by Amy Dresner
“Hiya! Good morning,” he said.
“Uhh, hi.” I tried not to look surprised. I was starting to come down. My palms felt moist, my mouth dry. My back ached. I didn’t want to betray my prejudice. I had never worked for a handicapped person before. Hell, I didn’t even know one.
“Come in,” he said, and with that, he whipped around in his wheelchair and started to zip through the loft. “I’m Eli.”
“Amy,” I returned.
I took a deep breath and followed him. The smell of warm oatmeal and peas hung heavy in the cold air. We passed a large rack that I would later learn was for stringing him up so he could have the lost experience of standing again. We continued into his bedroom. The odor of stale urine hit me like a right hook. I was grateful my sense of smell had been heartily deadened by regular meth use.
“This is Sage. She’s one of my assistants. She’ll teach you what to do,” he said.
Sage was a tiny ex-dancer with skin the color of burned toast and dark, messy hair. On the days she wasn’t working for this guy Eli, she worked at a hospice for AIDS patients.
“Have you ever done any nursing?” she asked in her little-girl voice.
“Nnnno. I’m kind of a… no.” They didn’t need to know what an entitled asshole I was.
“I’m confused,” I continued. “I thought this was a personal assistant job.”
“It is,” she chirped. “It’s being the personal assistant to a quadriplegic.”
“Ahh… okay,” I said, comprehending the situation. I wanted to bolt out the door at that very moment, but then I remembered my new mantra, “Yes to everything.”
“Have you ever dealt with shit?” Eli asked me bluntly. He was dead serious.
My brow furrowed. “Well I… have a cat,” I offered.
“Good enough!” he said buoyantly. For a so-called “cripple,” he was really fucking happy. It was disarming. I could walk fine and was a hundred times more miserable. Maybe there was something to learn here.
“Look, I like you, Amy. You’re funny. I know you don’t have any experience, but just give it a try, okay? If you don’t like it, you can quit. Cool?” He had hope in his eyes.
“All right,” I conceded. And with that I was hired.
I was given a set of keys and watched Sage go through the routine one time. Then I was on my own. I would show up at eight a.m. sharp. Eli would still be in bed sleeping. I’d wake him and pull the covers back. Occasionally, the pee bag attached to his catheter would have leaked onto the bed, and he’d be lying in his own cold piss for a few hours. I would stick a towel underneath him and begin the morning ritual. First I’d stretch out his atrophied legs. His legs were stick-thin and narrow, like those of a malnourished child. They would shake as I pulled them straight. I’d hold them that way until the trembling stopped and they were limp again.
I was a bit heavy then, with a heaving bosom and thick thighs. And a good thing that I was. I needed to be able to hoist his wasted body over my shoulder and then into the chair. It was there that we did his morning arm exercises. He would push against my hands in a circular motion and I would resist. But he always had to have music. His favorite was Hendrix; huge Jimi posters were plastered all over his dark, smelly bedroom.
He loved putting on this terrible ghetto accent. “My legs is broke. They don’t work no mo,” he’d joke.
Whenever I came to work, all the petty shit that I was distressed over seemed so insignificant. Because at least I could walk. And that made running away from myself so much easier.
“Are you knocking boots, Amy?”
“Knocking boots?” I asked breathily, as I pushed against his surprisingly strong but feeble-looking arms.
“Getting laid. Making love. Having sex.”
“Oh. No. Not really.”
“Better get on that shit. You never know when, all of a sudden… Boom! You’re in a chair.”
“I’ll get right on that,” I said, Hendrix blaring.
“God, I love Jimi. Foxy lady, doo, doo, doo…” he sang.
Eli used to have everything. He was beautiful and young and rich, with loads of musical talent and gaggles of girls. He showed me a video of himself before the motorcycle accident, and I wept like a bitch, seeing that wasted potential and how cruel fate could be. And then I saw myself—the life I’d lost to depression, self-destruction, and procrastination. I was only twenty-four then, but I had been in my own way forever, blocking the exits as my fear and self-hatred consumed me.
“Tell me one of your spoken word thingies,” he said.
“Really? It’s eight in the morning,” I said as I snapped on a rubber glove. I bent down and inserted a finger into his ass and made concentric circles until he was stimulated and took a shit.
I’d always been pretty vain. I don’t consider myself particularly beautiful, though I’m by no means ugly. Men seem to find me rather attractive, which has always both puzzled and soothed me. But it never touched that deep void in me, that bottomless trench of self-loathing. Eli made all that bullshit seem so inconsequential. Yes, his body was broken and maimed and rotting from disuse, but his soul was so fucking vibrant, it made his paralytic state almost immaterial. He was more alive than anyone I’d ever met.
“Are we taking a bath today, sir?” I asked.
“Yes! I think we will do a little sudsy.”
I began to run his bath while he chatted to me from his potty chair. I always acted as if nothing I was doing, nothing about him, was out of the ordinary. He was so vulnerable, so dependent, that I wanted to reclaim and give back to him any dignity and honor I could. It’s what I’d want done for me.
I rolled him over to the bathtub, hoisted him over my shoulder, and laid him carefully into the water. What a relief it must have been to have those twisted, heavy limbs float delicately, weightlessly in the warm water. He would dunk his ears into the water so he couldn’t hear me; he could just see my ridiculously expressive face ask him what he wanted for breakfast. He would laugh and laugh. I didn’t care that he was laughing at me. I was just happy to see him happy.
Eli could move his arms, but his hands were forever curled into a clawlike position. I would take a washcloth and rub it with soap and hand it to him. He would take his little pincerlike hand and clumsily rub the soapy rag over his chest. The places he couldn’t reach, I would wash for him. But I never washed him like a child. I washed him like you’d wash a sick friend.
I would then heave his wet, stiff body onto my shoulder and into the chair and wheel him over to the bed, where I’d dry him off. He’d be shivering but couldn’t feel the cold. I’d attach a condom to his penis, which had a tube leading down to a urine bag that was Velcroed around his ankle.
“What do you want to wear today?” I’d ask.
“My tie-dye shirt. The purple one.”
“You fucking hippie,” I teased.
I’d dress him and put him back in the chair. He’d follow me in his chair into the kitchen, where I’d make his breakfast.
“What are we eating this morning, master?” I asked him.
“Oatmeal… with peas.”
“You are so weird.”
I’d cook him up this bizarre concoction. When it was piping hot, I’d put the bowl on the table. There was this clamp thing that would hold the spoon or fork, and I’d insert the spoon and slide the clamp onto his bent little hand.
“What’s your T-shirt say?” he asked with a mouth full of oats.
“It says ‘slave,’ and it has a ball and chain because I think relationships are like prison.”
“Couldn’t agree more. Gotta get in, get yourself a little somethin’ somethin’, and get out. That’s what I say.”
I laughed as I scrubbed the pot clean.
I didn’t do this job for money. It really didn’t pay much. And though the hours were short, they were early, which didn’t agree with the budding drug addict in me. Despite all of this, I was never late. I was always on time. He needed me. I had never been nee
ded. I had never felt useful. I had always been the black hole of want and despair that friends and family threw time, love, and money into. I had been the person that everybody needed to take care of. Yet here I had become the caretaker. That ability was in me. I was relieved and pleased.
When we’d go out in public, to run errands or eat Indian food (his favorite), people either ignored him out of discomfort or looked at him with the same kind of pity and horror they’d give a sideshow freak. Both reactions made me angry. Didn’t they realize he was just a young guy who’d been in an accident? He still liked good food and good drugs and fast women. He just couldn’t chase them like he used to.
One morning, I came to work, and my pupils must have been huge, because he knew. Immediately. And the jig was up.
He didn’t ask me if I was on drugs, so I didn’t have to deny it. There was a trust between us, an unspoken intimacy, and I didn’t want to disrespect it with lies.
“Listen, Amy. I’ve lost of a lot of friends to speed. I can’t be around it. So if you’re going to do that shit, you can’t work for me,” he said calmly.
I was still in the first flush of my druggie love affair. Speed had me wrapped around its evil finger, and I was as loyal as a speed freak could be.
“Well, I’m not ready to put it down right now,” I said bluntly, with a little impunity. And with that, I quit. Or was fired. I guess it was a bit of both.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I take a day off from community service and go see my hairdresser, the same one I’ve had since before I was married. He is a buff, straight Latino guy who wears tight rock T-shirts and works at a chichi salon in Beverly Hills. Just because I’m a dirt-poor criminal and divorcée doesn’t mean I have to look like one.
He takes my hair down from its ratty bun.
“Oh, my God, what is in your hair? Is that semen?”
“No, not this time. It’s probably paint… from community labor.”
A sixty-something woman with a $4,000 handbag and an aggressive facelift looks over.
“Shit happens,” I say and shrug.
“You’re so gonna get me fired,” my hairdresser mutters.
“You love me!” I brag.
As I’m leaving the salon, I get a text from another comic I’ve been fucking.
“Can I cum in your pussy?”
“I can’t take the romance,” I shoot back.
“Meet me @ the Comedy Store. I wanna fuck u there.”
“Where @ the Comedy Store?”
“There are plenty of places 2 do it.”
“Sounds like u have done this B4.”
“Y or N?” he demands.
“OMG, calm down, horndog.”
Of course, I oblige, having the world’s shittiest boundaries.
After it’s over, he gives me a peck on the cheek and says, “Always a pleasure, big homie.”
Big homie? Please don’t fuck me and then call me “big homie.” Jesus. I used to be a CEO’s wife. But anybody with a long-term fuckbuddy will tell you the same thing: it’s hot at the beginning and all business at the end.
As I drive away, I feel a burning in my crotch. Perfect. When I finally get home, I take a look-see downstairs to see what the problem could be. As I pull down my underwear, I see the spearmint gum he had been chewing.
“I found ur gum… in my panties,” I text him.
“Was wondering where that went!”
Just then, Terry, my roommate, walks into our bedroom.
“Hiiii!”
“Hey,” I say to her. “Weird question: how do you get gum out of clothing?”
“Well, what kind of clothing?” Terry asks.
“Underwear.”
“Oh, my God. I don’t even wanna know… You are so gross.”
I know I’m really in the fold now at community service because they’re letting me in on the secret super-cheap Latino markets—and feeding me homemade chicharrón—deep-fried pork rinds. Plus, I now know that horniado means “horny” in Spanish. I can’t say I’m developing a taste for ranchero music, but it won’t be long till I can at least boast a tolerance.
I’m in the pickup truck. Mauricio is our crew boss today. He’s young, husky, and a smart-ass, but not particularly bright. He talks a lot. I think he has a mild crush on me, because he gives me endless shit.
“I do murals on the side. I don’t really like to draw, but I’m into vandalism.”
“Nice. So you’re probably spray-painting all the shit that I paint over every day.”
“You know what’s funny? That you used to be a comedian, and you’re not funny at all.”
“You know what’s even funnier? That I’m listening to a chunky twenty-six-year-old Latino who wrangles convicts for a living tell me what’s funny or not.”
A new guy slides into our van. He’s been moved over from the other crew.
Without missing a beat I say, “I smell pot.”
“You can smell it on me?” he says, not a little freaked out.
“Honey, I’ve been in six rehabs. I’m better than most drug dogs.”
Turns out he was busted for pot (he wouldn’t tell us how much), but it obviously didn’t faze him, because he is sporting a baseball cap with an embroidered marijuana leaf and socks with smiling ganja plants on them.
We hit the streets (or go out to “rock the broom,” as I now call it). It’s the day after New Year’s and we’re doing the Santa Monica Boulevard route. It’s particularly gnarly with streamers, flyers, and drug paraphernalia.
The new stoner is sweeping up a wadded shirt on the sidewalk, and underneath it is a pile of human shit. He gets poo on his broom and flips out.
“Why is this happening to me?! I’m a good person!”
I keel over, laughing. Just then my phone bings. It’s a text from Linda: “I’m at a BBQ with a supermodel.” I look around and then quickly type back: “Good for you. I’m sweeping up human poo with a bunch of criminals.”
There is an abandoned building we always pass on this street sweeping route, and this older blond tweaker has taken up residence there. She wears dirty white spandex shorts that show off her twig-thin, bruised legs. She has no belongings, and her face is overly tanned and caving in from life on the streets and the decay of meth. She sits on the wall and swings her legs maniacally. I sheepishly get a little closer to sweep the leaves from the front of the building. My presence doesn’t even register. She’s in her own world. I know it all too well.
After I crashed and burned on speed in San Francisco at twenty-four, my parents moved me back to L.A. They had both moved out of state by then, but their thinking was: “She was sober there. She’ll be sober there again.” After getting back to L.A., I managed to stay off speed for a few months but I was compensating by drinking two bottles of red wine a night. Alone. At the time I was writing yet another book I would not finish while reading a lot of Bukowski, Kerouac, and Hunter Thompson. I could easily rationalize my escalating drinking because all the great writers were alcoholics, didn’t ya know?
One day, I was poking around an antiques store.
“And how are you today, miss?” the perky gay man asked me. He had thick dark hair, perfect white teeth, and smooth, bulging biceps.
“Ehh. I’m okay.”
“Just okay? Girl, what you need is a rail!”
I don’t know what kind of energy I was giving off that day, but that store owner saw something deep inside me: that I was a junkie, and I always would be. And with that, I was back in. From one gay storeowner, I navigated the entire Los Angeles speed scene. Within months, I was buying from everyone—homeless Hollywood hoodlums to Mexican gangsters.
One of my friends from San Francisco came down to L.A. to visit. We stayed up on speed for a ridiculous seventeen days. He was a bisexual skinhead, which always confused me, but I came to find out this combo was not uncommon. He had delicate features offset by a bald head so shiny that you could almost see your reflection in it. His red suspenders hung loosely on his narrow
frame. You could hear him coming from blocks away as he stomped on the pavement with his steel-toed Doc Martens, whistling Fear songs.
By the end of our seventeen-day run, we were writing a new bible based on Emerson and Nietzsche and were convinced we’d found the mathematical equation for God. We had been so high for so long we could barely speak English. The night before he left to go back to San Francisco, he pierced my lip with a large safety pin as we swigged Jack Daniel’s and made a blood pact to seal our friendship. The good thing about tweaking for more than two weeks straight is that you don’t really feel pain. The bad thing is that your judgment is off, and you end up with sewing paraphernalia in your face.
As I dove back into speed, I learned that most tweakers are broke and are considered the bottom of the drug addiction barrel. The tweakers in L.A. seemed less creative and more desperate than the S.F. speed freaks. They were older, had been in the game longer, had been to prison. In L.A., I had multiple dealers, as they would all get busted with some regularity, and I couldn’t be without. By this point, I had a pretty big habit.
I had one dealer who’d spent most of his adult life in the pen. He was covered head-to-toe in prison tats and ran around with this extremely skinny black guy who claimed to be one of Michael Jackson’s cousins or nephews or uncles or something. Who knows whether that was bullshit or not? I learned not to ask too many questions. I’d be friendly, give them my money, and get my drugs before they tried to hurt me or fuck me.
I had another dealer who was a woman who “washed checks”—where you literally wash away the original ink on a check so that you can rewrite it with a different amount to somebody else. She also sold car parts on the black market. “Hey, if you can get any parts from early nineties Civics, I’ll take ’em,” she said. She once suggested that I deposit some washed checks for her, and they’d cut me a percentage, but I instantly pictured myself in an orange jumpsuit being some huge black chick’s “bitch” and politely declined.
