Oh Shit! You're going to do Inky Thinky too?!!!

Reader beware: I've been drinking since 4:30 pm. First a scandalous gin & tonic at the Hotel Healdsburg where we almost got the bartender fired. (Ellen, can I just say again for the record that it's even more scandalous that we couldn't get a cocktail before 4:30 anywhere in Healdsburg. In Santa Fe I could get a drink anywhere in town after 10am. Toto, I'm not in Santa Fe anymore, nor Manhattan, where a drink anywhere has no time limit. And thanks Alan for sharing your oh so very deserved promotional champagne with us. OK back to purpose.)


The headline above (posted before midnight) is telling of the small global (totaling some 10 friends) response to this fast/cleanse. Some want to follow suit (or at least say they might) and others think it's hideously insane to give up a number of substances. Including Timothy's brother Ted, who flipped this response to me after committing to no cigarettes in 2008, "I'm off to get a fucking pastry and coffee." I would too if I lived near the Healdsburg Downtown Bakery. And may his and DeeDee's lungs heal in 2008 (words only from an ex-smoker!).


Thanks to all compatriots that are joining me on the journey: Ellen, D, and, Anne are on the wagon with me. D gets extra credit for giving up the juice years ago (and for giving an elegant call for why stevia isn't sugar...right....and why sex is sugar...okay, i get that.)


"I'm sure some government agency is scanning your blog," says Timothy, sober from the other side of the table.Growing up in the Bomb City I'm used to government surveillance. Fuck them and their fucking bullshit (I get until midnight with the trashy mouth). Don't get me started about the trench coats, the sneaking around our streets of Lost Almost and the Manhattan Project.


It's 10:45 and I've got more wine to drink so enjoy your new years and we'll talk about the bomb city later.


Most of all, may you all be blessed with a wonderful new year, a 2008 life filled with joyous surprises, expansion beyond your belief and love so supreme it melts all those edges. And may my withdrawal not create a monster!

A drink? Why not!

I have one, two, three, four, FIVE more days to load up before my life becomes intransitive.

This is DAY FIVE--and without trying I have been a busy bee.

One creamy dreamy latte, one fatty cheese danish.

Two bites of pizza.

Three course lunch of fries, veggie burger, black and white malt with plenty of "fuck that shit" with girlfriend Lisa.

Four bites of chocolate.

Five slices of cucumber with a few fingers of gin, a little tonic and a lot of Bobby!

This photo Bobby took tonight gave me a flashback to some twelve years ago and my first icy sip of a martini. Nothing better than longing for a love about to leave.


Once upon a time there was a divorcé who brought back the martini. I mean, fully brought back the martini. Vodka, shaken not stirred, three olives please. I'm sorry, I meant five olives -- I haven't had dinner yet.


I think it was 1995 or 1996, the year I lost my marriage and found the martini. Back of the bar, saltine crackers in a basket, slice of Gouda. Ahh, Adler's Museum (aka Specs Bar) tucked back in the alley off off Columbus Avenue's flash of tits and Italians. Small crystal glasses, sharp green picholine olives, and the burn and blur of my third shaker full. This was the year of freedom, no strings, and nothing left behind.


Why the trip down memory lane? Why should you join me? Because this intransitive fast is not about curtailing thirst or hunger. More truthfully, it is about my thirst for knowledge, a ravenous hunger to know why the moment the icy, crispy, salty martini hits my lips I'm transported back to the dirty tables of Adler's Museum, to foggy nights where my heart seethed with hurt and no amount of Absolute "knowledge" was going to make it go away. It is about my wondering why it is my body goes one way and my mind can turn the other way and walk out the door. And it's me contemplating that it's very odd that a habit can sneak in and nestle itself up against your most vulnerable parts.


This is not a confession to "Bill." It is a curiosity about why I love the sound of ice bouncing off the rims of highball glasses, why it's easier to kiss someone when my belly is filled with olives and why when I stop the drinking, or quit the sugar or the fucking dirty mouth, that nothing really changes. Well, except for my awareness. And maybe that's enough. This isn't a diet or a cleanse or a way to make myself a better person. I'm discovering that better already is.


So if you're here to find out how to stop drinking, please find your guidance with professional help.


If you're interested in the nooks and crannies of stoping and starting, then off we go. In five more days.

10 Days before it all goes away

Fasting, I come to learn, is an intransitive verb. A perfect verb for January, intransitive between knowing what 2008 is to bring and what it is to deliver. A month where I will abstain from glasses of earthy cabernet franc, fizzy gin, cocao nibs, greasy donuts, creamy dreamy lattes, heady jasmine tea, and the oh-so satisfying explicatve "fucking get the fuck out of my fucking way." Perhaps 10 days from now you will join me on my 31 days of clean living.