I spoke with Queenie over the weekend. Just to touch base with her. Hadn't spoken in a while. Every time we do attempt to speak we argue about something, so as much as we may love each other, I think we both realize that it is better to keep our encounters to a minimum. But I do reach out often anyway. I called her on Saturday. She is not doing well. She is 34 years old now. But she still acts and talks like a teenager. She was a teenager when her parents divorced and I think she stopped growing when that happened. She has been in therapy ever since that day. Almost twenty years straight and God bless her is no different today than she was when I met her ten years ago. In fact she seems worse now. Now she is telling me she thinks she has a eating disorder and is all messed up about her body. It is almost as if when people get this bad mentally, they become two people. They split off from themselves. There is the them who is talking to you and then there is the person they are talking about, themselves. They talk about themselves as if they aren't in control of themselves. As if they don't understand themselves. She says she wants to be better, but that she is obsessed with her body. Obsessed with food. I ask her “well why you don’t just stop it then? I mean why don't you just stop all that and realize how wonderful and beautiful you are?” 

Of course that just makes her mad. It would probably make anyone mad. ‘look, you have to start on a vitamin regimen. Your body is in some kind of emergency state. Craving sugar. We need to fix it.’ “I don't need any vitamins Fishy! She screams. Its not my body. Its my mind.” What she doesn’t realize along with half the human population is that the mind is part of the body. Heal the body and you will heal the mind. And of course vice versa. So she won't even try a natural or say a nutritional approach. So she spends the last twenty years on different therapists couches spending tens of thousands of her fathers money, she continues to get worse, all of them obsessing on what is wrong with me, rather than what is right with me. For me it is very sad. Because I loved Queenie very much when we were together. She really tugged at my heart. It was hard to pull away from her. 

‘Queenie. I am sure you can make this all alright, o.k.? Tell me you can. I don't want to worry about you.’ ‘I wish I could Fishy. I don't know now. They want to put me in the hospital.’ ‘And what about you? Do you want to go to a hospital?’ ‘I don't know.’ maybe it will be best for me. I want to be better.’ ‘You know what? Queenie I have an idea. Lets go to the Bahamas. Just you and me. We’ll go for the weekend. Just friends. We’ll lie on the beach drinking rum runners until we pass out everyday under the hot sun. I'll write songs while you read magazines. It’ll be brilliant. Just for a couple of days. I'm sure that's all you need. What do you think?’ ‘I don't think so. I don't fly now. I hate it too much.’ ‘Well you can’t just stay in your own hometown the rest of your life. You have to just overcome this fear of flying.’ ‘Well you need to find another girl, cause that's not me.’ And then this is about the time that I realize that as beautiful and smart and funny as Queenie is that she really does have real problems. And they aren't just going to go away tomorrow kind of problems. 

I mean maybe she's right. Maybe she really won't ever fly anywhere because of being too afraid. Me I couldn’t imagine this. When I am afraid I acknowledge it, and try to really feel it to its extreme so I can get used to it and own it, and then I start forcing myself to do whatever it is I am afraid of so I can get over it. They call this immersion therapy and it works. Its frightening and uncomfortable but to me there is nothing I am more afraid of than living a compromised life due to any fears. ‘Well Queenie I've known you for a long time. I love you and I care about you and I want you to get better. O.k.? So please fucking get better.’ ‘Thanks Fishy. I hope I do but I don't know...’ So eventually me and Queenie hung up the phone. And that was that. I will send her positive thoughts and good prayers. But I think she has to stand up on her own you know. Like a baby. For the first time. Just stand up and start taking baby steps to really using her will to just wake up one day and say ‘fuck all this. I'm better today than yesterday. Goddamn I am fucking normal...’ you know something like this. I mean really, in all honesty, don't a lot of us have to do that a lot in this world? I mean maybe not everyday. But still. A lot of days. Its not so easy for any of us. But I wish there was some kind of magic wand or magic pill to just get everyone to be happy and more positive. Cause I think that would be the greatest thing. Perhaps more than anything else, even more than doing our art, that is the most noble of all goals.   

[The Swede came over. Looked hot as always. She started telling me these sex stories of her and all these different girls she's had. Before I knew it, I was totally doing myself while she talked. Right in front of her. I closed my eyes and listened to her tell her stories. It was great. ‘No don't stop. For God sakes. Keep talking.’ pretty soon, she started playing with herself while she talked and watched me. And that was that. It was cool. It was perfect. It is things like this that make being single worth it.]