Thirty-Forty Split

These are some things that happened to me in my thirties: I got pregnant in a drunken one night stand by the third back-up guitar player of some two-bit Guatemalan rock group (he fucked me after I passed out and all I remember about the entire thing was that he had on a nice shirt); I eventually lost the baby in a near fatal miscarriage in a dirty public third world hospital (even though it was a date-rape baby, I still wanted her desperately); I hemorraged for six months afterwards and was eventually diagnosed with a seven centimeter pendanculated fibroid tumor (which I have to this day); I got held up on New Years Eve by gunpoint and machete (and with my pad money stolen, I was forced to sit on a chicken bus for the next four hours bleeding visibly through my light yellow cotton pants); I did cocaine for the very last time with, Charlie, the American junkie epileptic hitman (who, despite/because of all his failings, I loved very deeply); I was robbed of the chance to say goodbye when Charlie died a few months later, sick and forever alone (but I did eventually write a lovely comic about it—sadly, the greatest romance of my life); three of my four dogs died in one night, and the fourth died a few years later (I loved that last one, Three-toe, more than any other living creature before or since); with increasing bouts of severe asthma and chronic bronchitis, after twenty-five years of over two packs a day, I finally quit smoking cigarettes (the single greatest achievement of my life); I started to black out out every time I drank, and woke up many mornings in the most extreme of circumstances (front door smashed in, mean Frenchman snoring beside me, and my bum bleeding profusely, for example); I took a Greyhound bus to Sturgis, got hammered, and fell off a balcony—twice—demoing the left side of my body as if I’d really been in a motorcycle accident (lightning bolt scar still hangs off my left eye for proof); I got hepatitis and almost died from liver failure (the absolute best thing that ever happened to me); I never started drinking again, but instead fell in love, for the first time in ten years, with the meanest, most arrogant alcoholic alive today (who ripped out my heart and spit and shit all over it, leaving me permanently bitter and fearful of love).

Also: I left the Third World, I moved back to Canada, I became a slum lord, I made peace with my father, I lost my best friend, I swam in the Mekong River, I shook Werner Herzog’s hand, I wrote a book, I learned to garden, I quit waitressing, I discovered Istanbul, I went on a pilgrimage, and after living the three most random, thrilling and intense months of my life touring Ethiopia with seven hot Italian clowns, I realized I’d never be the same again, nothing would ever be the same, and so I said Fuck-It-All and moved to Argentina.

And now I’m forty, finally learning to Tango.