Holly Northrop Blog

Jasmine and her friend Weber rode for over thirteen hours on an overcrowded Greyhound bus across the state of Pennsylvania, through the bowels of Jersey and directly into NYC's Port Authority on Friday night. They arrived at the edge of Times Square after ten o'clock, hailed a cab and made it to Brooklyn by 11:00, where they were staying with a co-worker and friend of mine in his semi-roach invested (he tries relentlessly to deal but it's the whole building) one-bedroom apartment in the bad part of Brooklyn. You know that area where the trust funded yuppie pups are afraid to live in because it is more Bushwick instead of Williamsburg. It's the part of Brooklyn where his own neighbors call him "white boy" as a term of street endearment, with a slight hint of menace just for shits and giggles.

Saturday morning, Jazz and Weber got up early and headed out for their big day of NYC and the Siren Music Festival. This is one of the main reasons they came here. But first, they had to get on a bus to the subway, MTA is forever fucking with the subway over there and the L Train shuts down on the weekends, so you have to take a bus to the subway.

Once back in Manhattan, Jazz and Weber had lunch at the super model café;, where indeed the people are beyond beautiful. After a few more errands and a quick trip to Times Square and then a stop on Prince Street for a knock-off designer purse, they hopped on the good old F Train to Coney Island. In the five hours that they were at Coney Island, they saw some great music; (Detroit Cobras and M.I.A) from the comfort of the VIP area; road the Wonder Wheel; drank at the backstage open bar; and of course, got a little too much sun. They left before the New York Dolls came on and I completely understand this decision. If you end up staying at Siren to see the last band then you end up waiting for hours to get on a subway. Add that to the hour subway ride back to Manhattan and well, even Jasmine understands that is just too much to put up with.

Jazz and Weber, rode the train back to Union Square where they bought dinner at Whole Foods and ate in the park. After dinner, they jumped back on the L Train, rode that for five or six stops, got off the train and then got on a city bus with everyone else from the subway, and rode that for six or seven stops until finally, they were back at my friends apartment. She called me just before midnight to let me know she was safe. Jasmine had had a fifteen-hour day.

Sunday morning, she and Weber packed up their bags and were waiting for the subway bus by 7:30 am. She took the bus to the L Train, transferred to the E Train and got off at Penn Station where they boarded an Amtrak train for a two-hour train ride to Hudson.

To hang in Jasmines other world must seem like a visit to a foreign country to her friends in PA. This trip alone was the first time her friend Weber had ever been on a Greyhound bus; been to NYC without field trip supervision; been backstage at anything, let alone a massive rock festival or the first time she had ever been on an Amtrak train. Then there is the whole, hanging with Martha and me and all of our well-established middle-age lesbian lifestyle with talks of cats, yoga, the new Prius and chronic back pain.

Martha is having a few issues around letting go. I need to remind her that she managed to sell my Jeep Wrangler, a vehicle I actually really liked until it was stolen and left stripped and foul in an abandon lot in south Newark. Once they fixed it, it did look just like new, the thing just never felt right and the love was gone. Anyway, Martha managed to sell my car, without my signature and buy the Jeep Liberty. She went to work one day in my Jeep and came home with the Liberty. So now, she has to give it up and sometimes, Ms Harvey is only five.

After a long lesson in the Jeep ownership and the newly installed Satellite radio, all four of us went to the Diamond Street Diner for some lunch.

Lots of hugs and photos later there was a ceremonial passing of the keys to Jasmine that looked similar to a knighthood. We went for a test drive to the store for road munchies, then a lesson in gas fill up. Maps and directions, the 'do not drink and drive' talk, oil changes, gas prices, thoughts on keeping it clean and the wearing of seatbelts. I gave Jazz all of my cash and a small drug supply to be used in case of future mental breakdown, magazines, a book, Siren swag and a sleeping bag.

Stories upon stories unfolded and laughter was everywhere but then before I knew it we were driving to the Park-N-Ride for hugs and kisses. Jasmine got back in the Jeep and drove away while I hugged Martha telling her how proud I was of her for letting go of her Jeep.

"That was hard. I deserve a cookie." She said.

I miss Jasmine and four hours is not even close to being long enough time to spend with her. Yes, that was hard, I thought. Happy Birthday, Peanut.

Oh and yeah, one more thing, Jasmine Rai Northrop has a nose ring.

One good thing that happened last week is that we are finally in possession of our new black Prius. In one week, we managed to put 900 miles on a brand new car that was only used to go back and forth to work. God that is a tad depressing isn't it. 900 miles and we only went to work. We should have at least gone to the beach or something. But the new car is fun to play with. Martha splurged and hooked us up to satellite radio but even that can't handle some of the true dead zones that are up here in Upstate.

My back has moved on to a new level of outstanding pain. Two weekends ago, I spent almost an entire Saturday face down on the living room floor while Martha, assessing her life choices, pounded on me with the massager. Once that was over, she then put a heating pad on my back and weighted that down with pillows. I took a shit load of codeine and fell asleep with my nose in the carpet. I woke up an hour later sweating and with my neck in a kink. Nothing helped. Depression would have been several steps up from where my head was at.

Out of shear desperation and some half-assed medical advice, Martha ordered medical equipment. She bought me, although we are both now using it, a TENS unit. Who would have thought that my life could change with a little 9-volt battery and a little bit of electrical energy? She also bought a ultrasound for that deep tissue massage. It seems that I am allergic to the self-adhering electrodes (because I am a pussy girl) so Martha had to spend even more money on the hypoallergic ones. The total tally on both of our backs now stands at:

Big, big day last Wednesday. I ended up going to the emergency room in Hudson. Late on Tuesday and while working from home, I started having a little dizzy thing happen. I felt sick to my stomach and considering that I wasn't dealing with anything other then normal work stuff, I figured that it wasn't my job that was making me nauseous (as is usually the case) but that it must be something else. I noticed that if I turned my head to the left or right I'd get dizzy.

I stopped working around 5:30, went downstairs cleaned up a little bit and took a shower. Then around 7:00 pm I rolled back on the exercise ball and wham!, my ear popped and my head started spinning around and around. Not horizontally but vertically. Everything I looked at spun around clockwise in front of my eyes, not that I think direction would have mattered much.

I had full on vertigo complete with spinning fisheye lens. I was even unable to lie on the couch without everything spinning around in front of me. I sat up and with a ridiculous amount of effort, I made it into the bedroom where I took a bunch of drugs and went to bed.

All night, every time I moved my head the room would spin, actually waking me up. At one point, I had just enough wits about me to make it to the bathroom and back before I passed out on top of the bed. Somewhere in the middle of the night Martha and I had a conversation about how if I'm still a mess my the morning, she would take me to the hospital.

So at 7am Martha drove me three blocks to the hospital. I was barely able to walk in the door and once admitted my ass was put in a wheelchair. After admitting me, the nurse wheeled me into an ER stall with a table and all the things that would be needed to save a life. There must have been roughly twenty of these stalls all around the whole floor. After first putting me on a table where the back kept falling down, spinning me around even more, we changed tables and they stuck an IV line in my arm, covered me in warm blankets and turned the lights off until the doctor could see me.

Moments after the nurse left me the woman in the stall next to me started vomiting. Vomiting, vomiting and vomiting. She was unbelievably loud and her voice was so low that at first Martha and I just assumed it was a man. Her vomiting went on for several minutes, (and I mean like ten), before she got it together. A nurse came over and started asking her questions.

"When was the last time you ate?" asked the nurse.
"Last night I had a bowl of cereal about 7:00." she replied. That is correct, something bad happened to all of us at exactly 7:00pm, I thought.
"In the past five years have you had any major surgical procedures?" asked the nurse.
"Just a hysterectomy three years ago." she managed to murmur out before she started vomiting again.

Martha, who had been leaning on my bed rail and petting me, mouthed to my face "That's a woman?"

It did boggle the mind and give me pause to all that hysterectomy chatter that I am prone to. Would a hysterectomy make my voice sound like the Ohio trucker that I already talk like? I pondered that as I laid in the cold dark room staring at a tan wall, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth, trying not to throw up all over myself. I heard the doctor order a CT scan with contrast for the woman next to me.

After about an hour, a doctor came over to see what my deal was. He looked in my ears, (which looked fine) and we chatted about the whole head spinning, unable to walk thing. He briefly went over the types of things that cause vertigo, trauma or tumor, and everything else. He ordered blood work and nausea medicine then he said he would check on me later.

The anti-nausea medicine was awesome and why that shit isn't on the market I'll never know. My stomach hasn't felt that normal since I was eight and when the nurse came around I mentioned to her that she might want to give the woman next to me some of it. She just looked at me and smiled. Yeah, sure, it sucked for her but at least she was able to walk away. Martha and I were trapped and I felt so sorry for Vomit Woman.

I kept drifting in and out of sleep but I woke up to hear a Bambi like nurse trying to give Vomit Woman two big things of barium to drink. I looked at Martha and whispered, "That's not going to work, I mean fuck, she's going to puke that right back up." Vomit Woman, understandably pushed back, saying there is no way she's going to be able to drink it, but Bambi persisted and told her to try.

So the woman tried and after about ten minutes of her making a low growling noises she started vomiting again. It was so loud it reminded me of an old SNL skit with Bill Murray at the Roman vomitorium. All Martha and I could do was look at each other and smile at the absurdity of it.

After a few hours of sleep, vomiting and a rather difficult bathroom break, the doctor came back around and asked me how I was feeling. I felt the same, except now my neck and back were killing me and I had a wicked headache. Quite possibly the worst headache I've ever had, I mentioned.

The doctor ordered a CT scan, (thank god, it was not an MRI) and told the nurse to give me something for my headache. Fifteen minutes later the wheelchair shows up to take me to the CT scan but the nurse, who was down the hall, told the wheelchair girl to wait; she wanted to give me something for my headache.

A few minutes later, the nurse shows up with a syringe full of Dilaudid, only my favorite drug on the planet. I want to make a t-shirt that reads, I (heart) Dilaudid. As she injected the medicine into my IV, I felt that welcome wave of warmth and that wonderful euphoric high that only clean, clean narcotics can give. Within seconds my headache was gone, my back felt great and I didn't even notice the spinning room around me. I had all the answers to the universe, I just wasn't able to tell anyone or move into a wheelchair they wanted to put me in. All I could do was lie there with a big fucking smile on my face.

"Why you were never a junkie, I'll never know." Martha said to me later when no one was around.
"Fear of needles." I slurred out of the side of my mouth.
"That's it, right?" she asked.
"That and watching my friends shoot junk and turn into trash."

After a CT scan determined that I did not have a brain tumor and blood work indicated that there was no meningitis, they loaded some instructions and a prescription on Martha. The doctor told me not to drive (ha ha) and sent me home where, fully doped up I climbed into bed and immediately I fell asleep half sitting up. I slept in that arrangement for about an hour. Martha made me lunch and I tried to eat some soup and a Pepperidge Farm Goldfish but threw up the goldfish and fell asleep again.

The pills they gave me are for nausea and/or vomiting. The prescription reads: Take 1 tablet by mouth three times a day as needed but I read it as take 1 tablet when needed and have been motoring through them at quite a clip. All they do is make me sleepy but they are making me dream weird.

Well I suppose I always have had weird dreams but my conscious brain seems to, as of late, not be protecting me as strongly as it has in the past. It's not that these dreams are horrible it's just that they are fairly disappointing. Things like, I'll dream about my ex-husband and that we are still friends, or I'll dream about my mom and not only is she still alive but she is, to some extent, normal. I dreamt about an old boyfriend and in the dream, we were just hanging out laughing. In all these dreams, there is laughter, something that has not happened in my waking life with these people in decades, and that is a hard plural meaning numerous decades my friends. Laughing is also a clue within the dream that makes me realized that I am in fact dreaming. Once that 'reality' enters the dream, the dream moves on to another improbable scenario where it flows around normalville, until it occurs to me that I'm dreaming. Not only is my physical balance off, my mental one is becoming sloppy. Super.

I have to see an ear, nose and throat guy on Tuesday. The hospital seems to think that I might have a rip in the membrane between my ear and my inner ear, or somehow, particles/fluid got in there and are brushing against hair follicles telling my brain that I'm moving but my body says that I'm not. Or I have an inner ear infection. Or I'm just fucked in the head.