Hi Sars —

I have an issue that’s cropped up recently, related to Teetotaler’s concerns
(5/19). I’m a 24-year-old woman who’s generally healthy, exercises
regularly, etc. I am a social drinker — generally a couple drinks, a couple
nights a week at, say, an office happy hour, the weekend sporting event or a
night on the town. It’s pretty normal stuff — I like having a couple drinks
when I go out with friends, and since we’re all in our mid-20s and living in
a decent-sized city, this happens pretty regularly.

Recently, though, alcohol has started to disagree with me. For about a month
now, every time I have a drink I feel nauseous, dizzy…I know this is
normal for being drunk, but I can usually hold a few before I even feel
giggly. As it stands? ONE beer and I can hardly drive home. ONE vodka tonic
and I’m out for the night.

I don’t care, really — I don’t need to drink to have a good time and am
perfectly happy sipping Coke for the night. But my co-party-ers are driving
me nuts. “What, YOU, not drinking?” “What’s wrong with you?” “Come on, have
just one!” And so, rather than try and explain (which inevitably leads to
either worry or teasing), I take one drink and grimace while choking it
down, then resort to driving-and-getting-up-early excuses to avoid a second.

Sars, how do I go about getting people to accept a simple “No, thanks”? Or
should I be trying to find a succinct way of saying, “Well, I would, see,
but for some reason I’ve turned into a total lightweight lately and
physiologically I just don’t think it’s good for me. Please don’t laugh”?

And, also, could there be something, health-wise, wrong with me that I’m
suddenly reacting to alcohol this way after six or so years of fairly
regular social drinking?

Please advise!
No, thanks, REALLY

Dear Really,

Just explain that booze disagrees with you lately — or wonder in a mild tone why they’re insisting that you have a drink.”I’m fine with a soda; why is it so important to you that I have a beer?””I’m good with water, and you’re making me uncomfortable by drawing attention to it.”

I mean, you don’t have to be a bitch or anything, but…come on.If they want validation for their choice to have a few pints, they don’t need to pressure you to drink to get that, and shouldn’t.

As far as the reasons for the change, maybe it’s a medication you’re on; maybe it’s just something that happens sometimes, like my developing a sensitivity to red meat at the age of 26.But I’ve known women who had a prompt shut-down reaction like that to alcohol, and…they were pregnant, invariably.So if you don’t know for sure that that’s not the reason, you might want to look into that.

Hi Sars,

So, my girlfriend lives in Massachusetts and I live in CA.She’s living
with a guy she used to date before me.It broke me into millions of pieces
when she left.We had been together for three years, were virgins going
into the relationship, and both realized we weren’t straight girls as a
result of our being in love with each other. She has battled severe
depression since I have known her, which is the only reason I regained
contact with her after she left and I cut her off for a month.She has been
on the mend since I took on responsibility for her well-being in January,
since when I didn’t neither the guy nor anyone else could stop her from
cutting and neglecting herself and I was afraid she’d die.

As it stands, with my support, she’s begun therapy and convinced the man she
lives with to do the same (he apparently has some anger issues that made her
afraid of him), she’s back on medication for her depression, she’s planning
to move to Seattle when I do in the fall, and she downshifted her
relationship with the guy to platonic-and-working-on-being-friends.She’s
even been lucid enough to be very supportive of me when I changed jobs,
similar to her incredible support of me during better times for “us” but
harder times in my own life.

So, I am not as madly in love with her as I once was, thankfully, but I am
willing to give the relationship I have always wanted with her a shot in
Seattle by starting incredibly slowly.We’re not planning to live together
until we’re both in the same city for six months.We’re not planning to have
sex until we live together.I am planning my own job and my own life and
penciling her in lightly, and expecting that she will let me down.

But I
still want to help her get on her feet emotionally and weather the
depression and come out the other side, even if I do not even want her in a
romantic relationship with me anymore by the time the many months pass and
she is healthy (my romantic feelings for her are on the wane, but I still
love her very much).I accept that she may improve and be relationship
material, and she very well may not.I’m planning to devote the proper
amount of attention to myself and living my life in a ratio with her and her
general fucked-upness.Is my inexplicable need to take care of her a huge
problem for me?Or should I risk it and just figure I’ll regret the action
rather than inaction if it comes out badly?

I know you’re not a therapist but my friends have all written her off
because she broke my heart. I appreciate your reading this.

Purveyor of Dyke Drama

Dear Purvey Yourself Some Counseling,

I would ask if you hear yourself, but it’s pretty clear you don’t, because if you did, you wouldn’t write that you’re “expecting that she will let me down” and then turn around and ask me what you should do.

You’re using her problems — the cutting, the depression — as excuses not to move on with your own life.”Oh, nobody else could take care of her ‘right,'” “oh, when she gets help, things will get better and she’ll love me”…come on.I don’t doubt that she’s got issues, but they aren’t excuses.She left you, and then she exploited your confusion over that turn of events; she may not have done it consciously, but she still did it, and you permitted it, because you don’t get it.It’s over.She’s not a good fit for you.

I mean, this: “I’m planning to devote the proper
amount of attention to myself and living my life in a ratio with her and her
general fucked-up-ness”?That’s not her fucked-up-edness, my friend.It’s yours.You’re planning your entire life around her, with the expectation that she’s going to make you miserable.The correct “ratio” here is 100 percent your life and your needs and 0 percent her or anything to do with her, but no, you’ve devised this regimented-sounding approach to doormat living: you won’t move in for this many months, you won’t sleep together for that amount of time.

You need to see a therapist and figure out why you’ve turned yourself into a handmaid for a woman who doesn’t even live in the same time zone, and doesn’t, or can’t, care about you the same way in return.Yeah, yeah, “supportive of you when you changed jobs.”Listen: you cannot move in with someone you know for a fact is going to disappoint you and hurt your feelings.I don’t know how it got to this point, but — enough.You deserve better.Get counseling and rewrite the plan without her in it.

Hey Sars,

I have a social etiquette question for you. Nothing glamorous, exciting, or life-changing, but a friend and I are in disagreement about the best course of action for a particular upcoming event.

So here’s the dealio — a couple who I’ve gotten to know through other friends, M and M, are having a party next weekend. They’ve been talking about it for months, hyping it up, the whole nine. I’m not good friends with M and M, but I met them through mutual very-good-friends and see them quite a bit out on the town where we regularly enjoy adult beverages and lots of laughs.

About two months ago, Mr. M sent an email asking for my address so he could send an invite for the big shebang. I sent along a reply, and forgot about it.

Turns out the party is, as I mentioned already, next weekend. All of my friends got invites, but the mailman brought nothin’ for me. I’m okay with it, actually, but one of my friends thinks I should just go with him regardless since everyone else I know will be there. I think, yeah, not so much.

If M and M went through the guest list and decided to pare it down, then I’d feel like an ass for showing up. If it just got lost in the mail, no biggie anyways. I’m due for a new pedicure. My friend thinks I’m a weenie for staying away. What do you think?

Thanks a bushel,
Tomatoes are my favorite fruit AND vegetable, I’m not picky

Dear Pick,

I would elect not to go; I wouldn’t want to cause any awkwardness, and while M and M may have meant to invite you, the fact is that you didn’t RSVP, so now they aren’t expecting you regardless, if that makes any sense.

It’s probably a simple oversight, given that all your friends got invitations, but assuming is not a great idea in these situations, so you should probably stay home, do your toes, and have your friends report back on whether either M was like, “So where’s Pick?”

Hi Sars,

I was wondering — what, in your opinion, makes a good writer? Is it how an author describes things, whether s/he is a funny writer, his/her sense of humor, insight into the world and people? Can any of these skills be acquired, if you weren’t (I mean, I wasn’t) born with them?

I’ve been reading through your old TN essays, and the more I read, the more reminded I am of how much I used to love to write. (Don’t ask me why your writing reminds me of that…something about it just struck a chord somewhere.) The problem I’ve had for several years now is that whenever I start to write something, I eventually get frustrated and ditch the whole effort because the voice that comes out on paper doesn’t sound like me. It’s as if the minute I start to write, all these ideas about how it should sound and what a potential publisher might like crowd out everything else, and I wind up with something totally fake. Maybe not horribly bad, but…hackneyed, to say the least. And on the rare occasion when I feel like my writing is my own, I re-read it and think, “Yeah, it’s mine all right, but it’s not funny or insightful or poetic or (fill in the blank).” In other words, it’s boring. And why would anybody want to read that?

So, in addition to my other questions, I’ll ask this one, which has been bugging me for a while — how do I know that whatever I write is mine and that I’m not just inadvertently imitating someone else? How do I find whatever it is that my “voice” sounds like? Because here’s the thing — if I had my druthers, I’d want my writing to sound like a cross between yours and Flannery O’Connor’s. But as cool as that might be, it still wouldn’t be mine.

No, I Don’t Expect to Change the World With My Writing, But I’d Like to Have an Original Thought Now and Then

Dear Wouldn’t We All,

What makes a good writer is really a matter of taste, just as subjective as what music you like or whether you dig Vietnamese food.I don’t know that I’m a great person to ask about this, honestly, because I do it for a living, and I edit as well, so I’m hyper-aware of stuff that other readers might not notice or care about.And a lot depends on the genre, too; what makes a good investigative piece in Vanity Fair is different from what makes a good short story or a good humor column, and sometimes a good plot is the most important thing, and sometimes a description hit on the sweet spot is the most important thing.It just depends.

But in my opinion, good writing is seamless.You can’t see the joints or the knots; it doesn’t have any typos or weird diction that pull you out of the story; it’s like a conversation.This is why Patricia Cornwell is not a good writer — she aspires to a diction she hasn’t earned, and her editor leaves so many bush-league mistakes in the ms. that I can’t focus on the story.This is why Jay Mohr is not a good writer; you can tell that he doesn’t read.What’s funny in person or on the mic doesn’t always translate to the page, and Mohr has no ear for the written word.

Jonathan Lethem is a good writer because he can set a scene; you can see where he is.Wendola is a good writer because she can turn a descriptive clause like a piano leg, nothing to it.Vergil is a good writer because he could see an epic tale on a personal scale (Hemingway, same thing).Joan Didion is a good writer because she can execute abstracts in a concrete way and not get bogged down in a lot of moist generalizing.It depends on what you want out of the writing, and yes, you can acquire the skills to do it, if you read voraciously and you listen voraciously, and you study what makes things funny, or affecting, or effective, and you write a lot yourself, because it takes time and not everything works.

So, I guess good writing is like the old standard for pornography: I know it when I see it.

In terms of not writing derivatively, well, you have to understand that the culture has existed for thousands of years now and just about every story you can tell has more or less already gotten told — you know, how Joseph Campbell or whoever says there are only seven stories, really, and any story you try to tell is going to be one of the seven.I’ve had people tell me the Famous Ghost Monologues reminded them of Spoon River Anthology; I never read that.I also hear that my writing is reminiscent of Molly Ivins, but I had never heard of her before people starting telling me that.

It is what it is.It’s almost impossible to write something unique at this point in human history; hey, even Flannery O’Connor sounded like Eudora Welty in spots.It’s just how it goes.You just accept that and you do your best to write and sound real.

Dear Sarah,

I’m hoping you can answer a question that’s been vaguely bugging me for
years.What does it mean this “Prince Albert in a can” thing?

I first came across the phrase back when I was hoovering up everything
Stephen King ever wrote.From the context, I gathered that American kids
(I’m British, you see) pick on each other by saying something like “Have
you got Prince Albert in a can?”I didn’t understand, but presumed it was
something that dated back to the ’60s.

Last night, though, I saw a reference to it on The Simpsons, and I seem
to remember you mentioning it in one of your columns.So WHY????Why is
it funny?Am I missing some deeper meaning, or is it really just a stupid
thing kids say?

The only thing a “Prince Albert” denotes on this side of the pond (apart
from Victoria’s husband, of course) is a pierced dick, but it doesn’t
seem like that’s the context here.

Thanks for any light you can shed.

“A-sphincter-says-what…?” I get!

Dear Exactly,

It’s not something kids say anymore, and they didn’t really just say it, like, to each other.It’s a prank-call thing.Prince Albert in a can is a kind of tobacco, and the idea is that you call a grocery store and ask if they’ve got Prince Albert in a can (meaning do they have it for sale).When the person on the other end says yes, you then say, “Well, you’d better let him out,” and you hang up.(Viz. also “Is your refrigerator running? … Well, you’d better go catch it!”)

You could have Googled this.Just saying.

[9/15/05]

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