Omigod.

It's getting closer to the table read. Now, I don't actually have a date set and I don't know where we will meet, but I can FEEL it. Does that count?

What's making me FEEL that is talking to some women yesterday about this - about change and growth and all of that bullshit.

I told them what I want to do and immediately heard my mom saying, "Who do you think you are, Missy?"

Well, apparently, I think I am a writer. An author. I wrote a play! Jeez that makes me a playwright. And with all those rhyming lyrics? I am a bard!

But seriously, it's HARD to change. I have had one identity forever, basically as a helper and caregiver and now this. Carole Burnett (youtube her) had this great line about giving birth...Giving birth is like taking your lower lip and forcing it over your head. 

Well, this change is like that.
Now, what made the difference in the FEELING (that this is play HAPPENING) is that I asked for help. Yesterday.

OMIGOD.

I asked an actress to help me because she has done table reads before. And poof, walla, it's gonna happen.

So yaw'l, ask for some fuckin' help!

Ebby Said - The true (musical comedy) story of the man who started Alcoholics Anonymous – and it wasn’t Bill Wilson.

Synopsis

Childhood friends despite disparate beginnings,  Ebby Thacher and Bill Wilson bond through alcohol induced adventures until their lives are both ruined by booze. Through a Christian rebirth and conversion, Ebby stops drinking and then helps Bill stop drinking. Bill adapts Ebby’s fundamental Christian guidelines to focus on alcoholism solely, thereby creating Alcoholics Anonymous which helps thousands. But Bill cannot – ultimately – help his pal Ebby, who resents the movement, and dies drunk.

But it’s funny : )

Cast

Mark -  Mark is an adult male (35-50+).  A stereotypically ethnocentric New Englander, he narrates the show with self-and-other deprecating humor. He is a soulful singer.

Bill – Bill is an adult male (plays 16 to 60). He is tall and gangly, confident yet sensitive, wounded and distant, handsome and athletic, plus a rugged tenor. Often drunk or depressed or both.

Ebby – Ebby is an adult male (plays 16 to 60) . He has a small build, but great taste. A Dapper Dan who thinks he’s a ladies man. He pretends to be confident but is insecure and needy. He can sing with backup. Often drunk and manic or both.

Lois –Lois is an adult female (plays 16 to 60) who is beautiful but with a mean and petty edge. She has a strong haunting voice and can dance.

Bertha – Bertha is a young female who is Bill’s blonde and perfect girlfriend. She is charming, pretty, kind and sings well.

Gilman – Bill’s father 40-ish. Always drunk

Roger – Roger is a young male who is the reverend’s son and Bill’s best friend. He is responsible, dutiful and loyal.

Doc – Doc is a young male (16) who is Lois’ younger brother. He is athletic and handsome and a friend of Bill’s.

Dr. Bob – Adult male (50+). Churchy. Tight-assed. Firm but kind.

Bill D. – Adult male 40+ Bill and Bob visit him in rehab.

Emma – Adult Female. Ebby’s doting mother

Dot – Dot is Bill’s younger sister (14). Sweet and wounded

George - Ebby's father. Gruff voice never seen.

Gramps - Bills grandfather. Kind voice never seen.

Barbershop quartet

A robed choir

Other small roles can be cast members filling in.

HELP!

This thing is bigger than Kavanaugh.

And it's been going on forever. What's different now is that people - women - are talking about it. Women are telling their stories of sexual abuse and violation. This still often leads to, “Why didn’t you tell the police?” (Your parents, the principal, your boss, whatever.)

And that, is the very crux of the story. We have been taught not to tell.

My mother – basically – said all the things mothers said to girls. “It’s a man’s world,” “Men only want one thing,” and of course, “Don’t go into the woods with boys and pull your pants down.” 

Umm, maybe that last one was unique to Till.

At any rate, what was drilled into me was fear. And it was a complicated, layered fear! When the my very first male teacher told me I was “dense,” I was destroyed! He had asked me to get the globe (this was in fifth grade) and I, apparently, looked all around but didn’t see it.

You know - the stuff I do constantly now. I’m 65.

But at that moment I was surrounded by boys who ALREADY knew something I didn’t know and had just seen it in action: men rule. I was just a girl. 

Boys could be intensely dismissive, as if I were invisible, or worse. They seemed to definitely be IN CHARGE. There was never a doubt who the kickball captains would be, or who would be class president. Boys got those spots. So even at that tender age, it was clear to all of us – we boys and girls were learning our roles.

So, the idea of telling about abuse seemed, well, sort of like standing in rain and proclaiming it wet.

It certainly didn’t occur to me that I could’ve told Principal Bixler about Mr. Sekelsky’s “dense” comment, and get this, my mom taught at the same school! (The MEN-ARE-SCARY mantra had been drilled into me so thoroughly that my familiarity with the school and staff didn’t change the “don’t talk” rule. I’m sure that’s why girls don’t tell their mothers or often, even their best friends about how they experienced this it’s-a-man’s-world thing.)

So flash forward to 1971. Sort of a hippie, I liked the devil-may-care attitude exemplified by hitchhiking. It was fun. And, duh, it was free.

Besides, our family had always picked up travelers with a thumb out alongside the road. (I think it was from Dad’s Navy days. Before he shipped off to the Pacific, he hitched home on "leaves" and so, later on, as a family, we'd spot the Crackerjacks with their sea bags. Plus, being country folk, we also might have been more inclined to help a stranger on the road because it really could be such a long stretch between approaching cars back then.) So although the idea of a young girl hitchhiking around on her own is not something my mother would have okay-ed, she did, in fact, approve of giving hitchhikers a ride, even when she drove alone.

I don’t remember what I needed in Squirrel Hill, but it was always easy to get a lift on Forbes Avenue. I had hitchhiked from downtown Pittsburgh (alone) at 3 AM along that route before. This was daylight and sometime in the fall. I was wearing what we – hippie chicks - all wore: blue jeans and a top made from tied bandannas. I was probably barefoot.

The car stopped for me and I jumped in. As soon as I did, the driver sped up, with the help of a green light on the way. I looked over to see the man – I have no recollection of his face - with his engorged penis in his left hand while he steered with his right. Without hesitation – as if I’d done it a thousand times – I jerked open the door and tumbled out into the traffic. I remember running into an art gallery immediately, for no apparent reason except that it was there.

I shook all over for a few minutes, looked at bad student art for awhile and then went about my day. I have no recollection of getting to Squirrel Hill that day or anything else of that day. Of course, I told no one.

Why did I not tell? Well, first off, it seemed ludicrous. DID THAT JUST HAPPEN?

Secondly, I was “asking for it,” right? A young girl, hitchhiking alone?

It never EVER crossed my mind that I’d suffered sexual abuse or assault. What I’d done was not be clever enough to assess the situation before I jumped into the car. Lesson learned; be more AWARE.

The subtle layers of this – and every other assault, from catcalls and demeaning comments to physical threats or violence – are now rippling through me and every other woman on the planet, I suspect.

Because, I was “groomed” for this! 

I was “groomed” to not value myself, to not respect myself. The voices I’ve heard supporting Dr. Ford tell me that I am not alone. I was groomed to be a victim of gender inequality and whatever came along with that. Most importantly, I was groomed to not imagine that things could ever be different than they were.

My brother thought he was helping me when he said I couldn’t be a veterinarian because “Girls can’t do that.” My high school guidance counselor said I could not be a film director because “Girls can’t do that.” My mother – who had taught physics – feigned ignorance when we had car trouble, gushing at the truck driver who stopped to help. (The Academy Award goes to Till Farber for Helpless Female.)

I saw, I learned and I believed it all.

Of course, the woman’s movement in the 60’s and 70’s opened my eyes in major ways. I never, ever said I was “not good at math” because that seemed silly; how could my vagina impact my algebra aptitude? I took industrial arts classes and learned “manly” arts like woodworking and printing. I treasure those skills to this day. 

But I now have a chance to challenge the deeper ways I was unconsciously accepting this “man’s world”. As an adult woman, I learned the role of the female in sex. The bottom line is that men pitch and women catch, and no matter how unsexy the interaction is, men “have to finish what they start”. Frankly, it’s a little confusing – we women get this one second of complete power over men WITH THE IMPLICIT AGREEMENT that there is no “No” after a certain point in a man’s arousal. (If my children are reading this, I apologize.)

This is why women will sometimes take the moment when a man is transfixed and adoring to say, “We have back-to-school night on Thursday” or something else as peculiarly out of place. For that second, we have your complete attention and we know that when you are drained, your interest in us will be too. 

That’s probably why Dr. Ford’s recounting of Kavanaugh’s hand on her mouth felt so threatening. We are just now beginning to find a voice we never even knew we had been missing. 

His smothering of her is symbolic – and real - for all of us.

Ok, I got high-jacked from writing silly verses (actually I am finishing up lead sheets of my songs before the table read, but that music stuff is pretty fun too.)

Men, here's the thing...We don't hate you. We have never hated you. Even - and this is on us - when you got drunk and incredibly stupid.

I saw my mother help my drunk teenage brother crawl out of the car he had just driven home. I watched her lift my dad from the floor after he fell in his drunken vomit. I did similar things. I said I was driving when my stoned boyfriend wrecked my parents' car. The lesser drunk, I drove shit-faced men home routinely. I rescued a guy friend with epilepsy who took acid and had a thirty minute seizure. This is what we do.

We have a song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDnlU6rPfwY

Up on Cripple Creek she sends me, If I spring a leak she mends me, I don't have to speak she defends me, A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one!

We have a movie: Leaving Las Vegas

We have a book: Women Who Love Too Much

,

So yes, that's "on us" to be naive enough to think we could change you. Oh hell yes. 

I am mentioning all this because - oh so predictably! - the Kavanaugh hearing seems to have unearthed new victims and they are not women but men who have their panties twisted because they feel vulnerable, I guess. 

And this is a good thing. 

Not because we hate you, but because it's a human condition and women have known it since, well, before our ancestors stood upright. 

It's part of our - women's - physiology, of course. We carry on the species, so yes, we were dragged into caves or under bushes or behind trees where our screams wouldn't be heard. And that cave-mentality continues even to today, where some (likely drunk) men think that what they want (from women) is their right to have. Yes, the brutality of it IS archaic, I know. But we all still have that tiny brain stem to blame. The thing is that we have also have thousands of years of evolution and the glorious functioning of the rest of our brains; we can choose to not be apes. (Apologies to all earlier primates.)

So we have all shared a role in this and what's appropriate - now - is that we ALL acknowledge it. 

In a nutshell, here's what we - I - would have preferred to hear from Brett Kavanaugh...

"Christine, yes, I remember you. We were not close friends, but I do remember you. I have hazy memories of those days but I did drink a lot at those parties. We had drinking games where the idea was to get as drunk as possible. If I forced myself upon you, I am so sorry. Those aren't details I recall - I have no memory of what you have described  - but I understand that someone sexually assaulted you.  I want to help you in any way, but more importantly, I need to be certain of myself - of who I am or who I could be with enough booze. Maybe a lie detector test or an FBI investigation or interrogations of every one of our friends from back then will give you and me some measure of comfort, and IF a drunken stupid me did this to you, I need to know for sure."

So is that hard?

(Please, please, please, please forgive me; but I MUST end on a lighter note.)

"That's what she said."

I

A musical!

A musical!

Here, this will be in your head all day, guaranteed…

https://youtu.be/0aiKosNOMRE

A musical!

Writing silly rhymes is fun and pretty damn easy, too.

(Thank you, RyhmeZone!)

PLUS, it worked! 

I could JUST NOT be intensely troubled by the Ochre Joker while writing silly and irreverent songs!

This story - at least the I am Bill W. one - is well known. Somewhat.

In a nutshell, Bill Wilson founded Alcoholics Anonymous and all the other Twelve Step programs which sprang from AA.

BUT, Bill’s great defeat – his enduring regret – is that he never convinced Ebby Thacher to join him “on the broad highway”.

And, oh so ironically, Ebby is the ONE person who was able to convince Bill to get sober! 

Years before Bill spread his “news” to Bob Smith and they began to work together (but separately – Bob was in Akron; Bill was in NYC), Ebby had approached a drunken Bill with religion – a good ol' fashioned Christian conversion! He showed up at Bill’s after being “missing in action” for years of street living and drunkenness. 

The OXFORDS – an early 20^th century "high brow" Christian social group had bailed Ebby out of jail. Literally. So he was grateful. Plus, he liked that the OXFORDS all had money and that they thought HE did. (He'd squandered his inheritance before he ended up homeless. Maybe the OXFORDS still thought there was a nickle to squeeze somewhere because they generally INSISTED on helping only the classiest down-and-outs. Before Ebby, they had dried out young Bud "Whatever you drive, drive a Firestone." Firestone.)

This version of Bill's story is a bit like The Gift of the Magi; with the girl cutting her hair to buy her boyfriend a watch chain, while the boy sells his watch to buy her hair combs. I mean, it might be like that tale if the girl chose an alcoholic death after she rescued her boyfriend from addiction. Yeah, maybe it's NOT like O. Henry's story.

Bill’s  love for Ebby, though, WAS pretty thoroughly unrequited.

So, the story is a one-sided bromance, with Bill Wilson getting the world’s acclaim and recognition but not Ebby’s love or respect, which is all he every really wanted.

Heck, EBBY SAID is about loving a drunk!

Oh snap! It’s an Al Anon story! It's about Codependency!

Go figure.

Ebby Said

“Start a blog,” they said.

Really? It’s come to that? You’ve got me doing the fucking Facebook! (Facebook! A full time job, am I right?)

And now a blog.

They said, “You’re 65 and you wrote a musical so blog about that!”

(I blog. I blogged, I am blogging. We do this now. We make up a word and then give it the whole “real word” treatment. When did this start? With “trend”?)

ANYWAY, I did write a musical and goddammit, I AM 65.

How AND WHY did this all begin?

So, think back to two years ago. Did anyone have a doubt who would lead our country through the 4 years ahead? I sure didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even want to vote that night. I’d worked all day (I’m probably alone in that, right?) but I will go to great lengths to do my duty. (Ok, if this is my blog, and it is, there will need to be a running joke about that word. I said “duty” but yaw’l get to hear dooty and snicker, ok? I will also laugh when you say “duty” Deal?) Off I went to my daughter’s old elementary school a few blocks from home. Although it felt completely unnecessary (did anyone doubt she would win?) it sure felt HISTORIC wearing my “I voted” sticker. As an old – er – older woman, I could tell my grandchildren what it was like to vote for the very first female president. That was SO worth dragging my butt and doing my duty (laugh, here).

I remember that evening, and I bet you do too.

Let’s see…there’s that horrible day in ’29 when people lost their fortunes, and, yeah,  we all have that one bad day that changed our lives forever. (I got caught shoplifting at the Giant Eagle in Pittsburgh in 1971) It’s not hard to name a BAD day, but heck, name a day more impactful that November 8^th, 2016!

For me, a numbness set in. I felt like someone had started up a new movie over the one which had been playing. I tried to blink REALLY hard to make the new images go away, but they persisted. What parallel universe had I entered? The punchlines were now the headlines! It was truly astonishing and I sure as shit didn’t know how I could fit in this new world.

See, I’m an old hippie (can I get a Boon’s Farm Apple Wine shoutout?) so we had been down this road ages ago. Eons ago. We had marched for equality and, seemingly, achieved it. My generation’s pivotal “day” happened at Kent State in 1970. You just HAD to pick a side. I just couldn’t look over the PA border and say, “That’s Ohio”. Gloria Steinem nailed it when she (cough) repeated Carol Hanisch’s line “The personal is political.” Our friends – and a whole shit load of them were in body bags from Vietnam – were dying.

(So this is where I interject my background a bit. I am from Appalachia. Yes. The place with shacks and yards filled with car parts and at least one car/truck sitting on cement blocks. Believe it or not, as an AVON LADY (always tryin’ to make a buck!) my “territory” was those shacks and I made the rounds enough times to know that the wonderful gals with 3 or 4 naked babies running around who were SO HAPPY to see me, needed Pampers more than Skin-So-Soft. I did not last long as an Avon Lady.

In that part of the world, our boys were easy pickin’s for Nixon’s draft. My brothers all knocked up their girlfriends (THANK GOD) so they got married and couldn’t go. (Wait - Mike, Deb, Jim - you were all planned, ok?) Whew. Others weren’t so lucky. My high school graduated 70 of us that year, but not before they took us all out together to see the memorial built in front of our school. We read the names of those kids we knew who didn’t come back from that draft. Talk about surreal.

So that’s part of a future rant about who does America’s dirty work. Later...

Back to the - um - now.

Trump was – apparently – president of the United States! And IMMEDIATELY that Bizarro World grew. Looking back, it’s mind-blowing to see how quickly black was white, up was down and yes, those are fine duds, emperor!

Here’s where the “being 65” thing kicks in. I cannot change the world. And unlike my much younger self, I won’t be around to see it through anyway. (Them’s facts, folks!) So I started my own revolt, all on my own. I will share that with you now… Everything I do must be EASY and FUN.

I know. You are thinking “Good luck with that!” because the world is – fo’ sure – not easy and fun. As our leader says, “Storms are wet” and such. There is so much suffering in the world! So, my mantra “Easy and Fun” may seem like good-ol’ denial and hell, it might be. I just know that it’s MY job to make me happy. No one can do that for me.

And, it goes without saying that not all things CAN be easy and fun. Say you get in a bad car crash… not easy, not fun. But what I’ve observed is that any onerous task is helped by the Easy and Fun motto because most HARD things can be made a bit fun and most NOT-FUN tasks can be made easier.

Like this… you need to confront someone or worse, apologize! Now, that might not be easy, but you can have a plan to reward yourself afterwards by doing something fun (I am not talking about spending big bucks. For me “fun” is hugging a dog – any dog.) Now, the way this almost always works is that looking forward to the fun part makes the confronting or apologizing easier!

So shoveling shit in the backyard becomes “Oh! What reward am I gonna give me?”

This new plan – easy and fun -  was simply necessary for me to thrive as a human with this new paradigm of - what? - hate? in the world. I am a Pisces and we FEEL THINGS DEEPLY. How could I make this Trump era easy and fun for me?

I immediately started writing and – no shit – a silly and irreverent musical tumbled out of me. Really! I know people struggle and work FOREVER on scripts but mine showed up – complete with music – in less than a year. (This year also included working full time and caring for my ill husband. Am I something, or what?)

I should probably mention I have never written a play or a song before.

I love what I’ve done. I hope others will or if they don’t, that they won’t tell me..

Oh shit… do I gotta thank Trump?