Mr-Tambourine-Man
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2009
- Messages
- 131
Painting a Life in Valium Blue
By John Scott Holman
Charlotte Rosen fully believed she was a perfect woman. So naturally, she was not very well liked. Oddly enough this pleased her very much.
At 40 years-old she was not exactly a beautiful woman, though some would say her features were quite enviable. She was above average in height and possessed a thin but sturdy frame, broad shoulders and cool blue eyes, still and powerful. The hard, angular quality of her cheeks and chin were softened by her sunny auburn hair, always worn back and unraveling loosely through the fingers of her hairclip.
Charlotte dressed impeccably, without so much as a loose thread to challenge her flawlessness. Women’s suits, naturally by the most prestigious designers, were her uniform of choice, even though she had no career of her own. While the suits intended to suggest nothing less than the strictest professionalism – Charlotte would not permit laziness in dress or performance - she somehow managed to wear them as casually as if they might have been a pair of linen pajamas. In some way this best explained her personal philosophy: the Charlotte Rosen take on life.
Currently her life consisted of a dull pain in her left buttock perpetrated by a most uncomfortable lounge chair (whoever fastened the cushion must have appreciated irony) in a sparsely crowded, ash gray lobby, where she was waiting… and waiting to see her General Physician for an annual checkup. She stared mindless at her fingers, lacquered in dark maple, a smart match for her elegant camel toned suit jacket and knee high skirt. Then she stared at a fly circling the room, landing finally on a completely undisturbed infant’s head whose bored mother casually flicked it away.
Though she rarely read the mindless waiting room magazines, she finally consented to picking one up, a gardening monthly whose title she neglected to notice. The articles were dull as canned food labels but some of the pictures were pleasing to the eye. She especially liked the black and white advertisements. There was something she found wholesome and dignified about black and white photography. She considered briefly whether she would be more inclined to believe the marketing claims of an ad printed in black and white.
Still, Charlotte wasn’t about to take up gardening and was just closing the magazine when an advertisement caught her eye. It was a two-page pharmaceutical spread headed “35, Single and psychoneurotic,” describing a woman who was anxious, depressed and unwed, nearly ready to give up on life and marriage. But before she finally threw in the towel she received her saving grace, when her doctor prescribed her a daily regimen of Valium.
My God, Charlotte thought, these days this little pill is a bigger star than Cary Grant!
Curious to finally see what all the fuss was about she delved into the fine print on the advertisement’s adjoining page. Apparently, Valium eased both psychotic tension and common nerves, as well as the irritability associated with Pre-Menstrual Syndrome and Menopausal Depression. On top of that, it also relieved pain caused by muscle contractions. Yeah, and it can even make you walk on water.
It was 1970 and the very word Valium had so seeped into the collective social conscious that its exposure as a drug was eclipsed by such household words as Tylenol and Aspirin. But until just then Charlotte herself was relatively unfamiliar with it. She knew that it was socially acceptable, even though the effects were mildly intoxicating, like the Nembutal her mother took to get to sleep. More curious to Charlotte was how surprisingly fashionable the drug had become. It was the quintessence of suburban chic. Dropping the little blue and yellow pills had always seemed to Charlotte to be a kind of status symbol. Once a woman could only look forward to styling her hair, but now, thanks to the ever-expanding wonders of the 20th century, she could self-style her very own brain chemistry with no more effort that it took to swallow a pill or two.
Yes, these pills were a status symbol- a symbol that Charlotte did not possess… at least not yet.
Then and there charlotte decided she would not be leaving the doctor’s office without a prescription for America’s favorite new pill. She didn’t exactly know why she wanted the Valium so badly; just that she had suddenly been overcome by a childlike desire to have, more importantly to have something had by so many others. It was simple lust, like a desire for a designer perfume, that compulsion forged long ago in the roaring formation of American consumerism.
Her name was called and she followed the nurse, her stomach aflutter with anticipation.
“You’ll be in room nine,” said the nurse. “The doctor will be here in a moment. There’s reading material if you’d like something while you wait.”
Great, maybe I can learn how to properly grow tomatoes or trim wisteria.
Her physician entered the room after yet another agonizingly long wait. For such an expensive hospital they were certainly lacking in timely service- and those chairs! Oh, the sacrifices one must make to be an elitist.
Her doctor was a rather unfortunate looking man. He gave the overall impression of a hardboiled egg. He was as balled as Yul Brynner with cadaverously white skin stretched away from his face and meeting in folds at the back of his skull. The freakishly tight skin caused his eyes to bulge alarmingly, so that his retinas seemed in very real danger of sticking to the lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses. But he was kind and actually seemed to listen during his appointments.
After the typical formalities of annual checkups (Why are these even necessary?) Charlotte delicately guided the subject towards Valium. What happened next astonished her. Without so much as inquiring about her symptoms the doctor hastily retrieved his prescription pad, and with a gruff yet childlike laugh, put pen to paper and rapidly scribbled out the golden ticket providing her access to the pharmaceutical in-crowd.
She thanked the doctor with a flirtatious smile and a pat on the arm. It was the least she could do for the pill-pushing old hobgoblin.
He called after her as she strolled down the hall.
“Make an appointment to see me in a few months and let me know how the diazepam is working…”
Diazepam? Her heart sank. “I thought I was given Valium?”
The doctor laughed that same child-man heckle. “You were. Diazepam is just the chemical name.”
Oh, thank God, she thought as she smoothed out her skirt. The last thing I want is some knock-off sugar pill. When Charlotte Rosen says Dior purse she doesn’t want her lipstick riding around in some Japanese imposter handbag.
Relieved, she gave the doctor an extra long smile, this time momentarily letting the tip of her tongue part her teeth teasingly. The doctor blushed. Though unswervingly faithful to her husband, she saw most men as hapless creatures in the game of sex, and found no harm in casually stirring up excitation, within reason of course. Charlotte had never been accused of any indiscretion in her life and were anyone, woman or man, to tarnish her reputation, she would give no thought to tarnishing their skull or vertebrae, in the most ladylike fashion possible of course.
She stopped briefly to make an appointment with the receptionist, before strutting victorious out the lounge doors and into the blinding sunlight. It stung her eyes but Charlotte was prepared, retrieving a favorite pair of tortoise shell sunglasses from her purse and resting them snuggly on the bridge of her upturned nose.
Never unprepared. Never improperly dressed. Never at a loss for words.
She gripped the prescription in her hand. Never unable to get what she wanted.
Charlotte Rosen: perfect.
***
Now, better to go to the pharmacy first or the dry-cleaner for Bill’s suit? Decisions… Decisions…
She settled on a compromise, dropping the prescription by the pharmacy first, then swinging back to the other side of town to pick up the dry-cleaning. It seemed the pharmacy had recently been filling scripts at a rate of a single pill per quarter-hour, so it made sense to pick up her husband’s dry-cleaning then go back for the medicine.
The suit wasn’t ready yet, even though Charlotte was ten minutes late. She was more than a little irritated and would have complained but the woman behind the counter was a meek looking oriental girl who couldn’t have been over sixteen and probably wouldn’t have understood her anyway. Besides, the inconvenience served to remind her of her induction into the no-worries lifestyle of the modern, medicated woman. From now on such irritation could easily be remedied simply by retrieving a pill bottle from her handbag. It was that simple, right?
Fifteen minutes later the oriental girl shuffled into a room marked “Employee’s Only,” and returned momentarily with Bill’s suit. Charlotte paid the bill quickly. Dinner would have to be ready by the time Bill arrived home at six, and though TV dinners were all the rage, Charlotte never relented to such culinary tackiness. Tonight she would serve lamb chops and buttered asparagus with baked bread.
There was no wait at the pharmacy and Charlotte was soon out the door with her prescription and a bounce in her step. She picked her two children up from school and made her way home in light late-afternoon traffic.
She cooked dinner quickly but carefully, one ear cocked towards the children at play in the adjoining living room. The table was set at ten to six and though Bill was five minutes late it was still more than hot enough to enjoy.
After dinner came dishes and clean-up, then an hour of television with the children, who were then hurried off to bed so she and Bill could watch the evening news. The news was all political, social and especially racial unrest – “signs of the end-times,” as her mother so often said.
After switching off the television she and Bill retired to bed. She watched Bill undress and admired his attractive physique, still fit and sturdy for a man of 50. He looked, oddly enough, like the quintessential television reporter, and his thick brown mustache could have been borrowed from the CBS wardrobe room.
She then slipped into her silk nightgown, savoring the sensual feel of the soft fabric sliding against her skin. It was then that she remembered the Valium and walked to the nightstand to fetch the bottle from her purse. She scanned the label: Take two tablets by mouth twice daily. Figuring she could use a good night’s sleep she opened the bottle and shook loose a small yellow tablet. She stared at it for a moment, admiring its design, simple yet bold, a prominent V cut out of the center. It truly was a fashionable little pill.
“What’s that?” Bill asked from bed, peering over a copy of All Quiet on the Western Front. Bill read voraciously. Charlotte rarely had the patience.
“My medicine,” Charlotte said, in a way that suggested the matter was a private one.
“You don’t take medicine?”
“Of course I do. Everyone takes medicine.”
“What’s it for?
Charlotte brushed passed him and into the bathroom filling a glass of water.
“Nothing…” she said. “Just my nerves, that’s all.”
“Tranquilizers?” Bill asked, his voice indicating mild alarm.
“Just Valium,” Charlotte said, mildly exasperated.
Charlotte swallowed the tablet defiantly and returned to the bedroom.
“But Charlotte, is that a good idea? Those things are addicting and you know all those movie stars and musicians keep that dying from them.”
“Come now, it’s only Valium. Oh Bill, even you took Seconal when we were engaged.”
“That was years ago and I didn’t know the dangers.”
“Well, Valium is different.”
“Whatever you say dear.”
Bill rarely won an argument and, after fourteen years of marriage, he knew when it was best to give up. He returned to his reading as Charlotte slipped into bed and stared up at the ceiling, waiting for the pill to take effect.
After twenty minutes she was about to dismiss Valium as overhyped, when she slipped out of bed to go to the bathroom and noticed a feeling of lightness all through her body, a clumsy, floating sensation, not unlike the effects of alcohol, yet clearheaded and somehow… cleaner. She looked at Bill, now snoring lightly beneath a bedside lamp, and had to stifle a fit of giggles… enlightened giggles. She felt as if she were seeing her husband, so helpless in his sleep, for the very first time. In fact, everything seemed new - no, that wasn’t it. Everything was the still the same, but her perspective was somehow radically different. It was as if a dirty lens had been cleaned and she saw things clearly for the first time. Sure enough, a weight was lifted off her shoulders… a weight she never knew was there.
She stood there aimlessly for a full ten minutes before sinking back into bed. Sinking was just the right word. She felt as if she were being swallowed up in the exquisite softness of the blankets, the sheets…
She drifted off to sleep and slept dreamlessly throughout the night.
She awoke the next morning to the throbbing pain of a full bladder and the refreshed feeling of a good night’s sleep.
By John Scott Holman
Charlotte Rosen fully believed she was a perfect woman. So naturally, she was not very well liked. Oddly enough this pleased her very much.
At 40 years-old she was not exactly a beautiful woman, though some would say her features were quite enviable. She was above average in height and possessed a thin but sturdy frame, broad shoulders and cool blue eyes, still and powerful. The hard, angular quality of her cheeks and chin were softened by her sunny auburn hair, always worn back and unraveling loosely through the fingers of her hairclip.
Charlotte dressed impeccably, without so much as a loose thread to challenge her flawlessness. Women’s suits, naturally by the most prestigious designers, were her uniform of choice, even though she had no career of her own. While the suits intended to suggest nothing less than the strictest professionalism – Charlotte would not permit laziness in dress or performance - she somehow managed to wear them as casually as if they might have been a pair of linen pajamas. In some way this best explained her personal philosophy: the Charlotte Rosen take on life.
Currently her life consisted of a dull pain in her left buttock perpetrated by a most uncomfortable lounge chair (whoever fastened the cushion must have appreciated irony) in a sparsely crowded, ash gray lobby, where she was waiting… and waiting to see her General Physician for an annual checkup. She stared mindless at her fingers, lacquered in dark maple, a smart match for her elegant camel toned suit jacket and knee high skirt. Then she stared at a fly circling the room, landing finally on a completely undisturbed infant’s head whose bored mother casually flicked it away.
Though she rarely read the mindless waiting room magazines, she finally consented to picking one up, a gardening monthly whose title she neglected to notice. The articles were dull as canned food labels but some of the pictures were pleasing to the eye. She especially liked the black and white advertisements. There was something she found wholesome and dignified about black and white photography. She considered briefly whether she would be more inclined to believe the marketing claims of an ad printed in black and white.
Still, Charlotte wasn’t about to take up gardening and was just closing the magazine when an advertisement caught her eye. It was a two-page pharmaceutical spread headed “35, Single and psychoneurotic,” describing a woman who was anxious, depressed and unwed, nearly ready to give up on life and marriage. But before she finally threw in the towel she received her saving grace, when her doctor prescribed her a daily regimen of Valium.
My God, Charlotte thought, these days this little pill is a bigger star than Cary Grant!
Curious to finally see what all the fuss was about she delved into the fine print on the advertisement’s adjoining page. Apparently, Valium eased both psychotic tension and common nerves, as well as the irritability associated with Pre-Menstrual Syndrome and Menopausal Depression. On top of that, it also relieved pain caused by muscle contractions. Yeah, and it can even make you walk on water.
It was 1970 and the very word Valium had so seeped into the collective social conscious that its exposure as a drug was eclipsed by such household words as Tylenol and Aspirin. But until just then Charlotte herself was relatively unfamiliar with it. She knew that it was socially acceptable, even though the effects were mildly intoxicating, like the Nembutal her mother took to get to sleep. More curious to Charlotte was how surprisingly fashionable the drug had become. It was the quintessence of suburban chic. Dropping the little blue and yellow pills had always seemed to Charlotte to be a kind of status symbol. Once a woman could only look forward to styling her hair, but now, thanks to the ever-expanding wonders of the 20th century, she could self-style her very own brain chemistry with no more effort that it took to swallow a pill or two.
Yes, these pills were a status symbol- a symbol that Charlotte did not possess… at least not yet.
Then and there charlotte decided she would not be leaving the doctor’s office without a prescription for America’s favorite new pill. She didn’t exactly know why she wanted the Valium so badly; just that she had suddenly been overcome by a childlike desire to have, more importantly to have something had by so many others. It was simple lust, like a desire for a designer perfume, that compulsion forged long ago in the roaring formation of American consumerism.
Her name was called and she followed the nurse, her stomach aflutter with anticipation.
“You’ll be in room nine,” said the nurse. “The doctor will be here in a moment. There’s reading material if you’d like something while you wait.”
Great, maybe I can learn how to properly grow tomatoes or trim wisteria.
Her physician entered the room after yet another agonizingly long wait. For such an expensive hospital they were certainly lacking in timely service- and those chairs! Oh, the sacrifices one must make to be an elitist.
Her doctor was a rather unfortunate looking man. He gave the overall impression of a hardboiled egg. He was as balled as Yul Brynner with cadaverously white skin stretched away from his face and meeting in folds at the back of his skull. The freakishly tight skin caused his eyes to bulge alarmingly, so that his retinas seemed in very real danger of sticking to the lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses. But he was kind and actually seemed to listen during his appointments.
After the typical formalities of annual checkups (Why are these even necessary?) Charlotte delicately guided the subject towards Valium. What happened next astonished her. Without so much as inquiring about her symptoms the doctor hastily retrieved his prescription pad, and with a gruff yet childlike laugh, put pen to paper and rapidly scribbled out the golden ticket providing her access to the pharmaceutical in-crowd.
She thanked the doctor with a flirtatious smile and a pat on the arm. It was the least she could do for the pill-pushing old hobgoblin.
He called after her as she strolled down the hall.
“Make an appointment to see me in a few months and let me know how the diazepam is working…”
Diazepam? Her heart sank. “I thought I was given Valium?”
The doctor laughed that same child-man heckle. “You were. Diazepam is just the chemical name.”
Oh, thank God, she thought as she smoothed out her skirt. The last thing I want is some knock-off sugar pill. When Charlotte Rosen says Dior purse she doesn’t want her lipstick riding around in some Japanese imposter handbag.
Relieved, she gave the doctor an extra long smile, this time momentarily letting the tip of her tongue part her teeth teasingly. The doctor blushed. Though unswervingly faithful to her husband, she saw most men as hapless creatures in the game of sex, and found no harm in casually stirring up excitation, within reason of course. Charlotte had never been accused of any indiscretion in her life and were anyone, woman or man, to tarnish her reputation, she would give no thought to tarnishing their skull or vertebrae, in the most ladylike fashion possible of course.
She stopped briefly to make an appointment with the receptionist, before strutting victorious out the lounge doors and into the blinding sunlight. It stung her eyes but Charlotte was prepared, retrieving a favorite pair of tortoise shell sunglasses from her purse and resting them snuggly on the bridge of her upturned nose.
Never unprepared. Never improperly dressed. Never at a loss for words.
She gripped the prescription in her hand. Never unable to get what she wanted.
Charlotte Rosen: perfect.
***
Now, better to go to the pharmacy first or the dry-cleaner for Bill’s suit? Decisions… Decisions…
She settled on a compromise, dropping the prescription by the pharmacy first, then swinging back to the other side of town to pick up the dry-cleaning. It seemed the pharmacy had recently been filling scripts at a rate of a single pill per quarter-hour, so it made sense to pick up her husband’s dry-cleaning then go back for the medicine.
The suit wasn’t ready yet, even though Charlotte was ten minutes late. She was more than a little irritated and would have complained but the woman behind the counter was a meek looking oriental girl who couldn’t have been over sixteen and probably wouldn’t have understood her anyway. Besides, the inconvenience served to remind her of her induction into the no-worries lifestyle of the modern, medicated woman. From now on such irritation could easily be remedied simply by retrieving a pill bottle from her handbag. It was that simple, right?
Fifteen minutes later the oriental girl shuffled into a room marked “Employee’s Only,” and returned momentarily with Bill’s suit. Charlotte paid the bill quickly. Dinner would have to be ready by the time Bill arrived home at six, and though TV dinners were all the rage, Charlotte never relented to such culinary tackiness. Tonight she would serve lamb chops and buttered asparagus with baked bread.
There was no wait at the pharmacy and Charlotte was soon out the door with her prescription and a bounce in her step. She picked her two children up from school and made her way home in light late-afternoon traffic.
She cooked dinner quickly but carefully, one ear cocked towards the children at play in the adjoining living room. The table was set at ten to six and though Bill was five minutes late it was still more than hot enough to enjoy.
After dinner came dishes and clean-up, then an hour of television with the children, who were then hurried off to bed so she and Bill could watch the evening news. The news was all political, social and especially racial unrest – “signs of the end-times,” as her mother so often said.
After switching off the television she and Bill retired to bed. She watched Bill undress and admired his attractive physique, still fit and sturdy for a man of 50. He looked, oddly enough, like the quintessential television reporter, and his thick brown mustache could have been borrowed from the CBS wardrobe room.
She then slipped into her silk nightgown, savoring the sensual feel of the soft fabric sliding against her skin. It was then that she remembered the Valium and walked to the nightstand to fetch the bottle from her purse. She scanned the label: Take two tablets by mouth twice daily. Figuring she could use a good night’s sleep she opened the bottle and shook loose a small yellow tablet. She stared at it for a moment, admiring its design, simple yet bold, a prominent V cut out of the center. It truly was a fashionable little pill.
“What’s that?” Bill asked from bed, peering over a copy of All Quiet on the Western Front. Bill read voraciously. Charlotte rarely had the patience.
“My medicine,” Charlotte said, in a way that suggested the matter was a private one.
“You don’t take medicine?”
“Of course I do. Everyone takes medicine.”
“What’s it for?
Charlotte brushed passed him and into the bathroom filling a glass of water.
“Nothing…” she said. “Just my nerves, that’s all.”
“Tranquilizers?” Bill asked, his voice indicating mild alarm.
“Just Valium,” Charlotte said, mildly exasperated.
Charlotte swallowed the tablet defiantly and returned to the bedroom.
“But Charlotte, is that a good idea? Those things are addicting and you know all those movie stars and musicians keep that dying from them.”
“Come now, it’s only Valium. Oh Bill, even you took Seconal when we were engaged.”
“That was years ago and I didn’t know the dangers.”
“Well, Valium is different.”
“Whatever you say dear.”
Bill rarely won an argument and, after fourteen years of marriage, he knew when it was best to give up. He returned to his reading as Charlotte slipped into bed and stared up at the ceiling, waiting for the pill to take effect.
After twenty minutes she was about to dismiss Valium as overhyped, when she slipped out of bed to go to the bathroom and noticed a feeling of lightness all through her body, a clumsy, floating sensation, not unlike the effects of alcohol, yet clearheaded and somehow… cleaner. She looked at Bill, now snoring lightly beneath a bedside lamp, and had to stifle a fit of giggles… enlightened giggles. She felt as if she were seeing her husband, so helpless in his sleep, for the very first time. In fact, everything seemed new - no, that wasn’t it. Everything was the still the same, but her perspective was somehow radically different. It was as if a dirty lens had been cleaned and she saw things clearly for the first time. Sure enough, a weight was lifted off her shoulders… a weight she never knew was there.
She stood there aimlessly for a full ten minutes before sinking back into bed. Sinking was just the right word. She felt as if she were being swallowed up in the exquisite softness of the blankets, the sheets…
She drifted off to sleep and slept dreamlessly throughout the night.
She awoke the next morning to the throbbing pain of a full bladder and the refreshed feeling of a good night’s sleep.
