For David Abrams’ Sunday Sentence project, readers share the best sentence they’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”
“Still, Connell went home that night and read over some notes he had been making for a new story, and he felt the old beat of pleasure inside his body, like watching a perfect goal, like the rustling movement of light through leaves, a phrase of music from the window of a passing car.“
From Normal People, a new novel by Sally Rooney
I’m jazzed (jazz-handed?) to have embroidery artwork and creative writing in the newest issue of CROWDED zine, a quarterly multimedia zine affiliated with The Crowd Theater, featuring written and visual work of Chicago artists.
The Issue #3 release party is tonight, May 11, at 8 p.m. in The Crowd Theater near Lakeview! Admission for tonight’s show is free, and you can purchase a zine there for $6. They’ll be taking cash, card, or Venmo exchanges @CrowdedZine. If you can’t make the show but would like a copy, Venmo $8 to @CrowdedZine with your address in the description and they’ll mail you your copy!
In the latest episode of Zero Proof Book Club, Shelley and I discuss Caroline Knapp’s memoir “Drinking: A Love Story.” We gush about Knapp and her writing and talk about our sometimes complicated relationships with our own families, friends, and more.
Listen to the new episode here, at ZeroProofBookClub.com, and follow us on Instagram at @zeroproofbookclub.
To pair with this week’s podcast episode, we’re drinking strawberry lemonade (we love Simply Lemonade with Strawberry) mixed with ginger ale. Super simple. Simply refreshing. Just in time for spring! 🍓❤️
What to expect: An extraordinarily candid memoir published in 1997 that changed the quit lit genre for good.
From the book jacket:
“Fifteen million Americans a year are plagued with alcoholism. Five million of them are women. Many of them, like Caroline Knapp, started in their early teens and began to use alcohol as ‘liquid armor,’ a way to protect themselves against the difficult realities of life. In this extraordinarily candid and revealing memoir, Knapp offers important insights not only about alcoholism, but about life itself and how we learn to cope with it.
It was love at first sight. The beads of moisture on a chilled bottle. The way the glasses clinked and the conversation flowed. Then it became obsession. The way she hid her bottles behind her lover’s refrigerator. The way she slipped from the dinner table to the bathroom, from work to the bar. And then, like so many love stories, it fell apart. Drinking is Caroline Kapp’s harrowing chronicle of her twenty-year love affair with alcohol.
Caroline had her first drink at 14. She drank through her years at an Ivy League college, and through an award-winning career as an editor and columnist. Publicly she was a dutiful daughter, a sophisticated professional. Privately she was drinking herself into oblivion. This startlingly honest memoir lays bare the secrecy, family myths, and destructive relationships that go hand in hand with drinking. And it is, above all, a love story for our times—full of passion and heartbreak, betrayal and desire—a triumph over the pain and deception that mark an alcoholic life.”
— Drinking: A Love Story
Technically, this book of essays from Rustbelt Publishing won’t be out until September 10, but you can pre-order your copy today for $20 here! I’m really excited to have my work included and can’t wait to get my hands (well, mostly my eyes) on it. Following, a description of the book from the publisher:
Chicago is famously a city of neighborhoods. Seventy-seven of them, formally; more than 200 in subjective, ever-changing fact. But what does that actually mean? The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook, the latest in Belt’s series of idiosyncratic city guides (after Cleveland and Detroit), aims to explore community history and identity in a global city through essays, poems, photo essays, and art articulating the lived experience of its residents.
Edited by Belt senior editor Martha Bayne, the book builds on 2017’s critically acclaimed Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology. What did one pizzeria mean to a boy growing up in Ashburn? How can South Shore encompass so much beauty and so much pain? What’s it like to live in the Loop? Who’s got a handle on the ever-shifting identity of West Ridge? All this and more in this lyrical, subjective, completely non-comprehensive guide to Chicago. Featuring work by Megan Stielstra, Audrey Petty, Alex V. Hernandez, Sebastián Hidalgo, Dmitry Samarov, Ed Marszewski, Lily Be, Jonathan Foiles, and many more.
Check out the summer 2019 issue of LongWeekends magazine. The latest issue promises everything us Midwesterners need to plan the perfect long weekend trip this spring and summer.
My short piece is about three must-try tiki bars and restaurants in Chicago: Three Dots and a Dash in River North, Lost Lake in Logan Square, and Hala Kahiki Tiki Bar & Lounge in River Grove (worth the commute out to the ‘burbs, my Chi-town friends; this place has been tiki-ing since 1964 and claims to be the Midwest’s most authentic tiki bar).
Sober pals, don’t let the tiki-theme tempt you into not checking out these kitschy fun spots. Nonalcoholic treats abound. Example: Hala Kahiki’s zero proof Fruit Punch, a mix of passion fruit, housemade grenadine, housemade Orgeat, orange, pineapple, lemon, and lime.
Thumbing through the magazine has already garnered some travel ideas for us to conquer this summer, like taking a trek to Springfield, Illinois, to try the world-famous “hot dog on a stick” at The Cozy Dog Drive In. I guess I’m just a suck for anything corny! (Get it? Corn dog. Ha. Ha.) What are your big (or small) summer plans?
In the latest episode of Zero Proof Book Club, Shelley and I discuss Sarah Hepola’s memoir “Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget.” Listen now to hear us talk about how much we relate to Hepola’s story and dive deep into the scary reality of alcohol-induced blackouts. Topics include binging, sex, blacked-out alter egos, and how to reconcile the person you are when you’re blacked out with the real you.
Listen to the new episode here, at ZeroProofBookClub.com, and follow us on Instagram at @zeroproofbookclub.
Some ultra chic Topo Chico Grapefruit + lime + salt rim
Sarah Hepola mentions margaritas a few times in her memoir, so we wanted to share this super simple zero-proof margarita idea with you this week! Start by salting the rim of your cocktail glass, then pour a bottle of Topo Chico Twist of Grapefruit over ice. Squeeze in the juice from half a lime (fresh grapefruit or orange juice would be great in here, too!) and garnish with lime wedges. Just DO NOT SKIP THE SALT RIM and we promise you’ll love this refreshing and booze-free margarita-ish drink.
What to expect: A New York Times-bestselling memoir about the journey from blackout drinker (hello, modern binge culture) to badass sober sister
From the book jacket: “For Sarah Hepola, alcohol was ‘the gasoline of all adventure.’ Drinking felt like freedom, part of her birthright as a strong, enlightened twenty-first century woman. But there was a price. She often blacked out, waking up with a blank space where four hours should be. Mornings became detective work on her own life: What did I say last night? Who was that guy? Where am I? Blackout is a memoir of unblinking honesty and poignant laugh-out-loud humor. It’s the story of a woman stumbling into a new adventure—the sober life she never wanted.”
— Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget
For David Abrams’ Sunday Sentence project, readers share the best sentence they’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”
“They had a secret, the two of them, and there was no better way to start a friendship than with a secret.”
From Before She Knew Him, a new thriller by Peter Swanson
Slate Arts + Performance proudly presents CONNECT, a new-media group exhibition featuring works by the following artists:
Joshua Eby
Robert Fowler
Erica Gressman
Joo Young Lee
X. A. Li
Sarah Leuchtner
Jackie Mantey
Sara Alexandra Pelaez
Christopher Riggs
Christopher Marc Ford
Andrew C. S.
Rui Sha
The opening reception is from 8 to 11 p.m. Saturday, April 20, at Slate Arts in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood.
“Connecting requires at least two points in which a link or attachment of sorts can activate. As human beings, our livelihoods depend on how well we build and maintain connections. Relationships. Neural networks. Sound waves. Internet speed. Fibers of one’s clothing.”
I have three individual pieces in the show, a triptych entitled “Good Things And Death Come In Threes.” (Three embroidery and thread on historical imagery in 14″ x 17″ wooden and pink frames, one inch between each frame: “Red Line,” “Yellow Line,” and “Blue Line.”)
The images in “Good Things And Death Come In Threes” were sourced from the public domain of the New York Public Library’s digital archives and selected for their visual representation of tools Americans have used to send a message, themselves, or others from one place to another; interestingly, these are also tools we use to disconnect ourselves from wherever we’ve come.
The title is a nod to the folkloric connections we often make as we search for answers and try to connect our existence to something bigger than our individual selves. The finished embroidered work reminds the viewer of photography’s ability to connect us to people not of our time or place, as well as the working class inheritance of thread as a means to weave historical narrative into making a modern point. That each embroidery has similarities is a representation of how we are all connected, whether we are together or alone.
Three years! Holy no-more-shitfaced!
I think of the exact date of my sobriety as a feral-animal-turned-beloved-pet’s birthday. I don’t know it for sure. I had tried to quit so many times before April 15, 2016, and I was tired of “remembering dates” only to be alarmed and disappointed in myself when I found myself hungover yet again. In fact, I figured out about a year ago that my real soberversary date is perhaps a few days before today… BUT I’ve got it in my brain as April 15, so April 15 it shall be.
That means, I haven’t been drunk since a little over three years ago. < !!!! pew pew pew all the emojis !!!!>
I have had one glass of alcohol since then. A glass of champagne at my bachelorette party. As soon as I sipped it, I felt gold in my veins. That’s what it felt like—gold. Relief. Escape. Precious.
More-more-more came calling with just one drink.
By the time of my bachelorette party, I had at least a year and a half of sobriety under my belt, but it didn’t matter. That voice I hadn’t heard in so long shot its shitty little self into my ear and said, “OMG ORDER EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW. A WHOLE BOTTLE OF CHAMPAGNE, AND AT LEAST TWO BLOODY MARYS. AND SHOTS FOR EVERYONE! OMG WE’RE fUCk*$g DOING THIS!!!”
But, no, we were not doing this. It took a lot of effort—too much effort, I thought, considering I hadn’t drank in so long—to push that voice back in the cage where it belonged. But I did. I drank sparkling grape juice the rest of the weekend. And my amazing mother-in-law had some waiting for Justin and I in the hotel after our wedding.
I’m so happy for that glass of champagne, which the well-meaning waiter had brought me as a surprise when he heard what our group was celebrating. Getting and staying sober was really hard for me, and it was especially difficult my first year, but I had reaped enough rewards of sobriety to know that voice was no good. Being sober for a while had made me aware of that voice so I could shut it up early. Being sober for a while had helped me be in my body in a new way, a way that enabled me to recognize that fool’s-gold feeling for what it was as soon as it hit me.
I’m so grateful today. I’m grateful for the people who loved me unconditionally through some hard times. I’m grateful to the people who find the courage every day to face their addiction problems, who have the courage to try to be their better selves and who fight for it day after day after day. I’m so grateful to the people who recover out loud, too, like the writers and recovering alcoholics who helped me understand what I was going through and helped me feel less alone.
Most of all, today I’m so… like… earth-shatteringly grateful to that sad, disappointed, disgusted, rock-bottomed-out self who decided around three years ago that enough was enough—and that I was enough without booze. Thank you thank you thank you.
That glass of champagne and how instantaneously my old destructive-drinking self presented itself was the final sign I needed to accept that I had to be done drinking forever. There was no controlling it. No nice little bachelorette brunch with one martini for me. I couldn’t drink ever again if I wanted to be happy.
And happy I am! Year Three was a good one.
Some highlights:
Year Three definitely brought some brought new challenges, too. This year, the shock of staying sober wore off. A layer of the onion had peeled away. The raw one. And now I was left looking at a whole new me. I had changed and had to get used to it.
When you get sober (from whatever you’re addicted to… doesn’t have to be booze) and want to enjoy being sober, you’re required to give up some additional things. You’re not ready for it. You think, “Well, I quit the number-one-problem thing. Problem solved!”
Alas, recovery is a lifelong journey. There are 12 stupid freaking steps for a reason. You don’t just admit you have a problem and, bam, all is well. It takes work. And constant self-vigilance and discipline — two seemingly scary words that are, I’ve found, the root of all peace.
This year I was able to recognize ways in which the behavioral patterns tied to my alcohol abuse were still showing up in my life. The patterns were just channeled through other outlets, less destructive outlets certainly, but unhealthy ones nonetheless.
They were hard to pinpoint initially. I’m being vague for a reason… it’s still sorta hard for me to explain. The best example I can give is work. Workaholism is real and I got it, y’all. I can sometimes use work and overcommitting myself for the same reasons I used alcohol. As a means of escape, to outrun perfectionism and fear and guilt and shame and imposter syndrome and and and…
I don’t think my intense work ethic is bad. Not at all. It’s one of the best things about me. I am loyal AF to something I say I will do and earn everything I have. That means a lot to me and always will.
I just want to work on working better. Saying no to good opportunities and only taking great ones, for example. Making space for more personal goals and being clear on what those are. Really working on being a better partner and friend and a person who lives every day aligned to her values. Etc.
I have three ideas for how to achieve this all in Year Four. Recovering workaholics still need a plan:
