51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life

by Kristen McGuiness

  And so I clam up, and that look comes across my face, the one from the record store twenty-five years ago, when my dashing, romantic father finally came home, and all it did was make me panic. I think I knew then what I am finally seeing now—that my father was never made to be a father.

  My mom’s youngest brother, my uncle Tom, is one the greatest men I know. He is also, along with my uncle Vic, the great male role model in my life. But being that Tom is a responsible, mortgage-paying, conservative-voting business owner, and Vic is a gay man with a penchant for suicidal depression, Tom assumes the father role a bit more naturally. Has he been perfect? No. Did he play a typical father role? Hardly. But when I was hitting my alcoholic bottom in L.A., and I had no money, and I was falling apart, it was my uncle Tom who asked me to come home to Dallas, to live in his house, and to get clean. And during that year, my uncle took care of me. He loved me. And when he calls me on the phone, he always refers to me as “Puppy” or “Little Moose” or some other endearing nickname that makes me want to call him Dad. And that is what my father has lost in me. Because someone else rose to the challenge and took his place.

  Lidia tells me about the great jaguar of the jungle, a spirit named Otorongo. And I can picture him immediately. In my studio at home, I have a large watercolor painting of a cheetah. She is the first thing I see every morning, and so when Lidia tells me that “the Peruvians believe that if asked, Otorongo can hunt for those truths, for those fears, deep in your heart, and catch them like any prey and bring them to your door,” I understand because my cheetah greets me each day with that same sense of honesty. And I can feel that amazing beast circling around my legs, ready to lead me deeper into this forest of who I am, who I was, and who I wish to be. Lidia has me lie down on the floor and search for why I can’t speak the truths that ring so loudly in my head. Why I get caught in that head and can’t get out when I need to the most. It takes a few minutes of her shaking her magic rattles and helping me to get the energy moving, when it hits me, “If I tell the truth, he will leave.” And that is the big fear. Whether it’s my dad, or some other man I love, I fear telling the truth because the truth is heavy and big and means something, and by saying it I might weed them out of my life. And because I often decide I want someone before I figure out whether I should want them, I prefer to hold back on the truth rather than risk losing them by it. And instead, I lose them because of it.

  26

  Date Twenty-Six: My Momma’s Still My Biggest Fan

  I once asked my former sponsor Louise how I can be in a healthy relationship when I’ve never seen one up close. She reminded me that I have my mom and her boyfriend Raymond as an example, and she is right. My mom was single my whole life. She never dated. There were never any strange men coming in and out of the house. She had her work to which she was a slave, and she had me. Nana, on the other hand, retired from men at the age of fifty. Of course, by that point, she had been married four times. The last of which was a sham marriage in the late seventies to my uncle Vic’s boyfriend. They exchanged vows, rings, and she took his last name, but it was only so he could get a tax break, and she could fly for free on Delta because he was a pilot with the airline. He later died of AIDS in the eighties, but my grandmother still has his surname. I find it incredibly funny that it will be his name that goes on her tombstone—a con even in the afterlife. But my mother is a different story.

  When my father was arrested and sent away, my mom didn’t go on a drinking binge, she didn’t have a nervous breakdown, she didn’t throw dramatic tantrums, as I know I would have done. She got a job, she went back to school, and she started working at the company where she still works twenty-five years later. And dating, well, there was no room for that. So I got used to it being just my mom and me, with my grandmother as the third member of the triumvirate. When I was in college, my mom was transferred to her company’s New York office just so she could be closer to me while I went to school. We left Nana behind, and the two of us learned to love New York City together. My mom went back for her bachelor’s degree at NYU when I was in college myself. And though I might be the more philosophical, my mom was the one to graduate with honors. Because she does things the right way.

  And then in 2002, I decided to leave New York. I think sometimes people can’t be open to love until it doesn’t look like there are any other options left. Until there is space in the heart, and time in the schedule, to make room for another.

  With school out of the way, her job not taking up all of her time anymore, and her daughter and only friend preparing to move to the other side of the country, my mother, on my uncle Vic’s urging, asked out the guy in her building’s gym she had been eyeing for quite some time. And that guy was Raymond. Raymond is my mom’s first boyfriend. They make dinner together and go to the movies. They go on vacations and play golf every time the weather’s good. They are in love, and they are one another’s best friends. And though I could throw out the codependency word, I also realize that sometimes a little codependence is the glue that keeps things together.

  “So I was thinking you should come out for Presidents’ Day weekend,” I tell my mom as I sit in my car at the stables. I stare out my windshield at the jump arena, watching as horses and their riders go over a series of fences.

  “Presidents’ Day? That sounds like a good idea.”

  “Really?” I ask, a little surprised by her quick acceptance of the plan. My mom doesn’t visit me as much as I would like.

  “Sure. I think I can do that.”

  I start counting down the days for her arrival. Because my mom has seen how much I have changed. She has seen me become more able to pay the bills and show up for my family and be a woman, even though she has not had the chance to see how I live. I pick her up in my clean car at LAX with a dozen roses and decent clothes and trimmed fingernails and clipped-back hair. I pick her up, and we begin a regular weekend in Kristen’s life. I show her the work that my nonprofit does. I make her dinner. I take her to one of my meetings.

  The next day, we start one of the best dates of my life. We go to the Observatory, and my mom loves the Sparkling Ribbon of Time. And she looks at all the brooches and pendants and points out the ones she likes. And she joins me in being at once awed and humbled by the size of this world. We go outside and stand by the café, looking at the big, beautiful view. I tell my mom how I’ve recently been thinking again about Jimmy Voltage.

  “I just wish he would stop coming to my Tuesday night meeting,” I tell her.

  “I don’t know why you don’t talk to him about it,” she suggests. “Ask him what happened.”

  I look down into the drop of the landscape below; the dry harsh ground of Griffith Park surrounds us. Right in the middle of the valley, there sits a small desolate hill, as though rising up against the paved road and wealthy homes and the stark Observatory that hovers over it. It is green and beautiful and I am sure the envy of every developer tearing up the land around it. But that’s the thing about L.A.; there are some parts about us that no one can change. And maybe the same goes for Jimmy.

  “I wouldn’t know what I’d say.” I shrug in response to my mom’s question. “I don’t think we’re that comfortable with each other to have that talk. Besides, I already know what he wouldn’t be able to say.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “That he thought he was dating a woman and ended up getting a scared little girl.”

  But I’m not sure if it’s that simple, that I somehow fucked it up. I know Jimmy has his own issues too. RAD was around long before I was.

  My mom squeezes my hand. “Don’t worry, K. It’ll happen.”

  We go to the stables, and my mom watches me ride Arrow. Afterward, we hang out with this horse who means so much to me and as he nuzzles into my arm, my mom laughs. “I don’t know why you’re bothering with all these dates. You two look pretty in love.”

  And we are. As I show my mom my life, I get a birds-eye view of it myself. Of the hiking trails an
d the road trips and the healthy meals and horses and sunny days and fresh flowers that fill my world. That night we lie in my bed and talk about what my mom was like before she had me.

  “It’s funny because I can’t even remember really being a person then,” she tells me. “I was just so shy and confused.”

  “Like a ghost person?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, you know, they’re the type of personality that never quite touches down to the ground. Like Keanu Reeves or George Bush. They’re here in the physical, but you can’t really feel that they’re truly part of this world.”

  My mom thinks about it; she is playing with my hand. “Yeah, in a way, I was.”

  Just as my mother gave me life, so I brought her the gift in turn. Because my mom is a whole, true person today. She is funny and kind and not afraid to share her opinion. Like most parents, she lived in a certain state of denial when I was drinking and using, and I know, though I am healthy now, she wishes desperately that I had never been sick in the first place. And therein lies the great difference between my mom and me. Because I don’t regret my dark places. I feel so fortunate to have seen the sad and the sick parts of life and to have emerged from them.

  But even more than that, she doesn’t want that kind of pain for me. Ever since I was a kid in elementary school, my mom and Nana have done everything they could to protect me from the harsh realities of life. They worked overtime to make sure I was never left alone in stores, never walked home from school by myself, was never put in a position where I could wind up on the side of a milk carton. While other kids went out and participated in a myriad of adventures, they said no to summer camp, to Indian Princesses, to sleepovers, and as I moved into adolescence, to any number of opportunities for me to get wild, get in trouble, get hurt. I have diary upon diary filled with the entries, “They won’t let me…” And it ranges from getting sugar-filled cereal, to going to all-ages nightclubs, to being able to wear Daisy Duke shorts, and finally, when I hit fifteen and found myself a boyfriend, to having sex. And it’s probably no surprise to anyone but them that I would grow up to become a woman hell-bent on adventure and sexual freedom.

  But I also know that no one could have loved me the way that they did. That overprotecting someone is sometimes the great price of unconditional love. Because how can you care so deeply for another, love them with every ounce of your being, be born by them and give them your life all at once, and not wake up every day, petrified that something bad could happen to them?

  The next day we drive up North to an outlet mall, and we go shopping. For years my mom took me shopping. She threw clothes and money and privilege at me to make up for the hours she was at work, for the fact that my father was missing, or because Nana could be mean. But since I got sober, we refrain from such guilt-ridden enabling. But this weekend is different. I am saving money on my own now, and I have just gotten a promotion that demands I get my first business suit. As we drive up, Dixie Chicks begin to sing “Landslide” on the radio, and I turn up the volume.

  “I love this song too,” my mom says as she turns it up more.

  It still fills my car, this memory of driving with my mother through the green hills and misty mountains of California. Me singing, and my mother stealing glances in my direction as we both know that I am growing up, that I have changed, and the one thing that never will is our huge, magnificent love for one another.

  27

  Date Twenty-Seven: Revelations

  On Saturday night I go to a party at Mimi’s house and begin to question her mental state. She called me Thursday morning at 7:15 a.m., nearly out of breath. Since we’ve recently started taking morning hikes together, I think she might be on her way to my apartment. But she’s not, she’s just excited.

  “I have the perfect man for you,” she squeals.

  If it weren’t seven in the morning, I might be more enthusiastic.

  “No, really, Kristen. He could be, like, the one.”

  I don’t mean to be callous, but Mimi’s Jewish matchmaker can get the better part of her. I have seen her do this with other female friends, and it’s scary. Even scarier, I have become her latest target.

  “Imagine Jimmy Voltage but with advanced degrees and a trust fund,” she knows she has me on this one. I haven’t heard her speak the words “Jimmy Voltage” in a long while, so it must be time for the big guns.

  I’m not necessarily on the hunt for a rich man, so the latter part, though nice, isn’t the clincher. But all in all, Mimi’s description sounds like exactly what I am looking for. Maybe Mimi got this one right. Maybe this guy Joel will be my second coming.

  Mimi and her boyfriend Carty have just moved in together, so there could no better place for me to meet my future partner than in the glow of their own partnership. When Mimi and Carty met, she didn’t declare off the bat, “He’s the one!” as I have a tendency to do. And though they had slept together by their third date, there was something rather relaxed about the way it started, about the way it has progressed.

  I walk into Mimi and Carty’s new house and know immediately that Joel is not my future partner. Because Joel is an alcoholic. I shoot Mimi a look, but she is trying to get Joel’s attention. Joel is busy dancing by himself in the corner. And though I like people who dance by themselves in the corner, I can tell by the large pint glass of whiskey and coke in Joel’s hand that he is not looking for a sober woman with an active spiritual program. He is most likely just looking for another drink.

  Mimi has been sober for almost seven years. I consider her one of my elders in that sense, and as I have struggled with the ups and downs that come with living sober, it is Mimi to whom I traditionally go first. So why she thought this clearly active drunk, albeit a hot one, and I would make the couple of the century is beyond me. Five years ago, sure, we probably could have started some tragi-comic romance that involved a lot of fighting and devastating benders. But now?

  We start talking because so far it is a small gathering, and we both know why we are here. I crack a Red Bull, and Joel doesn’t even seem to notice that I am not joining him in the Whiskey and Cokes. Joel seems to be pretty oblivious to everything as he talks about the limo he is renting for his birthday and the tattoos he has been trying to get lasered off his arm and how L.A. has begun to bore him. He is thinking he will move back to San Francisco.

  Though he’s drunk, there’s an ease between us, and it’s no surprise. Because, though I’m sober, I’m still an alcoholic, and we get each other. We’re the same type.

  “Why would you want to move back to San Francisco?” I joke, playing off the long-standing L.A./S.F. rivalry. “The women are so ugly there.”

  He laughs. “I know. That’s why they’ll let you do the naughtiest things to them.”

  I agree because I understand the misogynist mentality. I can certainly be one myself. Mimi is inside, watching us, and when I come in to get another Red Bull, she takes me into the bedroom under the pretense that she wants to show me their new game for Wii.

  I see through her ruse because Mimi hates video games. Me, on the other hand, well, I can definitively state that Nintendo was my first addiction. I am already swinging aimlessly with the Wii controller when she asks, “So what do you think?”

  I throw a right jab in an attempt to knock out my enemy on the screen. “About what?”

  “About Joel, asshole.”

  I grunt as I dodge my opponent. “I think he’d be an incredible hook up.”

  “Come on, don’t waste one on him. I think this could be more than that.”

  I barely hear her because I am in video-game land, and to be honest it feels more realistic than what Mimi is proposing. But she presses on: “You guys should get to know each other. I really feel this could be exactly what you both have been searching for.”

  I am getting a little out of breath—Wii is hard. “Mi?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know if you noticed this...Bullshit motherfucker!” I
have a bit of Tourettes while playing video games. “But your friend is an alcoholic.”

  “Yeah, I know, but I thought you could help him.”

  I’m really into the game now. “You want me to convert him?”

  Mimi is watching the screen, which is a good thing because I might have had to take aim at her too. “No, I thought you could be his angel.”

  “Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!” I yell at the TV.

  And this is how I’ve grown. I have absolutely no desire to save Joel’s lost soul. No human power can. I know because even the ones who tried to save mine failed. And I loved them. Dearly. No, soul saving is for higher powers only.

  Thankfully, Joel is not trying to get sober that night. I come out to find Joel sitting on the couch, taking pictures of himself with his iPhone. He doesn’t seem all that interested in talking to anyone at the party. He just keeps hitting the “capture” button while he stares into his cup. And I get that too. I used to look into my cup all the time. Fearing that it would end soon, wishing it would end soon, hoping somehow that there was an answer down there, and I just needed to get to the bottom of it.