It’s your time out on the stage. Microphone in hand, this is your moment. What do you say? Which core truth do you tell?

Bob Dylan’s refrain: “Everybody must get stoned,” from the song Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 is our starter theme…drugs, putting yourself out there into the circle, taking a beating to say the truth or stay on the periphery shrouded in acceptable lies held together with sips, bites, stones.

My path to numbing out with drugs was born in curiosity. By the time I was ten I had taken small black and white pills from my older sister’s room; by thirteen I had smoked my first joint. Later, food, calorie counts, ounces, and body image would be my obsession. And alcohol: I held my first scotch cocktail in a carved crystal glass at a party in the apartment of my volleyball coach. By then, though, I was seventeen.

At the time of the performance, I was just eight. I sang the Bread song, ‘If’.

It was a defining moment. Performing in the big gym. Although the talent show was held every year, this is the one I recollect. In my mind, my performance killed every connection to it before and after.

My older sister had long, thick black hair with natural waves that she wore down except for strands tucked behind each ear. She had dark eyebrows, long lashes, a beautiful smile. Her skin sat smooth, soft, and slightly darker than my other sister’s, or mine. Freckle-free, her beauty was exotic, far from the plain Irish I felt inside. I overheard my aunt say once, “She must have some Italian in her,” which was confusing. How could that be true? Kathy wasn’t just older; she was a mini adult by the time I paid any real attention to her feminine powers. A different beast…

Her hips swung slightly left, slightly right. I tried to copy but often fell over. She wore the tightest pants - puff and dimple free. One time I found her sewing the seam of her jeans while she was wearing them and wondered if she had to do this most days. She had this powdered makeup for her eyes, favouring blue and lavender. It made her more special. When she wore skirts, she had white vinyl knee-high boots, with two-inch-wide heels and laces all the way up the front. My favourite was her purple suede skirt, just long enough to keep what was hers private. Assuming, that is, no trip, or sit or bend, or breeze. She could wear anything and look tall, elegant. A movie star.

I wanted to be like her. It puzzled me that I was not.

+++

This was the song I needed to sing. I had heard it on the record player at home and could relate to it so well. I felt the lyrics vibrate inside me with aching tears from the first line to the joyous swooning finish, walking into the sunset in love.

I wasn’t afraid of singing it. I knew the words, loved them, and had the perfect outfit, or thought I did. My maroon Toughskin jeans and plaid shirt might be good for the first day of school, but this was a song for the talent show. It demanded a whole new level. I didn’t ask for help. Instead, I snuck into Kathy’s closet and tried on everything. But on me, her tight pants became potato sacks, and skirts became bulbous tubes, though I belted them and tried on her shoes. Her white vinyl boots looked amazing, but tripped me when I walked. As I sat on the pile of her clothes in her closet, I saw this dress I had never noticed before. Short, black with tiny red roses and green petals, it had a slightly flared bottom and scoop neckline. I put it on, and the neckline fell so low, my chest was exposed. I had an idea. I grabbed a couple of rubber bands, pulled the back of the dress, twisted, and sinched it up so that the neckline was higher. I put on a sweater, looked in the mirror, and I saw a woman worthy of stardom. I held a hairbrush and practiced my song, still standing in her closet .

I showed up for school in the dress. There were practical problems I had not considered: getting out from my desk without dislodging the knot at the back; the gathered fabric which made chicken wings of my arms; the tugging of the twisted fabric. Still, my friends asked me about the dress, saying how grown-up it looked. I felt worthy but as the slow hours passed, the rubber band loosened, plunging both my neckline and my confidence.

The music teacher had told me I would be called down thirty minutes before the show began. Emotions fluttered my stomach; I had to pee twice. The second time, nothing leaked but an exasperated sigh. As I stood up, the rubber band holding the dress snapped and the weight of the dress fell. I took a moment to realize that my dress was now completely open, billowing wide. I turned my head to look for the rubber band and couldn’t see it. I looked behind the toilet bowl. Nothing… Now on my knees, the fabric in front draped on the floor like the Wicked Witch in Wizard of Oz. I looked to the right and left. It was gone, flushed. No. Please God, no.

I had told no one of my theft of my sister’s dress and now was sure this was God’s punishment. My chest – boyish and flat – was in full view. I could not perform. I wanted to die…

It never occurred to ask for help from anyone. I was a worldly kid; I’d already snuck a taste of mother’s alcohol into school, the green Tupperware holding something tastier than a sandwich or chocolate bar. Within a year, I’d have my own collection of Marlboro flip top boxes to hold unsmoked single Newport’s my parents would never miss. But now, I decided I would just hold my clenched fist full of fabric behind my back. It took many tries and both hands to get it right.

I walked back to class and carefully sat down. 9:45… Fifteen minutes until the call came.

The auditorium was really just the gym, and that tripled as a lunch hall and assembly room. Students entered through double doors in the northwest corner and formed rows facing the stage. This day, I’d be using the back door. The one that led to the principal’s office.

We gathered on stage, out of view. Kindergarten to fifth grade, cross-legged, disembodied teachers’ voices keeping discipline beyond the curtains. At ten o’clock, with a smile and instruction to applaud, the principal began the show. Who would think a sport-obsessed tomboy like me would sing a song like this?

Yet, it made sense to my heart. I wasn’t like everyone else. I felt my heart and mind were painfully complicated and my life overwhelmingly simple. I didn’t know how to talk about what I felt inside but desperately wanted to try.

Back on stage, I hear, “Please welcome Diane Barrett.”

I stepped out. The emergency exit door was wide open to dispel the heat. I looked at the expectant faces, my mind emptied and filled again just as suddenly. I began. ‘If a picture paints a thousand words, then why can’t I paint…’ Unaccompanied, my lone voice was the only noise.

Until the sound of sliding backsides and whispers intervened.

I tried to stifle a rising hiccup mid lyrics and used my right hand to press my stomach and remembered in a flash. It was too late. My unclenched right hand released the fabric of my dress.

I couldn’t let David Lakis; the Nattarelli twins or Derek Freda see my tears and stupid chest. I dropped the microphone to free my left hand and gathered fabric over my chest. I looked to the first, then second, then 20th row. At various teachers staring at me. The song ceased to be the show. Laughter erupted. I ran off to the side and dodged the worried-looking music teacher. I knew the shortcut home, past the music teacher’s office, the nurse’s office and finally the custodian’s office where I stopped. He saw me long enough for the principal to call my name. I turned and looked back. The nurse stood next to him. Sympathetic, she beckoned. We went to her office and she quietly and quickly fastened my dress with bobby pins. I stood quietly and listened as she said how beautiful my singing was and my dress too. As she finished, she said “Time to finish the song.”

As soon as the song was done, I ran home, which was about 300 yards, went upstairs, took off the stupid clothes, and put mine back on. I knew my mother heard me and was now calling upstairs, “Who is that? Linda? Diane?”

“It’s me, I had to change.”

As quickly as I entered, I ran back to school. I was a child who held a greater fear of being caught telling the truth than a lie. Words hurt.

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From my late teens to my early thirties, food was my drug and unlike the public stoning of the Wayward Women, I punished myself with food – deprivation then overeating. I did it all in a relentless commitment to hurt myself for existing. For feeling.

Why couldn’t I absorb one pain without inflicting another? Why couldn’t I control the shame, the fear and irrational worries? I was a balloon and truth the pin that needed keeping apart.

I have never wanted to die. I think that is a blessing. Maybe it is a curse. I felt I deserved to, but I am deeply grateful to be hardwired to have an optimistic nature. Thankfully, with significant support, love, and patience, I stopped stoning myself. Eventually.

Bob Dylan is a master of combining words of deep resonance. As I tried to find ways to get help, speak up, it was messy, and I lashed out with words that hurt people. I learned it didn’t relieve the pain, because I didn’t have the words to clear my guilt.

Irish Mead is said to cure most ills. It doesn’t. The pain in the morning is testament to that. But speaking up in an AA meeting is a way of loving yourself. Saying out loud your worst deeds to an audience who will come up at the break and tell you they are glad you are there. Your essence, your being is good and valued. Eventually, like Dylan, you learn not to fear speaking the truth.

My beautiful (inside and out) sister, Kathy back in the day…

Read Hold the Alcohol, Please! by Linda Marie

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