MY NEUROSIS
When you are neurotic as hell, the trick is to appear casual. Pretend to be a person who doesn’t care. This has been easier to achieve as I get older, but was much more difficult to hide when I was younger (and pre-Wellbutrin). For example, I hate sharing food. It gives me hives. Everyone I’m close with knows this about me, but there are still times when I’ll be out, and the server will say “family style”, and if you watch closely, it looks like I just vomited up bile. It’s not a germ thing. It’s control, I suppose. I want what I want, and I’m too nice. A shit combo. So, let’s say I want the chicken piccata, and I like the less fatty piece of chicken (cause chicken fat is fucking disgusting), but the person on the other end of the table gets it first. Then passes it, and someone else grabs that piece of broccoli I had my eye on, and so forth. I learned early on, that it’s just better if I order for myself. I tell people the second we sit down. “Y’all can order up a storm and share, I will be ordering this and that, and no one is allowed to even look in the direction of my food.” They know I’m being tongue and cheek-y (to a degree). I will share after I’ve eaten what I want—and there’s almost always something leftover—I eat small amounts about a hundred times a day.
The food issue is easy to connect to my ridiculous cocaine-filled childhood (constantly hungry, yadda yadda). But I’m a freak about almost everything. Case in point. I’m sitting here writing at a bar in Burbank, and the air conditioning is hitting me directly in the face. I hate being hot (I run warm already), but I loathe being hit directly in the face with any kind of air. Which is why you’ll rarely see me in a convertible. I make exception for Harley’s and yachts. The minute I noticed the offensible draft, I started scoping out other places to sit. I’ve now tested four other tables for their wind velocity. Not much luck. The bar hasn’t been busy (but it’s starting to fill up). There’s a guy in the corner, watching a hockey game, and he just looked at me like I’m crazy. He’s right. You have no idea how much I wish I were a person who didn’t notice or care about air hitting her in the face. The occupied tables around me are also getting blasted by the same Freon to head ratio, and they seem perfecting oblivious and happy. Life must be nice for these types. I’d love to spend a day outside of my ridiculous head. Oh Lord. Now this kid (twenty-two at best) just sat at the table in front of me, and is swinging back and forth on his bar stool—directly in my line of vision. Even though I’m looking at my composition pad, it’s making me seasick! Christ, I might as well be on a friggin boat. Whiskey, take me away.