Excerpt from Wishful Drinking
PAGE 5
I emerge from my three-week-long ECT treatment to discover that I am not only this Princess Leia creature but also several-sized dolls, various T-shirts and posters, some cleansing items, and a bunch of other merchandise. It turns out I was even a kind of pin-up—a fantasy that geeky teenage boys across the globe jerked off to me with some frequency. How's that for a newborn-how-do-you-do damsel in very little cinematic distress?
To wit, one afternoon in Berkeley I found myself walking into a shop that sold rocks and gems.
“Oh my God, aren't you...the salesman behind the counter exclaimed.
And before he could go any further, I modestly said,
“Yes, I am.”
“Oh my God! I thought about you every day from when I was twelve to when I was twenty-two.”
And instead of asking what happened at twenty-two, I said, “Every day?”
He shrugged and said, “Well, four times a day.”
Welcome to the land of too much information.
On top of all this celebrity parents and Star Wars stuff, apparently I was once married to a brilliant songwriter, a rock icon of sorts. I mean, this is a man who wrote an array of beautiful songs, and even a few songs that were about me. How incredible is that? And get this—I had always been a really big fan of his music. Huge. As a teen, it was just him and Joni Mitchell. And, as I couldn't marry Joni, I married him. I loved this man’s lyrics. They were one of the reasons I fell in love with words.
How can you not love someone who writes “medicine is magical/ and magical is art/ think of the boy in the bubble/ and the baby with the baboon heart”? The answer for me was I couldn’t. I couldn’t not love him. I apprenticed myself to the best in him and bickered with the worst. And to top it off, we were the same size. I used to say to him, “Don’t stand next to me at the party— people will think we’re salt and pepper shakers.”
To wit, one afternoon in Berkeley I found myself walking into a shop that sold rocks and gems.
“Oh my God, aren't you...the salesman behind the counter exclaimed.
And before he could go any further, I modestly said,
“Yes, I am.”
“Oh my God! I thought about you every day from when I was twelve to when I was twenty-two.”
And instead of asking what happened at twenty-two, I said, “Every day?”
He shrugged and said, “Well, four times a day.”
Welcome to the land of too much information.
On top of all this celebrity parents and Star Wars stuff, apparently I was once married to a brilliant songwriter, a rock icon of sorts. I mean, this is a man who wrote an array of beautiful songs, and even a few songs that were about me. How incredible is that? And get this—I had always been a really big fan of his music. Huge. As a teen, it was just him and Joni Mitchell. And, as I couldn't marry Joni, I married him. I loved this man’s lyrics. They were one of the reasons I fell in love with words.
How can you not love someone who writes “medicine is magical/ and magical is art/ think of the boy in the bubble/ and the baby with the baboon heart”? The answer for me was I couldn’t. I couldn’t not love him. I apprenticed myself to the best in him and bickered with the worst. And to top it off, we were the same size. I used to say to him, “Don’t stand next to me at the party— people will think we’re salt and pepper shakers.”
Excerpted from WISHFUL DRINKING by Carrie Fisher. Copyright© 2008 by Carrie Fisher. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc., NY.
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