Peaked Out

“It's the Simpson family tradition-bring your kids to the bar,” my brother Andy said, as he held a picture of our cousin Amelia in his hands. She had to be 8 or 9 years old in it, wearing a man's baseball hat too big for her head, sitting on a barstool with a beer stein in front of her, most likely filled with a shirley temple. It was one of the many pictures being passed around at Christmas, another Simpson family tradition. He followed his statement up by saying something along the lines of “no wonder we're all fucked up alcoholics.”
And he's right. My uncle Mark went to rehab numerous times and ended up in the hospital because his liver shut down. My mother used to drive me home from family picnics on the wrong side of the road because she was so drunk, she thought it was funny. Every kid in our family had sat on a barstool before the age of 10. Bridal showers, wedding showers, birthday parties, graduation parties...they all took place in bars.
In high school, I went out on a date to see a rockabilly band play at a bar. As I sat down and looked around, I realized that I had been there before, as a child, and remembered playing games with Amelia to pass the time as our parents got wasted.
The first time I got drunk, I was 14. My mom let me have wine with dinner, and after a few glasses, I was acting so ridiculous that I made my little brother Adam cry. The year after that, my older brother Andy got married. He was so drunk by the time the ceremony began, that the justice of the peace had to say “repeat after me” twice. My uncle Mark knocked the wedding champagne flutes off the table, smashing them to bits. My mom's best friend kept bringing us pitchers of beer at the “kid's” table, and my boyfriend got so drunk, he vomited in the parking lot.
Growing up, I experimented with alcohol and drugs but for some reason, it never seemed to get out of hand. I never felt like I needed it. I didn't drink alone, I never bought drugs, and I was even able to stop smoking cigarettes cold turkey. When I moved away form my family and lived in California on my own, I began to realize that not only had I put 3,000 miles between my family, I had also put 3,000 miles between myself and the addiction that had infiltrated everything I had grown up with. I started to see myself as separate from them, separate from the alcoholism that seemed to be part of our gene pool.
And years later, it came to me. After dealing with a slew of drug and alcohol addicted boyfriends, I came to the amazing conclusion that I had beat my destiny. I wasn't addicted to anything. I could go without alcohol for as long as I wanted, drugs were never more than a social event, and I was damn proud that not even nicotine could bring me down. I was unaddicted. I had an unaddictive personality. It was amazing how I had turned out to be such the opposite of the rest of my relatives. Was I missing a chromosome? Did something freaky happen to me in zygote form? Or did I just observe the negative aspect of addiction for so long, that it has become completely unattractive. One thing I was sure of, was the fact that I didn't want to end up like Uncle Mark, who had only begun his life at the age of 43. Or my mother, who drinks a bottle of wine by herself every single night before bed. I was conscious that I wanted to be the opposite of all that. And for so long, I thought I was.

“Who killed Laura Palmer?” was the question upon everyone's lips in the late 80's, when David Lynch's television show Twin Peaks debuted on ABC. At the time, I was far too young to watch the show, and was most likely in bed by the time it came on.
But in 2007, The Twin Peaks Gold Edition Boxed Set was released, to the delight of all David Lynch fans, culminating the shows cult status. I had never seen the show, but knew that I would like it, being a fan of Lynch's movies, and a lover of all things weird and offbeat.
When the DVDs arrived from amazon.com, I dove in head first, excited to experience what so many of my friends were obsessed with. After watching the 2 hour pilot, I was hooked. Because I was sick at the time, I was able to stay planted on the couch, watching as many episodes as I could before the sun came up and my eyelids fell against my will.
I became immersed in the characters, in the little Washington town where a young girl was murdered, and in the mystery surrounding her, and all the people who were part of her life. I couldn't stop. Each episode left so many questions unanswered. I absolutely had to watch the next and the next and the next.
I started talking about nothing but Twin Peaks. I spoke of the characters as if they were real people. I fell for Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle McLachlan) and imagined myself marrying him. I pictured myself being great friends with Shelley Johnson, the waitress at the Double R Diner. And I was drawn to The Log Lady, and her cryptic introductions to each episode.
But this wasn't the first time. The girls from Sex and the City became my best friends, and I dreamed of becoming just like Carrie Bradshaw when I got a little older. And the Fisher family of Six Feet Under became a second family to me. When I finally finished the series, I cried. Not only because the last episode was heartbreaking, but because they were leaving me. For months afterward, I missed them. I had spent so much time with the characters, they ended up being closer to me than my real friends.
Twin Peaks was slightly different. It was a mystery. It made you think. There were so many twists and turns, so many interpretations and so many pieces of a puzzle that the viewer had to put together. And David Lynch made sure that the puzzle never really fit together perfectly.
The characters in Twin Peaks became real to me. So real, that I had nightmares about the evil spirit called BOB. I pictured him at the foot of my bed, just like he was in Laura's bedroom. For 3 days, I stayed up until sunrise, because I was too afraid to go to sleep at night. I hadn't been that scared in as long as I could remember.
I finished the entire show in the span of a week and a half. 32 hours of Twin Peaks. It had encompassed my whole world. And when I was done, I was hungry for more. I ordered the prequel movie Fire Walk With Me and The Secret Diary Of Laura Palmer (as seen by Jennifer Lynch, David's daughter) and anxiously searched the internet for other things I could buy. I spent hours on ebay, bidding on the Twin Peaks magazine, Wrapped in Plastic, and the Autobiography of Special Agent Dale Cooper (another book, created by Lynch).
When Laura's diary arrived, I read it in one sitting, a matter of a few hours, devouring every entry, putting the pieces I was reading, together with the show. When I was finished, I spent days online scouring websites that explained the unexplained, from symbolism that followed the entire story, to the theories behind the bizarre events that occurred throughout the time viewers spent in Twin Peaks. As though I was starving, I clicked on link upon link, consuming all I could...a glutton for information. What was the White Lodge? Or the Black Lodge? Why was Laura able to keep BOB from possessing her, but Agent Cooper was not? Who was The Man From Another Place? Were the woods outside of Twin Peaks the origin of the evil and terrible things that befell the citizens of Twin Peaks?
After Fire Walk With Me arrived, and I watched it, I felt unsatisfied. I wanted more. I ordered another book, this one written by David Lynch, about the fictional town of Twin Peaks and my fourth, a collection of critical essays on the show.
But just as I felt sad letting go of the Fisher family, I felt even worse about the end of Twin Peaks. There were so many cliffhangers in the final episode, because a third season was being planned, but the show was canceled before any further episodes came to fruition. It was unsettling to think of Agent Cooper being completely inhabited by BOB. Was he going to kill? Why was Laura saved by a guardian angel, and led to the White Lodge in Fire Walk With Me? Did everyone die in the bank explosion? My first reaction to my anxiety and depression about completing the show, was to start over and watch the entire thing again.
But I had regained my health, and had to catch up on my school work. I couldn't watch hours of TV until the sun came up. I had to go back to the real world. I had escaped to Twin Peaks, and had lived there for 2 weeks, but I couldn't stay there, hiding in the Road House or The Great Northern Hotel.
One word started to echo in my brain. Escape. Escape. I came to a frightening realization. Laura Palmer was my bottle of wine. I was avoiding my life just as Uncle Mark had. I was getting drunk on Twin Peaks.
The Simpson family tradition had found me after all. It had snuck in the back door, incognito. And by the time its disguise had fallen away, it was too late. I may be saving face, saving money, and preserving my liver, but I had the gene I thought I had avoided. I wasn't an anomaly after all. And the distance between me and my family closed in, bringing me home.