Sex, Drugs, and Rock-n-Roll

The SEX: As noted earlier, I've been struggling a bit with writing a good nookie scene. And since the best way to improve your writing is through reading, I've been, uh, studying sex scenes. A tough assignment indeed. I read through some erotica anthologies, reviewed some old Sandra Brown's, returned to one of my favorite scenes in Niffenberger's THE TIME TRAVELLER'S WIFE ("...[she] thrusts her hips back and forth a couple of times. I now have an erection that is probably tall enough to ride some of the scarier rides at Great America without a parent."), and flipped through a dozen other books.

Nothing satisfied. So it came as a surprise when, on a whim I purchased Anne Proulx's BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (no, I haven't seen the movie) for five bucks at an Indy bookstore in Bethany Beach and was blown away by the sheer beauty and raw sensuality between cowboys Jack and Ennis:

"They seized each other by the shoulders, hugged mightily, squeezed the breath out of each other, saying son of a bitch, son of a bitch, then, and easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths came together,..."

The DRUGS: I'm looking at voices, too. BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT is fiction, but written in two first-person voices, so where better to learn than from powerful memoirs? This last week I've reread James Frey and Augusten Burroughs, two of my faves, scrutinized their narratives (ever realize how A MILLION LITTLE PIECES reads so fast, in part because everything is left justified? Brilliant.) I just finished Anne Kaysen's GIRL, INTERRUPTED, a kind of comp to mine because she and Ben share a touch of insanity and a stint at the same loony bin (Mclean Psychiatric Hospital). The entire book, really a series of essays, questions that blurred border of crazy and normal. My kind of read, especially her wry observation on psychiatric medications:

"Thorazine, Stelazine, Mellaril, Librium, Valium: the therapists' friends. The resident could put us on that stuff too, in an 'acute' situation. Once we were on it, it was hard to get off. A bit like heroin, except it was the staff who got addicted to our taking it.

"You're doing so well," the resident would say.

That's because those things knocked the heart out of us."

The ROCK-n-ROLL: Still reveling in Radiohead's latest, IN RAINBOWS. Every few days, a new musical infatuation; this week, it's Jigsaw Falling into Place. With lyrics like "words are a sawed-off shotgun" and "before you're lost between the notes" coupled with fabulous percussion, how can you go wrong? The song reminds me of a scene in my friend Jimmy's novel DARK SIDE OF THE SOUL, where two souls dance on an angel's keyboard. Really.

The WRITING: It's going, it's going. Finally have a first chapter I like. A lot. At last. So much for our mutual sabbatical... though between poems and query letters, I'm writing PURE and LOVE SONG. Maybe just mixing it up is what I needed. Peace, Linda

Betwixt Angst and Comfortably Numb

This thing, not a feeling yet not just a thought, has been running through me like an underground spring, trying to well to the surface. It - whatever it is - has been lurking in my academic life, as well as my writing life. And my personal, too.

It goes something like this: sometimes we feel lousy. Not just a bad hair day kind of lousy, but the kind of nasty where we want to scream, hit people, curl into a tight ball on the floor of a dark closet, cut ourselves with exacto blades, play with long coils of rope, lose ourselves in the comfort of gambling, food, booze, or sex. The dark, dark emotions that dog us like stubborn shadows. And we want them to go away. Now. Because stewing in this maelstrom of negative emotion/feeling/angst/insanity makes us extremely uncomfortable.

But there are pills, you see. Some you can get from your family doc, others you can easily score from a college roomie, a dealer loitering in the Lexington Market parking lot, or a friend's medicine cabinet.

And the question is: do you take the pill?

Fascinating article and discussion on this delicate balance, courtesy of Judith Warner

Existential Angst

What goes up must come down, and my high plummeted, much like the temperature here in wacky weather Baltimore.

It was that second agent rejection that screwed my joy to the wall with eight-inch daggers. Once again, a very pleasant, personalized note with some nice compliments ('intriguing query', 'well-written'). Frankly, this love letter didn't faze me for a couple of days. But then I took that note and the rejection I received Christmas Eve and read them the way I scrutinize tea leaves or tarot cards or short, stubby life lines marching across a palm. Seeking answers. Looking for the 'why'. Because, you see, those agent rejections have code words and phrases, and they can be deciphered. And this is what the morse code tapped out: THIS STORY DOES NOT HAVE THAT NECESSARY ELUSIVE SPARK.

An editor, a rather well-known one who happens to teach the class I'm taking on putting a novel proposal together, confirmed my 'ah-ha'. As did two trusted beta readers, which pretty much paralyzed me. All week. I had me a hoe-down of a pity party. I wallowed in the miserable muck of existential depression, that deepest melancholy when the entire meaning of your existence hinges on your ability to create beauty and meaning.

At the end of three days, I decided to give up on BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT, convinced of the impossibility of plumbing further into my characters' - and my own - psyches. 'Time to move on, kiddo!' I told myself at three in morning. 'Think of it as your practice novel, the one that sits in a dusty trunk waiting for grandchildren to find.' And, worse, I wondered if I was a hack, a wannabe writer, someone forever ill-equipped to tackle important issues with a sacrament of words.

I still wonder...

But like most dark moods, this one passed. The quill called, a pensive siren, and I got bored with my negative, self-imposed drama and decided to not worry about whether this story, which I love SO much, will ever see the light of publication. I decided to let it rest. Marinate for a bit, stew in its juices of emotion and character and words. I know what needs to be done: my characters' voices need to sing off the page, brushing off all vestiges of my pixil strokes. THAT is what the agents and my readers are saying. Dig deep, even deeper than I can imagine, and with soul.

It's the how I am pondering...

So, for now, BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT slumbers. But Ben and Phoebe are persistent folks, so I expect our mutual holiday will be short-lived. And I continue to write - how can I not? This morning, in the dusk of dawn, I penned 670 new words on a blank page, starting story number 3 - LOVE STORY ON THE INNER LOOP: A Novel - inspired by a 'what if' that initially sprouted as a six-sentence ditty.

As Dory, the addled fish in Finding Nemo, sings: keep on writing, writing, writing.

Peace, Linda

PSSSSSSTTTTTTT... and remember: YOU CAN'T RUSH ART.

Bupe - The Cure or the Disease?

Addiction is a tricky business to treat - seems most of the cures cause as many problems as the disease. Methadone, frontline treatment for heroin and other opioid dependence, is a favored substance of abuse across the nation. And now buprenorphine, aka Bupe, is on the rise. Also used to treat that nasty smack habit, bupe is selling on the streets at 2 - 5 bucks a pop, respectable for a pharmaceutical with an opioid antagonist (naltrexone) component that acts as a supposed deterrent to intravenous use.

Problem is, the naltrexone isn't very effective at doing its job. Street use of bupe, primarily to ward off withdrawal from other opioids, is increasingly the opioid of choice for getting high.

What makes bupe different from methadone and other similar treatments? It's the only pharmacologic remedy available from a doc. Yep, trained and licensed office physicians can prescribe bupe for any patient. Dissolved under the tongue, bupe is taken in the privacy of one's home. In other words, no daily trek to a stigma-inducing meth clinic. As a result, thousands more individuals are in treatment. Thousands who might not otherwise have sought help.

Methadone, bupe, and a myriad of other 'treatments' illustrate the difficult conundrum of curing the afflicted without feeding the demand for new and novel substances to snort, huff, swallow, lick, and inject. Wish there was an obvious solution, but short of throwing more dollars to the National Institute for Drug Abuse, providing incentives to Big Pharma to develope non-abusable remedies, and boosting proven prevention strategies, there is no easy fix.

Take on even one of these barefaced solutions? In an election year? Come on...

---

On writing... February is off with a bang, who cares whether the damn groundhog saw his shadow? Chrys memoirist extraordinaire, has a fabulous piece on parties, published in (ta-da!) - The Sun. Woo-hoo, Go Girl!!!

Kelley sometimes-they-call-me- has a piece up this week at Flash Me - Bike Riding in Intensive Care.

Jenn Haddock, member of my Cedarhurst Unitarian Universalist writing group, gave birth to her first 6S - all you writers out there will especially resonate.

And yours truly has another ditty in the same - Perfect Day.

Perfect week.

Go forth and conquer this, the longest month of the year... Peace, Linda

Can We Talk About Sex?

Rather, can we talk about writing about sex?

Sex is so tricky, so complicated, especially if you're not writing romance or erotica. I'm writing literary fiction, so there's a difficult balance to navigate between being too graphic (the ooh-la-la) and being too sentimental (the corn factor).

A writing friend, John T from my Nudge-Nudge Collective, brought this dilemma to my attention while critting my sex scene. "Too cliche", he said. While graphic, it has that "been there, done that" feel to it. Besides, he said, what is "ultimately important here are the characters, their attitude toward each other, and their feelings" rather than the sex itself.

As I read his review, it rang true; deep down, I was feeling uncomfortable with the scene myself, felt it didn't get at the essence of my two characters.

So, without further ado, here's an excerpt from the most recent version of my nookie scene. First encounter between Ben and the elusive Phoebe, the object of hs desire. She (obviously) capitulates to his advances.

Tell me what you think...

----

“What?” My gasp slices the dark. A pale apparition sits by my side. “What is it?”

The angel traces a finger down my arm, slides a warm hand into mine. “Shhhhh… nothing.” She rises, tugs at me.

I stumble up, and the cold air slaps me awake. She leads me to the bedroom. The streetlights fling gnarled, ashen shadows on the walls and bed. A dull orange glow tints the horizon.

“Phoebe, are you sure?”

She turns to me, cups her hands on either side of my face, and brings me close and kisses me, a soulful kiss of promise.

I wrap my arms around her waist. We huddle into each other, my cheek resting on top of hair smelling of orange blossom or jasmine, some exotic flower. All I hear is our breathing, cadenced, soft.

She tilts her head to me, her mouth parts, and we kiss slow, lingering kisses that thaw my body from its sleepiness. My fingers tug on the band holding her braid, comb through her silvery hair. I shiver; the silkiness against my hands feels ethereal, the way I imagined.

We fall back onto the mattress. Expanses of her soft, warm skin glow like alabaster between cotton layers, welcoming me, my lips, my hands, my tongue. She watches me, letting me do what I wish, smiling her enigmatic smile as I move over her. I lose myself in the dark warm room, the folds of the cool, crinkled sheets, the terrain of her body.

The tips of my fingers skim eyebrows, cheeks, and lips; she takes my pinkie into her mouth and sucks it, gentle at first, then harder. I bury my mouth in her breasts, the small hollow below her neck, leaving trails of kisses as I explore the gentle swell of her abdomen, the dulcet softness of her inner thighs. Her salty sweetness fills my mouth. Moaning, she pulls me back up to her.

I fumble in the bedside drawer for a Trojan while her hungry hands travel my chest and shoulders, shooting electric riffs down my spine. I keep shuddering. Sweet, sweet God. We kiss, again and again, consuming the other, it seems like forever, then I am on top of her, her thighs part. She gasps a faint ‘oh’, and her eyes flicker open, afraid.

I hover above her, kiss her forehead. “I can stop, Phoebe.”

She stares at me. “No, no…I want… this.” The fear leaves, her eyes close.

I kiss each perfect, trembling eyelid, slowly, like a sacrament, and slide into her warm, velvet goodness.

She looks at me, smiles, and her legs grip me tight. Slowly, we rock together, finding our measure, our breaths keeping time, and I get lost again, rapt in the cacophony of sensation: silky strands tousled between my fingers, the gentle slapping noise of slicked skin rubbing together, her faint peach smell. Brilliant white heat erupts in my head, my body, streaks into hers, and she convulses under me in small tsunamis, her cry ragged in my ear. I collapse in her, and we lay still, legs and arms tangled, hearts pulsing together. An unfamiliar calm engulfs me.

We separate, still holding hands but not talking. Her fingers soften in mine, her breath slows. Exhausted with joy, I curl myself around her and pull up the quilt, feeling whole. Normal. Like I’m home.
---

Thanks John.

I'm off to write a more...er, sedate scene... Peace, Linda

Tuesday Tidbits

Between a dead laptop that's put me into extreme writing withdrawal and a hacking cough that makes me sound - and feel - like a three-pack-a-dayer, I've been downright miserable. Here's what's been getting me through the past week...

1/ "God, who is the author of this world, put foreshadowing in the clouds." From Will, my 8.5 year old son who's learning how to read and write stories in his language arts class. Brilliant, huh?

2/ Drambuie. A hefty jiggerful (or three) at night to 'help the cough'.

3/ Mucinex. My favorite Over-the-Counter drug these days. Of course, the damn stuff doesn't really work; it's all in my head. But the twelve dollar price tag makes me think the cough syrup's better than placebo. (I'd prefer terpin hydrate with codeine but, hey, then I'd have to see the doc).

4/ American Idol. It's baaaack!!!!!

5/ Radiohead. Their new album IN RAINBOWS is effing fabulous. Check out the live version of 15 STEPS, a percussive, driving tune in 5/4 that I can't keep out of my head (Radiohead - 15 Steps (Live at 93 Feet East))

Pain and How to "Kill" It

One of our nation's dirty little secrets is that drugs are destroying a chunk of Appalachia. Not heroin, not coke or crank or inhalants, but prescription pain-killers. OxyContin has the baddest rap, but Vicodin and methadone are heavy-hitters. Ironically, methadone is used to treat heroin addiction, but when a rash of fatal Oxy overdoses flared five years ago, the law clamped down on OxyContin prescribing and methadone became the favored opioid.

You can reduce the supply of a substance, but if you don't dwindle demand, addicts will always find another close substitute. One reason for the rise in OxyContin abuse was the reduction in opium supply when we waged war on terrorism in poppyland - Afghanistan.

Prescription drug abuse is not just a problem in Appalachia - statistics released by the National Institute on Drug Abuse Monitoring the Future survey found 9.2% of 12th graders used prescription painkillers in the past year.

My suggestion? Let's get down to the REAL causes of prescription drug abuse - a societal inability to accept, confront, and work through our collective pain. And, damn, isn't treatment a dirty word? Right up there with prevention...


On the writing front... Karl Iagnemma, one of my favorite scientist/writers released his first, critically-acclaimed novel The Expeditions, published by the Dial Press. I just ordered it from Amazon.

And speaking of Amazon... yesterday also was the separating of the wheat from the chaff in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. Guess I was the chaff, as my submission failed to make it to the semi-finalist round. Not that I thought it would - my manuscript is far better now then it was three months ago. It's been fun peeking in on the mayhem over there - check out the forums, then check out the submissions and review your favorites. I can't decide what's more entertaining - ABNA or American Idol.

My personal pain continued with a decidely dead laptop. The intensity of my discomfort increased when the mailbox yielded an agent rejection - my first. As such letters go, it was a 'great' rejection - three paragraphs, personalized, even a few notes about the writing and 'well-developed' voices. But a rejection nonetheless...

But as I skulked into the dark to self-medicate with a hefty dram of Glenlivet, at last... an acceptance. Three micro-flashes accepted into print. Yahoo!

Back to revising, back to writing, slow and steady - cuz you can't rush art.

Believe. Peace, Linda

6S Kind of Week

Take a look at the Six Sentences site and check out the micro-flash of some of my writing buddies:

First, my (wonderful) husband Henry expounds on how a seemingly bad life may actually be a relative blessing. Deborah, one of my Nudge-Nudge Collective buddies, writes lyrically of painting and yearning. Kim, also a Nudge-Nudger, compelling relates why it's not good to leave leave guns hanging around where kids can 'play' with them. Finally, fellow Baltimorean Brian pens a beautiful piece on Crazy Horse.

Good work, guys! Peace, Linda

In memorium... Today my trusty Dell Inspiron flashed her brilliant blue screen... and died. All weekend she had acted strangely, burping and bumping and freezing. I lost much sleep last night worrying about her impending demise. And, yes (thank Goddess), EVERYTHING was backed up on my external.

A smattering of celebrations: birthdays and fleeting fame

Two years ago I began birthing my third child: BRiGHTER THAN BRIGHT. The book came about because this pesky character (Benjamin) decided to squat in my wee noggin a few months earlier and never left. Writing a novel was not on my 2006 to-do list; indeed, I was going to focus on my silver and glass jewelry. But Ben is a persistent fellow, felt he had an important story that needed telling. The only way to exorcise him was to write him out of my mind and onto the page. So on January 2, 2006, this is exactly what I did - started writing...

“For as long as I can remember, I have always felt different, been different."

Here's the first line now:

The world stops; a whorl of white surrounds us, hoots and gossamer wisps suspend in air, kicked up to the shocking blue--

Over time, more than just the first line has changed; now, two protagonists tell their stories, 61k words are carved, forever, from the flubbery original (!!!!!), the result of nine full revisions and countless mini-revisions.

I celebrated the day by working on my second novel under construction. PURE explores the ethical dilemmas facing academic scientists in their quests to ascend to the heap of their respective ivory towers. Here's the first line of PURE:

Later, much later, when the shock wore off, people always asked, "Where were you?"

I am sure, of course, that this will NOT be the first line in two years, but you might as well start writing something somewhere...


It's been an amazing journey, and a fulfilling one. Thank you my dear friends for reading draft after draft without groaning, applying your red pens and track changes to my pristine pages, for giving me the tough love I need, for reading to the end, again and again: Deborah, Kim, John, Steve, Marg, Chrys, Jimmy, Mark S. Here, my gratitude and a cupcake. No worries - fat- and calorie- free, I'd never destroy your resolutions this early in the game.

The fleeting fame... Woke up this morning to find myself cited in the Associated Press exclaiming on a study describing racial disparities in access to pain medication in emergency departments. I'd forgotten about the interview with the reporter; usually, nothing comes of it. 'Twas exciting to see my name in the AP and the local rag. If only the reporter was able to add to my credits: aspiring writer seeking representation...

Back to work. Peace, Linda

These I resolve...

To write.
To be.
To greet each day with joy.
To choose love over fear. Always choose love.



Happy New Year. Be the best person you can be...
Peace, Linda

Into Our Wilds

I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.
Leo Tolstoy (FAMILY HAPPINESS)

The Bus Along the Stampede Trail. Photo by Carol Falcetta

In the wee hours the last Saturday of this year, I turned the final page, and cried. I just finished INTO THE WILD (Jon Krakauer), a mesmerizing true tale about a young man who left behind his affluent East Coast family, possessions, and money and vanished into the West. Two years after his disappearance, a moose hunter found his remains in a derelict bus abandoned in the wilds of Alaska. In his retelling of Chris “Alexander Supertramp” McCandless’ short life, Krakauer follows the boy’s two-year travels as a vagabond and tries to untangle his reasons for leaving “civilized’ life behind.

Of course, there are no final answers. But the story of McCandless and his tragic end moved me. Last night, I slept uneasily, wondering: Why? What compels a few rare people, usually young men, to risk all for some idealistic purpose? To abandon security and satiety, a life understood by all. To lose one’s self in the wilds of nature – and the mind?

This story haunts me. For one, young men fascinate me, their motivations, their thinking when they’re on the cusp between adolescence and manhood. I don’t know why, perhaps because I’m the opposite sex and a writer and my job is to be curious. As a culture, we stereotype this elusive aspect of the human species as an unfeeling and unemotional, motivated by ‘success’ narrowly defined as money, title, and other commercial indicators. But, I believe young men, like all of us, yearn for something greater than daily existence: a truth, a wisdom, a sheer moment of feeling. Of being.

I am too used to my creature comforts: my morning coffee, the warmth of my home, the security of my job, the hugs of my children and husband. Never could I, without a word of warning, disappear into the wilds of America. Yet people tramp into the woods or the desert or winding canyons all the time: John Muir, Gene Rosellini, David Thoreau, Everett Ruess, Chris McCandless. Most return, but others do not. Ostensibly, they leave to find verity in the purity of nature, but I suspect, in the end, they find the truth within themselves, somewhere in their hearts and minds. I admire their courage, the clarity and honesty of their quest.

So in reading, this little tome reveals to me a kernel of epiphany: this is why I write – to find a modicum of courage to peer over the edge of a glaciated peak in hopes, perhaps, of stealing a glimpse of pure blinding white whispering some truth to me.

See you in the New Year. Until then… Peace. Shalom. Pace. Salaam. Peace... Linda

But we little know until tried how much of the uncontrollable there is in us, urging us across glaciers and torrents, and up dangerous heights, let the judgment forbid as it may.

John Muir (THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA)

The Ten Commandments of Services Research

Taking a cue from my friend Sarah Moffett, a lawyer who follows a similar credo...

I. I am the Lord thy God. My name is Validity — Internal and External. Worship both. Thou shall not have any gods before Me. Much of science tends to be preoccupied with internal validity, the strength of the claim that the experimental manipulation causes the outcome. This leads to the desire to control all potentially confounding variables but may reduce external validity. External validity, or the extent to which the study findings generalize to the world beyond the research project, is very important in services research.

II. Do not worship idols. Although you must have comparison conditions, they need not be exact images. Remember that you worship Internal Validity not Perfection. In medication trials we are used to seeing "placebo," which resembles the experimental condition to the fullest extent possible. In services research, although it is important to have control conditions, it is often not possible or desirable for the comparison condition to be a twin of the experimental condition.

III. Do not take the name of "effectiveness" in vain. Remember that you worship External Validity. Many researchers think that they are doing an effectiveness study if they measure outcomes beyond symptoms. That is not what effectiveness means. Effectiveness refers to the impact of a program in the real world, beyond the tightly controlled world of clinical trials.

IV. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Research assessments should not be scheduled on important religious holidays and on anyone's Sabbath. Services researchers should pay close attention to issues of culture.

V. Honor thy fathers and mothers — and grandparents, foster parents, and families of choice. Services researchers should pay close attention to issues of culture.

VI. Do not murder your data analysis section - or your biostatistician. The quasi-experimental and group cluster designs of services research require complex statistics. The statistician should be a part of the study from the very beginning.

VII. Be faithful to intervention design, and use measures of program fidelity at all times. Given the complexity of many services research studies, which often test psychosocial and organizational interventions, it is essential that strategies are used to ensure that the interventions being tested are true to their descriptions.

VIII. Although thou shalt not steal, thou shalt borrow frequently. To the extent that services research often involves working in unique cultural and system contexts and adapting standard approaches, it is tempting for investigators to assume that they have to reinvent the wheel. It is important for services researchers to borrow heavily from the work of others.

IX. Sins of omission can get you into as much trouble as lying. Don't stick with the psychiatry literature. Remember sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics, marketing, education, political science... Services research draws heavily from a broad range of disciplines for conceptual models and approaches.

X. Do not covet the grants of your psychopharmacology clinical trials friends.

Lisa B. Dixon, M.D., M.P.H.
Dr. Dixon is affiliated with the Veterans Affairs Capitol Health Care Network and with the Department of Psychiatry, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore.

Originally appeared in Psychiatric Services (December 2007)