Highly influential

Happy Birthday Sesame Street

Ger-mare

A brand new series of nightmares have been added to my fall psychic prime time schedule. And to be honest, since bad dreams are par for the course, having some fresh things to prevent restful sleep, is better than syndication.

Last night in a dream, I found myself in the kitchen on Shabbat morning. I hadn't made challah bread, which in waking life, is not my habit so who cares. But in the dream, making the braided eggy double manna was my weekly routine. Somehow I had forgotten. The horror.

I was that amazing combination of panicked and paralyzed. Again, awake, I think, who cares? That's what the Zomick's fairy is for.

For what felt like hours and hours, I sat looking at the stove, pondering if I should make it. Weighing the decision. No one was home to witness me break the prohibition and use the oven. Only I would know. But everyone coming to lunch would surely notice if we were sans challah. You can't do shabbat with challah and you can't do challah without heat.

Was it more important, I obsessed, to make the challah or keep the Sabbath.

I don't know if this a specially convertcentric dream or not, but I will file it under ger-mare. Undoubtedly more to follow.

The Way Life Should Be?

Upon entering the state of Maine, there is a sign on the side of the turnpike, which has befuddled me pretty much all my life.

WELCOME TO MAINE

The way life should be

Huh?

I challenge you to find a more loaded sign. It implies some sort of utopian blueberry picking cross country skiing ideal. A world of tanned Thoreauish utilitarian pragmatists, L.L. Bean boot wearing types, who can preserves for the winter and dine on lobster in the brief summer.

Or you can play the Method actor game with it:

The WAY life should be

The way LIFE should be

The way life SHOULD be

The reality of course is quite different. Not that there aren't truly charming parts of Maine. Eventually, I will write about a childhood that can be best described as growing up inside a Norman Rockwell painting, but not today.

This morning I'm embarrassed. My home state had a chance to make history for marriage equality, but will go down as just another example of what happens when the majority votes on the minority.

I understand that change, the real, lasting kind takes time. But this country didn't desegregate because we voted it so. So this morning, I understand the sign with sadness.

Civil rights is the way life should be, but even in the 21st century, not the way it is.

Sexy Anna Rexia

No, you're not hallucinating.

Introducing this year's most offensive Halloween costume, "Sexy Anna Rexia."

Certainly no explanation is needed on this one. It's obnoxious. It makes light (pun unavoidable) of a disease that kills people. It's not even clever word play. This costume is akin in tastelessness to sporting a "Mental Lee Retarded" get up.

I was reminded, as I stood slack jawed in the disposable Halloween costume section of my local drug store perusing the sexy pirate/cop/wench/nurse collection, how very little people really get this disorder. Anorexia, while a very different kind of illness, is what schizophrenia was in the 1950's.

Even on this, the High Holiday of inappropriate, Anna Rexia is too much. And this coming from a girl who has gone as a topless Gyro girl.

Moammar Khadafy and David A Paterson: Same Man?

You decide.

My smartest thought of 2009

About a week ago, maybe two, I woke up and had my smartest thought of 2009. So smart, in fact, I'm still somewhat trying to decode it.

Usually I rise with a jolt, prompted by my own personal psychic starter pistol and I'm off to the races mentally. A sped up scroll of the things to be done, what's left to do from yesterday's scroll, the things I'm dreading, maybe something good is on the roster, something embarrassing I did or fear I'll do, all the while digesting the series of bizarro dreams I just had. It would be a panic attack except I'm too tired. Waking up has always been traumatic.

Back to my smartest thought. I was waking, but there was no starting pistol. It was calm; a sedate swimming through honey, surfacing from sleep feeling, my beau's unbelievable snoring in the distance was even soothing. And eyes still closed, a massive mental supertitle appeared:

WITHOUT MEMORY, THERE CAN BE NO CONSCIENCE.

Weird, right? Who thinks that at 6am?

I rolled over and pretended to wake my beau with a kick by accident.

"I just had my smartest thought of 2009."

I repeated the phrase slowly to him like some kind of loony tune soothsayer.

His response, that kind of half snore/choke men do.

"Who said that?" Surely I was regurgitating.

"Jonathan Sacks?" He offered, probably praying I'd shut up.

"No, me I think."

The true irony is, of course, I meant to get up straight up and I write about it, but forgot. Or I fell back asleep. Or I got lost in the more mundane less super supertitles. I honestly can't recall.

Anyway, I remembered about an hour ago and it still seemed smart. If nothing else, an esoterically perfect sentiment for High Holidays.

Now that I'm Jewish

Now that I'm Jewish (at least as far as the Conservative movement is concerned) I feel the same kind of disorientation I had when I first returned from studying in Prague at the turn of the century(Yikes, but I had to say it. You understand.). I had fallen out of the regular lock step hipster rhythm of New York City, after striking dramatic poses and giving serious cheekbone across snowy Central Europe.

In Praha, I was mostly cut off from pop culture, unless you count the steady and relentless thump of that one fucking Cher song popular in 1999. I was attempting to learn Czech, not that this Americhanka ever got beyond the absolute survival basics like, Beer please, Another please. Marlboros Please. (Marlboros in Czech is still Marlboros, though drastically cheaper) I actually spoke more French than anything, since the African Hash dealers tended to be comfortable en francais. Et moi aussi.

I was more concerned with the plays of Havel and golems than Stella Adler and Patricia Fields. I didn't watch t.v. really. I went to the opera instead, mostly alone, because it was cheap, made me feel European and tragic, dressed up in my single box at the Statni Opera House, watching Nabucco.

I've spent most of the last year and half in another kind of single box; reading Jewish books, studying Jewish thought, beginning to observe Shabbat and holidays and learning Hebrew(which rivals Czech in bitchiness). I've been basically immersing myself in all things Judaica until the final immersion in the Mikveh. I've done less reality television watching, I've spent less time searching out obscure music that is about to be hip, hell, I can't remember the last time I broke out my leg warmers.

It's not that these things are no longer me or that they aren't important (The Wendy Williams Show, is a perfect example of new important ironic likes) but they had taken a temporary back burner.

But now that the JSATS are behind me and my dunk done, I'm recollecting myself, if that makes sense. I wonder how I integrate the Liz of before with the Liz of now. I'm thinking about how I marry the somewhat observant me with the historically iconclastic me. Constantly trying to catch up with myself seems to be an ongoing project.

I'll keep you posted.

Are you there GdashD, it's me Elisheva

Two weeks ago today, I became Jewish.

At approximately 10:25 am on the 22nd of Tammuz in the year 5769 on west 72nd street between Broadway and West End Avenue, I dipped three times in the Upper West side mikveh (my local Jewish ritual bath) and entered into the covenant. Naked, chin deep in warm, slightly chemically, totally religious water, my friend Dvora at the mikveh's tiled edge cheering me on as I wept through prayers in Hebrew, a mikveh lady named Gita proclaimed after a final successful immersion,

"KOSHER!"

Ritual dipping, by the way, is harder than it looks. One must submerge completely whilst not allowing feet or hands to touch the side of the small pool. Never mind that the impossible Hebrew language must be recited between dips and somewhere in the back of one's mind, one knows that a block away people are shopping at Fairway.

As I emerged from the sacred waters newly Elisheva, blubbering, "Baruch atta...." New Yorkers outside were boarding city buses, hailing cabs, chewing gum, pushing baby strollers. being normalish, having an ordinary day.

Pulling me back into semi reality, Gita took my newly Jewish baby cheeks in her hands, peered into my face as if I were a crystal ball and she was reading me:

"YOU ARE NOW A BEAUTIFUL JEWISH GIRL!"

And then of course, "BE GOOD!"

I've done some fairly radical things in my life, but this is definitely in the top three. Much more on this to follow.

My worst fantasy

I would like to share some of my worst fantasies. Daydreams really, except they're disturbing. Daymares, if you will.

I do this somewhat hesitantly, offer a ringside seat to my psyche that is, because though I know they are telling of something about me, I'm not exactly sure what. I offer a window in anyway because at worst, no one cares about my reoccuring terror montages and at best, you have some too.

Everyone has a certain sort set of morbid disaster scenarios, I'm convinced. And by everyone, I mean New Yorkers. And by New Yorkers I mean those on the west side. There are the sprawlingly cinematic big budget global apocalyptic kind, usually experienced on the subway, going over a suspension bridge or on a transatlantic flight. These often involve fireballs whipping through tunnels, odorless poison gases and wildly infectious flesh eating diseases. And then there are more loca-horrors, small scale home grown nightmares, the insidious little imagined machinations that can happen anywhere.

Let me explain. Or better yet, let me just tell you one.

Like all other fledgling starry eyed, painfully earnest and perpetually stoned actors in New York City who study The Method, I've spent a great deal of time in acting studios. You know the kind, floor to ceiling mirrors, nondescript splintery black wooden boxes, ballet bars. The landscape speckled with borderline suicidal thespians, usually found in some sort of a stretch and waxing socialist about The Group Theater.

Actors are constantly stretching. Actors adore being relevant. I don't why this is.

Anyone who has ever gone to a Method acting school also knows that 98% of the student body teeters perpetually on the verge of suicide. Not that any of them will or do in a straightforward way. Drugs, drink and keeping your weight just this side of organ failure are the scenic route to self destruction. But anyway.

It's the resigned state of a future without stability, I guess, and with a krabillionth of a fraction chance at The Big Time.

I was one these types- a stretching socialist lunatic. Deep down I still am I suppose in some ways, with my energies redirected more to page than stage. But back in the day, I had this one recurring worst fantasy.

Usually it would happen just after yoga warmup and before a long day spent in the studio. It was not uncommon in those days (I say this like the late nineties were ancient times) to spend ten hours a day rehearsing in dance pants, memorizing Shakespeare and decoding Chekhov, perfecting my breathing and sneaking out to the fire escape for cigs. It was in some ways ideal, going to acting school. I was like an adult baby; learning to walk and talk all over again. Being told that Ibsen mattered, that the work mattered.

In other respects it was heinous. Having to witness fellow students regurgitate their most painful childhood molestation memories in the form of an acting exercise, being graded on pretending to be a tree, wincing through acting teachers berating ingenues on questionable talent and small tits, these are things I miss less.

Okay. The worst fantasy. I would walk into the bathroom post-yoga warm up and for a flash of a second I would expect to see a fellow actor hung from the ceiling. Not like by invisible Peter Pan Sandy Duncan hanging wires, but by a rope. A noose. Two leg warmed legs swinging as I would open the door. My heart would skip every time, expecting to discover the scene.

This obviously never happened in reality, praise Adler. And I still don't know why I had this daymare. It's much funnier when I tell it aloud, I swear.

derekh shiksa: part one

To kvetch or not to kvetch

That will never be my option

I admit to being one of those ethnically Christian gals who professed a love of matza.  And while I'm being honest here, I'll also confess to being so excited for Pesach that I couldn't even wait until Passover to open the Kosher for Passover Cheerios.  I've since learned the dread, not exuberance, is a more common sentiment among those observant. 

The night before the holiday began, a time when you're supposed to be rooting out those last morsels of chametz with a feather and a candle, I was watching the Daily Show and happily chomping on my first bowl of kosher cereal.  So what if it had the texture of corrugated cardboard and flavor of a manilla folder, my kitchen was already sterile enough for surgery, let holidays begin!

But after 8 days of chametzlessness, I realize I should have been more specific.

I love matza when it's 3am, I've 2 or 3 too many scotches and only after I've eating everything else not nailed down in my beau's kitchen.   

But before you pleasejudge yourself away, remember it was my first attempt to go unleavened.  This was my first Passover.  I may be, at least physically and legally an adult, but in all things Jewish, I am like an adult kindegartener.  There is a joy in starting from scratch, make no mistake.  Reading, writing, and speaking a new language, especially such a bitchy one like Hebrew, is full of small triumphs.  A holiday is still exciting for me.

One last goyish admission, I tried to make a matza bread house, or tenement I called it.  I learned, something everyone else figured out pre- bat mitzvah, matza is not a structurally sound building material.

In the end, I was successful in my matzaness, but now slightly bloated and not quite as psyched for the next 15th of Nissan, a few miscellaneous thoughts.

1. I understand the symbolism of eating matza.  It's a very tactile way of connecting with history.  It's the tradition, so who I am to argue with 2,000 plus years of it.  However, and I know this from many many years of expensive Upper East therapy, a traumatic event in childhood is often repeated throughout the course of one's life.  As a gentleman pointed out at my first night seder, one who has an especially strong disdain for the holiday, "We made the bread correctly.  We were waiting for it to rise!!!"  Again, I understand Passover won't change but aren't we retraumatizing ourselves?

2. I will never be able to genuinely kvetch.  This is the derekh shiksa, or way of the ethnic Christian, one who chooses a Jewish life.  Choosing is a powerful and empowering thing, but it doesn't leave much room for complaining.  But I think I've found a loophole: to kvetch about not being able to kvetch.

3. The most important realization: The seder I attended this year was hosted by an obviously brilliant, genuinely funny and hugely gracious gay couple in New Haven.  It may be the first positive thing that has ever happened to me in Connecticut.  I was nervous, mostly because of my ineptitude even after 1 1/2 of study, but also because the feast was to be vegan.  What would we eat?  With no meat, dairy, eggs or fish, I imagined noshing on tinfoil, parsley and charoset.  

The meal turned out to be excellent- the traditional lamb shank bone on the seder plate replaced by a flower, a special kiddie Haggadah for me and showtunes that marvelously accommodated the word, Halachic.  It was like no other seder I had ever attended. I was thrilled to be included at the "big kids" table.   

But more, as I sat, laughing, reclining, retelling the story of Exodus with all these folks; one, a molecular biologist, atheist and Sondheim lover, his polyglot gourmet chef partner, who let me light the special holiday candlesticks, the Rav Tastic, a writer, bgirl, my Hebrew teacher and friend, who stood up on her chair to deliver part of the four questions and the very drunk woman sat across from me, who confided with a wink in her voice, "I just don't get on with non-Jewish women, do you know what I mean?"

that there are a lot of ways to be Jewish.  

And that I will find my own way.

PEEP SHOW

Because I know you love a little interfaith humor

Shkhin

Plague 6: boils

Ever wondered what happens when you type in PEEPS and PESACH into google?   Well, I did.  

The search results exceeded all expectations.   For the many manifestations of marshmallow stricken with the 10 plagues of Egypt, click here.

Chag Pesach Sameach!

Two Easters and Pesach

Growing up my family celebrated Easter twice a year.  One was a WASPy amalgam of ham, Cadbury eggs, and the Easter bunny.  It didn't occur to me the absolute lunacy of a human sized rabbit breaking into my house at night and eating half a carrot and sugar cookies.  Or maybe it did, but I suspended my disbelief for the day-glo Peeps and plastic woven drugstore baskets teeming with equally not-biodegradable synthetic grass left in it's wake.  In retrospect, breaking and entering is a common theme of Christian holidays.

The second, usually the following week, was a Byzantine blend of lamb stew, eggs dyed a uniform deep crimson and sweet loaves of braided bread with a lucky coin inside.  This always struck me as dangerous.  We pulled out the big dining room table for these affairs to accommodate the massive meal.  And of course,  all the Greeks and an equally colossal set of personalities; two Yia Yias (grandmothers), a Thea (aunt), uncles and cousins.  Competing conversations, which inevitably devolved into screaming matches, were held in Greek and English over spanokopita, lamb, pilafi, and of course Greek salad.  I marvel at my mother's ability to cook such an "ethnic" feast- one not native to her New Hampshire Episcopalian upbringing.  My job was to arrange the fruit bowl, which I made a painstaking task, naturally.  

Neither had anything to do with Jesus.  

I knew that essentially the holiday had to do with a dead guy rising from the dead and, after repeated questioning of what the hell that meant, let the subject drop.

"It's a metaphor, Elizabeth."

20 years later, I celebrate another metaphor, Pesach.  It makes sense for me.  No questioning is dropped.  My brother, the father, Adam, who is studying to be priest in Peru, is in his busy season.  And as different as he and I are, we do share a love of Jewish men (albeit from different millenniums).

My journey was inspired by a man, without question, but it is the tradition itself that has sustained it.  It takes something more powerful than affection to attempt to learn Hebrew.  As for my brother, I admit, I don't get it.  I'd blame it on my parents, but at 30 years old the statute of limitations on bad parenting is decidedly up.

But we do share the experience, nonetheless, of  those dual Easters of childhood.  And admittedly, where I do not miss the esoteric metaphor of Ressurection, I feel sad that he and I have so little now in common.

Sure, the G20 is important but

As I mentioned in a prior post, Michelle Obama: Fashion Fantasia, following the victory over the dark lords/kings of comedy of the Bush Administration last November, one of the things I most looked forward to was Lady M. catwalking us back into glory.   I anticipated and hoped she would restore dignity to the post of First Accessory, I mean, Lady.

Another thing I hoped for was that she would give France's First Femme Fatale/Nico-in-training, a run for her Euro. 

Well, here it is, as reported (and I use that word loosely) on the Huffington Post.  Or HuffPo, for those too hip to waste the breath on all those syllables.   What can I say, I'm a sucker for a slideshow.

Bon Appetit!

Josef Fritz and Bernie Madoff: A Solution

Undoubtedly, you've heard of Josef Fritz, the Austrian uber-sadist, recently convicted of crimes so beyond heinous against his daughter, no punishment will ever fit the scope of the crime. 

And without question, you've caught wind of Bernie Madoff, who was also recently convicted of crimes of very very different nature, but again with a prison sentence that will never be adequate for the damage he caused and the lives he ruined.

The question becomes: what would be/is a proper way to punish them?  And even then, if we tarred, feathered, and whatever else horrible things we could think to do, would it ever be enough?

Elie Wiesel suggested Madoff should be forced to watch a constant scroll of victims images for the rest of his life.  I like this idea, except that for the punishment to be successful, you must first have a conscious.

I don't know what the Austrian people believe should be done with Fritz, but I imagine they have no shortage of ideas and ways to torture him.  Culturally speaking, if you'll excuse the generalization, they seem to be good at that.

My solution:

I propose that Mr. Fritz and Mr. Madoff should be confined together.  However different their crimes may be, they share acts so beyond the pale (and wives who most certainly knew what they were doing) that they deserve each other.  Let them share an 8x10 cell and spend the rest of their days out together.

My cellphone (Z"L) or How I almost died from Hebrew

Last night, I almost died from Hebrew.  Learning it, that is.  

There have been moments over the past couple months, as I struggled to learn a whole new alphabet and read it backwards, that I believed I might die of it.  But never did I think my tendency towards ancient Greek hyperbole would almost become an Upper West Side modern Jewish reality.  

As I mentioned before, dying an ironic death is among my worst fears and surely this would qualify.  And to make it doubly ironic, I have many times mused out loud, publicly, brazenly, smugly and without knocking on wood, that I could not conceive how someone could fall onto subway tracks (barring drunkenness).  "Ridiculous!"  said I.

Well, I very nearly became a NY Post Police Blotter snippet for tempting the fates so.

The setting: A crowded subway platform  on west 103rd street.

The players: Me, Various Disinterested Commuters and One Good Samaritan

The action: Waiting for the 1 train.

Me, a flurry of multitasking; busily texting, reading a book called, "Hebrew Talk: 101 Hebrew Roots and the Stories They Tell" and pulling two pieces of my favorite sugar-free gum Cool Colada out of my bag.  I could hear the train coming down the pike.  I could feel that hot subterranean breeze of an impending train.  I was savoring that synthetic Miami-in-your-Mouth taste that is Cool Colada.  I was learning about the power of the Hebrew word, elef.  

Then it gets a little hazy.  I know I dropped my phone.  I know I could now see the fuzzy halo of a headlight in the tunnel.  I remember watching the phone bounce across the yellow do-not-cross-idiot line painted on the tiled floor.  

Then like an urban lunatic possessed, one who cannot conceive of getting a new phone, let alone lose all those phone numbers, I inched towards the yellow line.  My bag, which was heavy with a day's worth of city living, shifted forward as I bent down and I lost my balance.  Not like, "Oopsy- should've worn more sensible shoes", but like, " Oh fuck.  I'm the girl who dies under the IRT."

But then a man, an angel really, grabbed me firmly around the waist from behind as I teetered.  If it had been any other circumstance, I would classify his grasp as borderline erotic.  But he was saving me.  Being saved is kind of erotic, actually. 

Anyway, now slightly shaken but alive, I thanked the man and the subway doors slid open.  He and the Various Disinterested Commuters boarded the train unfazed.  There was a kind of New York crisis averted and now get on with your life feeling, almost like this big dramatic thing hadn't happened.

And there I was, alone on the platform, and had a very eerie feeling.  As strange as it may seem, I started to panic that I had actually died.  "Omigod," I thought, "I've died and this is what happens.  The afterlife is going to be roaming the 7th avenue subway platform for eternity."  

It's not logical, I know, but see how you feel after almost dying by subway car.  My only solution was to run up the stairs to street level and have my existence verified by someone.  Anyone.

And there stood my perpetual port in the storm, the frozen dessert Oasis, Tasti D Lite.  I went in, my existence was acknowledged, praise Allah and I ordered.  I was alive and had 12 ounces of Peanut Butter Tasti to prove it.

My Hebrew teacher, the Rav Tastic Dvora, thinks I shouldn't take it as Greek omen to stop learning the Alef Beis, as I interpreted it, but perhaps I should now study only sitting down. 

 

Love is a Ponzi Scheme

Due to the technical ineptitude of PleaseJudgeMe, "Love is A Battlefield," does not automatically play while you read this post.   The video can be found below.

Ever since it was uncovered Bernie Madoff made off with however many krabillions of dollars it was, I admit I've been a little Ponzi obsessed. In fact, it has completely replaced my most recent overused non-word, "bloggable".

Every article of speech has been Ponzified. For example:

"Omigod, he so Ponzied you."
"I don't know, it just felt kind of Ponzi-ish."
"What a Ponzi!"

It gets worse. Two mornings ago, I woke with the First Lesbian of Rock, Pat Benetar, and the classic 80's anthem, "Love is a Battlefield," in my head.  The problem is, as the song played on repeat in my head, Battlefield was replaced by, you guessed it, Ponzi Scheme.

It was funny for the first five minutes. Then it became annoying. I listened to equally, if not more addictive songs, that couldn't be Ponzified, with the hope of skipping my internal record. I turned to Sir Elton, knowing that ,"Someone Saved My Life Tonight" is like the symphonic version of SARS. No luck. Desperate, I actually bought the 4 Non Blondes song, you know the one, figuring however toxic, would keep me humming, "What's Going On" until spring. Again, "Love is a Ponzi Scheme" kept on returning.

But then last night around 4am, I untangled myself from my beau's arms to write, still Ponzi-ing my Ponzi off, and realized maybe there's a reason I can't stop.

Maybe love is a Ponzi Scheme. Big Bernie M. not only succeeded in robbing people blind, but maybe more astonishingly, he was able to trick presumably smart and savvy folks into trusting him. Trust is how he did it.

So, in the name of optimism on Valentine's Day, perhaps it's better to say: love has the potential to be the ultimate Ponzi scheme, but that's a lot harder to set to a tune.

A Room of My Own

It has been nearly five years since I've had my own four walls and a door to close.  Longer still, if you count the year prior spent bouncing in and out of Camp Cupcake, hiding my mandatory butter pats and outsmarting beefy night nurses, whom I lovingly referred to as the Gestapo.

But now a half of a decade later, back to fighting weight and all the wiser, nestled in my cozy little room and listening to the rattling radiator, I sit half typing, half staring out my lovely big window. Even the grimy alley and small, sad urban garden below fills me with optimism.

I am less lonely in my solitude here than I ever was camping out on my Auntie Maim's utopian rent control floor.  Or certainly confined to bunk-rest at the Camp Whack-a-jobba.

I remain slightly hesitant to discuss my battle with an eating disorder and don't expect anyone to understand, since I hardly did myself.  I am still unpeeling that onion, as it were.  I can only report what it felt like; a perpetual 3rd person existential nightmare, a martial Murphy's law, where I was as unrecognizable mentally as I was physically to myself.  But I digress anorexically,

My virtual pen continues to creep back to that time, as I sort through the rubble of my 20's, but for now I am focused forward- on both my lovely, grated window and the future.  I am soothed by the hissing heat and blessed for another day and chance to be miserable.

Operation Nicorette Cut Back

372 days ago, I quit smoking.  I remember quite clearly all those 8928 hours ago, standing on the corner of 57th and 9th, wind whipping up in a mighty crosstown gust from the Hudson, as I attempted to hail a cab, talk on my cell, have a panic attack, and chew Nicorette simultaneously.

I remember how beyond badly I wanted to quit quitting cigarettes.  I remember being paralyzed on the corner, a frantic mass of multitasking, unable to decide whether to go home, to the Village(my spiritual home), or swan dive into the Hudson.  I was unable to decide anything.  Smoking allowed me the space to deliberate and without it, I was lost.

In my usual extreme and highly romantic way, I had decided I would only quit once.  I would be encouraged by a perfect record, by my toughness at going cold turkey, but mostly by the story I would tell later about how I succeeded.  I do this with a lot of things- I write the story first and then attempt to live it.  Sometimes it works.

I told myself that if I could keep a perfect record, I was allowed to chew as much Nicorette for as long as I wanted and up until I read a thing in the Times saying nicotine straight up was still bad for you, I thought I would just pull an Imus and chew myself into my twilight years.

But now, a year later having gained equally useless habits, it's time I say goodbye to the chew.  Wish me luck.