by Amy Dresner
In the seventies and eighties, my dad was making good money writing movies and schlocky sitcoms. That meant I went to the best schools, had lavish birthday parties, nannies, and an ample clothing allowance. Working as a writer, he had the time to take me to school, pack my lunch, write me “secret notes” (where all the words in the message were anagrams and the note was signed with a slapdash cartoon of his bearded and bespectacled face). My mother, on the other hand, was downtown every weekday, all day, feverishly trying to carve out a career for herself as a sportswear designer in a sexist and ageist profession. She’d come home at seven p.m., and I would run to the door and try to tackle her or cling desperately to her leg.
“Amy, please let me get changed first,” she’d always say. “You’ll get my pants all wrinkled.” Her pants could wait. I couldn’t.
On the weekends, my mother would sit out in the backyard and sunbathe, sketching. I can remember feeling bored and lonely, playing with my dollhouse in my beautiful room—a room that I refused to sleep in. I actually slept in my mother’s bed with her till I was twelve. She’d been beaten as a child and didn’t really like to be touched, so it was the only time I could be close to her.
On the weekends with my dad, he’d take me to the toy store or to the basketball court, or do some activity with me, like teaching me how to ride my sparkly royal-blue Schwinn. In retrospect, maybe he wanted a son. As a consolation prize, I do have a voice lower than Tommy Lee Jones’s after a bender.
I remember one Saturday, my dad and I were driving around, and we saw a dog in the backseat of a car. I must have been eight or nine at the time. My dad said, “Ames, see that dog. That dog is so rich, it pays that man to drive him around.” I believed that was true until about high school. That’s how much sway he had over me.
When I was thirteen, my mom, broke and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, told me she was going down to Mexico “to visit.” She didn’t come back to the States for ten years.
The next year I got into a very prestigious all-girls private high school—the kind where all the students wear uniforms—and my father bought a house a stone’s throw away. With my emotionally unavailable mother even more unavailable after she took off to live in another country, my papa and I grew very close—probably too close, as he was forced to be both father and mother. I, in turn, became his emotional companion, his surrogate wife. But I knew that if my father saw me as a woman, he’d push me away. I’d no longer be able to climb into his bed at two in the morning when I had a nightmare. So I didn’t date, and I was a straight-A student and a teetotaler, eschewing any display of my own burgeoning sexuality. When I got my period at fourteen, I threw a note on his desk and then ran and hid in my closet, hysterically crying. The note said, “I got my period. Please don’t think I’m a grown-up now.” Staying an asexual child was a small price to pay to keep your only parent.
My divorce is in process, and it is nasty. I have some cheap C-level Van Nuys lawyer that my mother is paying for. Clay has some expensive shark of an attorney from Beverly Hills. He is also threatening a “spousal abuse” defense if I try to get any alimony or any of his assets.
“I think he’ll win,” my shitty lawyer says.
“I just wanna walk away,” I tell her. “Financially, my family can’t afford to fight, and emotionally, I can’t handle facing him in court. He can keep his blood money. I just need this to be over.”
I begin to seriously unravel. Ideas of suicide and even vague plans become more prevalent and appealing. I begin cutting myself. I crush the head of a plastic razor and extract one of the blades. I inhale long and slow and draw the blade across my arm. Red blood erupts in a thin line. I cut again. And again. And again. In neat, parallel lines. The endorphins flood my system, and I feel high. It’s more of a numb buzz than I’d like, but I’ll take it. I can’t bear to feel my feelings. I can’t bear to feel how lost I am or how my husband loathes me or how much I loathe myself. I don’t want to feel the regret for the things I’ve said and all the things I didn’t. I want out.
Amanda, my escort roommate, knows what I’m doing. (I don’t have black trouser socks tied tightly around my wrists as a fashion statement.) Plus, there’s blood peeking out.
“Please don’t tell anybody,” I say.
“Lemme see,” she says.
I show her.
“I used to do it. My old therapist said cutting is about rage and the little ‘slices’ are mouths screaming.”
“That’s fucking creepy,” I say.
“Oh, you made a grid,” she notices, smiling. “We could play tic tac toe on your wrist now.”
I’m going to have scars on my wrists now. Everyone will know that there were moments in my life so painful that the only way I could cope was to cut myself and watch myself bleed. It’s embarrassing. I’m weak.
CHAPTER FIVE
In addition to the cutting, my newest addiction, sex, is really getting out of control. Amanda and I are a terrible influence on each other. Each of us will just report back to the other the details of our latest scandalous rendezvous, feeling safe that there will be no judgment or shaming. I wouldn’t say we encourage each other, but we certainly don’t discourage each other.
It seems weird that I’d come to this. I was never particularly slutty. You could blame it on “divorce backlash” or some unhealthy enmeshment with daddy. But if I’ve learned anything: you don’t need to know why you do what you do. You just have to want to stop.
Well, I want to want to stop. But I don’t want to stop. Not yet.
It’s eleven p.m. and my phone rings. It’s him. My newest limerent object. We met a month ago on Facebook, both part of the stand-up community. Phone calls and naked pics ensued. He’s finally in the States from the U.K., but we have yet to meet in person. It isn’t going to last. How do I know? Because it never does. And he seems too good to be true, which is always a bad fucking sign.
“I’ve got to see you,” he says in his clipped English accent.
“I can’t. I’m in rehab.”
“I’ll take a cab up there. You sneak down. We’ll have a kiss and a cuddle, and then I’ll leave.”
“Uh…”
“Come on. I can’t wait to kiss you.”
I’m silent.
“Please, Amy.”
I have a niggling feeling I’m being none too smart, but who could turn down the chance to suck face with a hot Brit?
As I creep down the dark driveway of the rehab, I am blinded by headlights. It’s a tech in a van—an uptight pretty boy who takes his job way too seriously. He rolls down his window.
“And where are you going, lady?” he asks.
“Just going for a walk,” I say, trying to sound casual and failing miserably. I am the world’s worst liar.
“Okay,” he says suspiciously.
I smile tightly and continue on my mission.
As I near the gate of the property, another tech—a beautiful blond ex-tweaker—pulls up beside me in her car.
“Where do you think you’re going, miss Amy?” She smiles.
“Uh…”
“Going to meet somebody?” she asks bluntly.
“Please don’t report me,” I beg.
“Just don’t get loaded, for God’s sakes,” she says and drives off.
I jump the fence of the rehab, surprised at my skill, as I’m an out-of-shape Jew. But, hey, the possibility of a stranger’s tongue in your hungry mouth puts a little spring in a girl’s step.
A yellow cab pulls up, and he steps out. He’s shorter and less good-looking than his pictures. However, he seems thrilled at the sight of me.
We sit on the curb and chat and kiss excitedly, like teenagers. Suddenly, he pulls away.
“So, you’re, like, paying to be locked up like a prisoner?” he asks me.
“Yeah—it’s called rehab.”
“I don’t understand. You’re an adult. If you want to leave, can’t you leave?”
“Yes, but…”
“You’re crazy, aren’t you?”
“You’re the one who took a cab to rehab to make out with a girl he’s never met.”
“True.” He kisses me again.
I taste booze on him and the bitterness of cocaine.
“I’m so fucking paranoid… I’ve got to put this somewhere,” he says, pulling an eight ball of blow out of his jacket pocket.
My heart pounds. I can feel my veins swell expectantly. But I pretend I’m not bothered.
He puts the coke down his pants.
“Just in case they catch us,” he says, wiping away the white crust around his nostrils with the classic thumb and forefinger move.
“So why are you here exactly?” he asks between kisses.
“I’m a drug addict,” I say bluntly.
“Aren’t we all?”
“And I’m a sex addict,” I add.
“But aren’t we all?”
“I don’t think you understand addiction.”
“Well, I’m British,” he concedes.
Just then, a flashlight shines in my eyes. I’m busted. Two techs have swung by on the rehab’s golf cart. They order me onto the back of the cart, and one tells the Brit to “get the fuck out of here before I call the cops.”
I lose my phone and computer privileges for a week.
Awesome first date.
My counselor, Liz, calls addicts the “puddle people” because we have no emotional skeleton, nothing internal to hold us up. At four months sober, that is exactly how I feel—empty and collapsing into myself.
“What would make you feel safe?” she asks.
“Get a large pad and pen,” I joke. “Sit down. This is gonna take a while.”
But the truth is, I don’t know. I have never felt safe, because I don’t trust myself. I, more than anyone, make myself feel unsafe. For a long time, I’d thought safety was having a man. And now, with an ugly divorce pending, I am at a loss. Does work make you feel safe? Beauty? Youth? I’d had all of those, and I still felt as if I’d been treading water my whole life. Drugs worked for a while, insulating me against my feelings and the world, but it was a temporary and certainly artificial safety.
Like all alcoholics and addicts, I hate structure, but I completely fall apart without it. As I graduate through the ranks at rehab, I’m moved from full residential care to “partial day” treatment. That means I only have to go to half of the tedious groups during the day, but I’m housed now in their nearby sober living. I begin to spend more and more time in my room alone, falling into a deep depression.
“Usually pain moves people into willingness,” Liz tells me. “What’s so interesting about you is that it doesn’t. You just stay in the pain.”
Oh, I know. Pain doesn’t motivate me to take action. It just paralyzes me until I hit my breaking point and act out in any way to get numb. Numb and dumb. That’s what I’m looking for.
She urges me to start my domestic violence class. It’s every Sunday morning for twelve months (and I only have thirteen months left before court). She says she’ll give me car privileges and issue me a weekly day pass. I comply.
It’s early, not even eight a.m. I’m speeding down the empty streets of Los Angeles in my newly leased car (thanks, Dad), chain-smoking Newports and chugging Mountain Dew. Treatment has transformed me from a Jewish American Princess into an Appalachian hillbilly.
I park in front of the tiny counseling center off La Cienega where I’ve been ordered to go for my “domestic violence and anger management” classes. Every Sunday, a bunch of women and I “process” our week and learn about boundaries, self-love, substance abuse, and breathing. It is an odd and sundry group of ladies, a mixture of abused women (attending voluntarily) and abusers (court-ordered to be there).
Purse slung over my shoulder, soda in hand, I plop down in a chair with a deep sigh. I smell of sleep and cigarettes. It’s only eight thirty, and I can already feel the tears coming.
The therapist is a petite woman with glasses and a light South American accent. She is lovingly confrontational, with a good sense of humor. I am, alarmingly, one of the star students—if only because I can spout off concepts from cognitive behavioral therapy and AA. I sound great. My actions, on the other hand, are another story.
The “check-ins” begin on my left; the basic how you’re feeling, how your week was, what’s going on. First up is a dumpy Brazilian woman who always wears skin-tight Lycra dresses and sunglasses. The bold print of her stretchy dress reveals her big stomach and drooping breasts. She is there for walking on her boyfriend’s Ferrari. She’s a huge stoner and comes to group high pretty frequently. She isn’t the brightest cookie to begin with, so you can imagine my delight when she is baked and offering ridiculous, unsolicited advice.
Next to speak is a working-class bleached blonde with pointy teeth that make her look vaguely vampiric. She has that raspy smoker’s voice and working-class hands. She’d gotten a DUI, and after the accident, in her drunken rage, she grabbed the other driver’s eyeglasses and ground them into the pavement with her heel. She still hasn’t confronted her drinking problem. Even now, months later, with a Breathalyzer installed in her car, her idea of “a couple” of beers is six. But I like her.
I kind of tune out as an Indian woman whose husband ignores her for days at a time checks in. She doesn’t talk much, and what she does say is always about cooking or her children. Her stories are boring and her English is poor, but I do envy her domesticity—the kind I thought magically came with marriage.
There are not one but two Orthodox Jewish women. One is a tiny, slender brunette (well, that is the color of her wig) and the other is heftier and—surprisingly—black. (Imagine the dual fun of anti-Semitism and racial prejudice!) Both are always clad in long skirts and other modest attire. Both were abused by their husbands and are there, to my astonishment, by choice. I feel a kinship with the slender Jewish woman. We periodically shoot each other looks when the Brazilian stoner goes off on a tirade. She doesn’t seem offended by my brazen talk of fucking or my foul mouth. The thick black Hasidic woman, however, is prone to giving long, self-righteous sermons on self-esteem. I just smile and nod.
My least favorite one of the lot is a hotheaded fifty-year-old chain-smoker who pulled a knife on her daughter and threatened to kill her while the 911 operator was on the line. (Nicely done!) She is constantly playing the victim, crying, “I’ve turned the other cheek my whole life. I won’t be stepped on anymore!” And then, not two minutes later, she’s recounting a heated episode with a stranger in the produce aisle. She uses the word “cunt” a lot. She also claims to be a “casual” (read: daily) pot smoker, despite having been a raging crackhead for years.
The therapist confronts her on her drug use. Pointing at me, Ms. Hothead tells the therapist, “I mean, she takes all those prescription medications for her moods. I smoke pot. It’s my medicine. What’s the difference?”
“Let’s stay on topic here. There is a big difference between marijuana use and psychiatric medications,” the therapist says.
“Yeah… nobody ever killed somebody on pot,” she says.
I flash her a death stare. “Don’t even fucking get me started on this,” I warn her. I cross and uncross my legs. This is a touchy subject for me.
Her denial that she has a problem is thick, but so is every addict’s.
What really strikes me about the group is that what landed most of us here was just one wild impulse, one irate moment, one too many drinks. Isn’t everyone capable of that? This isn’t a roomful of murderers or monsters. This is a roomful of people who lost control, who threatened somebody and were called out. And I will tell you, the remorse and the shame hang heavy in the room. A box of tissues is diligently passed around. Many tears are shed for the deeds we can’t undo and the horrible, resounding repercussions of those deeds.
We are all very different, yet all so similar. We are all in shock that we ended up here and initially in denial that we had done anything wrong except for getti
ng caught. Anger bounces around the room: anger at the cops; anger at our victim for calling the cops; anger at ourselves for drinking, smoking, doping too much and losing control. Eventually, that veneer of denial falls away and sadness surfaces as each of us struggles to take responsibility.
I pretend that I’m better than these women. But the reality is that I’m worse. I am more violent, more mentally ill, with a worse drug problem and a shorter and more dysfunctional marriage. I came from a privileged upbringing with loving parents and a crippling amount of money. I don’t have more excuses. I have less.
Tonight, instead of our usual evening AA meeting, they take us to a recovery book launch party at the 12-Step Store. A 12-Step Store is basically a store that sells AA shit: books, chips (sorry…“recovery medallions”), gold necklaces with the AA emblem, key chains, coffee mugs emblazoned with recovery slogans, and stupid T-shirts that say “Sober Princess” or “Survivor” or whatever. So much for the anonymous part of Alcoholics Anonymous. I find stores like this completely unbearable, but going to anything anywhere is a welcome change from another fucking meeting.
I’m making fun of some refrigerator magnet that reads “Steps, Hugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll (some things never change!)” when I hear an astonished, “Oh, my God—Amy!” I turn around and see the insane movie star that I fucked three rehabs ago (at my second rehab). Holy shit. It’s probably been eight years since we’ve last seen each other. He claims that he’s sober, but he’s really skinny and pouring sweat. Sweating like only cokeheads do.
“I want to eat your pussy right now,” he whispers in my ear, leaving a snail trail of perspiration on my face.
“Jesus Christ… Well, you haven’t changed a bit.”
“You fucking love it. Gimme your number.”
