FRESH YARN presents: Scared Medicine... by Maxine Lapiduss

FRESH YARN presents:

Scared Medicine
By Maxine Lapiduss

As far back as I can remember I've been afraid of the dark. Once the sun sets, I'm filled with a gnawing anxiety, which turns to doom as the hours tick by and the TV airwaves fill with back-to-back infomercials. I'm 43, but I still can't sleep alone in my own house. Anything could happen. Some sicko ax murderer could break in and hack me to bits, or worse, a demon could enter my soul and who'd be there to save me?

Consequently, I've had sex and forged intimate relationships with men and women I would NEVER have looked at twice, and worse, often STAYED in those "What were you thinking?" horrific couplings WAY longer than I should have. But, hey, what I was thinking was, "You fuck inappropriate people and do what you have to do to avoid spiritual possession!"

The sad truth is I wouldn't be in this emotional boat if it weren't for The Blob.

When I was three and a half, my dad, Saul, took me to see it. What possessed my very rational dad to think that The Blob was somehow an appropriate film for an impressionable pre-schooler -- let alone a delicate flower like myself -- to see, I couldn't tell 'ya. I mean, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang… The Blob… Winnie The Pooh… The Blob…

For those of you not familiar with the plot, a short synopsis: Upon finding a meteorite in the woods in the middle of the night, an old guy (Olin Howlin for you students of the cinema,) does what any of us would do if we stumbled upon a steaming meteorite from outer space. He pokes it with a stick. It pops open, revealing a Cherry Jell-O-like ooze, which attaches itself to the octogenarian's stick, then climbs up his hand and devours it as he screams in pain.

Meanwhile Steve McQueen, who plays this Rebel-Without-a-Causey-high-school-thug-in-a-windbreaker (even though he had to have been on the wrong side of 30 at the time), is smooching his well-endowed girlfriend in a parked car. Steve and his boob-alicious girl engage in some backwards drag racing with some other juvies and get pestered by the cops to, "Cool it." The cops split, then Steve hears the old guy's cries. He sees what's left of the octogenarian's blob-damaged arm and rushes him to the town Doc. Steve then tries endlessly to warn the town folk that a monster is lurking in their midst, but they don't believe him. So it's up to Steve-a-rino, and his drag racing buds, to stop The Blob.

Meantime, that mean mo' fo' Blob is on the loose swallowing up everything in sight. It oozes under walls and through cracks and, as it rolls up the street toward the town movie theatre, I -- a three-and-a-half year-old child sitting on Saul's lap inside the Manor Theatre in Pittsburgh, Pa. -- begin to get panicky. The audience members in the onscreen movie theatre begin to shriek and flee as the Blob swallows them whole. I see this and, not being able to differentiate pretend from reality at that point, become completely hysterical, knowing that any minute that damn Blob is gonna burst through the double doors, ooze under our seats and devour me, Saul, and half the Jewish teens in Squirrel Hill. It was exactly 3:12 PM. The end of my previously trouble-free childhood.

By 3:13, I was screaming bloody murder. By 3:14 Saul could not get me to stop wailing and realized he'd made a fatal mistake. By 3:25 I was at home on the couch in hysterics and needed to be seriously sedated. My mother forced a baby aspirin down me. Baby aspirin? Ha! Barely a blip on my nervous system. When that didn't work, Esther crowed, "Mackie, drink this up, " and handed me a tumbler of scotch and milk.

Nothin. I was sure the Blob was heading up Shady Avenue at this point and would be rounding our corner any second.

The big guns were called in. Within minutes Dr. Schwartz, my pediatrician who smelled like a combination of Vicks VapoRub and Sucrets, appeared at the door. He looked like Dick Tracy. This terrified me more, and my screams reached a new decibel level as he entered my bedroom. After that, I was so hoarse and exhausted I had no voice left and could only make the Edvar Munch "The Scream" puss, followed by a sputtering cough or choke.

By the time Schwartz wrote out the prescription, I was on suicide watch. I was seeing the Blob bubble up under the carpet, coming through the closet doors, seeping through the cracks in the windowpane and levitating my twin bed. I wouldn't sit on the toilet because I knew the second I did the Blob would get my cheeks. My mother had to sit on the seat first, then while I'd go, keep watch with a flashlight pointed in the bowl. Saul was dispatched to the Pharmacy.

Perhaps my terror of being alone stems from this incident. Makes sense, right? But now that I think of it, it could also have to do with the fact that I was unwanted and my mother had meant to abort me. And if it hadn't been for her best friend, my Aunt Mae, she would have.

Esther, my shop-a-holic, passive-aggressive, overly grandiose mother, loves to recount this story at least four or five times a year and always with great relish on my day of birth! Preferably in front of 40 of my closest friends. Odd, this tradition of celebrating your loving child's birthday by reinforcing the fact that they were an unwanted and a horrible mistake that kept you from becoming a star…thereby implying that they were the root of all that was evil and all that had fucked up your entire life.
Did I mention "grandiose?"

But God bless Es -- this is how my mother operates. The mixed message, passive-aggressive thing is her specialty, woven seamlessly throughout our everyday lives. Take Yom Kipper. We were the only Yids who'd go to services on the holiest of fast days then IMMEDIATELY head to Weinstein's for lox and bagels.

"Sin-shmin!" my mother would say. "It's the one day a year we don't have to wait for a table!"

Es was 42 when she found out she was pregnant. This was back in the day -- way before it was trendy or status-y to give birth as you're heading into menopause.

The story goes that when Esther found out she was knocked up, she franticly called Mae who ran over to console her. Esther wailed, "I'm too old to have another baby."

But Mae pooh-poohed. "What kind of talk is that? You have one already -- so now you'll have two. Big deal!"

And with that, Esther swallowed her dream of leaving Pittsburgh for New York and stardom, resigned herself to her fate, and me to mine.

By the way, the line, "You already have one, so now you'll have two. Big deal!" is the same line I used 30 years later to coerce my lover into getting another dog.

So, I'm still screaming inconsolably when Saul returns from the Beacon Drug Store with a bottle of Phenobarbital and Es feeds me two teaspoons. For the first time that day, I felt a calm wash over me. It was like when my yellow blanket would emerge newly warm and fresh from the dryer. The anxiety and doom simply vanished and I, completely exhausted and serene, melted into my pillow. "Blob? What dat? Who dat?"

By four the next morning, the drug had worn off and I bolted upright in my bed, certain the Blob was slinking up our stairs and climbing the laundry chute, sledding down the fireplace, surrounding our house, ready to devour us all, and the histrionics began anew.

Out came the Phenobarb, which Es and Saul dubbed "Mackie's Scared Medicine." But, I gotta tell ya, after a few days on the stuff, I began to look forward to Club "Med." Two spoonfuls each morning, two spoonfuls each night. It was the only thing that brought relief. As the weeks passed, they tried to wean me off but each time they did, I'd hallucinate, stay up all night and scream in terror. So two spoons each morning, two spoons at bedtime.

Every night my parents would take turns lying down with me. Es would come in, give me my Scared Medicine, then hold me close. I could feel her warmth, hear her heart beating, and I'd relax. After a while, Saul would come in and spell her. He'd sit at the edge of my bed and stroke my forehead. Off to sleep I'd drift, feeling safe and secure knowing that my parents really did love me.

Months went by. I still saw the Blob around the house, but didn't really care as much. I loved Scared Medicine time because it was the only time my sister's eczema and sourball attitude wasn't sucking up all my parents' attention. They weren't fighting. Or, if they were, it was about me for once, and my mental health, instead of Esther's compulsive shopping or how Saul should have been a more successful travel agent so Es wouldn't have to work two jobs and they could join the country club like Vi and Joe Sapperstein.

Apparently, after the third "do not refill" was exhausted, Dick Tracy became concerned. Mackie was wacky on smackey. Schwartz called a confab. They couldn't keep me on Phenobarb indefinitely, so they started giving me sugar water in the Phenobarb bottle but still called it my Scared Medicine. I'd take the placebo, two teaspoons of peppermint sugar water, and not knowing the diff, drift off to sleep listening to Esther's heartbeat or feeling my father stroke my hair, and all was right with the world.

I knew nothing of 12 Step programs then. Nothing of enabling or addictions; nothing of unhappy marriages or jealously between siblings or resignation, which makes people resentful and bitter; nothing of thwarted ambition or destructive patterns. All I knew was that I was finally getting my parents' attention on a regular basis, their physical closeness, and felt them working together for my welfare and the good of the family.

But that phase didn't last long. Don't get me wrong, my folks stayed together for 55 years. They're still together. Torturing each other daily. As best I can tell, they both felt trapped, felt they settled for each other, and had my sister and me to rescue them from their lives of quiet desperation. So I took on the role of savior. Tried every way I knew, from age four on, to make them happy. Make them proud of me with my great accomplishments: school work, talent shows -- later bucking the odds and writing on successful sitcoms, making big money and showering them with gifts, being a good citizen, buying Es more blouses than she could ever wear, a car, building her a house. But none of these things did the trick. Dissatisfaction flowed through her veins more than red blood cells.

And so the more money I sent home, the more complaining I heard and the more blouses were bought. Unopened boxes of expensive blouses stacked up in her closets. The house began to resemble Filene's Basement. I started to see that shopping was Esther's Scared Medicine. And she wasn't about to give it up. Saul had his two-pack-a-day habit and his Hershey bars.

Maybe it's a job that fortifies us, maybe a lover. Maybe it's the real drugs we take to fill the cavern of fear in our hearts. But wouldn't it be cool if there really was a Scared Medicine? A potion to make us courageous and compassionate; able to look past our own needs to those of our children, rather than sucking all their energy into our own vortex of overwhelm and self-pity and self-loathing, barely able to cope from one disaster to the next?

I love my parents. They were from fucked up homes of their own. Their parents escaped The Bolsheviks and lived in ghettos and sold apples in the Depression. So teaching their kids to be whole, healthy people was not tops on their "to do" list. I get that.

That's why all these years I've refused to give up on them. I've kept searching for the placebo; the magic pill that would soothe their past, ease their aging process and make them understand that deep down, it's okay. I know they're both just terrified like me.

Maybe I'm not really scared of being alone -- maybe I'm more petrified of loving anyone as much as I love them, because parents devastate you. They have heart attacks and weaknesses, and expectations, and they embarrass and disappoint you again and again.

So you move away and put up walls and live your own life and screw inappropriate people and turn queer, deny them grandchildren and do the opposite of what they want you to do and FUCK THEM and HOW DARE THEY and then you're so pissed off at them, that you're the Blob, a big blob of anger and frustration and hurt and you don't want them to hold you or be your Scared Medicine anymore because you were just a kid back then, DON'T THEY KNOW THAT? But they're the ones that acted CHILDISH and SELFISH and made YOU TAKE CARE OF THEM your whole life and they should have known better but THEY BLEW IT! Ah, who gives a shit, it doesn't matter anymore you're 43.

But the nagging truth is, it does matter, damn it. Because you can't get on with it. You can't sleep alone. You do want your mother to comfort you. You want her to hold you in her arms and lie in the darkness, in the stillness. You want to just listen to her heartbeat and drift off to sleep soundly and contentedly, without drugs, without the walls, because she's 85 and it's time to forgive her while you still have the chance.

Even through it means listening to her heartbeat through the two hundred dollar blouse she just charged on your Amex.