The episode with Morty

Two faded Southern belles named Faye and Noreen are sitting at the bar. A local journalist had found Noreen after asking some people about the club she used to work at back in the late 60s. Her friend Faye had told the reporter that her pal Noreen had loads of good stories about the place: the owner's Mob ties, drunk celebrities making asses of themselves, the one-legged go-go dancer who hopped around in a cage above the dance floor....

"Go on, Noreen, tell him that story about Morty........".

Noreen chuckles, rolls her heavily made up eyes and smirks.

"Oh jeez.........OK." She sighs.

"I used to work in a club in downtown Dallas, back when I was 19. The drinking age was 19 then so I had just started working there as a waitress.
The owner was this ridiculously short Jewish feller named Morty, who had originally bought the club from Jack Ruby back in the early 60s. Morty could not have been more than 5 feet tall standing on his toes. He was about 80-some odd years old then and used to follow the dancers around and have conversations with their tits.....you know the type: always on the make. Always pinching asses and so on. I was just a mousy waitress and not as bodacious as the dancers, so he pretty much ignored me until this one Saturday.

So, Morty asks me to come in early one Saturday to do some cleaning. I'm sweeping the floor in the dancers' dressing room and I hear the door close behind me. I was supposed to be the only one there, you know, so it startled me. I turn around and there's Morty, with not a stitch of clothing on. Stark naked, hands on hips with a big smile and a HUGE boner. 

Now..... I don't see how he didn't tip over. He must have been nicknamed "Tripod". So I'm standing there with my mouth open, staring like a damn deer in the headlights.

This tiny wrinkled old man with a giant prong is leering at me from the door. He winks at me.

"Good morning. I see you're here early today", says Morty, in his thick New York accent.

I stammered out, "Uhhhh, hi Morty, just sweeping up in here! Good lord, where are your pants? You'll catch pneumonia!"

Morty started moving in my direction so I barreled past him through the door, almost knocking him over. I was afraid he would latch onto my leg on the way out and start humping me like a dog. I threw aside the broom and ran out the back door.

He called me into his office the next day. I figured he was going to fire me. He sat behind his cluttered desk, took the cigar stub out of his mouth and smiled genially at me. I squirmed in my chair.

Morty said in his thick Brooklyn accent, "I want to apologize for yesterday. I'm afraid that I may have scared youse. My manhood has inspired fearful reactions befoah due to its awesome propoahtions. But errrr,.......maybe you're interested now that you know what to expect?"

"Uhhhhh, no thanks, Morty. I'll pass." I tried not to gag.

So, Morty didn't fire me. He didn't stop trying to nail me, either. He would have needed a bucket to stand on, anyway. I worked there for a year or so more, then I met my husband and we got married. Now my daughter is expecting our first grand baby." 

Noreen ended up marrying a mechanic. They lived in a little clapboard house in a suburb of Dallas where her husband started his own car repair shop, and had three kids, two boys and a girl. 

Faye says, "What are they gonna call the baby, Noreen? Have they picked a name yet?"

Proudly, Noreen says, "Yes! It's a boy, so he be called Stihl, spelled S-T-I-H-L, like the brand of farm equipment. Doesn't that sound masculine? His little school friends will think he's so cool."'

Faye is stunned. "They're naming that baby after a chain saw? His little school friends will call him Leatherface!"

 

Teen Age Crush

 Like a lot of young girls, I used to fall in desperate puppy love with various musicians: Paul McCartney and Peter Tork were a couple of my mental main squeezes. As I got a bit older, my tastes started to change. Puberty started to turn my world around, and although I knew it was going to happen, I wasn't quite sure how to deal with it. My childhood was tormented and I escaped into music. I was a huge fan of the Electric Light Orchestra when I was a teenager, mainly because of their drummer Bev Bevan. The crush started as most teen crushes do; I collected every picture of Bev I could find, I bought every ELO LP and I watched them whenever they made a US TV appearance. Luckily for me, they were a huge success in the 1970s, so it was fairly easy to locate pictures and articles about them.

Because of my childhood issues, puberty did not come into my consciousness easily. The thought of an actual male in my vicinity taking an interest in me terrified me beyond words. I felt much safer mooning over rock stars who had no idea that I existed. I wouldn't have any chance of actually having to deal with him in person, because he lived in England and I was in Texas; not to mention the fact that I was 12 and he was in his 30s at the time. 

Plus, everything I ever read about Bev was about what a fantastic drummer and a nice man he was; he was not some spoiled rock star poon hound. You never heard stories about him tearing up hotel rooms, being rude to fans or or going after too young girls. He wasn't Jimmy Page, after all.  That bit of knowledge made me adore him a little bit more; I never went for "bad boys". I wanted a guy who my Mom would approve of, one whom  I felt safe adoring and one who I knew would never hurt me. At 12 years old, I had already had enough pain and hurt for several lifetimes.

I used to read all the rock & roll magazines on the newsstand, so I was well aware of wild man British rock stars. To be true, most of them seemed that way. It was fun to read about Keith Moon destroying a hotel room or Ozzy Osbourne getting wasted, but I'm sure an entirely other thing to have to live with a situation like their wives and families had to deal with. I told myself that anyone who made the music I loved so much and made my life worth living for cannot be a bad person. I guess that makes me a rock and roll apologist.

For the most part, I think I've been right. Musicians in general are caring and sensitive people but they can sometimes find themselves in weird situations that most regular people would have trouble dealing with. That's where the drinking and drugging come in. Fame can exacerbate that as well. The public are largely ignorant of what it's like to be onstage in front of several thousand people when you have the flu, or have to come up with a hit record that's bigger than the last one, or to meet hundreds of people who all want a little piece of you because they saw you on TV or bought your record or wear your t-shirt. On top of all that, your band mates and crew also depend on you for their living. Yes, the musicians get the money and the fame, but they have to pay for it in ways you cannot fathom. Too many people saying "yes" to you too often and not enough saying "no" to you can kill you, ask Elvis Presley, or Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin or Jim Morrison or Amy Winehouse or Kurt Cobain or _______________ (insert the name of your fave member of the 27 club here).

I just know that if those guys didn't make their music that meant so much to me and others, I probably would have snuffed it when I was still a teenager. So for that, thanks to Bev Bevan, Keith Moon and Ozzy Osbourne for being great musicians and entertainers, and extra thanks to Bev for being a nice person.

Speed Racer

 I woke up wide-eyed this morning at 3:30am. Usually, I don't wake until 5am so I can start in on my day slowly, make coffee and watch the news and not have to rush. My eyes popped open and my mind was racing at full speed. When this happens (a lot!), it affects my ability to rest. I feel like I'm running on fumes today. My mind is like a horse in full gallop.

Maybe my ADHD is causing most of the depression I've dealt with for most of my life? It's so difficult for me to relax lately. In the past, all I had to do was read or meditate, but I cannot keep my attention steady enough to escape into a book for very long now.

Oddly, pacing back and forth in my house does quiet my mind a bit. I used to love going for walks in the neighborhood that surrounded my work place. Walking outside doesn't help now because I have to be aware of my surroundings. I need to put on my earbuds and lose myself in music. I need to make stop stalling and major changes in myself. 

I need to be creative and write more. I feel mentally constipated, if there is such a thing; like I have so much in my head that wants to come out but just will not.

This is not an ideal way to start my work week. I'm normally pretty keyed up on Sundays evenings because I have to work the next day, but it's on overdrive today. I feel like I'm trying to give myself a pep talk: "you need to eat better, you need to relax more, you need to write more, you need to start playing your guitar again, you need to avoid the news more, etc." I need to do so much, yet I cannot get started.

Why is it so difficult for me to be myself?

This Masquerade

   Many people were blindsided by COVID and the big shut down, but life had vastly changed in my favor by my being able to work from home. I had been asking to go remote for years, because social anxiety had been difficult for me in my job. Part of the world of work is going to meetings and being ambitious in order to "move up the ladder". I'm more comfortable and productive when I'm relaxed. I've always felt like I had to put on a "mask" to be around other people. I don't adapt to change quickly, and my work situation had changed radically a few years back with new co-workers, different duties, etc., but I was still doing work that I enjoyed and thought I did well, with people I liked.

   My chronic depression flared up seriously after the pandemic started; probably from the stress of life changing so radically in such a short time. I learned in my 20s that chronic depression is just that: chronic, and it can return without rhyme or reason. The trick is remembering that it's a disease that has to be managed, like diabetes or arthritis. I don't necessarily need to have a reason for being depressed. Sometimes, I just am. However, I'm much more able to deal with my dark periods as an older person. Depression made my 20s  (and to a lesser extent, my 30s and 40s) extremely difficult. I was hospitalized in my early 20s and have been on antidepressants pretty much ever since. 

  I have good periods when my life is enjoyable and bad periods when it isn't. At least now, I know that "this too, shall pass". When my initial problems with depression surfaced during childhood, I thought I was just crazy, that my brain was wired wrong. Maybe I was from another planet; who knew? I was able to keep up with my friends and my education, but the stress was beginning to wear seriously on me. For a long time, I wasn't a pleasant person to deal with. I thought I would grow out of it with age. 

  In the last 4 or so years, I had started having difficulties at my job. I couldn't seem to retain information about work subjects from meetings, felt that I wasn't performing my job up to my usual standards and did not want to fail my supervisor and my co-workers. I am counting on staying at my job until my retirement in a few years, so I knew I needed to sort myself out.

  I made an appointment with a neuropsychiatrist. Testing was done and three weeks later, I received the news: I was diagnosed with Adult ADHD at age 56. 

  My long-standing relationship with major depression and anxiety were no secret to myself nor anyone I knew. I thought I might even be on the autism spectrum, but ADHD never entered my mind, so to speak. I thought it was something that parents of excitable little kids had to deal with, not middle-aged women counting down to retirement. This was completely another thing to manage. 

 The psychiatrist suggested that I treat the depression first, then deal with the ADHD when I wasn't struggling so much. I started reading about ADHD in adult women. Apparently, the symptoms consisted of much of what I considered to be my personality: scattered mental state, unless the subject was something in which I was interested; daydreaming in school and not being able to retain information unless, again, it was a subject I liked, then I would excel. I hated math and science classes because they made me feel stupid. Teachers would tell me to "apply" myself in order to learn algebra or statistics or physics and I just did not want to know. Band class, History and English I would excel at. 

 I've felt like I've wasted parts of my life. I tend to compare myself to other people my age (and always come up lacking). and it seemed like most other people my age had careers that they liked, not jobs that just paid the bills. Most of my other friends and acquaintances seemed to navigate the world of work much better than I did. I'm very fortunate to have a great home life, with a wonderful husband and a happy marriage, so that took away a bit of the sting of being different.  When I left my house, though, I was bombarded with signs that I WAS DIFFERENT. I had my DNA tested; I researched my family history; I took every online quiz I could find in order to "find" myself. What was wrong with me? I know I'm smart and extremely creative, but I could not find a way to harness that energy to my advantage. I've only been able to be the "quirky and idiosyncratic" friend who mostly keeps to myself. Maybe this diagnosis will be my way out of my mental funk?

  I have to say that I don't feel like I need to put on an act in order to be around other people anymore. I can take that as a blessing, others may take it as a threat. Maybe it's just getting older and being tired of performing in order to be accepted. As far as what the kids call "adulting" nowadays, John Lennon was right; whatever gets you through the night is all right, even if it means escaping into your imagination where everything goes your way. I'm not a very sociable person, but I love my family and my friends, and I value their friendship more than I could possibly say. I have a strong support system to deal with ADHD and I am looking forward to getting to know myself.