Paige F. at the Sacramento gay/lesbian "River City Roundup"

Thank you very much, Jody, for bringing me up here. My name is Paige and I'm an addict and alcoholic. And I'm honored to be here. And I want to, thank Valia who was kind enough to drive with me. The poor thing.

Chat, chat, chat, chat. I am the daughter well, first of all, I have to say that I'm amazed that I'm alive. And now I'm really amazed because I'm in menopause and I'm really amazed even more than I'm alive. And I get really warm just, you know, looking out. I get really hot and then, you know, so if it happens, it's just, you know, what can you do?

It's just things over which you have no control, you know. I am the daughter of 2 alcoholic parents whose favorite sayings were you can never be too thin or too rich. My mother was anorexic before there was a word for it, so you can bet your bottom dollar I was a little on the heavy side in her eyes. We called her Jaws behind her back. My mother was not a nice person, and that's absolutely okay now.

25 years of therapy later. One day at a time. I found that my stair step to heaven was actually a step stool to the medicine chest at age 10. In the medicine chest, 2 steps up on a green stool was Turpenhydrate, small bottles of alcohol that my father collected in the service, lots of Aspergum, which I loved. Very sweet on the outside and it did something on the inside you never knew what.

There were lots of drugs there. There were bitters, you know, bitters, sugar, little bottles of alcohol, turpent hydrate, lots of asparagus, as I said, and that was my joyous moment in the beginning of each day. My parents had a lot of money, and I had a lot of privilege. But I'll tell you, when I found myself living in an abandoned house in San Francisco with no hot water, no money, no one to care about me because, in fact, I am a recovering hitter. They now call it battering.

Back then, there was not really a word for when you hit people that you loved. They just called you, like, violent or in a bad mood, but it was hitting. And the reason that I hit was because of self rage, self anger. So it was a long way for me into an abandoned house in North Beach, in a bathtub that I painted black. But I did have and Jody wanted me to tell you this, and so I'm gonna tell to you now and get it out of the way.

There was one outlet that had electricity, and by God, being creative as an alcoholic as I was, I strung a 120 foot extension cord from a house that had electricity up to that one little plug, and I carried home a color TV that didn't have color. And I plugged that thing in, and I sat in my cold water black bathtub and watch that TV and thought this is heaven. When I was living in that house, I also was living with a woman who was and now is gone. She's gone. She was then crazy and now she's dead.

And I remember when I was 10 years clean and sober, I was sitting in front of television. They were doing a story about the homeless at Christmas time and wasn't that a sad thing? And I've been homeless and I understood. Yes. It a very sad thing.

And I looked on the TV, and there was a woman that I loved who was dragging a teddy bear out of a Mission Street Sewage Culvert where she was living. And I haven't seen her in many many years, and I thought there but for the grace of God go I. So, yes, I'm starting to sweat a little. It's menopause. Don't worry.

I'm fine. Let me take you back to the beginning because I think it's important that you know that like you, I have come full circle. And really, I was born into a lot of privilege. My parents were both drinking. I was born alcoholic.

The minute that I could drink, I did drink. There was not one day from the age of 11 to the age of 29 when I got clean and sober, when I was without drugs or alcohol. There was not one day, not one. And because I had a little bit of a weight problem, I also got a lot of Dexadrine. If you remember Dexadrine, you know, a little bit of speed to help you get thin.

And it got me thinner. It made me a wonderful athlete. I was just I could throw things farther, run farther, hit harder, just do everything really great, you know. And I could also, get really good grades. But inside, as all of us have heard and, Doug, thank you because I think you really eloquently painted a wonderful picture of how the insides and the outsides don't always match.

And inside, I was a self loathing, pretty hateful, angry, young woman who looked good on the outside. And my feeling was, as long as you look good on the outside by God, you can deal with anything because you can never be too thin or too rich. And I'll never forget when I went to my first AA meeting, there was a woman in the back who was like really, really old, really old. I mean, she could have been maybe 85 or so and she was knitting in the back and I was so proud of myself that I came in looking really hot. I thought I just looked great.

Angriest person on the planet, but looked real good. Right? So I came into the meeting and she was knitting in the back, just knitting, knitting, knitting. Just like and I kept looking at her and I thought, what the hell is that lady making? Just knitting in this meeting.

So I said to someone, you know, first meeting, you know how for how long is she sober, And they said, oh, about 35, 40 years. I said, okay. So I'm getting up and they said, didn't you come and want to talk? Oh, I raised my hand. Yeah.

I'd like to talk about everything and you know how they all put their heads down. Oh my God. We got a live one. We've got a live one. Here she goes.

Here she goes. I raised a boy and I talked for about 20 minutes and they were so kind. No one told me to shut up. They were going down like this. Of course, I thought that meant they are not worthy.

They are not worthy. But instead they were telling me to fucking sit down like that. You know? So anyway, this woman didn't say a few. At the end of the meeting, she raised her hand.

She said, I have something to say to the young woman whose meeting this is the very first, so I thought, oh, good. She's gonna say I'm pretty hot stuff. She looked at me and she said, it's too bad you don't wear your liver on your face. And I thought they've got something here that I need. They have got something that I need.

This is something real for me. And I was thrilled because if she had if anyone had been too nice or too loving, I could not have tolerated that. You're only given what you're able to tolerate. I needed someone who was gonna be kinda nasty and kinda let me know just exactly what was up, And I came back to that meeting. And at that first meeting, I have stayed clean and sober ever since, and I've never had the wish to drink or use.

And I feel very blessed, but God has graced me in that way. What I can say is that I really appreciate that Doug really did well in school and really worked hard, etcetera. The problem with me is that I could not dissect that fetal pig on Friday morning in biology. And frankly, I could not get up to do much of anything on those early morning classes, so I just didn't bother. And my parents had to build wings of libraries in my honor because I was kicked out more times.

And then daddy write a check and here they come, wing dedicated to Mr. And Mrs. Blah de blah, my parents. And then I'd come back in, and then I'd blow it off again. It was horrible.

But I made it to the school, got a c minus or something like that. You know? I went to Europe, as a graduation present. That's what you did. I grew up in Minnesota.

Isn't Minnesota getting a lot of great publicity with that wonderful governor? That's perfect. He is extremely pro gay and I just love that he's there. But that's not the way it was when I was growing up there. Believe me.

So my parents sent me off to Europe somewhere. And I don't know where. I don't know how, but somewhere I dragged myself through Europe by myself. And I was sitting on a beach somewhere in Sicily at some point. I was there for maybe 3 hours.

Unbeknownst to me, I got bitten by a sand flea. These are things you do would not remember. You know, these are not memorable moments. I got bitten by a sand flea 2 years later. I had what is now a rare and tropical blood disease called Kala Azar, and I was given 6 months to live.

And I had my spleen removed and, I got all the drugs I wanted. That's all I care about. 1 month passed. I was given 6 months to live. They didn't diagnose it.

2 months passed. 3 months passed. I sold my car. I dumped my job. I got rid of everything I owned everything.

4 months passed. We're sorry, babes. There's nothing we can do. 5 months passed. My mother sent me an address book in the mail.

Things were tough. Can you imagine sending me an address book? Okay. What was I gonna do with 1 month left? And the tick tock, tick tock, I thought that is so inappropriate.

That's alright. You know, we live with these kind of things. Finally, the doctor took a biopsy of my liver and he said, Paige, I know what you have. I said, What do I care? What do I have?

He said, You've got a rare tropical blood disease. We can cure it. You're gonna be discharged in 2 weeks. 2 weeks? I went, how could you discharge me in 2 weeks?

I'm dying. Doesn't that count for something? This is the end of my life. I had friends. I had morphine.

I had my hospital room decorated like a studio apartment in the Soho. It was fabulous. People really like you when you're going. Oh, maybe they really liked me that I was going. Maybe it was pie.

2 weeks later after getting these really incredibly long syringe shots from the hospital, I was discharged completely well. I had nothing. No job, no car, no girlfriends, no friends. An address book for my mother and nothing much else. And no hope.

And the drugs were gone now. No more morphine. They didn't have the push button morphine things back then. So I very smartly this was Adel to Bates. I very smartly went to Sacramento and Ashby Avenue and stood in line for heroin.

This is what was becoming of me is a good girl who studied 17 years of Latin. And I'll tell you, those 17 years of Latin were really great when you're looking for drugs. Right? You could get almost anything in those pharmacies when you knew your lab. I have nothing.

And now I had a morphine habit that they did not win me from. And so what what what does a smart girl do? Goes and gets heroin. So I lived as a junkie for several years, mostly snorting because I was afraid of needles, and that's one other reason why I'm probably alive today. But I had nothing and I thought, you know what?

I better go to therapy. Here I am on the streets living with friends and I decide I get this notion in my head I need therapy. You know how the light shines and you think, oh, so I think I need I need therapy. I went to a therapist, only the problem was I had 2 distinct personalities at this time that I was not aware of. Because the years of self hate, the years of ravaged with speed and morphine and heroin had helped me to develop another distinct personality.

1 was Paige, who now stands wholly in front of you. The other one was Carlotta, and Carlotta was African American. She lived in New Orleans, and she ate gumbo. So when I went into therapy and this woman, this poor woman who worked with me for 12 years by the way, and I got sober working with her, said, where did you grow up? I guess I told her about my life in New Orleans, which I knew nothing about.

And it was Carlotta who hit. It was Carlotta who hurt. It was Carlotta who was abusive. It was Carlotta who got the best drugs, and Paige was just simply not there or at least I I really don't remember. So I had what was called dissociative schizophrenia.

And I will tell you it was a miraculous day when the therapist said to me one day, where's Carlotta? And I said to her, She's back in New Orleans. She's not here anymore. And that's when I knew I had a victory of being a single person inside a single skin. That was a pretty big moment for me, And then I realized with terror that I had been going to therapy as Carlotta for years.

So, you know, I mean, I had to go to this kind of depth to get whole again. And when Valya, who was in the car with me today driving up, said, I feel like I'm at ground 0, I thought to myself, 'Yeah, I was at ground 0. I was barely able to live as a single person inside a single piece of flesh.' That's ground 0 to me. So anything else to me is now. You know, I have a mood.

I'm thrilled. I feel it. You know, it's just it's a joy to me. And I'll tell you the other thing is my life was completely topsy-turvy. Here I was as a person who was supposed to be thrilled to be alive and I was so depressed.

Right? Because the living have the hard work. Right? And the ones that are gonna be passing through as I thought I was, it's easy. You don't have to do much.

And on top of being 2 personalities, you know, my life was just not it wasn't my life. I just I just didn't have a life. However, one thing that was always present in my life or however many I had lives is that I always could have a good time. Even Carlotta had fun, and I was always able to have fun. And one time I remember I was dressed as a man.

I like to go and drag a lot. I mean, you know, nothing. And I was really great. You know, I'm pretty flat chested. I didn't have any menopause symptoms then, so no one would have known that.

And I was really, really slender, kind of androgynous looking. So I put my hair back, wear a hat, and I'd go to toad hall in San Francisco. Do you know that? That was a men's bar. And guys would pinch me on the butt and I turn around.

I'd say, you're barking up the wrong tree. You know, I thought this is really fun. This is like really a fun way to spend the night. So one night I'm totally drunk and I'm racing on the way to Kelly's Bar, which used to be a gay bar in San Francisco. 16th and Mission.

Really scuzzy area. Okay. Really scuzzy. So I'm dressed as a guy. I'm racing to see if I can beat someone else in my Carmen Ghia and I'm going probably 120 miles an hour on, near Brisbane and I see the flashing lights and I thought, what the fuck?

You know, what are these lights in my face? You know, they're blinding me. I can't, can't see well ahead and now, and this, this cop must have followed me. Oh man, Miles. And I looked just like a guy.

I was pretty proud of that too. And, you know, like finally I pulled over. I said, what? What are you doing? I'm on the way to Cali's bar.

You know, and this sort of, I don't know what to and he said, get out of the car now. And he cocked a gun. He cocked a gun thinking, I think that he thought I was a guy. So here I am totally fucked up on Quaaludes, a lot of Southern Comfort. That was my favorite thing.

I love that mix. That was a mix, boy. You like that mix? Yeah. That was a mix.

Yeah. But butter, you say. Yeah. And I see I yelled at him. He had the gun out like this.

And I was I was freaked out. I gotta tell you, I was really frightened. And I said, I am a woman. And this guy was like, Oh my God. Oh, and he calls the guy in the car.

He said, it's a broad who was driving like that. It's a broad. You know? And here I'm, like, terrified. Anyway, reckless driving, possession and narcotics.

My father brought the best legal services in. They said, I'm sorry. This is just so disgusting. There's nothing we can do. Money is not gonna change this problem here.

So I went to Santa Rita. Got finger you know, Santa Rita Prison. Really. I mean, this is like now who I was a good girl. I went to I went to boarding school.

You know, I went to boarding school. I studied Latin. Here I am, the only person who's smiling for her mugshot. I must have thought it was a prom shot. You know?

I'm like, I'm really smart. I was really I was really trying hard to get the kind of feeling that you would want on a photograph, because I don't photograph well. So I'm like this. Okay. To make a long story short, just like what Doug said.

Alright. I'm don't worry. I'm gonna get to my sobriety. I hit one person too many. I blacked out too many times, and there was a still small voice in me that said, you've had a lot of chances here, Paige.

And you've had a lot of personalities that could have helped you out of this. And you've had a lot of drugs, and nothing's working. And I I thank you, and I thank my God as I have come to understand God that I had a that I had a voice inside of me that said, you can do better than this. You can do better. It isn't pretty to have, a look good on the outside when you're hitting people.

I was at the White Horse Bar in Oakland. Do you remember the White Horse Bar? The only problem with the White Horse is that the s was always out. So we always refer to it as the white whore bar. Because when you drive by, the s was unlit, you know.

So it's the white horror bar, which, you know, I fit right in, you know. I was beaten up there, on a night that was not gay night because, you know, it doesn't matter to me what night's gay night as long as it's a bar. So I was beaten up. And the police said, So what are you gonna do? What should we do about this?

And I said to them, again, I was always a pretty honest person about certain things, and I said to them I started the fight. And it's true. You know, you look at a woman being beaten up by 2 guys, and you think, oh my god, this poor woman. I picked the fight. I picked it.

It was it was exactly what should have happened to someone who picks fights with people. Okay? So when the judge said to me, alright, miss Faegree. I think the problem with your life here is that you haven't had a job. I said, you're right.

Why didn't I think of that? You are sorry to get a job and we'll reduce the fine. I said, duh, you know? God, of course, I'll get a job. Where did I go?

Jackson's Wines and Liquors in Berkeley. I got a job in a deli. It was fabulous. I could store the cocaine in the in the cold box downstairs. You know, bring up the turkey, and there I was with the lines of Coke and the very, very, you know, the frozen daiquiri daiquiris daiquiris, you know.

What is storichnaya? Right? That was really good in the cold case down there. So, so I got a job. I mean, that was the problem.

I thought, that's it. That's the problem. I also got clean and sober in that deli, and I worked for $4.30 an hour. And I'm very, very you know, you can if you have the will to stay sober by God, you can get sober anywhere. That's my feeling.

Now I don't recommend you you keep working at a deli where there's a lot of alcohol to get sober, but in my case, I needed to work in order to stay sober, and I was able to do it there. My 22 year birthday is December 15th. Thank you. Doug didn't mention this anniversary, and I know there's 2 schools that thought about it, but I'll tell you every day I'm so proud of myself with God's help that I've been able to stay clean and sober in one body and my name is Paige. It isn't Carlotta.

So I'm so proud of that, that I honor each day that I've been able to stay clean and sober. One of the things that I think were important, when I got sober, not to mention it's too bad you don't wear your liver on your face. She's since died sober, by the way. One of the things that I really paid attention to because I think they work are all the slogans that were put on the walls in the halls. First things first, easy doesn't.

I never got that one at first. You know these simple things as Doug again I'm gonna reference you said, you know, when you come back to the most simplicity, the most simple parts of the program. And easy does it for me meant do something until it becomes easy. Just keep doing it until not find help. There are chat rooms.

You can go to the AA chat rooms. They're fabulous. They're wonderful. There is no excuse. Back then, we just had the phone, and there were no day meetings.

Boy, I have some good music back there going on. There was one lesbian meeting. My feeling is I've always been gay. I was born gay and I was born alcoholic. About these two things, I've never had much doubt.

But there were no gay meetings. And I my feeling is a gay meeting and this is fabulous, but they weren't we didn't have those back then. So you just got sober. And if you go to AA, I can guarantee you, you'll get sober. And that's what the program of AA will give you.

And that's that's it. And that's enough. Someone's gonna go do something with music. Yeah. That's good.

I appreciate that. I'm amazed that I'm alive because there's absolutely no accounting for any of us to have a quality of life that we call living one day at a time. If people thanks, Jody. If people, if if I stay sober one day at a time, then I have a gift that I am bound by, and that gift is to share my sobriety with anyone who wants it. My life listen.

You know, you don't get sober and instantly everything becomes, like, really pretty. I still look good. Okay? Alright? Don't tell me wrong on this one.

Alright? And don't tell me to wear my underwear on my face. It's fine now. Okay? I think I look alright, but I'll tell you, I'm in menopause now and you know, shit happens.

And, you know, I have to have knee surgery in a couple weeks. You know, I just my knees just aren't holding up. I'm just telling you this. And I didn't stop hitting people when I first got sober. You should know that.

You should know that you don't get clean and sober and all of a sudden all your bad shit goes away because it doesn't. Mine didn't. I should tell you that I'm a recovering hitter and it's been many many many many many many years since I've hit anyone, but that didn't go away right away. My self loathing didn't go away right away. My feeling as though I was never enough did not go away right away.

My feeling that you got the good dice, but I got this shit. I got the bad roll of the dice, did not go away right away. My feeling that my insides and my outsides did not match, did not go away right away. My feeling that I would always be unhappy, that I would never quite feel right, that there were a group of people out there who felt right and I would never be one of them, did not go away right away. My feeling that I hated myself did not go away right away.

But I will tell you one day at a time working the steps, I have no concept of time. Okay. I'm I'm alright. I'm alright. Okay.

My feeling that if I kept a plug in the jug, same thing as the elbow, That if I said prayers every day and every day I say a prayer, you know, my life is pretty simple. I gotta tell you honestly. My life is pretty simple. I pray every day for God to help keep me clean and sober, but I'll tell you one thing right now. For me for me, being clean and sober is almost enough, but I realized if I were gonna have to live in this body and lug this thing around for a few more years, I was gonna have to pay attention.

I was gonna have to pay very strict attention, so I stopped smoking and I stopped eating white sugar, and I stopped eating red meat, and I started exercising every day, and I started drinking lots of water. Oh, did I lose my sense of humor once, not once? But this was really rigorous. Because it you know, we had donuts. We had donuts.

Oh, come to AA. We came for the donuts. You know, big sugary things you could barely lift off the plate because they have so much frosting on them, and then the fingers would go around like that. You know, that was, we thought, a great meeting. No food, not a great meeting.

We went. We ate the sugar. We stayed sober. My program does not permit me to eat white sugar anymore because what goes up goes down, and white sugar makes me crazy. It just makes me speedy.

So for me, I wanna be in this body. This is the gift I've given and I'm gonna hang on to this little temple as long as I've got it. And the other thing is is I started a serious practice of Buddhism many years ago, and I'm now what I refer to as a practicing Buddhist. I couldn't leave off practicing alcoholics, so I had to practice something else. Now I'm a practicing Buddhist.

The reason I did this is that I could not still the voices in my mind for years that said, You don't have the right ingredients to be a full human being and be happy. I could not shut those voices off. I couldn't. So I needed something to help me go numb in the brain and stop paying so much fucking attention to myself. Because my feeling is the more attention I put on me, the more crazy I'm gonna be.

I don't mean vigilance. I don't mean staying away from drugs and alcohol. I don't mean drugs and alcohol. I don't mean not paying attention to nutrition. I don't mean that kind of stuff.

I mean, going over and over the ground of did I do the right thing? Did I say the right thing? Do people like me? I don't care anymore. I don't care.

I have pretty much on a daily basis whole hours go by when I think I'm just fine as Page that I'm just fine. I don't have to sit and worry if you like me anymore. And I worried. I was a steward and a worrier. I don't have to live like that, and the Buddhism helped me to do that.

The Buddhism helped me to remember that my happiness is your happiness. That my self acceptance belongs to you. That I am working in my life for the happiness of all beings. That's what AA says too, my friends. Right?

Carry this message, practice this principle in all our affairs. So for me, it was like not really complicated to like do whatever it required. And my other saying in life is so many supplements, so little time. I have the means, the wherewithal, the money, and the willingness to take supplements, and I take lots of vitamins. And now I finally realize it doesn't prevent aging.

I'm sorry. I thought it did. I thought it was gonna prevent aging, and it doesn't. But it makes me feel as though I'm like working, working really hard on myself. I'm almost at the end of my time.

I wish I wish I had something like really pretty like a business card saying by Mother Teresa to share with you. You know, that was really beautiful. I don't, but here's what I do have to share with you. My attention the less attention I'm going to repeat this the less attention that I pay to myself in terms of thinking about stuff, the more I'm going to be happy, and I know that. And if I can share with you anything that has worked for me, works for me it's that your life is very, very important to me, and I am intensely curious about what makes you happy and what you do right and what makes you sad.

Because if I can think about that and take the ingredients of your life, then I become a whole person with little bits of you and me every day. And that's what keeps me sober today. Thank you.