THE EXES IN MY IPOD: A Playlist of the Men Who Rocked Me to Wine Country

by Lisa M. Mattson

  I should have tried harder with my dad. I should have helped him beat his addiction.

  If I stood by Robert, I could make at least one wrong right.

  I grabbed the phone book and scanned the yellow pages. New Jack City had taught me everything I needed to know about cocaine: It was addictive. It killed. It made grown men dry hump stuffed rabbits. I needed to be prepared for the worst. I circled all the crisis clinics, addiction centers and hot lines. I plotted my plan while The Cranberries chanted about zombies from my stereo. We’d drive to his house together. We’d sit down on the couch; he’d tell his mother, who happened to be a nurse, about his drug use. I’d hold his hand. I’d help him pack his suitcase. The three of us would drive to the treatment center. I’d visit him every day. I would be the most positive influence of all.

  Robert trotted into my station at Cheesecake. He milled around a cluster of Areca palms while I stood at table thirty-nine, scribbling a Cuban couple’s order on my notepad. Robert’s eyes sagged, but his handsome smile and usual swagger were still intact. My heart sank when I saw him. His big curls of golden hair were ratty and dull. His golf shirt was wrinkled. Oh, my messed up Robert. Hours had passed since the cocaine call. I grabbed his hands and led him to the payphone stall by the bathrooms, feeling the weight of his addiction on my back.

  Robert pecked me on the lips, then squeezed my shoulders with both hands. “I don’t know what’s happened to me.” His blue-green eyes darted around my face.

  I looked down at the restaurant’s terra cotta floor. “It wasn’t the first time, was it?” The hum of the busy dining room buzzed in my ears. My eyes moved back to Robert’s pretty face. His blood-shot eyes watered. He dropped his head like a defeated athlete. My tongue felt like an inner tube. I struggled to find words.

  My hands flew to his and squeezed with determination. “I’m going to help you. I have a plan.” I’d confided in Micah, a gay server at Cheesecake, who had snorted cocaine several times at Studio 54 when he’d lived in New York. He’d described the symptoms of addiction—high energy, insomnia, confidence and paranoia—which I’d grown to love as Robert’s personality.

  Robert’s eyes ricocheted from my face to the dining room entrance behind me. His body jerked from side to side. He looked like a wild animal caught in a cage. “You’ll help me keep away from bad influences?” He gripped my fingers tighter. “You’ll keep me out of the clubs?”

  I nodded, rubbing his knuckles. It meant steering clear of Jessica, his long-time friend, who lived walking distance from CocoWalk. She had long, red hair and bewitching green eyes and did lots of drugs. Robert had told me he used to crash on her couch before he’d started sleeping in my bed.

  Robert ran his hands through his curls. “It’s my addictive personality. I just can’t do anything once. I just keep tempting myself.” He began pacing, looking down at the octagon tiles.

  I wrapped my arms around his waist. “Don’t worry. I’m here to help.” He dropped his head onto my shoulder and squeezed me tight, like a child hugs a parent. His vulnerability made me feel strong and needed, helping me press through the fear of dating a guy who described himself as “addictive.” I thought of my father and all the times my mom had asked him to go to AA. He’d refused to get help. He didn’t think he had a drinking problem. “I will be here for you.” My voice shook. “I promise.” I kept my face tucked into Robert’s chest. I wouldn’t run away from him like I’d done with Chris. I wouldn’t desert him like Dad. We would confront his drug problem head-on.

  Robert pulled away from me, his face twinkling like a Christmas tree. “Then we have something to celebrate.” His somber tone flashed to bright. “Last night is never going to happen again.” He gripped my shoulders. “We should drink to that.”

  The day of our camping trip, I woke up with a smile on my face. My bedroom was cozy-warm and filled with sunshine. It was mid-December. I love you, Miami. My first winter in the tropics and my first getaway with Robert had finally arrived. The thrill of new experiences gave me promise that we could make it through the rough patches—even if they were as rough as Charlie Sheen on a binge.

  I met Robert at his house in Kendall in the afternoon. The townhouse looked like a bland, temporary housing unit with off-white walls, tan carpet and very little furniture. His mother stood in the living room in her pristine white nurse’s uniform, stirring a spoon in a cup of coffee. She smiled and extender her hand. She was tall and thick, but had the same blonde, curly hair, square chin and piercing eyes as Robert. She said her goodbyes and swiftly darted out the front door.

  Robert handed me a tiny, square box. “It’s a little early Christmas present.” My heart galloped as I pulled the bear-shaped, silver earrings from a cotton cushion. They looked like he’d bought them at Claire’s, but I slipped them on as eagerly as diamond studs.

  Our weekend getaway to Blue Cypress Lake near Orlando commenced with a moonlight canoe ride through a dark cypress swamp. Our paddles knocked on alligators’ backs as we glided deeper into the forest of palmettos, pine trees and cypresses. My job was holding two big flashlights in my hands like an air traffic controller, throwing hazy beams on the banks and into the murky water to keep us on course. I wore a flannel shirt, a safari hat and Gap jeans with a Swiss Army knife in my pocket—just outdoorsy enough to make Indiana Jones proud.

  When we arrived at the isolated campsite, Robert’s friends built a ghetto campfire in front of a rickety cabin with bug screens for walls—then pulled out a baggie of weed. My heart began thumping in rhythm with the crickets chirping in the dark woods. I sat Indian-style by the fire and held my palms toward the flames, trying to look cool. Robert plopped down next to me and squeezed my shoulders. I cracked a smile and watched Robert’s friends passing a freshly rolled joint around the flaming metal bucket. Robert’s head bounced from me to the doobie, his face glowing from the fire. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the joint get closer to Robert. My stomach and head churned. He’ll take a pass, I kept telling myself. It felt like the whole world was standing still when that joint was between Robert’s fingers. He turned to me. I turned to him. Our eyes locked. Then, he shrugged his shoulders and lifted the joint to his lips. The shock gripped my throat. I felt like I’d swallowed a balloon. Is this the real Robert? Is this the kind of guy I belong with? My body shifted slowly back toward the fire, weighed down with disappointment and disgust. Smoking pot seemed so useless to me. There was no benefit—unless you enjoy feeling like a zombie. I’d given pot a chance, and all it had given me was the urge to motorboat a chocolate Bundt cake. Robert coughed and offered me the joint. Smoke drifted above his head. I plucked it from his hand and passed it to his buddy faster than a stick of dynamite.

  Robert nudged me with his right shoulder and sneered. “Come on! Don’t be a party pooper. We’re on vacation.” I smiled bashfully and pulled my knees to my chest.

  When we crawled into Robert’s sleeping bag that night, I turned my back to him and listened to the crickets.

  We didn’t speak for four days. I didn’t want to see, hear or smell that man; he didn’t want my help getting sober. I remembered the words my mom had muttered: You can’t help an addict until he’s ready to be helped.

  Robert never popped into Cheesecake to give me a kiss. After a few shifts of waiting—waiting on customers while waiting for Robert to bounce into the dining room and apologize, I began to miss him. I missed his golden locks, his endless bursts of energy, our late-night rendezvous. I took out my frustration on the restaurant’s POSitouch register, pounding the order keys. Finally, I paged him from the restaurant’s payphone. No call back.

  After a late weekend shift, I got the nerve to walk upstairs to Dan Marino’s. Robert wasn’t schmoozing his customers in the Miami Dolphin-blue booths like usual. The bartender said Robert had not shown up at work for three days. I felt like a barstool had hit me in the gut. Where are you, my screwed up man? He was missing. I marched to every bar in CocoWalk and Commodore Plaza. “Have you s
een this guy?” I asked bouncers and bartenders, shoving a picture of Robert in their faces like the psycho cop looking for John Connor in Terminator 2. No one had seen Robert in days.

  I spent the next two days pacing my apartment, burning tracks in the living room carpet. Should I call the police? File a missing person’s report? Had I learned nothing from America’s Most Wanted? I asked everyone I knew in the biz to keep an eye out for Robert. “Page me if you see him, anywhere and anytime.” My desperation turned from helplessness to denial to resentment by day six. The crushing feeling in my heart had been plastered over with anger; I’d told him I’d be there for him. He’d told me I was good for him. He’d taken me camping. He’d bought me earrings, even if they were cheap. He’d slept in my bed. He’d tried to spoon me all night in a sleeping bag. I’d dedicated more time and energy to his addiction than my father’s, and I’d known Robert less than one month.

  Looking down at a stack of napkins on the empty veranda at Cheesecake, I practiced my Robert speech. Each precise crease my hand pressed into the white cloths revealed another layer of his disrespect. He was throwing his life away. He’d deserted me when I’d promised to help him. He was less than a zero.

  “I just can’t let you go on like this,” a fellow server named Mark said in his gruff, nasally tone. He collapsed into the booth seat across from me letting his long legs dangle in the aisle. Mark had been hired about four weeks after the restaurant had opened, at the same time as Ashley the party girl. He’d lived in Wisconsin as a closet homosexual until age thirty, then moved to Miami to liberate himself. I paused mid-fold and looked over at his 200-pound frame filling the booth. He was blonde and hairy with a crooked nose from multiple sports injuries—not an ounce of femininity.

  He palmed the stone tabletop with his thick fingers. “I saw your boyfriend.”

  My eyes practically shot from their sockets. Adrenaline bolted through me, and I lunged across the table at Mark. “Where? When? What the hell happened? Is he okay?” The questions fired from my mouth like bullets. Mark smirked and laced his fingers around the back of his head. “You’re being an asshole!” I pulled my check presenter from my apron and threw it across the table, smacking him square in the chest. Receipts fell like confetti onto the tiled floor.

  Mark loosened his tie, coolly. “I’m not sure I should tell you.”

  “Stop it with the stupid games,” I said, my voice hissing. My eyes scanned the empty tables and two entrances to the veranda to make sure no one was listening to us.

  Mark stared down at his beefy fingers and began gnawing on a jagged cuticle. “I saw him at Jessica’s house a couple nights ago.” There was a pregnant pause. My eyes darted from his eyes to his lips to his broken nose. My leg began to quiver. “We shared an eight ball.” He looked at my face, then out the window across the aisle. “Then we played a little game I like to call ‘three’s company.’ He’s quite the catcher.” He grinned and raised his index finger playfully to his thick lips. The words rolled nonchalantly off his tongue as if he were recounting a dinner order for table nineteen.

  My mouth hung wide open in the air, as my hands flew to my ruddy cheeks. I was a living, breathing version of “The Scream” painting. Holy shit cows! I couldn’t stop the mental picture from forming. I saw my beautiful boyfriend bent over the arm of some couch, his face in Jessica’s crotch—while Mark pumped him from behind. My eyelids snapped shut. Vomit stirred in my stomach. I flew from the table into the bathroom around the corner, hearing Mark’s voice trail off through the glass veranda door: “Now you know why I didn’t tell you sooner.”

  I stood above the wall of fancy copper sinks, splashing water on my tan face. The violation made me feel like raw meat exposed on hot pavement … under the blazing sun … for a day … being stepped on with dirty feet … until rotting bacteria turned me green and purple. We’d never used a condom once. On the first night, he’d said, “I know I’m clean, are you?” The question made me feel as uncomfortable as a pelvic exam. I felt guilty for even asking him to use protection. I was on the pill, which seemed safe enough. I would never drive a car without a seat belt, so why did I have sex without a condom? My brain was missing a safety gauge. Linda’s advice started echoing in my head: Cut back on the alcohol. It makes your legs spread. In high school, my parents’ idea of talking to me about the birds and the bees was sending me to Catechism. We were Catholic. We weren’t supposed to have sex before marriage, and taking birth control and drinking alcohol were sins. I darted into the last stall and kneeled in front of the toilet in my white uniform. My fingers laced over the cool toilet seat. A restaurant bathroom? Close enough to a confessional booth for me. Hello, God. Are you there? It’s me again, I prayed.

  I returned to the row of sinks and mirrors and gripped the granite countertop with both hands. I looked deep into the reflection of my blue eyes, feeling drops of clarity seep into my bones. It was like staring into a swimming pool that hadn’t been touched all night. Our relationship was a horrible chain of events that would scar me for life as wife worthy. What man would marry a girl with my sexual history? I’d hit on a stranger in a bar, who happened to be a model, who happened to talk me into having unprotected sex, who happened to smoke cigarettes and weed, who happened to snort cocaine, who happened to fancy an occasional dick in the ass. Not quite the “broadening of my cultural horizons” I’d had in mind.

  “Why me?” I whispered to myself in the mirror. The shock numbed my love for Robert, but it couldn’t kill it instantly. He’d battled the demons I’d grown up around. Only a girl with my history could see beyond his beauty and accept his faults. My greatest fear had been losing him to an overdose or a Victoria’s Secret model—not to a burly rugby player. My own health was never a consideration. Never mind that dating a guy who ranked higher than me on the ten-point scale only fueled my insecurity. We were doomed from the start.

  I pulled paper towels from the dispenser and wiped my eyes. My stomach spun like a blender. What kind of microbial parting gift was growing inside me? I’d dodged a half-dozen pregnancy bullets in high school and even a STD scare in college. Mainstream awareness of AIDS and HIV was in full swing, thanks to Magic Johnson and Pedro Zamora from MTV’s The Real World: San Francisco. Birth-control pills wouldn’t save me this time. Neither would ruby-red slippers or my Harley “wheels.” My good luck had finally run out.

  Fear and disgrace kept me confined to my apartment and the restaurant for at least a week. I sulked from table to table and avoided the bus stations where co-workers gossiped. Sex is going to kill me. I didn’t want to die young. I wanted to be the first woman in my family to graduate from college. I didn’t want to be the butt of jokes either—the girl whose boyfriend dumped her for a guy. Lou Diamond Phillips had taken enough of a beating for us all when his wife left him for Melissa Etheridge.

  I finally visited the holy temple that could end my angst: Planned Parenthood. The nurse’s aide ran tests for every sexually transmitted disease possible. Then, I waited for the results, biting my nails down to the quick. I listened to my James CD (the band, not the ex), and the lyrics spooked me like never before: the part about a hand in the till, dressing in women’s clothes, messing with gender roles. Why was the real Robert so hard for me to see?

  The resentment and embarrassment morphed into a ball of anger within days. Robert miraculously resurfaced once the threesome secret was revealed. Alicia told me she’d seen Robert in his work uniform, trotting upstairs to Dan Marino’s. I needed closure. I needed to confront Robert to officially end us, which had never happened with Chris or James. So, I did what seemed totally rational: I slammed two Jell-O shots and a White Russian at Fat Tuesday—the perfect recipe to prepare for a confrontation—before marching upstairs to Dan Marino’s.

  Robert was counting tips at the bus station, looking hot in his turquoise blue work shirt and khaki shorts. I wore a striped blue T-shirt with my work jeans and sneakers. My curly hair was bushy and wild—just right for a fight. The entire sc
ene moved in slow motion. I took two steps toward him, and my legs felt like boat anchors under my white jeans. His head turned toward me. Crap, I’m not ready yet! I dunked behind the island bar and grabbed a stool.

  “I’ll have a double White Russian with cream,” I shouted to the bartender, my knees twitching under the bar. Oasis’s song “Wonderwall” drifted from the overhead speakers. Was I really the one who was gonna save him? I snarled at the irony. I’d wanted to save Robert. Me, the girl who’d slept with her baby blanket until fourth grade, thought she could save a promiscuous drug addict. My priorities in life always mutated into whatever seemed best for the guy in my bed—not for me. I needed to save myself for once.

  “Hey, you.” Robert’s voice rang in my ears. I looked up from my murky drink to find his sculptured face inches from mine. I stared at his beautiful eyes and tanned cheeks. My hands began to tremor. I stabbed my ice cubes with a skinny straw.

  “How could you?” My voice shook. His sexy, citrusy smell filled my lungs. I stared at him in his uniform, feeling the alcohol find its comfortable home in my bloodstream. My mind sped through all the statements I’d rehearsed in my head. There was so much to say. He’d put my life at risk. He’d told me he loved me. That was a strong word—one that nobody in my family tossed around often. “How could you do this? How could you?” My mouth continued hitting the replay button. Robert look stunned. His jaw opened, but he didn’t say a word. His green eyes darted around my face.

  I jumped off the barstool and scurried past Robert before he could spew a rebuttal. By the time my hands threw open the double doors, tears were streaming down my face.

  The engine of my Pontiac roared as I flew out of the CocoWalk parking garage. My tires squealed onto Tigertail Avenue. I cared about nothing but getting as far away from Robert as possible. Out of nowhere, police car lights flashed in my rearview mirror. Holy shit! My foot pumped the brakes. My heart hammered against my rib cage. My eyes darted crazily around the street. How many drinks did I have? Three? Shit! I’m going to get a DUI—surprisingly, the first in my family. No one would be bragging about my title. Pull it together, Wheels. I took a deep breath. I couldn’t buckle under pressure. I drove slowly down the street, buying myself time to think while the cop bleeped his sirens at me. I grabbed a handful of pennies from my center console and stuffed them into my mouth—an old how-to-get-out-of-a-DUI trick I’d learned back home. I turned my radio to a classic jazz station. My car crept into an hourly parking lot. By the time the police officer reached my window, the pennies were gone and mascara tears streaked my cheeks. I launched into my explanation, wailing about just breaking up with my boyfriend after a long shift at work, how I was stupid to let my emotions get the most of me while driving. Thank God I was still wearing half my uniform. I said I was sorry. I rubbed my cheeks to wipe away tears.