Sex, Drugs & Gefilte Fish

by Shana Liebman

  My grandma was above and beyond. She didn’t just have that requisite jar of old-lady ribbon candy. She always had a stash of chocolates and gummy fruit slices and what she called “caramels.” She also knew what she didn’t like. Her most popular expression was “I’m not comfortable.” “I’m not comfortable—bring me a pillow,” “I’m not comfortable—lemme lay down,” “I’m not comfortable—bring me a pillow, get off the couch and lemme lay down.”

  So it’s fitting that my most uncomfortable moments in childhood were at the hand of my grandma Betty. It was my grandma Betty who gave me my first sex talk. I was 11. We were sitting in her Oldsmobile in the parking lot of Jade Winds, her retirement community in Florida. She asked me if I was kissing boys yet and I couldn’t even muster up an answer. She then went on a diatribe about what she called “heavy petting” and the “good kinds of rubbing” versus the “bad kinds of rubbing.” (By the way—it’s a great tactic to have the big fat loud grandma give your kid the sex talk. Guaranteed intimacy issues well into their thirties.)

  When I got my period for the first time, I was with my grandma Betty. I was at the Aventura Mall in Florida. I went to the bathroom and saw the bloodstain on my underpants. And I was ecstatic. I had just read Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret, and I did exactly what Margaret did in the book. I looked at the drop of my blood on my underpants and then looked up to the heavens and I thanked God. I bounded out of the bathroom and realized I had to now tell Grandma Betty what had just happened. I stammered. “I uh, you know, just I got my um…” “What is it? What?” she boomed back. “You know, I got my thing, I got… you know… my period,” I whispered. “Oh you got your PERIOD!” she yelled back. And then she promptly smacked me on the face. I learned later that that was a Jewy kineahora thing to ward away evil spirits. But at the time I just thought she was a total bitch. I understood in an instant that I was with the worst possible person to help me shepherd in my ladyhood.

  She promised me she had the stuff I needed at home from a prior visit from my menstruating cousin Cami. When we got back to Jade Winds, she handed me a box of what she called “tampoons.” She shut me into the bathroom and simply told me to put one in. There were many problems with that plan. The biggest issue being that I had no idea where “in” was. She shouted at me from the other side of the door:

  “Put your leg up on the toilet!”

  “And then what??”

  “Shove it in there!”

  “In where??”

  “In your vagina hole!!”

  “Where I pee out of??”

  “No, the big hole!”

  I don’t know how big her hole was at the age of 78 but mine, at 12, was teeny tiny. I spent an hour poking at my vagina blindly with a tampon. I cried for her to let me out but she wanted to teach me how to use a tampon—which she promised was way more pleasant than bleeding into a maxi. Her heart was in the right place but unfortunately my tampoon was not.

  Perhaps the most uncomfortable moments of all were sitting with her on her deathbed. She died slowly of cancer, which allowed for weekly visits to her bedside at a makeshift hospice in my aunt’s house. There she would present me with pearls of wisdom that would stay with me forever. Mostly about marriage, something she knew a great deal about, having been married to my grandfather for 62 years—at least two of which were happy. She said I was never going to find the perfect man, which I already knew. I told her I probably wasn’t going to marry a man, which I think she already knew. She said and I quote, “Everybody settles.” And I swore to her on her bedside that I would not.

  We talked about where she thought she was going to go when she died. She had no false hope of heaven or fear of hell. Having never been a spiritual woman, her answer, when asked where she was going to go, was always, “I’m going to Timbuktu.”

  A week before she died, I had what would be the last uncomfortable moment with my grandma. I showed up for my weekly visit and I found my cousin Seth rolling a joint. I knew he was a big stoner but I thought, “Jesus can’t you wait till you’re home or she’s dead?” But the doctor had told my aunt that she could give my grandmother marijuana to ease the pain and increase her appetite. My grandma Betty, once a voracious eater, was barely eating anymore and this was our last hope. My aunt didn’t want to be a part of it; that would be too uncomfortable. So she put my cousin Seth, the stoner, in charge. And I just happened to show up on that day.

  “We’re gonna teach Grandma how to smoke a joint,” Seth said. “You know how to smoke a J?” I was 19. I knew very well how to smoke a J. But I didn’t really want my grandma to know how well I knew.

  We sat at her bedside and broached the subject. “It’s one of those things you have to try once in your life,” Seth said. I said, “Hey, Grandma, if you try it I’ll try it.” Somehow she agreed. She was tethered to an IV so she couldn’t really use her arms. I held the joint up to her mouth. I told her to puff, to pull the smoke in, and breathe it in. She puffed a couple of times. She coughed a little. And so did I. About a minute later, she shook her head. “I don’t feel anything. This isn’t working… does anybody have a caramel?” Scott and I laughed. She was herself again. We grabbed her a caramel and unwrapped it for her. She smiled, because she couldn’t help it. She laughed. She couldn’t help it. We all had the giggles. We couldn’t help it. And we sat together for the first and last time, actually comfortable.

  I Am Anxious

  By Jonathan Kesselman

  BEFORE I WAS BORN, back in 1974, doctors didn’t use ultrasound; instead they would determine a child’s sex by checking the pulse of the baby. A slower pulse meant you were going to deliver a boy. A faster pulse meant you would be having a girl. Needless to say, my mom’s friends knitted pink hats for me.

  And ever since I was brought into this world, anxiety has been a major part of my life. When I was 13 or so, I came down with a really bad case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. And for those of you who say stupid shit like, “Oh my god, I’m so OCD…” trust me, you’re not. Using Post-its, or cleaning your apartment a lot, or having a “super”-organized closet is not OCD. Flipping light switches in sequences of four or staring at the corner of ceilings while feeling compelled to repeat bizarre phrases in your head for fear that someone will somehow take over your identity… that’s OCD. To reiterate, a really clean apartment is not.

  When I was 18, after years of failed talking therapy and medication, I finally got over the C part of my OCD through a behavioral psychology treatment called Systematic Desensitization. Essentially, during the course of the treatment, you’re exposed to the things that trigger your obsessions, but then not allowed to perform any of your compulsive actions. It’s sort of like A Clockwork Orange when they make Malcolm McDowell into a pussy by clamping his eyes open and forcing him to watch TV… or like Fear Factor, except you don’t have to eat bugs or talk to Joe Rogan… that is, unless Joe Rogan is somehow one of your OCD triggers. But how fucked-up of a disease would that be?

  About four or five years ago my anxiety got pretty bad. I wasn’t working, I was completely broke and I was enslaved by my anxiety. The only discernible difference between the Egyptian slaves and me was that I was living in the Valley in Los Angeles, and there was no way in hell I would lift a heavy stone—I have lower back problems.

  But I was depressed, drinking a lot and generally not a nice guy to be around. So, when I turned 29, and the hangovers got too bad, I decided to see a psychiatrist and deal with it once and for all. I was prescribed a wonder antianxiety and depression drug called Lexapro. Suddenly I could focus on work. I started making money, and I stopped snapping at people for saying stupid shit like “Oh my god, I’m so OCD.”

  But with every good thing in life, there is always sacrifice: I stopped wanting to have sex. Even more interesting was that when I did engage in sexual activities I could still easily achieve an erection, but it would take me forever to come. The phenomenon, I quickly learned on Google, is known as retarded ejaculation. Sounds
like fun, right? Not so much. After a half hour of fucking, both parties desperately want it to end.

  At first, I was ashamed to bring up the Lexapro thing with the women I would sleep with. It’s kind of hard making words like antidepressant or anxiolytic or retarded ejaculation sound sexy.

  “Baby, I want you to come. I want you to come so bad. Come all over my tits!”

  “Um, wow. That might be kind of a difficult thing. You see, I have this side effect from my combination antidepressant/anxiolytic medication. It’s called retarded ejaculation. Basically, it’s a physiological phenomenon that occurs when…”

  And to make matters worse, because I didn’t tell these women what was going on, they assumed that it somehow had something to do with them. That maybe they weren’t attractive or sexy enough. And so finally, because I felt immense guilt after seeing how panicked and insecure women would become when I couldn’t ejaculate, I gave in to the shame and told them the truth.

  Oddly enough, upon hearing about my retarded ejaculation, most of these women would instantly relax, and then take the news as some sort of personal challenge. Out would come the lotion and the towel, and after 45 minutes of having my cock stroked, being talked dirty to, all the while having my eyes closed, intensely focused on my most base and perverse sexual fantasies involving a completely shaved, unicorn-loving, blonde shiksa temp receptionist named Krissy who screams out “Fuck me, Captain!” as she’s bent over my imaginary high-powered Manhattan mahogany desk… or the one in which I use a mind-control agent concocted by a shadowy, classified department of the CIA to assist in my espionage work in South Korea where I’m sent to fuck the beautiful Communist midgets into our way of thinking… I might sometimes come.

  It got to the point where I realized that since I wasn’t all that interested in sex anymore, and because it was becoming such a hassle to come up with even more elaborately specific sexual fantasies, that I’d just excise sex from my life completely.

  And then something amazing happened. I saved a shitload of money. I no longer had to buy chivalrous-man dinners at expensive restaurants, or pay for $125 “Thai” massages. I no longer had to buy flowers, or drinks, or Rohypnol… I’m kidding, of course. Buying flowers for a woman is totally lame.

  Secondly, my career started taking off. The pursuit of pussy takes up a lot of time that could be better spent writing, taking meetings, networking, watching TV, playing NBA 2K8 on the Xbox 360 Live, napping. And also, I no longer had to deal with all of the emotional baggage that came from… what’s the word I’m looking for… “connecting”… with another human being.

  So I learned a lot from this experience: Freedom never comes without a price. Moses couldn’t come into the Holy Land, and a lot of the time, neither can I.

  Benzos and Breast Cancer

  By Stephanie Green

  I WAS HIGH WHEN I GOT THE CALL. Shit, I’d been smashed for 24 hours, starting with the anesthesia, followed by Percocet and scores of Xanax. After the lumpectomy, I’d gone straight from surgery to Tom’s house and smoked a joint. Smoking on top of anesthesia—nice. The lumpectomy was supposed to remove a benign fibroadenoma from my left breast. I’d felt the lump in August. It was small, soft and moved around—not the kind of hard, cystic thing women are supposed to fret over.

  An ultrasound told my first surgeon it was benign, but he told me that it might keep growing. “I’m single, take it out. I don’t want some guy feeling me up and finding that.” It was my first surgery. My BFF Dana and my mom accompanied me to the operation. My body had weathered Ecstasy, acid, ’shrooms, mescaline, coke, crystal, pot and almost every kind of downer. I’d always partied like a rock star. I was a champ under anesthesia.

  When the surgeon walked out of the OR, he assured my mom and Dana that the tumor looked clean. It was nothing. He was “sure” of it.

  The next morning, I felt so good that I assured my mom she could make the five-hour drive home to Jacksonville. No need for her to stay in South Beach. The doctor said I was fine. I felt fine.

  I walked over to Tom’s house—he had recently become my pothead partner—and settled into a nice high. A few minutes later, my cell rang. “Mammo” popped up on my caller ID. (Today, eight months later, the number for Mount Sinai Comprehensive Cancer Center is still labeled “Mammo.”)

  I was sitting at Tom’s kitchen counter in one of only four chairs in the apartment. Rene, whom I’d just met, was taking a turntable out of the front door. Tom was helping him. I was in jeans—Rock and Republic—but I can’t remember any other part of my wardrobe; odd for someone who remembers what she wore at all of life’s pivotal moments.

  A woman with a thick Latino accent said, “Ms. Green, when can you get to the doctor’s office? He wants to see you soon.”

  “Uh, I dunno,” I said through my pot-thickened haze. Why would they want to schedule a checkup so soon? I thumbed through my Filofax nonchalantly. “I guess I could come tomorrow,” I said while thinking that I’d earned myself at least a week of doing nothing but hanging out with Tom and smoking.

  “You can come here soon?” The urgency was evident even beneath the layers of incompetence in her voice.

  “Uhh, when?”

  “Now, miss. Please.”

  “Now?!”

  “Yes, now, the doctor is on his way in just to see you.”

  I hung up. I was so fucking high. Tom gets the best shit in Miami. Usually when I smoke with Tom, I’m done for the day, but unfortunately this day was only just beginning.

  The only other time I’d been in this much shock was watching the Twin Towers burst into flames. My thoughts leapt to Mom. I knew she’d either be on the road or seconds away from hitting the road. Rene had gone. Tom caught my eye, grasped my fear and sat down in a desk chair across the room from me. I dialed my mom.

  “Momthedoctorjustcalledhewantstoseemenow.Youneedtocomepickme upnow.”

  “What? OK, calm down.” Her voice got weak and slow. I’d heard that disconcerting tone once before, in 2004, when I’d called in the middle of a hurricane-induced blackout to tell her I was being sued.

  Tom was a caricature—ginormous eyes, white skin, chin to the floor—still staring at me. I locked my eyes on his as I panted into the phone.

  “Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it,” Mom said. “No, I’m sure it’s not cancer, you’ll be fine.”

  As high as I was, and through the tornado of thoughts swirling in my brain—I was about to be diagnosed with cancer—I remembered the most important thing: drugs.

  I barked instructions into the phone to my poor mom. “Bring the Xanax! Then pick me up at Tom’s behind China Grill. I’ll be outside.”

  I was already calmer knowing that Xanax and Mom were on their way. After I hung up, Tom came to me from across the room panic-stricken, the color still completely drained from his face. He sat down across from me and took my hand. “What happened, Steph?”

  “Omigod omigod omigod omigod I have cancer. I have cancer, Tom. Cancer. I’m 32 and I have cancer.”

  “You do not have cancer. Don’t panic.”

  He hugged me. I cried just a little into his shirt. He stroked my hair. Tom and I weren’t touchy-feely friends. Both straight and single, we’d never crossed that line. But in that moment I grabbed onto him like a boy-friend.

  “Think positive,” he said, pleading with his brows.

  “The doctor doesn’t call the day after a biopsy with good news.”

  “Focus on me.”

  He looked as stricken as a mother would be, a father, a brother, a husband. I would never forget that look. Even though I didn’t see much of Tom after that, I knew that whatever happened, he would be an integral part of my life story. I would never forget that room where we’d laughed, argued, smoked, drank and played with his daughter and dog. He was, at that moment, the one thing moving while time remained still.

  I walked outside and sat on the curb waiting for my mom. When she drove up, I got in the car and swallowed three Xannies.


  “I fucking have cancer, Mom,” I yelled. “What the fuck?”

  “Whatever it is, we’re going to beat it. Everything’s going to be just fine.”

  “Stop jinxing me!” I shouted back at her.

  Mount Sinai is on Miami Beach, a mere 10 minutes from my apartment on South Beach. I instructed Mom to drive around the hospital grounds until the pills worked their way into my blood and I was fully sedated.

  I knew it was breast cancer, but I wanted to hear it from Doctor El Schmucko who’d told us the day before that the lump was “absolutely nothing.”

  I forget his exact words, something generic: “The biopsy came back positive for ductal cell carcinoma.”

  “Yeah, no shit.” I was impassive, slightly maniacal and majorly medicated.

  Dana, my best friend whom I had called with the news, appeared at the door of the exam room shortly after El Schmucko told me his diagnosis. “What…?” she said entering, looking confused but without alarm.

  “Hi-iiiiiiiiii!” I squealed like we were meeting at a bar. “Guess what? I have cancer!”

  Dana started laughing and crying at the same time. Her first thought upon hearing my frantic phone messages was that they’d operated on the wrong breast or left a sponge in me. (She watches those medical reality shows.)

  I next remember getting into the car. I called Tom, told him the news. He went silent. I may have called some other friends. I remember my mom on the phone with my dad, telling him as we left the hospital: “She’s doing remarkably well actually. Xanax is a wonderful drug!”

  I was oddly giddy after Schmucko’s diagnosis. “I’m registering at Neiman’s!” I declared, out of the blue. “I didn’t have a Bat Mitzvah, I’m not getting married and I know people will be sending gifts. So I’m going to register, and we’re going to have a huge cancer party!”