"As if I didn't know my own head"

A Review of Wishful Drinking

Here's how Carrie Fisher hooks you in. She's really funny. She gives you the juicy stuff up front--electroshock, pills popped, Hollywood inbreeding, a dead guy, gay, in her bed--all in the form of finely-tuned one-liners.

So you could be in the basement of a bookstore in New Hampshire, say, waiting for a guy to pick you up on his way back from the hardware store, and you see Wishful Drinking among Harlequins, and it's better than reading about country barn restoration or the art of making maple syrup.

So there you are, cracking up out loud, alone on an antique fiddleback chair, thinking, I wish I had a best friend who was this funny! Maybe if I bring her book home, I can pretend for a day!

You sit with Carrie on a blanket in the field, shooting the breeze, laughing with abandon, until the shade comes in and the mosquitoes come out. This is the hardest part of the day, especially as it is only 3:00 p.m. But today it's easier, because you're still only on p. 99. Today you don't think about starting a beer, and it's a good thing, cuz you're plum out--you gave up beer yesterday as a way to lose a few pounds.

Now you're inside and the chapter is entitled "Sadness Squared." But do you take heed? No. You and Carrie curl up in a dark corner and bond. You are craving chocolate.

So this is how it happens. She hooks you with her humor, then gives you a mood wash, and before you know it, you're in the middle of a fight.

By the time my guy comes in from the woods, I've had a three-hour soak. Maybe I'm just a regular California gal who's weaning herself of sun, and friends, and coffee. I've never been diagnosed with anything--or at least anything they would tell me. Once, when I was 13, I overheard a doctor ask my mother if I was "high-strung," but he was an asshole. When my mother was out of the examining room he told me that I could be beautiful if I let him give me a nose job.

By this time we're in the country kitchen, carmelizing onions, me feeling so peppy and punchy I can't see the danger coming. I know enough to avoid serious discussions while low on blood sugar, but this wasn't personal. It was theoretical! philosophical! This was my question: Without actual chemical confirmation, how could you know whether you were bipolar, or merely had a mood disorder, or were highly creative? Huh? Huh? This conversation followed us to the fireplace.

Where I proceeded to entertain my lover with witticisms from Wishful Drinking. He saw a picture of Princess Lea and made a comment about how fun it must have been filming Star Wars. "How would you know?!" I challenged, my voice rising. "You have no idea what it's like to be an insecure 19-year-old girl who thinks she's fat, working with a sadistic director and a bunch of macho men!"

My guy is smart enough to know when to bow out and feign sleep on the couch. I finished the book by the fireplace and then went to bed, wishing I had some sleeping pills.

In the morning I woke up, and my first thought was, "Hey, I'm not Carrie Fisher!" My guy was back in bed with me. "I'm done with the book," I said. "I'm normal again." Not only is my lover a great singer-songwriter; now he knows what it's like to be Paul Simon. "Thank god," he said.