Wishful Drinking

6. “FROM WHAT I CAN SEE OF THE PEOPLE LIKE ME, WE GET BETTER BUT WE NEVER GET WELL” — PAUL SIMON

Years ago, there were tribes that roamed the earth, and every tribe had a magic person. Well, now, as you know, all the tribes have dispersed, but every so often you meet a magic person, and every so often, you meet someone from your tribe. Which is how I felt when I met Paul Simon.

Paul and I had the secret handshake of shared sensibility. We understood each other perfectly. Obviously we didn’t always agree, but we understood the terms of our disagreements.

My mother used to say, “You know dear, Paul can be very charming—when he wants to be.”

And my father just wanted Paul to write an album for him.

Anyway, Paul and I dated for six years, were married for two, divorced for one, and then we had good memories of each other and so what do you think we did?

No—no, we didn’t remarry. We dated again. Which is exactly what you want to do after you’ve been married and divorced.

Samuel Johnson once said that remarrying (and he’s not talking about marrying the same person here, just remarrying) is the “triumph of hope over experience.” So for me, remarrying the same person is the triumph of nostalgia over judgment.

So Paul and I were together for over twelve years (off and on) and we traveled to a bunch of places—all over the world really. And the last place we went to was the Amazon, which I highly recommend by the way—if you like mosquitoes. Anyway, when we got back, Paul wrote an album based on South American music called The Rhythm of the Saints—and on this album is the last song he ever wrote about me—and it’s called “She Moves On.” (An ironic title.) If you can get Paul Simon to write a song about you, do it. Because he is so brilliant at it. Anyway, one of the lyrics in that song goes like this:

She is like a top
She cannot stop

So yeah, he knew me.

But the lyric I really wanted to tell you about was this:

And I’m afraid that I’ll be taken
Abandoned and forsaken
In her cold coffee eyes

Yup, I’m a bitch.

Now, Paul didn’t just write unpleasant songs about me.

She’s come back to tell me she’s gone
As if I didn’t know that
As if I didn’t know my own bed
As if I didn’t notice the way she brushed her hair from her forehead

See? Recognize me now?

He wrote other nice things about me and our time to gether, but you know how with exes you tend to remember more of the negative things rather than the positive ones?

No? I guess it’s only me then.

He wrote another song called “Allergies.” And the lyric in that was:

my heart is allergic To the woman I love
And it’s changing the shape of my face

Do you think that’s flattering? I don’t think it really is.

But Paul also wrote another album—a beautiful album—of course they’re all beautiful, but this particular one was called Hearts and Bones, and the title song, “Hearts and Bones,” was about us, and it went like this:

One and one-half wandering Jews
Returned to their natural coasts
To resume old acquaintances
Step out occasionally
And speculate who had been damaged the most

But that couldn’t be it because I didn’t get permission to reprint those lyrics. So that would be really bad, wouldn’t it?

Oh, it isn’t really bad, because I didn’t take any alimony from Paul. So try to think of this as you reading my alimony. And lovely alimony it is.

—One and one half wandering Jews
speculate who had been damaged the most.

Guess who won that contest?

Poor Paul. He had to put up with a lot with me. I think ultimately I fell under the heading of: Good Anecdote, Bad Reality. I was really good for material, but when it came to day-to-day living, I was more than he could take.

We once had a fight (on our honeymoon) where I said, “Not only do I not like you, I don’t like you personally!” We tried to keep the argument going after that but we were laughing too hard.

So, I married Paul at twenty-six, we divorced when I was twenty-eight, and at twenty-nine I went into rehab. Not because I needed it, but because I was doing research for my novel Postcards from the Edge, and I needed to meet some real drug addicts and alcoholics, to give the book some veracity.

7. SADNESS SQUARED

Okay, have it your way, I’m a drug addict.

You know how they say that religion is the opiate of the masses? Well, I took masses of opiates