My roommate J___ and I were really really close, and then in the fall of 1995, I got sober. It was a difficult transition for both of us. I was a tremendous bitch because I was detoxing at home; I arrogantly believed that I wasn't screwed up enough to go to rehab. I couldn't sleep for about a month since I hadn't fallen asleep naturally in years and my body was freaking out. I was emotionally sensitive and absolutely unreasonable.
She was a bartender with a boyfriend who liked to get really drunk and she would bring friends back to the apartment after closing time. While I was lying on pins and needles up in my loft, they were smoking pot and the delicious aroma would appear in my mind like a misty hand, torturing me like I was Toucan Sam.
I moved out in the spring of 1996, into a Single Room Occupancy boarding house-type place in the West Village. My room was on the top floor, a 4 floor walk-up with a bathroom in the hall. The room was tiny with this awful pink shag carpeting and I absolutely loved it. I had one hinged mullioned window that overlooked the courtyard of the huge apartment building behind Ardsley House. I found some Buddha bells at a Tibetan gift store on Greenwich Street and hung them in that window and the Spring breezes would make them tinkle in a very peaceful way.
The first Spring of my sobriety was a turning point in my life. Early sobriety was hard for me, I had lost my roommate's friendship along with most of my other friends and had no idea who I was. I spent that whole Fall and Winter wandering around Manhattan with a keen loneliness that was like a knife edge. I spent weeks obsessing about the Danish barista at the No Bar Cafe (Rasmus!) and never had the nerve to talk to him. I would go to museums or Alt.Coffee all day, just for a place to sit so I wouldn't be in my roommate's way. That Spring, I had started making friends at my regular AA meetings. I had made a friend who lived in Ardsley House and she is the reason I ended up living there. I was branching out, having dinner with the people who are now my good friends. I had a regular gig playing guitar while standing in the window of "The Smallest Bar In New York" on Sullivan Street, attached to a sushi restaurant. I began to really know who I was.
Who was I? I was a giant bag of pain. There was more to me, but I had a lot to process, and one thing I would do was put on "Dummy" by Portishead, burn some Nag Champa, lie on my back and just let myself collapse into whatever it was I was fighting. Self hatred, loneliness, feeling unworthy, unrequited love, frustration, feeling completely incapable to deal with life...."Dummy" was the soundtrack to all of that.
I was a little late to the Portishead game, one of my much cooler co-workers lent me the CD, and of course, for months, it was my go-to background music.
For good measure, I'll throw in Glory Box.
Whenever I hear any song from this album, but most often it's Sour Times which I believe was the big hit from the record, I get that feeling again, that feeling of a new beginning with one foot in sorrow and regret. The feeling of possibility and of dashed dreams and lost friendships. The feeling of autonomy and also of abandonment. The feeling of longing, but not knowing for what.
She was a bartender with a boyfriend who liked to get really drunk and she would bring friends back to the apartment after closing time. While I was lying on pins and needles up in my loft, they were smoking pot and the delicious aroma would appear in my mind like a misty hand, torturing me like I was Toucan Sam.
I moved out in the spring of 1996, into a Single Room Occupancy boarding house-type place in the West Village. My room was on the top floor, a 4 floor walk-up with a bathroom in the hall. The room was tiny with this awful pink shag carpeting and I absolutely loved it. I had one hinged mullioned window that overlooked the courtyard of the huge apartment building behind Ardsley House. I found some Buddha bells at a Tibetan gift store on Greenwich Street and hung them in that window and the Spring breezes would make them tinkle in a very peaceful way.
The first Spring of my sobriety was a turning point in my life. Early sobriety was hard for me, I had lost my roommate's friendship along with most of my other friends and had no idea who I was. I spent that whole Fall and Winter wandering around Manhattan with a keen loneliness that was like a knife edge. I spent weeks obsessing about the Danish barista at the No Bar Cafe (Rasmus!) and never had the nerve to talk to him. I would go to museums or Alt.Coffee all day, just for a place to sit so I wouldn't be in my roommate's way. That Spring, I had started making friends at my regular AA meetings. I had made a friend who lived in Ardsley House and she is the reason I ended up living there. I was branching out, having dinner with the people who are now my good friends. I had a regular gig playing guitar while standing in the window of "The Smallest Bar In New York" on Sullivan Street, attached to a sushi restaurant. I began to really know who I was.
Who was I? I was a giant bag of pain. There was more to me, but I had a lot to process, and one thing I would do was put on "Dummy" by Portishead, burn some Nag Champa, lie on my back and just let myself collapse into whatever it was I was fighting. Self hatred, loneliness, feeling unworthy, unrequited love, frustration, feeling completely incapable to deal with life...."Dummy" was the soundtrack to all of that.
I was a little late to the Portishead game, one of my much cooler co-workers lent me the CD, and of course, for months, it was my go-to background music.
For good measure, I'll throw in Glory Box.
Whenever I hear any song from this album, but most often it's Sour Times which I believe was the big hit from the record, I get that feeling again, that feeling of a new beginning with one foot in sorrow and regret. The feeling of possibility and of dashed dreams and lost friendships. The feeling of autonomy and also of abandonment. The feeling of longing, but not knowing for what.
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