Well if you can’t then I’m really fucked.

  Anyway, a couple of weeks later, my daughter, Billie, who was about thirteen at the time, tells me that she wants to be a neurologist with a specialty in schizophrenia when she grows up.

  So I say, “Why not be a grief counselor? We’ll see each other more.”

  My daughter, Billie, is incredible. Even though she’s a teenage girl and they so often end up thinking their mothers are lame and/or insane (and in Billie’s case, she’s not completely wrong). She’s so pretty (she looks a lot like my mother) and she’s a straight-A student—except for chemistry and when’s that gonna come up? And, she’s a great writer and has a wonderful singing voice. (Where’d she get that?) And she just got her driver’s license so pray for me.

  Anyway, once, when Billie was about four we were driving along in Florida and she sees this church and she points to it and says, “What’s that?”

  So I said, “Well, baby, that’s where people go to worship God.”

  And she says, “God, like the God Bless You God?”

  Like that’s his main claim to fame.

  I took a job at one point when Billie was about three or four with a magazine who would send me to different places with her and one of her friends and then I would write about it. I wanted to call it “Billie’s Holiday,” but they ended up cleverly calling it “Travels With Billie.” So we got to go to all sorts of places. One time, we went to Vegas and visited my mother’s hotel where there were actually slot machines that, in order to win, you had to get three faces in a line of my mother’s smiling face but no matter how many times I tried to get a jackpot with my mother’s head, I never seemed to be able to win. I couldn’t hit the jackpot with my mother’s smiling face! If I’d dreamt that, a shrink would have a field day analyzing its deeper meaning.

  Billie has always been a very verbal and watchful child. And you know what’s terrible nowadays is everything that is on TV and the internet. You know, you get movies that are rated PG or PG-13, but it’s not a system that accurately indicates just how sophisticated or explicit these films are. Anyway, one day, Billie and I were watching Muriel’s Wedding, and I was thinking: Well, this is okay, right? I mean, why shouldn’t she see this? I didn’t remember it as anything inappropriate, so I’m sitting there with her and suddenly one of the girls in the movie says: “She sucked your husband’s cock.” And then another woman responds: “Oh, well, she also sucked your husband’s cock.” Now, I’m sitting there next to Billie and I’m devastated. What do I say, if anything? She’s about seven at the time.

  So I say, “You don’t think people actually do that, do you?” (Great! There’s a brilliant point.)

  And she looks sheepish and says, “No.” Then about six months later, we’re watching yet another one of these movies that I think is totally fine, when it happens again! Another actress makes a reference to going down on a man.

  So, I say to Billie again, “You don’t think people actually do that, do you?”

  I don’t know what she’s been exposed to between the internet and school—no matter how diligently I try to monitor it.

  But this time she responds very quietly, “Yes.”

  I’m totally unprepared for this so I say, “But you don’t think men actually like it, do you?”

  And to this, she emphatically shakes her head No.

  So, you can see how great I am with training with my daughter. I did tell her about the birds and the bees, but you kind of have to move really fast because of what kids are exposed to now. The weird thing is when kids see porn before they have sex and ugh…well, actually, I’m a fine one to talk because when I was fifteen, I was in the chorus of my mother’s show (like most teenagers) and the gay guys in the show showed a movie called Sixteen Inches in Omaha to either shock me or watch my reaction.

  As you can imagine, this is a wonderful introduction into the male anatomy. So subtle and nuanced.

  Anyway, more recently Billie told me that she’s changed her mind—she no longer wants to be a neurologist with a specialty in schizophrenia, now she wants to be a comic. (which is kind of a natural progression if you think about it).

  So I say, “Well, baby—if you want to be a comic, you have to be a writer. But don’t worry, you have tons of material. Your mother is a manic-depressive drug addict, your father is gay, your grandmother tap-dances, and your grandfather shot speed!”

  And my daughter laughs and laughs and laughs, and I say, “Baby, the fact that you know that’s funny is going to save your whole life.”

  Now, if you had a daughter that great—you don’t, but if you did—wouldn’t you want to do something nice for her? Well, I did. I wanted her to have some normal Mommy memories of me. Not just memories of a mother who got tattooed and hid Easter eggs in July. So I learned to cook. And it turns out I’m a pretty good cook. I mean, I make most of my meals at about 11:00 at night, but they’re very, very delicious!

  But when I first learned to cook, my mother flipped out. It was like I was violating a family code or credo—I didn’t even know we had those things.

  She would say, “Carrie’s in the kitchen…cooking.”

  Like she was saying, “shaving her head.” And what a weird thing to do in the kitchen, by the way.

  So, one night, I’m at her house (I told you we live next door to each other) and I say, “I’m going back up to my house to make Billie dinner.”

  And she grabs my arm and says “Nooo! Why are you doing this?! Please let me send Mary to make her chicken crepes.”

  But I’m pleased to report that, over time, my mother has become more accustomed to my cooking so now she says, “You know, dear, we had an Uncle Wally in the family who was a good cook.”

  So, if she can see it as a talent—especially one from her side of the family—she’s cool with it.

  I heard someone say once that many of us only seem able to find heaven by backing away from hell. And while the place that I’ve arrived at in my life may not precisely be everyone’s idea of heavenly, I could swear sometimes—if I’m quiet enough—I can hear the angels sing.

  Either that or I’ve screwed up my medication. But one of the reasons I think my life is going so much better is that having originally done Wishful Drinking (the show and now the book) as a singles ad—a really, really detailed personals ad—I think if I attract someone from one of my audiences or one of the readers of this book, he’ll never be able to say, “You never told me you were a manic-depressive drug addict who turned men bald and gay,” like men say to me now. Because I am no different than any other single person (all three of them). I also want someone to love and treasure and overwhelm—oh, and disappoint!—especially disappoint, I find that so erotic. Anyway, the ad worked! Because when I did my show in Santa Fe, I received in the mail a marriage proposal.

  Now, I told you I was a manic depressive, right? So you know I have lousy judgment—so I was hoping that before I take such an enormous step, I could run the proposal past you and get you to somehow weigh in on it. Okay?

  Keep
in mind—I’m not getting any younger.

  Dearest Carrie Fisher,

  I want a relationship with you because I want to get married and have sex every night. [Because that is what you do when you are married.] You are older than me, but I am a full grown man of forty-one. I do love you Carrie.

  Here are the most personal things about me. I have a big tummy and I had an anus operation for hardened hemorrhoid bleeding. [Which is good to know because now I can never say to him, “You never told me you had an anus operation for a hardened hemorrhoid bleeding!” Like I would.] I used to buy VHS videos for self-gratification since I was fifteen to a couple of years ago.

  I have had sex before and I’m not a virgin since I was fourteen. I never had a girlfriend or been married because I was seeking stardom for myself until fall of 1992. [Because you all remember what happened in the fall of 1992.]

  I love the band Duran Duran and the movie Star Wars and the TV shows MacGyver and The Price Is Right.

  Please feel free to write me.

  I love you Carrie.

  So, what do you think? Should I marry him? Are you an optimist like Marie McDonald?

  Come on, I want to get old with someone—not because of them—and I already have such a huge head start!

  11

  A SPY IN THE HOUSE OF ME

  Before I wrap up, I’d like to share some of the things with you that I’ve learned from going through all this nonsense.

  “Resentment is like drinking a poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

  Saying you’re an alcoholic and an addict is like saying you’re from Los Angeles and from California.

  Some of the wisdom I have gotten from my grandmother—my mother’s mother—the closet locker, who taught me, “A fly is as likely to land on shit as it is on pie” (which is true, if you think about it). She also said, “Cry all you want, you’ll pee less!” (I don’t know if that is true though.)

  But the main thing I’ve learned, I learned all by myself, no help needed. I learned not to get my tongue pierced. Because if you’re getting it pierced for the reason why I think you’re getting it pierced and you’re not good at that thing to begin with, no little piece of jewelry is going to save the day.

  I was talking to a priest friend of mine recently (as one does) and I was telling him about how I was scheduled to meet with my daughter and her shrink the following week.

  “It’s going to be so difficult,” I moaned.

  He shrugged. “You’ve done difficult before.”

  Well, who hasn’t done difficult before?

  As I mentioned earlier, I turned fifty-two this year. (Did you hear, they made an announcement that fifty-two is the new thirty-one—or the new black.)

  And I like to think of myself as a threshold guardian. “There but for the sake of me, go you!”

  If I’ve forgotten to tell you anything in these pages, it could be the ECT, it could be bad memory from getting old, or it could be because there’s just too much stuff stuck in my head.

  Sherlock Holmes believed the brain could only hold just so much information, so if he ever learned anything that was useless to his profession, he set about systematically to try to forget it.

  I like to quote fictional characters, because I’m something of a fictional character myself! But my point is that I have something stuck in my brain. And because it’s in there I frequently get lost on my way to people’s houses, I always forget people’s names, and I leave stuff everywhere so that my husband, Dick Tater, has to pick up after me. And at times I forget parts of my show, which is how this whole thing got started. So now I’ve written it down at least.

  Anyway, the following is the “something” that I have stuck in my brain which I go about trying to systematically forget publicly here in these pages! (And if you understood that, you’re in desperate need of medication.)

  It’s a poem. Yes, as you probably guessed, a poem, by George Lucas:

  General Kenobi, years ago, you served my father in the Clone Wars; now he begs you to help him in his struggle against the Empire. I regret that I am unable to present my father’s request to you in person; but my ship has fallen under attack, and my mission to bring you to Alderaan has failed. I have placed information vital to the survival of the rebellion into the memory systems of this R2 unit. (Proper Copper Coffee Pot.) My father will know how to retrieve it. You must see this droid safely delivered to him on Alderaan. This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi—you’re my only hope.

  I can’t forget that stupid, fucking hologram speech! That’s why I did dope!

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  One of the things that baffles me (and there are quite a few) is how there can be so much lingering stigma with regards to mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder. In my opinion, living with manic depression takes a tremendous amount of balls. Not unlike a tour of duty in Afghanistan (though the bombs and bullets, in this case, come from the inside). At times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you’re living with this illness and functioning at all, it’s something to be proud of, not ashamed of.

  They should issue medals along with the steady stream of medications one has to inject.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to my inextinguishable and amazing mother and neighbor, Debbie.

  To my brother, Todd—hogger of all the sanity available in our freak family.

  To Greg Stevens, my best and only Republican friend—no one will ever be as much fun to shop with. I miss you every day.

  To the epic engineer of all my elsewheres, magician assistant, memory and running mate, Garret Edington.

  To Melissa North, South, East, and West—I’d follow you in any direction you decided to travel in.

  To my father, Puff Daddy, who gave in part by taking away—thanks for the highest grade of absence available on Earth.

  To Josh Ravetch—who helped me get this whole Wishful Drinking thing started—I owe you big time.

  To Clancy Imislund—whose voice is louder than my head—thank you for keeping sobriety fun.

  To Helen Fielding—thank you for keeping sanity fun.

  To Judy and RJ Cooper, Dave Mirkin, Bruce Wagner, Bruce Cohen, Craig Bierko, Abe Gurko, The Tolkins, Rachel and the Edgars (big and small), Gloria and Mary, Cyndi Sayre, Michael Gonzalez, and my literary mod squad—Suzanne Gluck, Kerri Kolen, and David Rosenthal.

  Photo Identifications in the Chapter 3

  Chapter 2:

  First row (left to right): Eddie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, Harry Karl, Richard Hamlett

  Second row (left to right): Carrie Fisher, Todd Fisher, Marie MacDonald, Connie Stevens

  Third row (left to right): Paul Simon, Bryan Lourd, Joely Fisher, Tricia Fisher

  Fourth row: Billie Lourd

  Chapter 2:

  First row (left to right): Elizabeth Taylor, Mike Todd, Richard Burton, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor

  Second row (left to right): Eddie Fisher, Miss Louisiana

  Third row (left to right): Betty Lin, Chinatown, Liza Todd, Hap Tivey

  Fourth row (left to right): Rhys Tivey, Quinn Tivey