De-Viced

I have finally figured it out what my problem that is. What I lack is a vice, some fated flaw that concomitantly brings out the best and worst of my personality and talents, something that would make me at once endearing and revolting. I feel oddly well adjusted in this maladjusted world. For as crazy and misplaced as I am on this orb statistically I am bizarrely stable. I have read countless self help books and have actually been able to help myself (not just project my new found knowledge on others like chunky vomit) I have learned how to self analyze and communicate my feelings, as well as take responsibility for my actions and non-actions. Most importantly I know EXACTLY where I’m fucked up! My propensity towards honesty has made me 1) let people know 2) ask myself if I am ok with that particular fucked-up-ness, and 3) if not, resolve to work on those places. . Though have never been to therapy, I have had a tarot card or rune read from time to time. I am not and have never been escape seeker, which is in most cases the root cause for take a Vice.

Let’s take a brief look at the history of the Vice:

Vice:
1. Immoral habit: an immoral or wicked habit or characteristic
Lying is the least of her vices.

2. Depravity: immoral conduct

3. Prostitution, gambling, and drugs: criminal activity connected with prostitution and other sexual offenses, gambling, and illegal drugs (often used before a noun)


The vice and stardom, celebrity or we can go as far to say genius, have been linked for as long as we can research (Billy Holiday, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Keith Richards Karen Carpenter you get the idea). However, in the new Millennium the advent of the Internet has transformed the vice from a dirty little secret into a priceless career booster with its instantaneous full disclosure. Let’s call it the [Amy] Winehouse Effect. The Internet has also made it possible for the average Joe the Plumbers to become mini celebrities of online social networks where their vices can be documented and displayed in perpetuity.

The modern day vice looks quite different from her old school ancestors. Opium, peyote, marijuana, cocaine, heroine, tobacco, prescriptive pills, and alcohol were standards, but just before the change of the century the scope was broadened as the species found new ways of over indulging in average everyday activities thusly transforming them into a “taboos”. Shopping and sex topped the new list. Soon anything done in excess could be considered a vice of sorts. It must be clearly understood that all “vices” are not considered equal, not by a long shot, those that lead to physical and spiritual dissipation still top the list.

Let Me Get an Upgrade:

In the ‘70’s sex was harmless and love was free, get it where you can, and sometimes that meant in broad daylight with a person you just met but whose fringe vest you dug. Now a days with venereal diseases that laugh at antibiotics, stay with you for life, or could possibly end it, sex is more terrifying than titillating. Personally I have a six-page application form (available for download in PDF form at ifyoueverhopetohitit.com) and a bodily fluids collection testing kit that I require before going to second base. Have you ever seen the pamphlets for genital warts? Then you understand my prudence. I am clear that since sex has turned into an episode of CSI, I’m pretty sure that it will not be the official vice of Miz. Thrope. As an aside, in shopping for a vice I am leaning toward something that can be done alone. The sex thing requires meeting someone, creating a safe word, too complicated and though I have great affection for the male member, I have found that it is generally attached to something troglodyte in nature. If only, if only you could get one without that pesky attachment, now where oh where could a girl find something like that?

It’s About Hygiene:

I can not tell you the number of times that I found myself in a bathroom stall of a beat pulsing nightclub with a girlfriend who ask me to accompany her. I say “sure’ thinking she needed a wingman to wade through the sea of dancing bodies, as not to get lost. To my surprise I am pulled into the cubical with her where she whips a packet of coke from her décolletage. It never fails I always fall for it. It must be the same mental block that has women not realize that their foul mood is PMS until they literally see red. There were times when the potty summits were three deep in a stall, and once at the after-hours club Save the Robots I actually had to pee while four people took hits in the corner. No judging, no judging, when you gotta go, you gotta go. Luckily my bare black ass was no competition for the white pony in the room.

Strangely I was never drawn to drugs, I think that I was scared straight by that college student in the ‘80’s who did a Quaalude while drinking alcohol and slipped into a coma dying some decade or something later. I was not trying to play with fire. Cocaine never enticed me, the whole snorting thing freaks me out, I’d probably sneeze and waste my money and needles are out of the question. Mary Jane and I never hit it off. The common Gateway drug was always locked for me. Once on a trip to Jamaica I smoked, it only made me paranoid and sluggish and gave we a weird internal body tick. I couldn’t see how people could function in that state; I guess they kinda don’t huh?

Another stipulation in my adopting a vice would some basic hygiene. Using a public bathroom to pee is bad enough but to brave the germs to take a bump, um…no. I see that there is a sharing sort of communal, cum-ba-yah vibe with drug use. I’m not parsimonious by nature but passing off things used orally or intravenously by folks I don’t really know… um… No (see bodily fluids collection testing kit – Hep-A, B, C…)

See, I’m a control freak, I don’t like the concept of anything that might get a hold of me and not let go, be it man or medicine. I do however like the drink. Oh I revel in the sweet gentle spread of warmth that a full-bodied red gives you, or the clear headed buzz only Sake delivers, vodka creeps up, then bam! And tequila, well let’s just say that I know Jose Cuervo so well I call him Joe, he, unleashes the beast. Ah I know my friends well. However I found that as I grow older I do not like to be drunk, and I like less waking up hung over. In addition alcohol has a bloating effect, and let’s be clear, I what the RCS (Romantic Comedy Syndrome) version of debauchery, I want to indulge- but look flawless, like I just stepped out of the make up trailer. Honestly, I don’t look good puffy. Plus I am a stickler for the tell tale that if you drink alone you have a problem, as a child of an alcoholic… well I don’t like to play with fire.

A Debt-triment to Your Health:
Shopping seems like a new fangled vice that I could be quite good at, except for two things, first, I have an ethical tug of war with needless consumerism, I get physically angered with the idea that I need something else. Oh, it’s a whole mental dog and pony show that happens when I feel like I have to buy something, and not just another bag, or pair of boots – I’ll put off buying eggs on principle “Do I really need these eggs is the media just making me think I need eggs?” Mean while the next morning I’m screwed because I can’t make an omelet ‘cause I was bunking the system! The second issue is, I don’t support the accruing of debt. Given our current economic situation, the whole concept of having to show that you owe money before anyone will loan you money is asinine. No I prefer to work with the old Clinton, pay as you go methodology. The only zeros I like to see are on my bill balances! Oh there is a third thing, I live in New York City- closet and storage spaces are always limited.

So it’s not looking good for my finding a vice. I don’t like drugs, they will ruin what little looks I have (or have purchased) either making me too thin (although I am curious), or bloated. The harder set of drugs would definitely at a point jeopardize my credit rating and my dental work. Sex is out because I don’t want to have anything on my genitals that is usually on the terribilis family, and shopping while tempting, is wasteful and ethically against my personal philosophy.

Wait - there is one thing that I indulge in daily and am obsessed about, it’s free, and if I can convince a few million people that it’s cool enough to engage in, it might just catch on. I get high, on Honesty and Integrity. It’s a heady brew; a combination that is more powerful than absinthe and the contact high is wicked! It’s so rare, that when others sense that you’re doing H.I. they are oddly draw to you but at the same time scared shitless. I mean you have to be hard-core crazy to do that shit man. Yeah guess in a way I’m a totally stoner, a junkie, and to be honest (whoop see there, I’ve been using) I have O.D. several times. Since my vice is relatively new I don’t know the penalty for using or dealing, but the good news is that I’m not alone. I have a really strong feeling that our new president is hopped up in the same thing!
ROCK ON ROCKER!