I’ve never had much sympathy for addicts. Many years ago, when I discovered that my first significant boyfriend was hooked on cocaine after receiving a call from an emergency room at midnight about an overdose, I broke up with him. My anger, in part, resulted from the thousands of dollars I kept “lending” him, never understanding why he needed the money, the increasing turmoil in his life, and what I perceived as his chronic weakness. After he’d lost his job on Broadway, was evicted from his apartment and disappeared for three days after being on the run from a murderous drug dealer, I walked him to Penn Station at 6 a.m., bought him a one-way ticket home to Virginia, and didn’t leave until I saw the train vanish into the tunnel. And that was the last of our life together in New York.
With such haughtiness I used to dismiss cigarette-smoker friends who would need to leave my dinner parties to huddle on my building’s roof deck in the rain to light up, or partners of friends who would get drunk every time we went to a restaurant. I would dismiss the typical American Wal-Mart shopper, so fat that he or she needs to drive a motorized cart to negotiate the aisles.
