What Was I Thinking?
By Carrie • Feb 7th, 2009 • Category: News
What Was I Thinking?
About a year ago my friend Paul Slansky asked me to contribute to a book his wife, Liz Dubelman, was doing about that terrible moment when you realize that the relationship you’re in isn’t going to work. Well, I just happened to have a few of those to choose from, so I wrote one up and now that book – What Was I Thinking?: 58 Bad Boyfriend Stories – has just been published, with my humble effort right up front. Here’s the beginning of “A Bullwhip?”
I happen to be the possessor of a very big personality. And so when I meet someone, that’s where we hang out. It goes on for miles, the great outdoors, we romp around in my personality. And in my big sprawling personality, where this new someone is now, I love him. I love everything he does. I love being with him, I love sex with him, I’m charmed by him.
And what is love if not a state of enchantment? You meet someone and it puts a charm on the world. Everything looks better when you love someone and you know you’re going to see him later. Everything between now and that later is so much fun to do, because you’re going to get who and what you want at the end of the day, so anything’s possible when that’s up ahead.
Now when the person that this happens with is someone like Paul Simon, then we’re not just hanging out in my big personality. He has one, too, and they overlap in a lot of places. And that’s when it’s really kind of golden, when you can find someone who speaks your bizarre, bizarre dialect of a language of the smallest country in the world that hardly anyone ever visits, but they never forget having been there. Paul and I did share that, so when we got enchanted, the enchantment lasted a long time. But the problem is that, even at its best, enchantment just can’t sustain.
When I date someone, I generally have about three months of a personality available and then I finally come to the end of it. I need to refuel, I short-circuit. And then whoever I’m with shows up, and a lot of the times I don’t like him so much.
Now wait, I just got a little quieter and what’d you just say? You didn’t read this? You’ve never seen that? You don’t know who that is? You really think that about me? He bothers me – not that I’m so great, but the enchantment wears off, and then the sleeping giant wakes up and says, “Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of someone dumb.”
And once that starts, it’s like a case of measles, where you get just one itch one day, and then that itch spreads and spreads and spreads. And what feeds it is that he sees it happening. My face is like a Richter scale of every quake inside and outside of me, so it all shows up somehow. And if I turn the full beam on him of how much I like him and who he thinks he is, with everything that I am, if I shed that much light on him, and then that light starts diminishing, diminishing, diminishing, he notices. And I can’t stop it, and the more I try to stop it the more it looks like I’m trying to stop it, and that light gets fainter and fainter and fainter until everyone’s in a dark room.
I remember it specifically happening when I was going out with this guy Jesse. He was actually smart, and the enchantment was unbelievably great. I remember once we were making out at Disneyland – I was that into him that I was just publicly making out.
One night we were at my house and I was watching television, and Jesse was rubbing my back. And apparently I wasn’t turning the full beam on him, because it went from zero to a thousand in a nanosecond. He said, and not nicely, “What does somebody have to do to get your attention? Wrap a bullwhip around your neck?”
Okay, that’s all you get for free. For the rest of it, click here and buy the book:
http://tr.im/e9pe
What Was I Thinking?
Carrie, I continue to be amazed by your honesty – not to mention your humor. Thank you again for so willingly sharing so much of yourself.
OK, so I just got this image of Indiana Jones and his whip….. hmmmmmm…
Shoot, I was sort of hoping that would turn into a Harrison story, too. Oh well, maybe another book some day.
My favorite moment of sudden realization that maybe it WAS just me after all was when I said “I love you” for the first time to this one guy, and his response was “Why?” Yes, that’s a good question…
oh yeah…… what was I thinking. I decided to horn in on a relationship an aquaintance was having. After all, she wrote about him so glowingly. He was so macho, but also extremely chivalrous, looked like a muscular knight in armor up on his motorcycle, alright. After three totally confused weeks with him, where I basically would cater to his every whim, I left. There was something strange in the air…..I felt I could actually “smell” deception. I left and within a few days I was contacted by the SBI. They wanted to interview me about this freak, and had me draw diagrams of the inside of his house. He was a dispicable, evil person. Somehow, in my fantasy quest to escape my life, i helped take down a true criminal. At what cost? I don’t know. Things have a way of balancing out, don’t they?
The moment? For me, it was when my then fiancé wanted to take his boyfriend on our weekend trip to Chicago.
Funny, I was thinking about this same subject yesterday.
What really sucks is when you think you have found the perfect person and you are gazing off into the distance at your perfect relationship when he tells you that he doesn’t need you anymore. And what’s worse is how do you know you won’t do that again to yourself? If you’re me, you are a hopeless romantic who puts everything into it til the moment the bottom drops out and you’re falling alone thru space again.
Le sigh.
you summed it up perfectly for me in an interview thing you did with Courtney Love. You said that you came to the conclusion that something in you was broken. that ‘choice thing’ that makes you choose a certain person. or as Courtney said, “Your compass is fucked.” So true. I mean, so many people make many wrong choices for decades, and they keep on making em. if that works for them, awesome. but I know, with all the terrible decisions I have made, with disastrous results/consequences, I can’t trust that ‘choice thing’ within myself.
and now, everytime i go to Disneyland, I am going to think of you and some guy named Jesse. Cause weird things stick in my head.
Oh, I’m definitely going to have to pick up that book. What a strange thing to say, put a bullwhip around your neck…
OMG-
thanks for saying what I’ve been thinking for years, maybe I’ll DO something about my life, love love love your blog
I just wanted to say how much I loved your new book and your old books! I actually just found out last weekend that it was out via twitter, which you should totally sign up for!! I mean random tweet of Carrie Fisher, you would be the best tweeter ever! Plus you would have a bunch of people following you that woluld buy your book so win win. Anyway i love love love you and I can not read to read more blog postings and hopefully more books! Oh ya you were fucking hysterical on 30rock.
Isn’t it tragic how we all go through that universal experience of being completely crushed when we figure out that our very first love isn’t going to work out? And yet, somehow, we all just keep on going back for more. I do believe we should put a little note into the suggestions box so that Homo Sapiens V2.0 has that bug fixed before its release.
Carrie, I’ve sat here reading your blog since you first began posting, and every time I’ve been tempted to write a comment I have stopped myself, thinking, “Oh come on. This is Carrie Fisher. What the fuck does she care about what you think? Go back to your little part of the internet and do your own little thing.”
Suffice it to say, I finally got over that today, mostly because curiosity has got the better of me and I have some questions I am dying to ask you. I know you must be a busy lady, but I will chuck them out there, anyhow!
In one of your earlier posts, you mentioned being a somewhat persnickety soul (ten points for using the word persnickety in a sentence, al-right!) that endlessly fucks with her work over and over again for fear of being laughed at my folks on the interweb.
As a would-be writer who does exactly the same thing (you really have no idea how long it has taken me to compose this comment), I am busting to know – how do you get over it? You obviously care a lot about what you write, so how do you get over that self consciousness, and actually ‘get it out there’? Do you ever write things and then completely destroy them before they ever see the light of day because you take an instant dislike to them? Do you get a sure feeling when you know right away that something you have written is perfect?
Also, you have gorgeous eyes. In the many photos of you that I have seen over the years, young and old, it is always your eyes that immediately hypnotise. You can have my blue ones, if you ever fancy swapping.
-Kiki
I grew up trying to get extra credit telling my teachers that Eddie Fisher was my cousin. I don’t remember if it worked, but now my kids claim to fame is being related to Princess Leia, even if none of us has met any of you. At first they didn’t believe me, but now it’s just something they can pull out of their hat to impress their friends. And I’ll admit I enjoy it as well, strange as that seems.
My mom is Sarah Watkins — the daughter of Molly Tisch Watkins — your grandfather Joe Fisher’s youngest sister. My mom has memories of her Uncle Joe and of your father — and I have great memories of Aunt Bertha and Aunt Pearl as well. I grew up in Philadelphia and knew them all.
It’s a small world these days, no matter what. Not sure how much of your father’s family you know — but there is a part of it alive and well in Philadelphia (and Chicago).
Carrie,
I just discovered your blog. Good writing. I’ll have to check out some of your books as soon as I get a job again (Detroit Three casualty).
My relationship personality exposes itself in the reverse order of yours. I start out a relationship somewhat guarded then grow more effusive as time goes on. My partners have not always responded well to this flowering style (a lot of leaving the movie in the middle). My wife, however, was happy that I “decided to relax” after a certain point.
Do Liz or Paul plan to write a “bad girlfriend” follow-up? Not that that ever happens…
Hola Carrie,
I read your posts and enjoy them. I have seen your interviews and love your personality, your sense of humor. Sometimes you remind me of a little girl sitting in that big chair trying to make all the people around to laugh. and you do. Your openess is great and so it is your charm. I really love you.
I agree with Kiki about your eyes. I like the way you express yourself but I have to admit that I got carried away by your eyes.
Keep doing the good work, Carrie. I wish you the best.
Love,
Dear Carrie,
thank you for running this blog – you are the greatest!
I wish you all the best, too!
Love is easy. People are all shiny and interesting and neat. How can you not help but love them?
Now, being comfortable with someone, to the point of being able to be your alone self around them, and they around you, yeah, that’s the real issue. I was pretty much a 2-3 month dater, before I just needed my space from whoever I was involved with. After that, yeah, I might be able to stretch things out for another few months but it was already clear to me that it was over. Or, a couple times, it happened the other way, where they got tired of me. That hurts the most, when it seems your shininess has rubbed off. And every so often, you meet someone who you can be comfortable around and they’re comfortable around you, and even better, you’re both on similar paths at a similar place in life. That’s really cool.
Thanks for the cool blog!
Carrie, you of course know this, but let me just reiterate what everybody has probably already told you a thousand times–you are a wonderful, insightful, poignant, and funny writer. Now let me tell you something that you didn’t know–I love reading your blog! Thanks;-)
RE: “Okay, that’s all you get for free. For the rest of it, click here and buy the book.” Ha ha! You’ve sold me! What a great tidbit, Carrie. You write so well– it’s like magic how your prose flows with humor, love, forgiveness– honesty, especially… I’ve admired you since Star Wars debuted in the 70s– your Princess Leia character brought feminist confidence to young girls, helped boost my esteem, and personally gave me a sense of trust with the future world I would soon grow into. Leia’s a great archetype for the woman warrior without setting the bar so high that a young girl could not dream of being embodied by her same equal strengths. And in a quirky cosmic way, a more realistic modern day vision of the gnostic (Pagels) Mary Magdalen. But all this aside, while Leia and your mother no doubt fostered confidence in yourself, I get the feeling that the woman you’ve grown into has evolved through many challenging trials, heartbreak, disappointments, and yet, all of such did not warp your spirit but helped raise you up to be a person of true character. And for that reason, you can ‘tell it like it is’ without shame or watering down, because for Pete’s sakes, the past is past, and if we can’t learn from heartbreak, what’s the point of giving it a go with love? Love’s nuts! Anyone who can say they’ve truly known love without suffering isn’t telling the whole truth, so– thank you for being HONEST with the real deal. I look forward to picking up WHAT WAS I THINKING? as I’m long overdue for a true read. Ariana Huffington’s ON BECOMING FEARLESS was a decent, healthy read, yet I’ll dare say that from the excerpt above from your latest book, there’s more fearless honesty to what you’ve written, which, I suppose, was only possible because you’ve got the ability to laugh at dumb things done. Sweet!
Best wishes,
Louise
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