by Amy Dresner
“You take this to the court.”
“Gotcha. Thank you.”
I contact my asshole criminal attorney to ask him to meet me in court for my final appearance.
“I’ll need seven hundred dollars to do that.”
“It’s one appearance. It’s the end to what we started. I can’t pay you any more money, nor should I have to.”
“I can’t show up without payment.”
Two days later, I get an email from him asking me to post a glowing review on his website. Riiiight.
I call the court clerk and explain the situation. She tells me that it’s ridiculous and says that the judge will order him to appear.
I go back to court on my own, and, of course, my lawyer doesn’t show, so I am assigned a public defender. I piss off the bailiff by sitting in the wrong row. You’re not supposed to sit in the front row, and I apparently can’t read anymore.
They play this strange video before the judge comes in, explaining that you’re in court because you’ve been accused of a crime and that you have certain rights. I find it surreal. It’s one of those moments where you step back and think, “Umm… this wasn’t on my life itinerary.”
When they call my case, I’m incredibly nervous and keep interrupting the judge to explain things. Luckily, he’s a kind man and sees that I’m new to the criminal life. My charges are dismissed. Holy shit… this ordeal is finally over.
When Mariana tells me that I’m going to get yet another roommate, I decide to move out. I can’t stay in sober living forever. It’s so easy to think you have your shit together when you’re only around people who are just weeks off booze or drugs. But it’s a false sense of success and security, and I know it. It’s time. Time to get out of this recovery bubble, put on my big-girl panties, and go out into the real world.
I’ve been in some sort of “treatment” for more than three years, ever since my marriage crumbled. So the thought of going “out there” is reminiscent of how I felt at twenty-one, when I was graduating from the cozy confines of college. I guess I feel a bit…“institutionalized”; you know, like those people who spend ten years in a psych hospital or prison and then forget how to function in the free world.
What will happen when I’m on my own? Will I abuse my new freedom? Will I sink into a depression? Will I do shots of Jack Daniel’s and have sex with strangers?
I give my notice to Mariana, and I burst into tears.
“You’re family,” she says softly to me. “You can always come home, babe.”
“Thank you,” I sniffle.
Still, I am terrified. And I’m terrified that I’m terrified.
As generally defiant as I am, as sure as I am that I’ll love my “freedom,” I also know from previous experience that I do best when I’m in a structured environment. As the kid of divorced parents, I was shuffled around a lot—between houses, cities, and even countries—so moving is incredibly destabilizing for me. I know that moving is generally considered one of the most stressful things any person can go through. But when you’re already unstable inside, a big outside shift can feel thoroughly overwhelming.
I look unsuccessfully on Craigslist for a decent place with a roommate who might not be a serial killer or prolific drug user. I have no money for furniture, and I lost all my stuff in the divorce, so it has to come furnished. Everything in my price range (eight hundred dollars) in Los Angeles proper is a veritable shithole: small, dark rooms, shabbily decorated, dreary curtains obscuring tiny windows, shared bathrooms.
Trent, a lanky Canadian stoner and my onetime writing partner, offers me his place during the two months that he’s visiting his family in Vermont. He’d rather have me than some stranger, he says. I can pay whatever I can afford. Great. Except that it’s… in Inglewood, a primarily lower income black neighborhood near LAX.
“Oh,” I say. “You mean, like, by the airport?”
“Kind of. Come check it out.”
I drive down to his pad. From West Hollywood, it’s easily a thirty to forty-five-minute trip, even without traffic.
I text him when I’m there. It’s a shit-brown boxy stucco building, probably built in the fifties, with security bars on every window. He comes out and opens the locked front gate, and I follow him up to his apartment.
“Welcome. It’s not much, but it’s mine.”
His place is pretty sparse: white tile floors, very few windows, white walls, no TV, very quiet. There’s one photo of him and his daughter and a strange collection of vintage pocketknives. A meditation pillow sits on the floor by one wall. The place feels almost monastic.
“You can fuck in my bed. I’ve yet to. Go ahead and christen it. Just don’t muck it up too much. And be easy on it. I built the frame.”
My immediate thoughts are: 1) nobody—and I mean nobody—will haul their ass all the way down here to visit me, and 2) I will get super depressed in this place and die alone in Inglewood.
“I’ll take it.” I smile.
I call Linda, who makes a plan to come over to the sober living and help me pack up. In my closet, there are boxes I hadn’t dared open in years… bail bond paperwork from my arrest, divorce lawyer files, criminal attorney files, worksheets from rehab, bills from the psych ward—all souvenirs of a life destroyed by addiction.
“We need to go to the Container Store,” Linda says.
“I fucking loathe that place. It’s all weirdos like you with OCD who like to put things into cool boxes. And Japanese girls… lots of Japanese girls.”
Linda ignores my complaints and drags me there. I groan as we walk in. Linda is in polypropylene box heaven, stacking up different sizes in a cart she’s ordered me to push.
“Isn’t this fun?”
“Eat a dick,” I say. I look at a price tag. “This shit is expensive! Being messy is cheaper. Why can’t we just use cardboard boxes again?”
“Shut it,” she says.
She drags me there two more times, and on my third and final trip within five hours, I finally get it. In a tired, robotic voice I say to the cashier, “I now have a false sense of security and control over my life and destiny. I no longer feel the laws of entropy apply to me. Is that what this store is for?”
“Umm… yeah, I guess,” he says dryly.
After Linda and I pack up all the boxes, we throw them into our two cars and wagon train down to Inglewood.
After unlocking three different locks, I open the door to my new temporary home.
“Ta-da!”
Linda pokes her head in the doorway. “Wow, and I thought I didn’t like a lot of shit around…”
“Yeah he’s into… uh, minimalism.”
Once we’ve dragged everything into the apartment, she heads toward the door. “Hey, call me if you’re freaking out,” she says.
“Thanks, mama.”
The door closes behind her, and there I am. I put on music. Loudly. I’ve always used loud music to alter my mood. Well, truth be told, I’ve used just about anything to alter my mood. I say aloud to nobody, “It’s going to be okay.”
Trent’s place has no plants. No pets. Just a few guitars and a keyboard. The sofa is a futon. The coffee table is some upcycled thing he found on the street. I drag my suitcase into the bedroom. It’s hot. No central air, but there’s a ceiling fan that slowly moves the stifling air around. There are bent white blinds that cover a dirty window looking out onto a tiny courtyard and into the apartments of the next depressing building.
I wander back into the living room. There is a small window above his makeshift dining table. It looks out onto the back porch of a shoddy house that is covered with assorted bits of discarded furniture. I see a huge black guy with dreads down to his waist doing flies with free weights on a plastic chair.
It hits me: I do not want to be alone. And, even worse, I want to be with Bradley. I know he’s in L.A., about to start filming an independent movie. Before he came back from New York, we had an interesting/shit-tastic phone conversation.
; “Look,” he says, “I’m coming out to L.A. to shoot a film next week, and I want to see you, but I’m going to have twelve-hour days, and I can’t have any pressure from you to hang out and I can’t have any of that ‘I’m not texting you back quickly enough’ crap. I don’t mean to be a dick, but if you start doing that shit, I will hang up on you.”
“Wow. Okay. Well, I won’t text or call at all. How’s that? I’ll just be here when you need me… like Domino’s.”
It’s been a week since that exchange and against my better judgment, expecting nothing, I text Bradley: “1st nite in my new place!”
He miraculously texts back right away and invites himself over. “Nice! Send me the address. I’ll be there by 11 tonight.”
“See you later :),” I coolly text back.
Whoa! Fucker wastes no time. The refrigerator is bare so I quickly run to the nearest 7-Eleven to get some drinks and snacks. As I’m walking back to my car, a very skinny black guy with glossy eyes, sporting an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt, asks me for money.
“Hey, excuse me, miss. Can I get sixty-five cents for a hot dog?”
I hand him a dollar and say, “I used to be a drug addict. I get it.”
A huge smile comes over his face.
“Thank you for your compassion. Can I get a hug?”
“Sure.”
My first night in Inglewood, and I’m hugging a crackhead. This should be an interesting two months.
When I return to the apartment, Bradley is already out front.
“Whassup?” I say, trying to sound casual.
“Not property value, I’ll tell you that,” he says, referring to the bars on the windows, and then flashes me that dimpled smile.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The neighbor to my right in this Inglewood complex is a young muscle-bound kid from Nebraska who makes sure to tell me that he overheard me having sex the other night.
“Thin walls,” he says with a lascivious grin.
“Oh, God.” I am mortified.
“It’s all good. I’m friends with lots of very sexually liberated people. When I heard you, I thought, ‘get it, girl.’”
I smile awkwardly.
“Want some weed?” he asks.
“Thanks, I’m good. I’ve been in rehab half a dozen times.”
“For… sex addiction?” he asks, in all seriousness.
“Umm… no.” I can’t tell if he’s hitting on me or trying to bond over twelve-step programs. These things aren’t mutually exclusive, unfortunately.
The whole building smells like weed. I regularly hear a young black couple with a newborn baby having horrendous screaming matches. The Korean family below me is eerily quiet, and they never say a word to me. I imagine inside their apartment it’s just a lot of nodding. Jack, my alcoholic Vietnam vet neighbor, has a daily “garage sale”—always with the same stuff: three vacuum cleaners and one chair that he’s refinished. Bradley thinks it’s a front for running numbers or drugs, but I’m not so sure. Jack and his vacuum cleaners just seem lonely, and if I don’t rush straight to my car, I get stuck in a forty-minute conversation about God knows what.
It’s a blisteringly hot summer. Trent’s place has one small wall AC unit in the living room. Sometimes I sleep in there on the futon, but usually I sweat it out in the bedroom, the overhead fan whirling. When the neighbors aren’t arguing, it’s peacefully quiet at night. On one of the hottest nights, I’m tossing and turning. I keep checking my phone for texts from Bradley. Nothing. Finally I turn my phone off and go to sleep.
I wake up a few hours later and look at my phone. It’s 1:32. Two missed calls from Bradley and a text that reads: “Call me ASAP. Urgent.”
I take out my night guard (which I have yet to introduce to Bradley for fear of killing his boner forever) and call.
“What’s going on? I just woke up and saw your texts. You’re scaring me.”
“I’m scared! Tomorrow we’re shooting my biggest scenes and I’m not prepared for shit.”
“You got this, I’m sure.”
“I’ll pay you if you come read lines with me.”
“What?”
“I know it’s late. I really need your help. I’ll pay you. That should work; you’re a Jew.”
“You don’t need to pay me. I’ll come,” I say. “But I have to Skype with my boss at eight thirty a.m., so I need to work from your place tomorrow, okay?”
“Yeah, of course. See you soon.”
I trudge over to the fridge and pop open a can of Yerba Mate. Why did I say yes again? He lives in a complex with a dozen other night-owl comedian-actors. Surely one them could read lines with him. Was this an excuse to see me—aside from the usual “can’t sleep…feel like fucking?”
But Mr. Single Forever Bruh! had made himself vulnerable and expressed that he needed somebody. And not just anybody—me. Sure, it was a pain in the ass to drive up from the hood in the middle of the night, but who said love was convenient? My whole life I’d been taking. I’d been the one who needed. Here was a chance to give back and be needed. And maybe even prove to Bradley that people can, surprise surprise, show up for you.
We work for a couple hours. He feels better. The next day, he calls me to say thanks. “You really helped me last night. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
After that, something shifts in our relationship. Bradley decides to give up his West Hollywood shithole apartment and take up with me and the Crips in Inglewood for the summer. Our sudden jump into temporary domesticity speeds up the pace of our relationship quite a bit. We fuck every day and hold each other every night. We are basically in a relationship, but he won’t admit it. I’ve yet to be introduced to his parents, who live just down in Huntington Beach. I’ve met maybe one of his friends. I don’t know what he does all day or who he does it with, and I don’t ask. He still hasn’t told me he loves me. But clearly, something is keeping him here. And it ain’t my luxurious digs or my cooking. What is it? The sex? Sure, I mean, I’m good. But I’m not “forty-five-minute drive if you don’t love me” good.
I go to a nearby kiosk—a repurposed Fotomat—to get keys made for him. The guy manning it is an older black man wearing a huge gold chain with a diamond-encrusted crucifix. His place is stocked with everything you’d need if you were up to no good: druggie bags in every size, stun guns, pepper spray, batons, handcuffs, fake police badges.
“Quite a selection, brother,” I say, impressed.
He laughs. “Variety is the spice of life.”
“Wish I’d known about this place before I got on the straight and narrow,” I say.
I join the local 24-Hour Fitness. It’s a far cry from my swanky West Hollywood gym with its free towels and wi-fi and pretty-boy actors. The weights are left everywhere. It’s 99 percent black and you check in with your fingerprint. Every time I go to work out, the black guy at the front desk fist bumps me. I’ve never felt so silly or white in my entire life. There is also a security guard in the cardio room. Why? Because there’s the occasional brawl or stabbing on the elliptical? I’m confused and a little terrified. However, I’m white and skinny and invisible here. Nobody fucks with me.
I am loving house-sitting in Inglewood. After sharing a room for almost three years, this sparse one-bedroom feels like a mansion. I’m so grateful to have my own space that I keep it impeccable. I quickly realize that cleaning is weirdly therapeutic.
Linda texts me: “What are you doing?”
“Mopping.”
“Dear Lord, are you okay?”
Program friends are horrified at where I’m living.
“You’re in Inglewood?!” a sober friend asks me. “Isn’t that a little close to the rock?”
“The rock is always close if you want to find it,” I say. Ugh, I sound so program I want to slap myself.
My days are full of writing and the gym. Bradley sleeps in till twelve and works nights doing stand-up. I get into playing the good wife, a far cry from who I was when I was actually married.
I religiously do his laundry, methodically folding his underwear and T-shirts, leaving them in a neat little stack by his side of the bed. I always make sure the fridge is fully stocked.
I’m driving to the market when my mom calls.
“Honey, can you please do your food shopping in the daytime? And will you call me when you get home so I know you’re safe?” she asks.
“Mom, it’s Inglewood, not Watts in the nineties. Calm down.”
“Is it by the airport?”
“Sort of.”
“Well, what are you buying at the market? Healthy stuff like yogurt and berries and organic produce, I hope,” my mom says.
I reassure her that I am, but I can’t help myself: “Mom, I’m forty-five, and I’ve been in six rehabs. I used to smoke meth and shoot cocaine. You’re worried that I’m not eating my leafy greens? Really?”
One night my garage door gets tagged. Just mine.
“What the fuck?” I say to Jack.
“Yeah, that hasn’t happened in years. The last time, it was across the street, and somebody got murdered,” Jack tells me, beer in hand, as he’s sanding some shitty chair in his driveway.
“Great…”
“Us tokens gotta stick together,” he says, laughing that deep, wet smoker’s laugh that ends in hacking. He lights up a cigarette and continues sanding.
While I’m examining the damage, a black kid on a scooter comes rolling by and sees it.
“Shit. That’s a gang sign,” the scooter kid tells me.
“What’s it mean?” I ask him.
“I forget.”
“Does it mean ‘Kill all skinny white Jews in Inglewood’?”
“Nahh, man.”
“You sure?”
Jack offers to call the graffiti-removal crew for me. “They come and repaint it for free,” he tells me. “I think it’s part of some court-ordered community service program.”
“Uh, yeah. Unfortunately, I’m very familiar with it…”
When I was in the depths of my drug addiction, I had wild mood swings. Back then, when I considered making my bed a productive day, my dad used to say to me, “Discipline creates stability; stability does not create discipline.”
