My Fair Junkie

by Amy Dresner

  “It’s still the same.”

  “I’m gonna call you. We are gonna fuck!”

  It sounds like a threat as much as a promise. I flash back to the last time I saw him, years before.

  We’d both relapsed after getting out of that rehab. He’d invited me to come “hang out” at his house, which I knew really meant “get high and bone.” I drove up the swervy roads of Mulholland Drive, nervous and gakked out of my mind. He still had a big, gated house deep in the hills. He hadn’t lost all of his money to his drug habit and his army of lawyers… yet.

  His “assistant,” a hot, dark-haired woman, greeted me. Even high as fuck, my instinct told me she was his quasi-girlfriend, but he insisted that she was his “assistant.”

  We sat on his bed and talked. He didn’t look well. He pulled out a glass pipe and started smoking meth. I’d brought coke with me.

  “Have some of this GHB,” he said, pouring me a capful. “It will make you horny.”

  “I’m already horny,” I protested, but he insisted.

  Twenty minutes later I was throwing up mercilessly. His assistant/fuck friend cooked me a frozen burrito, which, within minutes, also made its way back up. She rubbed my back and held my hair for me as I hurled into one of the many toilets in the house.

  The rest of the visit is a bit of a blur. I do remember fucking him at one point when, without knocking, his lawyer came striding right into the bedroom and started talking to him about some legal issue. They both acted like it was no big deal, which made me suspect this must have been common house protocol.

  Later, after Mr. Movie Star showered and asked me to scrub his back, he turned on the TV and started watching old videos of himself getting awards.

  “I had it all,” he sobbed—between hits off the pipe.

  The whole scene was kind of nightmarish.

  Not even three days after the book launch at the 12-Step Store, he makes good on his promise to contact me for a fuck rendezvous. I drive down to his loft in downtown L.A. A very young black girl opens the door. He loves black girls. She doesn’t seem that surprised to see me—or maybe she’s too fucked up to be surprised.

  “Your friend is here,” she calls into the bedroom.

  “Bring her into the bedroom,” I hear him say.

  I walk in, but I’m already anxious to leave. He’s on the bed in his underwear and there’s an empty bottle of Jameson on the bedroom floor.

  “That’s not mine,” he clarifies.

  “I don’t give a shit. I’m not your sponsor. I’m here to fuck you, not work the steps with you.”

  I notice there is an impressive collection of unmarked prescription pill bottles on the bedside table. He sees me take in the stockpile of orange bottles and, with one move, sweeps them into a drawer. I don’t ask.

  “Lakeesha, baby. Come in here,” he calls to the young black woman. He pats the bed where the two of us are.

  I’m not a fan of threesomes. Somebody always gets left out. Plus, I’m not into chicks. Sure, a little kissing when you’re drunk is nice. And I might dress like a homeless lesbian, but the idea of eating pussy is possibly the most revolting thing I can think of.

  Yes, I am as straight as straight comes. I realized this at twenty-four, when I was shit-faced and making out with a girl. I put my hand down her pants, and it felt like sticking your finger into a jellyfish. I was repulsed, and never did it again.

  But of course, I’m also a people pleaser. And this guy is a loose cannon. He has an infamously bad temper, which I have yet to witness, and I’d like to keep it that way. I end up fucking him and his black girl du jour.

  He moans my name as she is blowing him, and she slaps him and says, “It’s me, motherfucker.”

  This is going well.

  I make it back just in time for curfew.

  I want you to know I wasn’t always a soulless fucking machine or a drug addict, for that matter. In high school and college, I had been obsessed with “purity.” No sex, no drugs, no drinking, no smoking. I didn’t even kiss a boy until I was eighteen, and when I finally did, I broke out into hives for six weeks. Hello, repression!!! I was afraid of sex but dressed that up in the guise of “waiting for Mr. Right.” Then, as the years passed and I stayed a virgin, what was once this “gift” became this albatross of immaturity and prudishness. Being a teetotaling virgin in college wasn’t cool, it was freakish. So I duly got rid of that unsexy status, getting drunk one night and losing my virginity a few weeks later.

  And let’s be real: nobody wants to fuck a nineteen-year-old virgin. We don’t know what we’re doing; we bleed; and then we fall in love with you. Who wants that?

  So, yes, I was nineteen, and I was drunk. It was 1990, and I was a junior at Emerson College in Boston. It was cold there. I was too smart for the school, and they were too dumb to notice.

  I was madly in love with one of the school playboys, and he knew all too well but pretended he didn’t. He also knew I was a virgin. Because I told him.

  The playboy and I were in his cramped dorm room. I was loaded, wobbling gently on my high heels. I was also terrified, but too drunk to show it. As the room began to spin, I sat on the edge of the bed.

  “No clothes on the bed. That’s the rule,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I’m serious. If you’re going to be on the bed, you have to take your clothes off.”

  I undressed mechanically. This was not the romantic night I’d envisioned for my deflowering. But I’d decided that this was the night I’d shed my prepubescent take on the world—and cut that cord that kept me “daddy’s little girl.”

  The next thing I knew, he was on top of me naked. We were not kissing. He was pressing his cock against me, but I was so tight and he was so big that he couldn’t enter me. Instead, his dick kept nearly nudging me off the top of the bed. He grabbed me by my forearms and pulled me back down to try again. Finally, after two or three attempts, he pinned my arms down and gave a strong thrust with his pelvis. The pain was sharp. I yelped. He put his hand over my mouth to muffle my whimpering. More thrusting, more pain, some blood, and it was over. Welcome to the world of sex, Amy.

  One night, I’m sitting in a circle of chairs in a church. I’m in an AA meeting in the San Fernando Valley. And I’m pissed. This is typical. I’ve been crying, and my eyes are puffy from tears. I’ve got on a black fox-fur jacket and big dark sunglasses. People think I’m high or blind. I don’t give a fuck. I hate AA at this moment.

  I am digging around in my purse, trying to look busy so nobody will talk to me. No such luck. There’s a hand on my shoulder. A high-pitched voice.

  “I’m Anna. I just wanted to say hi and welcome,” some woman says to me. “I heard your ‘share’ last week. It was so funny. You’re so bitter and angry. It’s hilarious.”

  “Oh, thanks… I guess.” I have no idea who this woman is, and I don’t care. She’s just like every other Big Book thumper in the rooms, reaching out to the newcomer. A Big Book thumper is the AA equivalent of a Bible thumper, preaching the joys and salvation of a life in sobriety. I go back to prospecting for imaginary items in my purse, hoping she’ll go away.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here,” she chirps. “Enjoy the meeting!”

  “Yep.” I don’t look back up.

  This meeting is a grueling hour-and-a-half Big Book study where we read passages from the Alchoholics Anonymous book and then people share their experience on the reading. There is no official break during that time. You’re allowed to get up and get coffee or go outside and smoke. I go outside to vape and text pictures of my naked ass to shallow, lecherous men.

  I’m at this meeting because I have a new sponsor, a woman, and she is part of a creepy “lineage,” if you will, of sober women who are very old-school and traditional. This means that if you’re a part of their “thing,” whenever you speak at a meeting or take a cake to celebrate another year of sobriety, you have to wear a skirt or dress to show respect.

  I’m the most di
srespectful person I know. Plus, I never wear dresses. I don’t like the attention. When I wear a dress, I feel like I’m being served up on a platter to men: open, vulnerable, ready to be eaten. So I just wear jeans, short boots, and holey rock tees so I can fly a little below the radar. But men like dresses. They like femininity. And I like men. So maybe I should wear more dresses. I don’t fucking know.

  I cut myself some slack because I was wrangled through puberty by my dad, a six-foot, four-inch, bearded, Jewish Papa Hemingway type. So, how do you turn out when you’re raised by a hard-drinking writer? Well, you can mix a mean drink, play poker, and bowl. You cannot cook, put on makeup, or pick out a bra that fits.

  Though I grew up idolizing my father and imitating his wit and sarcasm, when I got out into the world, I quickly found out that it isn’t what men want. At all. They want soft-spoken, nurturing women in tight skirts and tighter sweaters, with gleaming, manicured hands and formidable high heels.

  When I was twenty-four, a guy once explained my man problem to me this way: “You’re too analytical, too intellectual… too much like me.”

  “A man with a pussy. What more could you want?” I said.

  Anyway, so I’m in this goddamn meeting. I don’t open my book to read along or highlight like a good alcoholic student should. I just stare at the clock and gulp Diet Coke.

  The woman next to me—a total stranger—leans over and chirps, “Closed book equals closed mind,” and then smiles.

  I chortle, but I really want to punch her in the throat. I do not open my book. My eyes are fixed on the clock. Only seventy more minutes to go.

  Five minutes later, she leans over and whispers, “Don’t you follow along and highlight your book? I mean, it is a book study.”

  My patience has hit its breaking point, and I turn to her and say, “Listen, it’s a miracle I’m still here. I usually bolt about ten minutes into this hellish meeting and go blow some guy. So just give it a rest, okay?”

  Her mouth gapes, her eyes go big. She gives me a superior snort and turns away. I go outside and think to myself: Fuck it, let’s drink.

  I do have to say, when you’re an alcoholic or a drug addict on the verge of a relapse, nothing “makes” you get loaded. You’ve already decided days before. You have your reason. You’re just looking for an excuse.

  I have been thinking about drinking for a few weeks. I need a respite from my head and a recess from my life, and sleep and sex just aren’t cutting it. The emptiness inside is too big and too deep for either. As my whirlpool of despair grows darker and picks up speed, I am just waiting for that one small thing, that flippant remark to tip me into self-destruction. Today is that day.

  I can’t drink. I know this. It’s the odd occasion that I don’t black out and get sick immediately, and this time is no different. I don’t know if I had some delusional notion that this drinking binge would be different from all the other über grisly ones, or if I just didn’t care. For alcoholics and addicts of my variety, drinking and using is like a temporary suicide. We just don’t leave a note.

  Back in the rehab’s sober living facility, I do a little cutting. I mean if I’m going to self-destruct, why not pull out all the stops? I reslash where I’d been cutting, and as blood pours down my wrist, over the faded “x’s” and “o’s” that Amanda had drawn, I feel relief. I feel like I’m saying “fuck you” to everybody. Fuck you. Fuck him. Fuck me. Especially fuck me.

  There is a bottle of expensive vodka in my trunk, a birthday present for a friend. I’d had it in my car for a few days, which was fucking stupid. What was I thinking? Playing chicken with myself? Being arrogant in my sobriety? As I walk down the stairs to fetch it, a thought comes into my head: Don’t do this. Call your sponsor.

  “Fuck that bitch,” I say aloud to no one and continue down the stairs. I pop the trunk and pull the elegant bottle from its iridescent gift bag. I stomp back up the stairs and return to my bedroom in the sober living. Here we go again, I think. Fucking Groundhog Day.

  When I open the bottle and drink, it goes down smooth. It’s fancy stuff. I wait for that “ahhh” feeling—for that moment when ease or numbness or pleasure clicks in. Nothing. I take another swig. I wait. Again, nothing. I don’t remember the progression, but the next thing I know, I am shit-faced—I mean, really, really drunk. Then I begin the phone calls. All those things I need to tell all those people—things they really need to hear. Right now. I have no idea what I say, but I’m sure it is dramatic—confessions of secret love or venomous spewings of hidden hatred. Nothing good. Nothing I shouldn’t keep to myself.

  I call Brendan, one of the boys in my “stable.” This one is a comedian. He is ten years my junior, and blond, with prancing blue eyes and a sharp, pointy nose. He has a nice body, and he’s a decent fuck and loves to eat pussy. I’ve come to realize that comics, for the most part, are the darkest, most self-loathing and damaged people on the planet. I can say this with some certainty, as I was one myself for five years. Comics typically are either in recovery or they are full-blown addicts and/or alcoholics. The social drinker or occasional drug user comic is about as common as a rainbow-maned unicorn.

  “I’m drinking,” I warn him via text as he’s on his way over.

  “So am I!” he shoots back. He’d also been in rehab with me. Obviously this place is doing wonders.

  Twenty minutes later, he arrives to pick me up.

  “You’re drunk,” he says, annoyed.

  “No, I’m not. I’m shit-faced,” I correct him. As we drive to his house, I roll down the window and begin to throw up. A lot. It goes all down the side of his car.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks.

  “I’m fine!” I say with some irritation.

  I vaguely remember being in his dark bedroom, taking off my clothes and laying myself out on the bed in what I perceived to be a provocative, “come hither” pose.

  “Did you fucking cut yourself?”

  “Shut up. Let’s do this,” I bossily slur. He fucks me briefly, and I complain that he doesn’t eat my pussy first. I get up to go to the bathroom, and I stumble and fall backward—flat on my back, naked.

  He looks alarmed. “You all right?”

  I burst out laughing. “Of course!” But I am far from all right. I am an alcoholic who is drunk as fuck, cutting myself with a razor, having unprotected sex that I’ll barely remember, and weighing the pros and cons of suicide. No. I am not all right.

  As he drives me back to the sober living, I vomit relentlessly. Yet, instead of thinking, I should not have drank, I think, I should have just done coke. Welcome to the mind of an alcoholic addict.

  CHAPTER SIX

  No surprise, they kick me out of the rehab’s cushy sober living. I hear I am considered “resistant.” I prefer to think of it more as “invulnerable,” but whatever. Gone are the marble floors, flat-screen TVs, and gourmet chef. I’m shipped off to an independent halfway house in Tarzana. “Halfway houses” can be pretty shabby and poorly run, more about making money off addicts’ desperation than helping people find sobriety. They are notoriously overpriced and overcrowded.

  I drive, chain-smoking, over the curvy roads of the Hollywood Hills to that remote shithole part of the San Fernando Valley. My little car is packed with my few belongings. I don’t cry.

  I finally arrive at the large, gray, imposing house.

  This isn’t bad, I think. I knock on the door, and an old biker chick with long purple hair opens it. She has only one whole arm. Her other arm ends abruptly at the elbow.

  “Welcome. You must be Amy.”

  “That’s me.”

  “I’m Violet, the house manager.”

  I smile bleakly. Do I shake her other hand? I don’t know what to do.

  “I’m so happy to have another girl in the house,” she continues. “There are five guys here right now. Finally I have someone to help me get dressed.”

  Five guys? They sent a female sex addict to what’s essentially an all-male sobe
r living house? Genius.

  I try not to look at her arm. Did she lose it shooting dope? Was she born that way? I don’t ask. We go to the back patio to smoke as she reads me the litany of rules. I nod and say “no problem,” but I’m not listening. All I’m thinking is “How do I get the fuck out of here?” I feel panic building in my chest. I want to leave, but I have nowhere to go. I’ve been displaced from my marital abode. I’m not allowed back at Linda’s because her brother who owns the place has banned me—thanks to my little wrist-slitting incident. Both my parents live out of state. I mean, sure, I have a handful of close comic friends who check in with me occasionally, but most aren’t sure how to help or are too poor to. So this is home now, like it or not.

  She shows me to the tiny room that will be mine. Two single beds with ugly bedspreads and a broken TV. That night I dream that I call my ex-husband and ask him to rescue me. I sleep twelve hours but still wake up tired and dazed.

  I pad down to the kitchen. I grab a coffee cup out of the dish drainer. It’s supposed to be clean, but there’s something crusty on the lip. There’s a sign by the sink that reads “Do not leave dishes in the sink. Your mama doesn’t live here.” Funny. Welcome to living with five men.

  I grab a spoon out of the drawer. It’s bent. Heroin or magic trick?

  “Time for morning meditation!” Violet, the house manager, yells. She is in her bathrobe, holding a pack of Pall Malls in the crook of her stumpy arm.

  You can hear the groans of cranky, newly sober young men.

  “Wake up, princess. Time for morning meditation,” she calls into a dark, musty room.

  Three young guys file into the den. Two are wearing black hoodies with the hoods up. One resident is missing. He didn’t come home last night. Another, an older alcoholic who does art department on movies, is already at work. He had eight years of sobriety—twice—and is also a chemical dependency counselor, but relapsed during his recent divorce. I get it. He picked up smoking in the last six months, but he just takes two drags off a cigarette and then puts it out. The ashtray is always full of long, white, bent cigarettes.