Free That Thing You Do With Your Mouth: The Sexual Autobiography of Samantha Matthews as Told to David Shields by David Shields, Samantha Matthews Page B

self-destruction: She really needs to be working—that’s when she feels the best—but she has to fuck it up by staying out till 5 a.m. with Lady Gaga and then have her doctor come by and say she has an ear infection and will be out for the day. I don’t have her resources, I can’t cover up the way she does (although it’s completely transparent), but I’ve also gone into work in abominable states the next morning, out of pride: You did it; you deal with it. Being a mother has definitely reined me in. (This last line is Good Samantha, hoping you don’t think I’m LL.) I’m sure if I had her money, I’d do everything she does.
    I suddenly see myself as a ridiculous, attention-seeking, unstable alcoholic. Surely everyone can label me. They do: “Trouble.” Would I prefer “Head-together Sam”? She’s controlled. She’s moderate. She’s even-keeled. She’s nice, but not someone you’d call to have a good time. I don’t know.
    I remember being about eight or so—in the car on the way to church—and having a screaming meltdown. I was really angry about something (probably my mother’s embarrassing, drunken behavior the night before) and sobbing. My dad screeched the car to a halt and shouted, “That’s enough! You’re going to stop crying, goddamnit! And when we get out of the car, you’re going to put a smile on your face!” Moments later, I got out of the car and posed outside the church for a family photo with a smile on my face, as though nothing had happened. We were perfect and happy.
    I loved the first part of Anne Enright’s The Forgotten Waltz ; I literally laughed out loud and cried at the sametime. She hits a nerve for me when she talks about sex, adultery, alcohol, guilt. She writes what I think but never say (publicly).
    Why am I hiding all the time?
    Ani DiFranco:
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  We don’t say everything that we could
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  So that we can say later
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Oh, you misunderstood
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  …
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  We lose sight of everything
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  When we have to keep checking our backs
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  I think we should all just smile
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Come clean
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  And relax
    I work best when there’s no tiptoeing around, so I appreciate that you haven’t held back. It focuses me and strips away everything superfluous. Shut up and get to the fucking point.
    When I was twelve, I was told I was going to have to wear a back brace. (I know you’ve had your own back issues.) I can remember the doctor’s visit—a numbed-out, bass-less heartbeat in my ears, like a speaker with the volume turned all the way up but no music coming out, just that raspily whispered ehhhhhh sound. If someone were to press play, the sound would blow everyone out of their seats. I heard the doctor give me the diagnosis, the fuzzy-speaker noise over his gibberish keeping me a safe distance away from what he was saying.
    I wore my brace religiously; it never occurred to me to do any different. I’d been sentenced. I accepted it and adapted. Making me wear a brace was just another thing someone else decided to do to my body. Something else to paralyze me.
    I have a need to scream almost all the time.
    My body and thoughts curl into one another again and again and again. A constant figure eight; there’s no end to the circularity. My spine’s trying to hug itself. It’s a snake trapped mid-slither, squirming its way out of the pain.
    Will I ever look at anything as not sick? It’s fucking exhausting. I’m fucking exhausted.
    In graduate school we were asked to do a life-or-death improv in which the end result would be you naked onstage. People chose situations like gas chambers in concentration camps, or there’s a