My Fair Junkie

by Amy Dresner

  CHAPTER TEN

  I’m driving home, exhausted, sweaty, and covered in paint from another day of community labor. Only twenty-three more days of this shit to go. Holy fuck, am I going to make it? My phone bings. A text from my ex. Ugh. This should be fun.

  “Well, it’s official. We’re divorced. Best of luck to you.”

  Best of luck? The formality alone should make me laugh. That’s what you’d say to an applicant you interviewed who didn’t get the job, not somebody you were married to for almost four years. But it doesn’t make me laugh, it makes me sad. Really sad. I’m struck by the complete lack of sentimentality, like he was casually flicking a bug off his sleeve.

  I walk into my room at the sober living, and Terry is there.

  “Hey!” she pipes up.

  “Hey,” I say dejectedly.

  “How’d it go today?”

  “Exhausting, as usual.”

  “Your eye is red.”

  “I’ve been crying.”

  “No… like it’s really, really red.”

  I look in the mirror, and my right eye is pomegranate red and the corner is swollen. “Fucking great. What is that?”

  Terry inspects it with nursely precision. “Conjunctivitis. You’ve got pinkeye.”

  “Perfect. More treasures from the street.”

  I take my eye into the shower, do my usual Silkwood-style scrubdown, and then lie down on the bed. I’m just dozing off when Terry yelps, “Oh, my God!”

  “Wha…?”

  “You know Brendan? From our rehab?”

  “Yeah, I used to fuck him. Why? He hitting on you?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Brendan, at thirty-three years old, died of a heart attack in his sleep. He was having a pretty severe relapse. We hadn’t spoken for a while because, after my drunken debacle at his place, he deemed me “crazy” and cut all ties. But when I’d last seen him, he’d been on his newest kick to “moderate” his drinking, “The Sinclair Method.” The Sinclair Method involves taking naltrexone, an opioid antagonist they typically give to people with compulsivity problems (sex, gambling, etc.). You take this drug before you drink, and it’s supposed to quell that insatiable urge that makes alcoholics keep drinking well after the party is over. Well, Brendan’s “moderate” drinking on naltrexone included putting away fifteen beers in a few hours while gambling on the latest game and having sex with me, so I was none too impressed. And now he was dead. Ultimately, of alcoholism. So that Sinclair shit obviously didn’t work.

  “His funeral is next Sunday,” Terry told me. “You wanna go?”

  “Yeah. For sure… You mind if I turn the lights down? I’m so tired.”

  I hit the switch and lie down in my bed, staring at the ceiling, tears streaming down my face in the dark. I can’t believe Brendan died. Jesus Christ. I wish I had been able to say good-bye or sorry or even just have a laugh about that vomit-splattered drunken rendezvous.

  “What were you crying about earlier?” Terry asks in the dark.

  “My divorce is official,” I say.

  I’m now a forty-two-year-old divorcée. A fucking cliché, clinging to my youth through meaningless sex with young dudes, one of whom is now dead. God, I’m pathetic.

  “That’s great. Congratulations. He was an asshole.”

  “Yeah, but so was I. I don’t know. I feel fucked up about it, like I’m still in mourning. Not so much for what we had, but for what we could have had. I swear, divorce is kind of like grieving a death, except the person is still alive, hates you, and doesn’t want to give you any money. Does that make any sense?”

  “Totally.”

  “I’m single again, and that’s cool, but now I’m a divorcée… somebody good enough to marry but too damaged to stay married to.”

  There’s a long silence, and then I add, “But hey, I’m still alive. I still have a chance to fuck up another relationship. Brendan doesn’t even have that.”

  When I’m not chipping away at my community labor, I’m either having empty sex with people who don’t love me (mostly comics) or attending Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous meetings to try to stop doing it. I did stand-up professionally for almost five years and was married the majority of that time. Back then, all the fellow comedians who wanted to fuck me were grudgingly respectful of my vows. However, once they heard I was going through a divorce, I was inundated. Didn’t matter if they were married or living with their girlfriends, they were on my jock. Finding comics who want to fuck is like finding a vegan who wants to talk about being a vegan. Beyond easy.

  Just like with drugs, I keep thinking I have a handle on my sex addiction. I get a few weeks or even months under my belt without “acting out,” and I tell myself, Oh, I got this. And then I relapse. What I’ve come to realize is that the beast of sex addiction takes lengthy naps. During those naps, I am convinced I am cured. But then it is on me again, like a spirit possession. I notice that the urge to check out with sex is often triggered by a call from my ex and all the feelings of rejection and trauma that he provokes in me. Whatever the cause, the urge gets stronger and stronger until it cannot be denied, and I cave. There’s even an anticipatory trembling on the way to meet a date, oddly reminiscent of the rush to meet the dealer. But afterward, I almost always feel empty—filled only with shame. That’s when I make those meaningless promises to myself: That was the last time… never again. Until the next time, of course.

  What is becoming increasingly clear to me is that I am lying to myself. What I really want is love and companionship and tenderness. Sex is a cheap second prize but the only thing I think I deserve or can find. Also, it’s weird how I can have great sex with people I don’t feel connected to, but I can’t have even decent sex with somebody I care about. This is concerning. Intimacy disorder, anyone? It feels like sex and love are in two different boxes for me, and the idea of combining them requires a level of intimacy and vulnerability that is nothing short of terrifying.

  In the meantime, I get busy rationalizing my promiscuity as being “free” and “liberated.” I can fuck like a guy, I say to myself. I’m not a slut. I’m a female stud. It’s total bullshit, and deep down, I know it. I bond to each of these losers I fuck, and then I need to fuck somebody else to break the attachment, and then somebody else to break that attachment. It’s a horrible cycle.

  I’ve been sleeping with this one comic, Ethan, for months, but I have known him for years. He’s also sober and lives out of town but travels for his day job for some consulting firm. He’s in town every few weeks, staying at some shitty Travelodge, and I go there and we have aggressive sex, and I leave.

  One time, he doesn’t kiss me. I shouldn’t be upset, because he’s a terrible kisser, but the reality of what I am to him, what this is to him, becomes brutally evident. I glare at him and blurt out, “I get that we’re ‘sport fucking,’ but for God’s sake, if you’re going to treat me like a whore, leave some money on the table next time. Honestly, I’ve had more intimate encounters with the fucking barista at Starbucks.”

  Ethan always hands me a hot wet towel after we have sex so I can wipe myself down, like I’m a customer at a sushi restaurant or sitting in one of the better seats on an airline. It is all so clinical and impersonal. But Ethan can be funny and he’s a good fuck, so I keep coming back for more. However, each time, I feel more emotionally stripped—sometimes even sobbing as I drive home—so I hope that I’m starting to hit my bottom.

  Around that time, I stumble upon a quote from John Barrymore: “Sex: the thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount of trouble.” It seems almost biblical in its revelation… Too bad I don’t believe in the Bible.

  When I first start going to Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) meetings, I absolutely despise them. Ironically, the people in SLAA are the most unattractive crew I’ve ever seen gathered in one place. It’s astonishing to me that these people are getting laid, let alone complaining about it. It’s also kind of hard for me to take the “di
sease” of love and sex addiction seriously—as this “fatal illness”—when I’ve had needles in my neck. Personally, I’m on the fence about whether it is a disease. Sex and love addiction certainly feel compulsive at times, but the disease mentality pushes it for me. I think it’s more about getting a hit of dopamine and acting out unresolved childhood issues. But if there is one thing that really bothers me about twelve-step programs, it is their need to pathologize everything.

  In case you’re not familiar with SLAA meetings, when you speak (which is called your “share”), you are not supposed to indulge in “graphic descriptions” of your “acting out” behavior. If you do, some other member might raise their hand while you’re speaking to stop you because they feel they are being “triggered.” How mortifying, right? Needless to say, I live in terror of this happening to me. Every time I share at a meeting and am not immediately shut down by somebody, I feel a weird sense of relief and elation, like I just riverdanced through a field of IEDs and still have both my legs.

  I had a SLAA sponsor for a while. When I first met her, she told me that I wasn’t allowed to even talk to men for thirty days. That felt very unrealistic. When I told her how out of control I was sexually, she adjusted, making her only requirements that I use a condom and not fuck a certain specific sweaty, promiscuous movie star. Well, okay. That seemed doable.

  Despite her more than generous guidelines, I began acting out sporadically and stopped calling her. Then, of course, I ran into her in an AA meeting. SLAA considers itself the graduate program of AA. They feel that it’s only after you get sober that you realize your real problem is relationships. Nothing like the one-upmanship of twelve-step programs.

  “How are you, mama?” she asks and gives me a tight hug.

  “I’m okay. I haven’t been acting out,” I say quickly. It had been almost a week, which was a lifetime for me then.

  “That’s good,” she says. “Call me.”

  “The idea of acting out is kind of grossing me out.”

  “For now,” she adds.

  “But what’s the deal when you stop acting out? Like now, suddenly, all these dudes are on my dick…” As soon as I say it, I realize how crass I sound. But I plow on. “Like yesterday, I was crying and on my period and two guys texted me, trying to have sex with me…”

  She smiles. “That’s the way it works,” she says. “You set a boundary, and it gets tested.”

  Let me explain the lingo here for a second. Boundaries, or “bottom lines,” as they’re known in SLAA, are behaviors you will not engage in or people you will not engage with. So not breaking your “bottom lines” is what determines your sexual “sobriety.” This makes sobriety in SLAA very personal and quite amorphous, unlike AA sobriety, which is “nothing that alters you from the neck up.” So, for example, one guy confessed to fucking a prostitute, but because prostitutes weren’t one of his “bottom lines,” he didn’t consider it a relapse and was still “keeping his time.” Get it?

  I smile a little and thank her, but honestly, I find this a bit far-fetched. I mean, doesn’t the universe have better and more important things to worry about than my pussy?

  At most of the SLAA meetings I frequent, very few people raise their hands as willing to sponsor. The fact that the program seems to have a lot of sheep and very few shepherds doesn’t instill much hope in me. I also take note that unlike AA, which gives you your first chip after a month of staying off the sauce, SLAA gives chips for one day, two days, and three days of “sexual sobriety,” as well as every month. This further encourages my doubt that the program is feasible for any length of time. Then again, perhaps it’s just me. Besides, being newly sober off substances, I’m more concerned with not picking up a drink or drug than not picking up a guy.

  Amanda, my old roomie from rehab, has recently relapsed and is back in treatment. They are forcing her to go to SLAA, too.

  “I hate it, because everyone in there is gross, and they all seem to have a boyfriend or a girlfriend that they can’t stop cheating on, and I’m single forever,” she tells me. “Plus, I sit there and think about them fucking. Soooo gross!”

  Besides all of us sexual compulsives, SLAA has the self-identified “sexual anorexics,” people who have withdrawn completely from sex and love out of a fear of intimacy or a fear of relapsing. Of course, this type of celibacy is not recovery—just the other end of the spectrum of active sex and love addiction—and the program makes that clear. Still, to me, it feels pretty damn lightweight. At one meeting, one of these sexual anorexics spoke of her disdain for the many platonic hugs she was getting from men recently.

  I laughed and thought, “Oh, honey, I wish my problem was just hugs. Try getting fucked by a twenty-eight-year-old AA newcomer in the backseat of your car, and then we’ll talk.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I pray I get put on Esteban’s crew, not only because he is happy and hilarious, but because he only does painting, and that’s a much sweeter gig than sweeping the streets. When I’m with him, we spend most days in Glassell Park painting over graffiti. It’s looking like “Cornejo” has been busy here. Every wall and garage door has “Cornejo rules,” “Cornejo was here,” “Cornejo is king” spray-painted all over it. A week later we come back, and “RIP Cornejo” is everywhere. Evidently, somebody besides us got very sick of Cornejo.

  Esteban had come to this particular community labor outlet eighteen years before on a gun possession charge. Actually, it was two guns, and one had been a sheriff’s. He had a stunning 140 days of community labor ahead of him, but the crew bosses immediately noticed his wizardlike ability to color-match paint, and, after he was off probation, they invited him to come work for them. He declined. He already had a job that paid well at a watch factory. Two weeks later, they called him again, offering him the pay rate of his choice and he took the job. That was sixteen years ago. So he was cool because he had been one of us. There was no judgment from Esteban. He understood that plenty of people drive drunk or get in fights with their spouses. We were just unlucky enough to get caught.

  It’s 10:34 a.m. on a Thursday. I am slaving away with the roller, skinny arms trying to balance the extension pole, paint dripping onto my sweaty face, and Esteban comes over and says, “Tranquilo, Amy. Take it easy. Easy,” and flashes his big white smile.

  I laugh. I’m getting too intense, as usual.

  I go to pull a big pail of paint out of the truck. It’s super heavy.

  “You got it?” he asks.

  “Yes.” I smile, my bony shoulder drooping under the weight.

  “Yeah, you’re strong. You beat up your husband.”

  “Well, not exactly.” I laugh.

  We finish the job and pile back into the truck. Then Esteban starts in on the most disturbing story. He had watched a movie the night before. It was based on a true story.

  “So this girl,” he says. “She was only twelve years old. And her uncle take her to live with him and have sex with him in the mountains. She don’t know is not okay. She only twelve. But he don’t want her to get pregnant, so he take her to a bruja… how do you say? Witch? Yes, he take her to a witch, and the witch… she put a potato up her bagina…”

  Bagina? “Bagina” is instantly my favorite word. Even over “pussy,” which took me till my forties to say without flinching. “Bagina” is fucking hilarious. I’m using it. I don’t care if I never get laid again.

  Esteban continues, “So, for two years she don’t have no baby. But she get sick. Really sick. And so her uncle take her to the doctor. And he look up into her bagina and see the potato. It grow root. And the root go into her stomach. And then she die. Lucky for her she was not in Mexico, because there we eat yuccas, and yuccas are very big!”

  All the guys laugh hysterically. I chuckle uncomfortably. I’m the only female in the truck.

  We pull into a McDonald’s.

  “Okay, break time!” he says. “Ten minutes, guys!”

  We all pile out of the truck to smoke or grab the
swill they call coffee at fast-food places.

  I’m shocked when two of the guys come back with hash browns. After a story like that, how the fuck could they eat potatoes?

  Toward the end of the day, we stop at a street corner to paint over some new posters plastered on the power box. It’s pretty much a weekly stop. There’s an old black homeless man in a wheelchair. He is always here. He has huge swollen legs and feet and stinks to high heaven. He has the most piercing ice-blue eyes I’ve ever seen, and when he smiles, you see that his two upper front teeth are missing.

  “Do you like your job?” he asks me.

  “It’s not a job. It’s community service,” I confess.

  He just smiles with kind eyes.

  “Can I help you move over a bit so we can paint here?” I ask him.

  “I got it. Thank you, though.” He wheels himself over a bit and then begins to fix his hair with his fingers. A large silver rhinestone ring sparkles in the sun. I’m mesmerized.

  I used to be very uncomfortable when I saw handicapped people. I’d either avoid looking at them or just thank the God (that I didn’t believe in) that it wasn’t me. That all changed when I was living in San Francisco in my twenties.

  Back then, I was ripping through my trust fund thanks to my speed addiction, and my father was getting suspicious. I needed a job. I’d left the dishwashing job and been fired from the waitressing gig. I needed money. I looked in the local paper. “Video director seeking assistant.” Sounded interesting. Back to my Hollywood roots. I called and got an interview for the next day.

  I took the train downtown to the financial district. This “video director” lived in a big loft on Kearny Street. I knocked on the metal door. It seemed like ages before it opened. I looked around anxiously. It was eight a.m. and I was still up from the night before and the night before that. The sun was coming up. My eyes burned. I looked down and noticed that my hands were a little swollen. They felt tight. I chewed on the inside of my cheek. Finally the door opened. A frail young man in his late twenties with gnarled, bent hands sat in an electric wheelchair. He was smiling and wearing a silly knitted hat.