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Rock Monster

Page 28

by Kristin Casey


  When Isaac Tigrett lent Joe the use of his private, antique railroad car, I spent the first night on board with him, an offer Joe promptly regretted when I got sloppy drunk. Stuck together all night in that small—albeit beautiful and luxurious—space, it could not have been any clearer: the time had come to disengage.

  •••

  Late one evening, while driving up Laurel Canyon, he suddenly presented me with a mea culpa. No lengthier than his offhand regret over the redecorating thing, it was still the most heartfelt apology he’d ever given me. After some hemming and hawing and struggling with words, he gave up and said, “I want you to know how sorry I am.”

  It came out of nowhere, on the way to dinner, and I looked at him, perplexed. “For what?”

  He paused, struggling again. “Everything…all of it. All the ways I hurt you.” He looked like he was about to cry.

  “It’s okay, babe,” I said softly. “Don’t you know I forgave all that long ago?”

  I wasn’t lying. We’d hurt each other equally. It was awash, in my mind, and as we drove on in silence I felt something clear between us. Wholly unaware he’d cleared the way for our breakup.

  The first sign to hit me—like, really slap me across the face—was his refusal to cover my monthly brow-and-lash tint, a fifty-dollar expense. Since I had no cash on me that night, I was forced to grovel for a loan, within hearing distance of my mortified aesthetician. More than the fact of our wildly disparate incomes, pettiness like that was unlike him. Years later, I wondered if he’d done it on a lawyer’s advice, cutting off that final financial tie as a preemptive strike against palimony—a word that wasn’t even in my vocabulary.

  Weeks later, another awkward visit when he went mute on me. We had lunch, saw a movie, and then hung out at the house—six or eight hours, during which he said not a single word. I could see him chewing on something he couldn’t spit out. I knew what was up…of course I did. But neither of us would say it.

  •••

  Our visits dwindled further in 1995, but on one of our few visits he very much wanted see me. It was the day he found out Denise was pregnant.

  I was packing at home in Vegas, about to catch my flight, when he called unexpectedly. “I have to tell you something.” His voice sounded different, distraught for one, but authentic and vulnerable—like the old Joe I knew and loved.

  “Go on.”

  “I met someone in rehab last year, and, well…she’s pregnant. I just found out.”

  Surprisingly calm, I asked him a short string of questions. Did he love her? No. Were they in a relationship? No. Did he plan to pursue one? No. Did he still want me to come? Yes!

  “I need you,” he said, just like he had before going to rehab.

  When he was stressed or scared, he needed me. When I was, it annoyed him. I recognized the unfairness, but being needed by him was everything. Boarding the plane, I asked a flight attendant how soon she might start drink service. “I just found out my boyfriend got someone pregnant.” I had to laugh at how ridiculous I sounded. “Anyway, I could really use a drink.”

  “I’ll do you one better,” she said, and one minute later, she slipped two mini vodkas into my hand. “I feel you, honey,” she whispered. “Good luck with that.”

  Joe did his best to comfort me, claiming sex with Denise had “just happened.”

  It wasn’t his wayward penis I worried about. “You’re really not in love?”

  “I swear, she’s just a friend. You’d like her, actually….”

  “Don’t,” I said. “Just don’t.”

  But I did like Denise, who kindly offered to speak on the phone and assure me, exactly as Joe had, that they weren’t dating or in love. They were just having a baby. The one I’d been asked to have repeatedly. The one he no longer wanted.

  Ironically, Denise’s pregnancy brought Joe and I closer together, but it didn’t last. Back on tour, we met up in Minneapolis. I didn’t see him again until the band returned to Vegas. I watched the Hard Rock show with Don Henley’s fiancée, Sharon. I had a beer in hand, and she, a cigarette, and we joked about how delighted our men would be to smell booze and smoke on us afterward. When it was over, I watched her and Don leave holding hands and smiling happily. My goodbyes with Joe couldn’t have been more rushed. He didn’t kiss me or return my hug before Smokey whisked him off. I stood alone in a crowded hallway.

  For the next two months, I had a tough time reaching him, succeeding on rare occasions. I consoled myself by drinking daily, desperate to cushion the blow that was coming. The few times I got Joe on the phone I was sentimental and morose. The more desperate I sounded, the colder he got, until one day in June. The conversation was stilted, strained, and terse, but what had gone unsaid too long roared like a freight train between us. I don’t know where I found the courage to say what I did, but one of us had to, and I couldn’t bear waiting on him. I was the queen of inaction, incapable of the next right move, so I opened the door to let him walk through.

  “Joseph,” I said, taking a breath to calm my voice. “Please, just say it.” My eyes flooded with tears as I finished in a rush. “I need to hear you say it. You owe me that much.”

  Apparently, he agreed. “I don’t love you anymore,” he said. Then, as if the words hurt him, too, “Oh, Kristi, I’m sorry…I am so very sorry.”

  A dam broke and I cried and cried, clamping the receiver to my ear, the last, fragile connection to the man I was once meant to marry. “I’m so sorry, baby,” he repeated, with more love than I’d heard in months. “I’ll fly up tomorrow, I promise. I’ll say goodbye in person.”

  •••

  He came as promised and spent a few hours with me, driving through Red Rock Canyon and strolling through Caesars Palace. Over a late lunch at the Palm restaurant, as our time together grew short, I made a mad scramble to stop the inevitable free fall that was long past stopping. I’d talked all day about how well I was doing, paying down debt (a half-truth) and moderating my drinking (a total falsehood). He’d listened without comment or changing the subject. Then he gave a straightforward answer to the question he’d surely been dreading.

  “Can’t we try again? Are you sure there’s no chance?”

  “No,” he said firmly. “There isn’t.”

  I wept. I couldn’t help it. Then I asked a final question. An absurd one, perhaps, in retrospect, and yet—if I were ever to make sense of it all, to someday move on—a necessary one. I must know my fatal flaw, the part I’d played in our downfall. What had I done to make it all go wrong?

  “You made it too easy for me,” he replied, and I choked on my Perrier.

  I didn’t ask him to elaborate. I knew what he was saying. I hadn’t made him a better man; I’d sunk to his level instead. The statement was not inaccurate, but a slap in the face nonetheless.

  “It’s no one’s fault,” Joe insisted. “It’s really not.” I nodded, blaming myself, and suspecting he did, too. I was an out-of-control alcoholic, alone, confused, and in debt. He was a clean-and-sober success washing his hands of my predicament. He didn’t offer help, and I didn’t think to ask.

  At my apartment, we shared a long hug in the parking lot, and then Joe got in a cab. I watched the back of his head get smaller until the car pulled onto the street, turned, and disappeared.

  •••

  The curtain came down with a thud. Everything by which I’d defined myself, for seven years, was gone. What came over me then was a terror so massive, claustrophobia felt like Disneyland by comparison. A primal panic so intense my mind nearly split in half. And in the millisecond between sanity and psychosis, a voice in my head spit out a desperate defense. Like a fighter pilot with no time to think, I pulled the lever and jettisoned.

  Facing a future without Joe, I chose no future at all. Life without him is a fate worse than death, so I’ll continue on my current path for a quick end to th
is mess. A calm came over me as I walked to my apartment. I had an escape plan. I’d even calculated a rough ETA by the time I turned the doorknob. Bad as my drinking already was, with a little extra effort, I’d be dead in twenty-four months.

  Without You

  I had nowhere near the emotional tools required to process our breakup. I’d been drinking and drugging so long, my coping skills had ceased developing in high school. My sole go-to strategy had backfired spectacularly. The drinking that once allowed me to connect had severed the only connection that mattered. I had no idea how to move on.

  Had I the strength to put us in the past, there was no me left over to step forward. I’d lost touch with the fragile nugget of myself I’d managed to form years earlier, post-meth and pre-Joe. In a two-year window I’d summoned the strength and hope it took to stay off drugs and restart school, all on my own. Seven years later, I was a black hole where nothing could thrive or grow. The future was an abyss, the present, a vacuum sucking me in.

  Despair came naturally to me. Like alcoholism and depression, suicide was in my family tree. Estrangement and withdrawal were familiar territory, and my temporary mutism at the Dune’s implosion was not a first-time thing. At seven it had happened while surrounded by family on Christmas Day, none of who noticed anything strange. The livelier they became, the less my vocal cords would engage. When I couldn’t feel their joy, I wished to disappear. Instead, my voice did it for me. With a house full of relatives, I couldn’t reach out to my mom right then—better to suffer in silence than risk her rejection.

  Our strained relationship, on its own, hadn’t sparked the suicidal urge, but our failure to bond over the years hadn’t helped matters. I’d lived my life exposed to the elements, admittedly often on purpose. I needed to feel tough, to know I could endure. Short on courage and long on bravado, I’d dive into a mosh pit or a strip club audition, but not four years of college or weeks alone in rehab. In grade school, I’d quit track the day of our first meet. I’d quit swim team after winning my first (surprisingly easy) ribbon. I feared failure and success equally. I made a splash now and then, but being a work in progress was unacceptable to me. I saw winners and losers, black and white, do or die. I’d never really done life well, but the alternative was worth a try.

  I considered taking a razor to my wrist, but the suddenness of the act was off-putting. Part of me held out—one juror of an inner twelve—doggedly reviewing the evidence before the execution date rolled around. I was severely depressed. My self-esteem was shot. I thought I was worthless, yet I wasn’t convinced. I’d experienced much good, after all: divine visions, psychic epiphanies, and sublime reality. I’d been touched by luck and unearned privilege. Beyond that, I believed in something—an energetic force or higher being—and crossing the line between “its” will and my own was something to avoid. I eschewed religious concepts, mortal sin, and eternal hell, but I was not blasé about spirituality. I may’ve been yanked from the cosmic energy source, but what if my outlet was still there? Where I could plug in and juice up, should it come my way again? The question haunted me, and until I got an answer, straight-up suicide was off the table.

  Drinking myself to death was a way of inching backward out the door. Guess I’ll be leaving now. Grabbing my coat and waving goodbye…I’m almost outside. Anyone? Anyone? I wouldn’t stick around where I wasn’t wanted, but I had to be sure first, you know?

  •••

  If nothing interfered, I would slip away with a clear conscience in two years’ time.

  It was the summer of 1995 and I was twenty-seven years old. I’d been drinking excessively since age fifteen, almost daily for a decade. Those years looked like a garden tea party compared to what lay in store for me.

  My mission was twofold: earn enough money to cover my bills and imbibe enough booze to shut down my system. My plan, if you could call it that, was loosely written. I opened another credit card, with a higher limit than the first four combined, and for a while I made the minimum payments, occasionally on time. If my finances seemed precarious, my physical health was on par, but I cleaned up well enough to get by. Club lighting worked in my favor, and Vegas customers were drinkers, oblivious to my flaws and generous with drink orders.

  At home, cheap wine had to do. On most days off, I went through four bottles of Sutter Home—goodbye, Far Niente; so long, Lafite Rothschild. It was a pleasure knowing you. At work, if I was lucky, I’d only have to buy my first shot—one double tequila, though that number ratcheted upward quickly. One double became two, then very soon three, until I was drinking six tequilas in a row, at noon on every workday. Bartenders lined them up when I entered the club. I’d pause on my way to the dressing room—bam, bam, bam—then saunter off to a smattering of applause. What the bartenders didn’t know was that I needed all six to calm the tremble in my hands enough to apply makeup. Nor were they aware that those weren’t my first drinks of the day. I drank a bottle of wine at home every morning to get my ass to work in the first place.

  I had eight to ten drinks between 9:00 a.m. and noon, every day. Eight to ten to get started, another eight or ten to maintain.

  •••

  In October, I met a kindred spirit. Bill was a binge-drinking Vietnam vet, ex-fighter pilot, and Nellis Air Force Base instructor; sexy, reckless, wounded (no shocker there), terminally upbeat, and horny enough to keep up with me. He rode a high-handlebar Harley, dressed like Lorenzo Lamas (he pulled it off, I swear), and looked so much like Mel Gibson he’d twice been asked for his autograph. We met at the club and spent the next six months tearing up his bed, my bed, and every corner pub between. It ended the day Bill expressed real concern about my drinking. He said, “Are you trying to kill yourself?” as if the idea should scare me. I showed him the door, thinking, It’s like you don’t know even know me.

  Death was a constant, comforting fantasy, but I had a ways to go yet. Bill’s absence left a hole in my life I wasn’t prepared to deal with. If I was going to allow a man in, I reasoned, he must be strong, yet devoted. Someone to help prop me up without throwing me off course.

  Enter Chuck. My third-in-a-row Vietnam vet, one whose civilian hardships had been on par with his wartime experience. Chuck had a chip on his shoulder—a quick temper (that was not once directed at me). He was my champion and protector, a deadhead stoner, and an ex-dope fiend (speed freak) who loved his Golden Retrievers as much as he disliked most human beings. He had a strong jaw, soft eyes, and lots of rough edges. Part teddy bear, part grizzly, he was intense and interesting, sweet and funny. Boyish like Joe and vulnerable like Maj, he wore his heart on his sleeve and it endeared him to me. For some crazy reason, he treated me like a queen.

  Chuck was a driver—as in taxis and trucks. We’d bonded in his cab over acid trip stories and classic rock. A friendship arose, and once Bill was gone, I promoted Chuck to boyfriend status. It felt strange applying the term to a man I didn’t love, but standards of the past were luxuries I could no longer afford. In exchange for his help avoiding hospitals and jail, I offered my female companionship—a last best bargaining chip.

  Only through dumb luck had I skirted a second drunk driving arrest. One rainy night, turning hard and fast onto West Tropicana, I spun out in the Mustang, flying across six lanes, one median, and a curb, before landing in a parking lot, shaken but unhurt. With Chuck behind the wheel, all of Vegas was safer, and at home, he was shouting distance from the shower. Most mornings my body shook so badly, I’d grip the showerhead with one hand and use the other to wash my body. Having Chuck there made my morning routine less death defying. He did everything but hold my hair back when I vomited. That was my penance alone to bear. Besides, Chuck would’ve had to quit his job to find time for it.

  By late 1996, the vomiting was extreme. It happened daily, often repeatedly, and sometimes without warning. In the morning it was a given, reliable as sunrise—were the sun a hot, bitter stream of bright green bile (with two more g
reen suns coming up behind it), that is. I’d crawl from my futon on the floor to the bathroom, eight feet away, pull myself up by the door frame, then push off toward the sink. If I got it right, I’d land with a hand on the counter and one on the faucet. Dropping to my elbows, I’d blast the water as my body heaved and released.

  It was an excruciating, sputtery stream. Unlike puke, bile has no chunks—it’s slick, slimy, and such a ludicrous shade of green that despite mind-numbing pain I’d often feel sad that no one would see the humor. The pain wasn’t funny, though—my throat was like Velcro ripping open, over and over and over. I’d gag and shake and gag and gag. Running water helped. The mirror did not, but I looked up anyway, into the eyes of the woman I was trying to kill. The snail I would dissolve cocktail by cocktail.

  When it was over I’d collapse, careful not to bump my head. I’d need alcohol very soon after that, or I could become more violently ill. If I was too weak to drive or (just as often) had misplaced my car, I risked seizures and extreme withdrawal. In an emergency, Chuck went to the store for me, if he was not at work already. The nights I slept alone at my place were riskier, but I got by.

  •••

  Chuck spent Thanksgiving at his mother’s. I spent a quiet night at home…until the moment a burglar was tackled on my patio. I jumped off the couch and peered through the blinds when one of the cops—the one not wrestling a masked man to the ground—shouted at me, “Get down! He’s got a gun!”

  I hit the floor, terrified and pissed. On that day, of all days, I’d had less to drink than any other that year. I had no explanation for my restraint, nor why my tremors had remained fairly mild. But thanks to the drama outside, I was suddenly shaking so hard I could barely turn the doorknob to let the cops inside. They told me an observant neighbor had seen the burglar sneak onto my patio, and their patrol car had been right around the corner. A serial rapist had been on the loose in Vegas for two years at that time, targeting single women in ground-floor apartments. The burglar wasn’t him—just a regular criminal, it seemed—but my illusion of safety was shattered. Despite the fact that one neighbor and two police officers had, quite possibly, saved my life, I couldn’t see it that way. That’s not how my brain was wired.

 

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