“Mr Linky” is linking to this rather than this post

The Bronx, winter 1969

I don’t know where we are exactly. Some community with hills and old uncared for wood frame houses. Literally that’s what much of the Bronx looks like; the parts that aren’t all old apartment buildings in horrible condition, Riverdale, Country Club (the two very good areas) or Coop City the newish giant complex of buildings that all look exactly alike and unfortunately were built over Freedom Land–an amusement park on a map of the USA that I loved.

I’m not sure why I’m here either.  I convinced some friends to spend the night at Tricia Levy’s. She’s older than us.  Tough.   Shoots dope and hoops with equal vigor. She dropped out before I began the previous September.  Many of my school friends are drop outs.    Segal, student body president,  is in love with her.  He hates me for reasons I don’t understand.  He’s not with us.

Really I’m pissed at my off and on boyfriend, Noah, who set out to visit Tricia with some other friends that didn’t include me. I don’t understand why we break up every three weeks.  I found the secret to getting him back but I don’t share this info with anybody including myself.  It’s sort of subliminal.

We spend hours smoking dope.  Noah leaves with a few friends.  I stay with Jacy and Jake, her boyfriend, who I had convinced to come with me.  They go to sleep in a closet.  Jacy’s one of my crew of gorgeous girlfriends.  We all hang out with boys and happen to get along.  People type us girls as tight and I guess we’re as tight as any girls who only care about boys can be.

Noah’s best friend Henry who never smokes dope or does anything that wouldn’t be parent approved stays with me. I adore Henry who later I will hurt as I never hurt anybody before or since.  The guilt remains to this day.

The apartment has very little furniture but too much pop art consisting of straight lines, squiggly lines and neon for my taste.  I find a sleeping bag and get ready to go to sleep.  Henry takes a sleeping bag next to me.  Somebody hands me a glass of Kool Aid.  Too damn sweet but I’m thirsty so I drink the whole thing.

I wake up in the early morning.  The sun shimmers into the apartment.  The posters look immense.  Something’s wrong.  The lines are moving.  The colors are too bright. Everything’s moving. I feel as if I can’t stand or walk yet I do as well as I do normally.

I try telling Henry that something’s very wrong but I can barely talk.  Henry hates eating out, hates food really,  but for once in his life he wants to go to a restaurant.  I just want to go home and somehow convey that.

When I get back to school Segal finds me. He wants a full report on the night and morning.  I’m not sure how he knew I went to Tricia’s.   I’m better and beyond angry:

You want to know?  You really want to know?  I’m feeling the effect of Acid right now.  Acid that I didn’t f–king want.  Your f–king girlfriend. She gave me the Kool Aid.  I’m going to kill her.  Kill her if it’s the last thing I do.

Segal immediately becomes madder than hell at Tricia. He says he no longer loves her.  He falls in love or lust or something with me.  I let him take me out, take me to demonstrations in DC in his Jag, but I won’t sleep with him.  Never.

This is an excerpt that will expanded upon.

By Pia Savage

The plane was late. The terminal was wall-to-wall people, and the ladies room could be charitably described as gross. For some reason, probably to remain sane, I began singing “I fought the law and the law won” over and over again as loudly as I could. Fortunately, I was singing this in my head, for had I been singing out loud, the law probably would have carted me away. I hear music perfectly in my head, but am totally tone deaf.

When I was a child, a piano teacher came to our house to give my sister and me our first lesson. She couldn’t say enough great things about my sister.

“But her,” she said, about me. “How can you even think of giving her lessons? She’s retarded.”

My parents tried to stop the piano teacher from talking, but I never forgot what she said. My father, who thought I could be perfect if I only tried harder, asked me to practice so I could “show” the teacher. My mother told him to drop it. He realized how sad I was and turned it into a joke. We all knew my father had taken piano lessons for seven years and could play one song, “The Anniversary Waltz,” which he played often and not always appropriately. He played it that day, and I laughed, but my heart was broken. I had already been kicked out of ballet lessons. I had already been kicked out of softball. I still, to this day, wish I could sing, dance and play an instrument or a sport.

My first week at college, I was asked to join a band as I had the chick rock-star look down perfectly.

“I can’t sing,” I said.

“You can play the tambourine.”

“I have no sense of rhythm.”

“You can just stand there and pretend.”

I couldn’t even do that-or wouldn’t, of course. My confidence level was somewhere below a minus-10. If the police came and asked somebody to confess to having begun World War II, I would have confessed. That I hadn’t been born then was but a minor detail. I was guilty of everything.

There was so much that I couldn’t do. I couldn’t learn another language, nor spell, and my handwriting was illegible. I couldn’t learn math past percentages. I was probably only good at arithmetic because my father was a CPA who would drill me every night. Then again, he would drill me in spelling words, and it’s only been in the past few years that I have been at a computer constantly, that anything about spelling has begun to make sense. I never learned the rules of grammar, and still have to think to remember what an “adjective,” “noun” or any other part of speech is.

Yet I’m able to use words in ways that few people can. My writing ability is purely instinctive. I was one of the most-read personal bloggers for over two years. Trust me, I had no idea what I was doing. My blog didn’t have a master plan. I didn’t have a theme. My posts were long. Were I to begin blogging now that there are “rules,” I wouldn’t even attempt to begin a blog.

I have many deficits and yet I’m smart. My IQ has been tested as well above average. I confuse people constantly.

I have nonverbal learning disorder, or NLD. That means I spend too much time being angry because inside me is a very smart person who can’t tie her shoelaces properly and only recently has begun to learn order in every sense.

NLD is diagnosed in children who may show very impressive verbal, reading, spelling and rote memory skills, but very weak motor, social, sensory, and visual-spatial abilities. NLD is a neurological disorder overlapping with and possibly occupying the same end of the autism spectrum as Asperger’s syndrome. It originates in the brain’s right hemisphere. This is the part of the brain that deals with performance-based information, and according to the Nonverbal Learning Disorder Association, when there is a deficit, it is in “visual-spatial, intuitive, organizational, evaluative, and holistic processing functions.” If you saw me in person, you would know why it is also known as the “clumsy child syndrome.”

I couldn’t clean my room when I was a kid, and I couldn’t clean my apartment properly as an adult. I was sloppy. I use the past tense now because I learned to fake it. Maybe everybody fakes their way through life. I wouldn’t know. I’m too busy trying to right myself.

I had many secrets as a child. I didn’t want to hurt my parents so I didn’t tell them that kids would tease me beginning around age 9 because I couldn’t run, catch or throw a ball, or do any of the things necessary for social success. My parents would tell me to try harder. My father devised exercises that didn’t help. My parents tried so hard; I felt so bad for them.

I had my first fight with a therapist when I was 9. What was I doing in therapy? Nine-year-olds aren’t supposed to be in therapy, but in many ways I was never a typical child. I could sense that I was different. My parents watched me try so hard and their hearts broke. I went for tests at NYU. I only remember being given an IQ test, verbally. The tester yelled at me because I did so well but didn’t know what “Genesis” was. I was 10 years old and my family wasn’t religious. How was I supposed to know it was the first book in the Bible? When the test was over I ran to my parents and told them they were failures as parents because the woman said everybody was supposed to know that. Looking back, I’m a bit shocked my parents didn’t become religious fundamentalists in the hope that it would help me. I found out later that particular IQ test was supposed to be given to adults, not fifth-grade girls, and I still did incredibly well. There were many other tests. The results were inconclusive. They thought I might have had, I found out later, a touch of cerebral palsy.

I am awkward and uncoordinated and when under stress it gets worse. As a child I did not have the grace of other young girls, nor the fluidity of movement, speech and thought. My years as a child in Queens and adolescent in the Jericho school system were nightmarish. I would constantly be berated by teachers for sloppy notebooks and illegible handwriting-singled out and humiliated in front of the classroom. I was a space case, they’d say, and I was called “stupid” by teachers in front of my classmates. Classmates, keep in mind, who already thought I was a physical mess-clumsy and uncoordinated.

My first panic attack was on notebook inspection day in second grade. As my last name begins with an “S” I had much time to wait and imagine the consequences. Mrs. Schrieber was thrilled with most kids’ notebooks. We were 2-1, the smart class. I’m sure she had bad things to say about a few people. But nothing compared to what happened when I walked up to her desk and she took my notebook. Silence. Dead silence. Then she screamed. She had never seen a notebook that was as bad as mine. She held it out for the class to see. None of my notes were in order. My handwriting was illegible.

I was 7 and my hands were shaking. I couldn’t catch my breath. The room spun. I thought I was going to faint and almost wanted to. When she spoke to me and demanded answers about the notebook’s condition I couldn’t answer even had I a ready answer. I didn’t know why it was so bad. If I could have have made it better I would have. My parents made one of their frequent trips to school. They could only supervise my homework; they couldn’t be in class with me. My parents didn’t want school to be my whole life.

I tested exceptionally well on standardized tests. As long as they played a role I couldn’t fail. That made both my second and fourth grade teachers crazy. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Sutter, told me in front of the whole class that I didn’t deserve to be in a “1″ class. She said I was “a sloppy, lazy girl” who didn’t think like the other girls. I was developing early and wasn’t proud of that. She pointed my pubescent body out to the other kids, remarking about my breasts. She would not have felt entitled to treat me this way had I been a student she respected. Somehow that got back to my mother, who seemed more upset about my new bad body image than my being taken out of a “1″ class.

Outside of school I had neighborhood friends who I knew didn’t really “get” me or like me. Non-competitive sports calmed me and on my own I’d roller skate and ice skate (badly) because I enjoyed going round and round the rink. My parents insisted that I spend at least as much time doing these types of activities as I would doing homework. My mother got me an adult library card in second grade and I would take out the maximum amount of five books each week. Friends and family couldn’t believe that I could read so fast and comprehend the material. Even kids were constantly testing me to make sure I understood.

It was never easy. I was the girl who had to give an oral report in eighth grade and no words came from my mouth. My teacher found that very funny.

My fellow students said they didn’t want to be president of our homeroom. So that same teacher insisted that I be president. Everybody laughed. My teacher scored points with the popular kids and got rid of that pesky job. She told me I had no choice. I have never forgotten that feeling so similar to being sent to the corner of the room in the dunce cap.

When I reached junior high I failed typing and almost failed everything else. My typing teacher would yell because I have a light touch and couldn’t get the letters to come out. Since I couldn’t memorize the keyboard that really didn’t matter. This upset my father, who would help me practice on his typewriter every night. In our house typing wasn’t a “girl” thing, but a necessary skill in life. Once again I thought I was disappointing my father, who didn’t even really care that I wasn’t a good student. He just wanted me to speak up for myself, be neat, have hair that didn’t fall into my face, and now type.

In junior high, every morning, as we waited for the bus I, the odd girl out, would be pushed into the shrubs. The bus driver would see this as he drove up. Not his problem. It was acceptable to treat me as if I were trash, and one thing I realized early in life; kids imitate adults. These weren’t bad kids. I’m friendly with some now. If the teachers thought I was trash it was acceptable for kids to treat me that way.

School is torture for an undiagnosed NLD child. You never really grow used to being yelled at. It wasn’t as if I were a bad girl. I never cut classes. I didn’t hang out in the bathroom. I didn’t even have anybody to eat lunch with. But there were very brief moments of triumph as well. A ninth grade art teacher loved my primitive paintings and even entered them in an art fair, but he left the school system. My tenth grade biology teacher saw that I understood the material but couldn’t answer standard four choice tests. He gave me special essay tests. And I did well.

It was better in high school. I lost 35 pounds sophomore year and teachers don’t make fun of pretty girls. But until then it was open season. I often overheard kids saying that I had wonderful parents who had a great decorated house and how could I be their daughter? I was the girl who constantly spilled things on my clothes.

Recalling these stories, I’m shaking as I type this.

It wasn’t until college, at C.W. Post, that I began to become the person I was supposed to be. True, it took me three colleges and eight years on and off to graduate, but there was this thing about me that attracted people when I wasn’t repelling others. I felt half-a-beat off, but I made friends. But when you’re out of the hell of high school, in the real world at college, the types of idiosyncrasies I had were more accepted. I was now quirky, interesting.

There was a psychologist at college whose clients included a large portion of my friends, and he would discuss me with all of them. Even at 18 I intuitively knew it was wrong for a doctor to discuss somebody with so many people. Then I wondered why I was discussed so much.

I understood why at college my resident assistant and my roommate conspired to take away my cigarettes and have them analyzed for drugs, because of my odd behaviors-a very illegal search that had fortunate consequences for me, by the way. I was given my own room in the basement of the dorm (and a curfew). I could, however, go in and out of my window at will. The thought of me jumping up into a window and jumping down to the ground makes me laugh, as I’m the least coordinated person I know. But I had a full social life that didn’t include sitting around the dorm.

I didn’t tell my parents about the cigarette incident for a long, long time. But I did tell them that I had been kicked out of Driver’s Ed in high school because I couldn’t learn the “10-2″ position. The teacher told everybody that I came to school stoned. I think I had at that point been stoned twice in my life and never in school and certainly never in Driver’s Ed. But, hey, call a 17-year-old girl a stoner and you might just be creating one.

My mind was a roadmap I couldn’t follow (I can’t understand directions anyway). and I was unable to understand anything when it applied to me. I would hang in clubs in Greenwich Village and always joked that a man would practically have to hit me in the head to get me to notice him. So I moved in with the one who accidentally did hit me in the head.

Another joke of mine was that I had been born divorced from everything. When I was 20, I dropped out of college, traveled in Europe with people I met on the plane who dropped me soon after, because frankly I was weird. I went to Israel to work on a kibbutz, from which I was eventually kicked out. I couldn’t keep my area clean. There was a boy at home, and we married. The marriage couldn’t have worked had we worked at it. We were too young and I had problems nobody could give a name to.

I moved in with friends from college who neglected to tell me they had turned into junkies. And they could have been carrying signs and I wouldn’t have noticed. I was going to school in Manhattan, employed, doing volunteer work, and just wasn’t aware. That’s part of it: I am oblivious to the obvious. I went to Cambridge, Mass., to visit my sister for a weekend and didn’t come back to New York. I made friends there, took a job at an exclusive boutique and enrolled for grad courses at Boston University. It was the first time school made sense. I hadn’t realized until then that I learn conceptually. I’m not a rote learner. I’m not a deductive thinker, but an inductive one. I easily see patterns. Remember, I look beyond the obvious; as the obvious doesn’t exist for me. The higher up the school chain I go, the better I do.

I returned to New York and began what was supposed to be a six-week temp job coding documents for a large corporate divestment case that somehow turned into a 13-year career, on and off. I managed a complex project where the client consisted of a consortium of seven law firms. I excelled at hiring, training and motivating, and had learned to delegate years earlier so that others could do the work I was unable to do. But this particular project was so difficult because of my lack of organizational skills that I threw up every morning on the walk to work.

I laid myself off and proceeded to lose weight. I couldn’t stop walking. In my distinctive awkward gait, I must have walked every block in Manhattan a few times. I thought I was losing my mind. I found a well-known psychiatrist who sent me to a pharmapsychiatrist who sent me to a testing psychologist. I was his first adult patient and could only fit into the children’s seats since I was so thin at that point. He would give me a test and come back two minutes later saying, “You really can’t do this, can you?” According to him I was so learning disabled that he couldn’t understand how I could function in the real world. But if I was willing, he might be able to help me. I looked at the child-sized desks. My adult-sized ego had taken a beating it never really would get over. He was telling me everything I couldn’t do, but nothing that I could do.

The fraud I had always thought I was wasn’t in my imagination. There was something more, something nobody was able to name: NLD.

I held several jobs, but I had things to prove so I went to grad school for social work. I quickly figured out that they had made a bogus language to explain simple concepts. Here, I excelled. I studied constantly. Remember how I felt guilty about everything, feeling like a fraud about all aspects of my life? When I received my undergraduate degree, I kept feeling as if my father must have bought it-of course, I could not have earned that on my own-though I knew he didn’t. What happened was that I had learned to study. When my father, who thought I was brilliant despite what the world was telling him, died, I was on a mission to prove to a dead father that I was smart. This made no sense even to me, and I should have talked about it to my newest therapist, but I couldn’t put it into words. Everything I did was to prove myself. I had to show the tester that I wasn’t as stupid as he thought. I passed the then-certification now-licensing exam for the CSW in 45 minutes in my last semester. I learned how to help a lot of different types of people, but still, there was no help for me.

I was still seeing the pharmapsychiatrist since I had become addicted to Klonopin. I was depressed for the first time in my life. You see, I had always been too anxious to be depressed. There seemed to be so little help for me

Grad school was supposed to be a rigorous intellectual exercise, but with NLD, seventh grade was actually much more difficult. That’s a good thing for all of the parents out there who are worried about their NLD child’s future. There is hope. And more so nowadays, when NLD is diagnosed earlier, or even diagnosed at all for that matter.

Something was very wrong and nobody could help me. Asperger’s syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism that is often manifested similarly to NLD, had become a popular diagnosis while I was in school, and I was given a very half-hearted unofficial diagnosis. Asperger’s is that disorder where those with the syndrome are awkward both socially and physically, often very smart and somewhat offbeat. My diagnosis was given half-heartedly and not “officially” because I was too social. (The Asperger’s diagnosis is evolving, and being social no longer prevents a child from getting the diagnosis.) I couldn’t have lived that Asperger’s life as though I had it. The physical symptoms fit; nothing else did at the time.

I was doing everything possible to find out what was wrong and all I was getting were more questions. I hated being fixated on problems. I went on, because despite it all I loved my crazy life.

People talk about the shock of recognition when they find out their problem has a name. Asperger’s didn’t do it for me. And for good reason. It was wrong. I began to be very resentful of all the publicity it was getting. It felt as if it became a catch-all.

When I was finally diagnosed with NLD with the subset developmental coordination disorder (dyspraxia, also known as the “clumsy child syndrome”), by a specialist in the field, I felt that shock of recognition. I wished that my parents were here to understand that I had true problems. Learning about it changed my life. For the first time I took total control.

I’ve been a Manhattanite for a while, and I recently realized it had been the wrong place for me to be living in. My best friend spent days pointing out that people bump into me more than I bump into them. I can’t measure space properly so I overcompensate. I’m always the one to say “sorry.” And I had already said “sorry” to everyone I could in my hometown of Jericho.

I’m now living in South Carolina, because New York has too much stimuli for me. I spend a lot of time chilling out and trying to get back into shape. I want a great social life. I cheated myself out of so much in the past. Basically I gave up men after the learning disability tests and haven’t found anything to replace them with. I denied myself having children because I was so damaged. As harsh as this sounds, I would love to kill the doctor who told me I shouldn’t be functional, but I can’t remember his name. If I give up on living, if I stop improving myself, I let him win. And I can never do that.

So I’ll continue to sing on-key in my head, but now I’ll also sing out loud as well, off-key and with pride.

Pia Savage is one of the Internet’s most popular bloggers. You can check out her blog at www.CourtingDestiny.com.

What You Need To Know About Nonverbal Learning Disorder

By Pia Savage

One of the most misdiagnosed of all disorders, nonverbal learning disorder (NLD) is a neuropsychological condition that originates in the brain’s right hemisphere. The condition often goes undiagnosed because the child is usually eloquent, retains auditory material and can read at a younger than “normal” age. As with any disorder, a child can have any or all of the symptoms, at different levels of impairment.

NLD, with an already high official prevalence rate of 6 percent, is believed by many experts to be much more common than that since it is so often misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all.

The NLD child will lack coordination, fine and gross motor skills and have balance problems. Though the child retains auditory material, he or she doesn’t retain images, and has faulty visual recall. The child’s sense of spatial relations is severely impaired. Spatial relations are key to understanding the world, for example, the distance between two people. A child might stand too close or too far, in an intuitive attempt to make up for this spatial deficit. People think that these children aren’t paying attention to their surroundings, when, in fact, the child is paying too much attention subconsciously. The NLD child might accidentally touch another person in a way the person might think the child is actually hitting him or her.

The child will have difficulty with executive function. According to www.nldline.com, this includes decision making, planning, initiative, assigning priority, sequencing, motor control, emotional regulation, inhibition, problem solving, planning, impulse control, establishing goals, monitoring results of action, and self-correcting. Again, the child might have all or few of these problems and in differing levels of severity. In my experience, this is especially true in motor skill, organization and spatial relations areas.

The NLD child has problems with comprehending nonverbal communication, has difficulty adjusting to new situations and transitions and has deficits in both social situations and social judgment.

Kinesthetic processing is the ability to detect sensory stimuli such as body position, weight, or movement of the muscles, tendons and joints. Children with NLD lack this vital ability to master the physical world around them. Since the child can’t rely upon kinesthetic processing or spatial relations, he or she is unable to generalize information and little is learned from experience or repetition. Again, there are degrees of severity and a child’s innate intelligence may compensate.

There can be problems in visual, auditory, tactile and/or olfactory sensory abilities.

And there’s more: When you’re not in sync with the world around you, stress, anxiety, panic and phobias develop, and are often the by-products.

As a guideline, check out the assessment scale devised by clinical psychologist David B. Goldstein, Ph.D., at www.nldontheweb.org/Goldstein_1.htm, a scale that parents can fill out. NLD diagnosis is made more difficult because the child often has other problems, or problems that mimic NLD, such as Asperger’s, a high functioning form of autism. A child with NLD may appear to suffer from attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or an assortment of physical, developmental or mental disorders. With an NLD child, cognitive testing shows a significant difference between verbal and performance scores. The verbal score will often be very superior.

A good prognosis for the NLD child depends on early identification and intervention. As each child is different, the treatment plan will differ, but it should be holistic and encompass every area of the child’s life, including every staff member who comes into contact with the child at school. An Individualized Educational Program (IEP) should reflect the child’s needs: The child’s assignments should be modified daily and treatment constantly revised. As much visual stimulation as possible should be taken out of the classroom setting and enough room should be added on tests to account for poor handwriting. With proper identification and treatment, the child should be able to live a “normal” life.

For more information visit www.nldline.com and www.asdfocus.com/factnld.htm

Reader Comments

Posted: Sunday, July 13, 2008
Article comment by:

This is a well written, not so clinical as to put me to sleep, explanation. A way the general public can understand something which is hard to expalin. Thank you Ms. Savage

Posted: Thursday, July 10, 2008
Article comment by:

Your syle always leaves me breathless my dear Pia… you are the only one I know who can explain something without resorting to, well, explanations… brilliant, as are you!

Posted: Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Article comment by:

You did a FANTASTIC job with this article. I am in graduate school, and one of my papers was on NVLD. I swear I see much of this in myself, as well as one of my twin sons. Coincidentally, he was diagnosed with developmental coordination disorder by the developmental pediatrician. I need to get an eval from a neuropsych for both of us. Thank you SO much for writing this. I know this was heart-wrenching for you to relive the past memories. I found out about your article from 3 Word Wednesday. Warm regards, Michelle aka The Beartwinsmom

Posted: Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Article comment by:

Although I’m a man, I easily identified with so much in your article Pia. It could well have been my story and as you are aware, the struggles we endure subside a bit with time but the pain of the past is more difficult to erase. My one wish is that the public be made more aware of the essence of our disability and the labeling ceases to exist. We can contribute much to society if employers, social contacts and even family members, give us the fair opportunity we are entitled to. Keep the journey alive!

Posted: Monday, July 07, 2008
Article comment by:

An excellent way of explaining the unknowable. Certainly, I came away understanding the “non-verbal” part of the disability.

Posted: Friday, July 04, 2008
Article comment by:

Excellent article. And an inspiration to anyone diagnosed with NLD or, for that matter, any other diagnosis.

Posted: Friday, July 04, 2008
Article comment by:

Pia, your story was so inspiring. i also have nvld and was not diagnosed until I was 30. I went through years of hell in jobs I had no success in as well as relationships. I have tired to take my own life now look like I am facing divorce. this disability has cause me a great deal of pain. I am trying to move forward. Please pray for me.

Posted: Thursday, July 03, 2008
Article comment by:

as an addendum, this writer, Pia Savage, is is highly compassionate, both in her personal life, and, in the world; ie. she is PASSIONATE about safeguarding human rights everywhere. A kinder individual would be hard to find. She also enjoys dancing – that makes her a good dancer. . .

Posted: Thursday, July 03, 2008
Article comment by:

A wonderful truth within an equally wonderful story. Whether one has a non verbal learning disorder, has a child with it, or just wants a good read about a condition they know nothing about, this is it. Thanks for this wonderful piece.

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Bone supplies three words. I wasn’t planning to write this story. It just came out.



Cassandra had long ago admitted she sold her soul to the nearest bouncer in exchange for an hour or so of pleasure with whatever rock star was playing at a concert hall or club.

Like most groupies she liked sex but desired more. She wanted to be a rock star’s old lady. That had never happened. Nobody ever talked about groupies who married rock stars near her.

She lived in the same one bedroom she had always lived in near Tompkins Square Park in the East Village. Then it had been filled with roommates, talk, guys brought home, drugs and liquor. The constant smell of sex permeated, along with incense and flavored oils.

Cassandra’s been alone in the apartment for many more years than there were roommates and fun. Walking up five flights takes longer now. After a day spent taking orders, delivering drinks and food, in a coffee shop that used to smell of too many stale cigarettes, she really doesn’t care if the apartment’s filthy.

When she remembers she takes the garbage down. Sometimes the empty beer bottles and cigarette butts remain a study in still life, or so Dinah thinks.

Dinah was Cassandra’s bunkmate in camp. They had never been close. But Dinah felt a responsibility for everyone she had ever known.

When they turned seventeen, Dinah would walk into the club or concert hall with her boyfriend, a British rock star she married at nineteen and was still with 35 years later. It had always saddened her to see Cassandra waiting outside the doors or in the aisle waiting with the other groupies. They looked as if they were waiting to be fed, over eager or sullen and bored looking, it didn’t matter. They weren’t girls who counted.

She asked Brett if Cassandra could come in with them. He agreed.

Cassandra knew that she had been given an opportunity. But she was still the same Cassandra Weber who never had anything to add to the conversation. She didn’t really get conversation. It seemed a waste when there were drugs to be taken and sex to have.

When Dinah’s friends would come to a concert, they would talk to the guys as if they were friends and equals. But they couldn’t be. They weren’t famous. Rich, yes, but none of them had earned their money.

Cassandra’s family had cut her off after she refused to go college in 1968. They were done with her and she with them. They thought education was the answer to everything.

Her family lost most of its money in 1969. She would guess that her parents were dead. Cassandra was never curious enough to find out

She still knew that one hour of pretense with Mick was worth everything.

Cassandra didn’t have friends. She had some men who would huff and puff their way up the stairs, and not leave until the beer, scotch and cigarettes would run out. She was merely a small convenience to them.

And she had Dinah. They had run into each other about a decade ago at the coffee shop. Cassandra had gained much weight, had rotten teeth, and a rosacea marked face. Cassandra still had a filthy mouth. The only kind of conversation she enjoyed was much cursing with a few other words.

She recognized Dinah at once but prayed that Dinah wouldn’t guess who she was.

She felt like Dinah’s guilt trip. The girl who was never supposed to be anything special but wasn’t supposed to be a waitress at a coffee shop that had a neon sign with four letters permanently unlit.

Cassandra hated having a cleaning service come once a week. Dinah insisted on it and paid for it. She tried to get her to give up cigarettes and eat healthily. Cassandra liked donuts, and deserved them for breakfast at the coffee shop.

Cassandra supposed she was a matter of convenience to Dinah. That Dinah believed she had to try to make Cassandra take care of herself because she couldn’t live with the guilt otherwise.

Actually Dinah simply felt blessed.

So I’m planning on enjoying it.

What’s a Jew without guilt? Sounds like a riddle; maybe it is. The following post is an exercise in fiction, not on real life.

Guilt: An internal debate

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No! No! No! Really off blogging until Monday but the more I think about the attorney on Boston Legal as compared to me, and as much as I adore David E Kelley and the cast of the show, I think that they did people like me a big disservice.

I’m not looking for empathy or accolades. Need to tell this story but damned if I know how to.

I once tried to get doctors to sign off on papers that would have let me be admitted to the Rusk Institute for rehab. Was glad that I could amuse them so much.

Tried scanning in a picture of me at seven because my face still looks the same; but of course the scanner somehow became disconnected, and reconnecting it felt like work. I was the person who screwed up the Xerox machine, at work, but you never minded because I was so cute about it.

When I quit Social Security, the District Manager couldn’t understand it because I was so “perky” and “vivacious.” She was comparing me to the living dead so it meant less than it seemed. All I could think about was the first Mary Tyler Moore show, when Lou called her “perky,” she thought that it was a compliment and he said, “I hate perky.” Something like that. At the job after Summitt, everybody called me “Mary,” and uh, Lucia was my “Rhoda.” She didn’t work there, but was invited to every party.

We were the White Girls who would go to parties in Harlem, stay after 11 and dance up a storm. We were equally at home downtown where Lucia managed an architectural sculpture plaster store and installers on Lafayette. Met John Gotti almost directly across the street.

I had pneumonia at thirteen months. As I had lived in a foster home until I was four months old, my parents didn’t want me to go to the hospital as parents couldn’t stay with children then. The doctor set up some kind of oxygen tent and I was better by the next morning. But the initial fever was high. I had many bouts of tonsillitis and strep throats.

My father had been sent to the hospital when he was very young, with his cousins, to have his tonsils taken out. I think they got a group rate. It scarred my father for life, and he was determined that neither of his daughters have our tonsils taken out. I forget the number of doctors who said my tonsils should come out. Finally a life long friend of my dad’s, a doctor in Texas, who would in his life be married six times but only to five women said that I shouldn’t have them out.

Do you remember the first time you dived off a high board? I don’t either but I remember the smell of the pool, the gym, the absurd weight loss machines; such as the belt that women would strap to their waist, or hips and they would jolt back and forth to a machine that looked like a doctors scale. As I was ten I found it very funny. Remember the smell and how the changing area looked, and the woman who asked me my age. “Ten,” I said proudly as I was sure she was going to tell me how pretty and tall I was, and how I looked old for my age. “You’re tall for your age, but you look about eight.” It was the first time an adult hadn’t gone on and on about how pretty and mature I was. I sulked.

But not as much as when my paediatrician(s) told us that I couldn’t dive anymore because I had one continual sinus infection. Yes I had paediatrician(s). The one in Great Neck was for everyday problems; and the one on Park Avenue for consults and more complicated things. Think that my Aspergers actually evolved from Central Audio Processing Disorder, which made me not hear words correctly. Therefore I misheard words nor did I understand all words. My biggest problems, and only problems with words according to my school were my horrible handwriting and my total inability to spell. Did have the highest reading scores in the grade. Still have an incredible vocabulary. If only I could sound out the words enough to make good mistakes and let the spell check find it.

When my slight lisp was cured, I no longer had to go to speech therapy. If my problems processing words had been tackled when I was in elementary school or even junior high, I think my life would have been much easier. It’s easy to say that they didn’t know; my problems were more common in boys, I was exceptionally verbal. I was and am overly concerned about other people. I never acted out in school; I was a good girl.

And I was adopted. The adoption issue clouded and masked everything. At nine I was offended when my child psychologist brought up being adopted as a problem. Why should it have been? I liked my family; and couldn’t imagine being part of another one.

So much time wasted. I do resent it.

When I began college I felt like a kid let loose in a candy store who had to choose between all the best candy. The boy who was to play important and many roles in my life did introduce himself to me many times, and gave me small presents. It took me a long to realize that he was the same boy, but for some reason that added to my appeal.

I began college during the height of the hippie era and there was much room for individuals. Didn’t feel normal; didn’t feel calm, but I didn’t need to be.

Knew many people who were to become drug war casualties. But I knew people who would calm down on coke; and I knew people who really did become more interesting on pot. In my case it calmed me down, and slowed my thinking just enough to let me interact more easily with people. I didn’t understand that then; therefore I probably should have inhaled more. I’m probably the only person who would appear spacy and stoned straight, and was your favorite person to talk to when I was stoned and you weren’t.

Not sure that it slowed my thinking as much as allowed me to think like most people. As all my basic problems manifested before I was sixteen; it’s safe to assume that recreational drugs only helped me. My stance on recreational drugs isn’t the usual one, but I can’t help believing that one day the exact interactions between the brain and THC, for one example, will be shown to help people lacking something still not known or understood.

Obviously I have thought about myself and my problems a lot. There were years, decades when they didn’t apear to affect me. I knew something was wrong. Just didn’t know what. My therapists, in my adulthood tried, but we all knew that there was something more something, something at the core that had to be physically based, or misshooting neurons. That’s probably when I began thinking about truth and perceptions.

This past year I reached out to many people. It was more than insulting to get a list of occupational therapists; and a aren’t you disabled tude. I’m perfectly capable of finding the best myself, and giving myself more than enough tude for ten people.

I wasn’t disabled before; except for the tests that showed me to be extremely learning disabled. But in the almost two decades since then I have accomplished much as I had before, and I want my accomplishments to be highlighted. Also I have paid a fortune in therapy over the years.

In blogging I have found an incredibly supportive community. It both helps me and

I bought a TVO about three years ago. For six months after 9/11 I couldn’t get network TV, and I really wanted comfort TV on their original homes not Nick at Nite. Have no idea why I didn’t want to watch them on cable. I hadn’t watched TV comedies since halfway through Mad about you I’m a big Helen Hunt fan; but it became boring.

Weird side note. The first month having intermittent cable TV and more important to me computer cable service seemed patriotic. We were London during the blitz: self sacrificing, stoic, and going on and on. That got old fast. As most of you know my mom died a month after 9/11 very suddenly, and the cable being out so much cut off comfort and communication.

Email’s been important to my life for almost a decade now. When Google was introduced the Internet became a wonderful place. I loved both the simplicity of the home page, and the ease of looking things up. Not having the Internet more than I had it seemed like a cruel joke as did not being able to watch Everybody Loves Raymond on Monday nights. It was my mother’s favorite show. She also liked Who Wants to be a Millionaire but I didn’t feel obliged to watch that one.

I admit I could have used dial-up but everything seemed so complicated then. My super and a crew were constantly in my apartment because of massive leaks; I couldn’t use the Internet two thirds of the time or watch anything on TV. I actually joined the Mystery Guild to get books; I’m a compulsive book reader but B&N and Borders didn’t have all the comfort mysteries I needed. I don’t mean that in the traditional sense; I’m not big on cozies. I like psychological thrillers with an erotic edge best to be honest.

My low signal problem was finally fixed and I bought a TIVO. There was one small problem. It could guess the names of films, TV shows, and actors for you. I had finally found my version of computer games. I cheated; and would use the TV guide to every film made or IMBD. I would make TV guess the names of the most obscure Bulgarian films. It did. I ended up almost never watching TV; just The Sopranos, 6 feet under, and Everybody Loves Raymond The cable company came out with DVR’s and I got one.

It doesn’t guess for you; it does record two shows at once which TIVO didn’t. TIVO does let you come to a live show late and watch it from the beginning. Live meaning when shown on TV; with a DVR you can only watch from the moment you turn the TV on unless of course you had set it.

Setting a DVR to record, or whatever, is a joke. Just go the guide, look up the day, the station and the hour, and click. It will record only first run episodes if you want, and if you want will record on all stations played. Though unless you’re associated with the show and want to see if it looks different, I can’t imagine anybody wanting to do that.

The only shows I watch live areBoston Legal and Medium because I love them both. The husband on Medium is my idealized male; like Patricia Arquette, and the stories. Feel bad that I forgot to buy TV Guide to get the three d glasses, but it was still a good episode. Love the house that they live in, and all the colors it’s painted. It’s a real peoples house, and the daughters are adorable in a good way.

This weekend I’m having a Kill Bill festival, if two films qualify as one. DVR’d them both this week.

I delete most programs without watching them. I really don’t need to watch every CSI, the original, once a month is more than enough; really do need to watch every Without a Trace

In my post The Red Ribbon that I wrote last year, I made fun of Will & Grace. No more; if there’s one TV show in the history of TV I can truly relate to….I relate to Grace, Will, Karen & Jack. It gets the gay world I know without being over the top.

Yet it’s over the top dramatic in performances occasionally. Each one of them can be so Broadway or Gay piano bar. One episode mentioned The Ramrod; a gay bar in the Meatmarket that I thought had closed years ago. I have two great Ramrod stories that I just might tell. Ones spooky weird; and ones fun weird.

For the past week or so I have been into getting into bed and spacing out to to TV. It’s fun, and it’s so much better than the old VCR days. I had an obsession with General Hospital which I really couldn’t even stand after awhile. Since the VCR could only record from one channel I could only watch TV on ABC. And there was nothing to watch on ABC.

For small holiday gifts I suggest you buy DVD rewinders; I hear they’re all the rage.

I don’t know know what this says about me, but I can pick Emmy winners. Patricia Aruqette, so much bigger boned but facially so similiar to Rosanna, won for Medium, along with the new Closer, two of my three fave girl shows the other being, of course, The Gilmore Girls. And I will take Candice Bergen anywhere. Think Boston Legal’s incredible. Not just for James Spader, my absolutely favorite actor alive, but for how it uses older actors. Older than me is a good thing; it keeps me helpful, and they’re all wonderfrul actors playing great characters in a David E Kelley show that has dared to question the federal government albeit in funny ways since the show has been on.

I couldn’t have written the above until I hit 40 as I was the one person I knew, outside of my immediate family, not to own a VCR. Finally realized that while certain members of my family might have had an intellectual snob thing going I didn’t have to. Now fave sis, who has every new product for her eleven year old daughter, introduces me as:

“This is my sister, Pia. She could have been an intellectual but chose pop culture instead.”

No comment. Yes comment: my love of pop culture became acceptable when I began reviewing film; but I would have rather reviewed DVD’s; much more intellectually stimulating, the extras; the assumption that you will review the DVD in bed, and can replay at will.

The weather, last night, might have been sultry but there was an Autumnal chill in the air, and I could seep without air conditioning. Rafe couldn’t find parking which made it the true beginning of the Fall season. And he looks; never have met a person with more patience, and ability to find a parking space where other people only see a small spot and a do not park sign; somehow he knows how to circumvent them.

I had already seen Rafe at his hair salon, two blocks from my old apartment which I didn’t take pictures of as I never made it there. My friend Angie Ralph, is a hair stylist at the salon, so we talked for an hour outside it. It felt good to be with a friend who has known me since we were young and hot. Angie’s Lucia’s childhood best friend, and I was friendly with both Angie’s husband and brother before I became friends with Lucia. We all knew each other before adult life and death came hitting us in the face. We can all look at each other and see our 20′s reflected in our faces and bodies while everybody else sees middle age.

Note to the Ralph girls: I used to think your mom was too cool for me. She was a partee animal; and your dad was always your dad, willing to converse with anybody; he could and did become friends with bag people. The radio is playing Boz Scaggs and bringing me back to those days even more.

So in splendid isolation, last night, I reveled in the radio, and listened to some amazing rhetoric. It left me absolutely postively convinced that New Orleans must be rebuilt; it left me further convinced of the failure of the federal government to help people that they had never helped before.

I am blogged out right now. I like writing posts because I like writing; I enjoy reading other blogs and commenting because I like bouncing off other people’s idea and the mutual back and forthness of blogging.

But I need a very long weekend to chill. Even on vacation I was doing blog related things from two to seven hours a day, usually three to four. I want blogging to be fun again; so I need some time away. To finish organizing my apartment which scares me as I’m the least naturally organized person on the earth. So when I say that I’m scared; I mean it literally.

I need time to revel in having a first draft almost ready; it doesn’t seem real. I need to go to the beach; maybe for a day; maybe for several; maybe not if the weather turns in which case I need to begin doing the tourist in my own city things that I had been planning on doing.

It’s been a hard month and I haven’t cut myself any breaks, and thanks you who commented to that effect. You are right. I might comment in two or three blogs a day but if I don’t get to yours until the end of next week please like me anyway.

The only other blog related things I will do besides my Bring it on! post on the 27, and introducing Bonnie of Frogma as our Friday guest author this week; I’m going to take a blogger’s break. Though I always reserve the right to change my mind, and to post.

I am filled with love for the people of this country who have pulled together in a massive effort to help. Yes we in New York have a special obligation. The first car parked on my street after 9/11 was a cop car from Michigan. It made me tear up with the knowledge that people cared.

We care about Katrina; we care about our country. I hope more than anything that Rita doesn’t do much harm; and that we can reclaim our government so that it works for all people.