You’ll Never Blue Ball in This Town Again

by Heather McDonald

  Recently, I was watching A&E’s Intervention, a documentary-style TV show where they show real addicts sniffing cocaine or shooting up heroin and then their family does an intervention by reading letters to the addict about how much their addiction has affected them all. I always have to watch until the very end of the episode. That’s when they play the happy music and write on the screen that Susie completed ninety days of rehab in South Carolina. I wipe my tears and feel so relieved until another paragraph pops up stating that Susie relapsed six days upon returning home and has gone back to sniffing computer keyboard cleaners.

  Halfway through an episode about a woman addicted to Vicodin, I realized that I was addicted to crack backing! Or is back cracking? Who cares? I know what I mean.

  Several times a day, this woman would go to random pharmacies and pay strangers who had prescriptions for their Vicodin. She couldn’t function or think about anything else until she got her fix. I realized that I was the same way.

  When I ask someone to crack my back—which most people can do if I stretch out facedown on the floor and they press on my spine—it is torture until the person actually does it exactly right. As I lie there waiting and begging for the crack, it’s all I can think about. When I hear a good strong pop, it’s so euphoric I practically orgasm.

  In a way, I’m just like heroin addicts wrapping a rubber band around their arm, waiting for the hit. I look for the same hit with a crack in my back. I’ll even ask a stranger to do it. If I find someone at work willing to crack me, I’ll lie on the filthy carpet and back-crack. I don’t care. They don’t even have to be a licensed chiropractor or even someone I like. Lay me flat and twist one leg to the opposite side, cross my arms, squeeze, and turn my head so that it’s facing the other direction. Just crack my back if you ever meet me. I’ll love you forever!

  The first time that I was professionally “cracked” or “adjusted” was by this huge black chiropractor. He pushed on my back once and it was like someone took a piece of bubble packing wrap and twisted it and it popped—that delicious sound that only bubble pops can make. I’ll be honest: I’ve been chasing the dragon ever since, and it’s never as good as the first time. But until Promises in surf-pounding Malibu opens up a wing for backcrackaholics, I guess I’ll just have to live with my addiction.

  Maybe one day if I become famous enough, I’ll have my own Heather McDonald Center, just like Betty Ford. The center will bring the insatiable need to hear one’s spinal cord snap, crackle, and pop like a bowl of Rice Krispies drenched in 2 percent milk to the forefront of the medical community. We’ll have big black-tie charity events to raise money for the wing, showing videos of recovered back crackers throughout the hundred-dollar-a-plate dinner.

  I don’t know if my self-awareness of my back-cracking addiction made me not want to flirt with these cute chiropractic students, like an alcoholic turning down a bartending job because the temptation to indulge would be too great, or if I chose not to flirt with the hot chiropractors because I already met the man I was destined to marry.

  When I told my friend Tara about my date with Peter and my lack of interest in the chiropractors, she immediately said, “I think this could be the one.”

  “Don’t jinx it!” I screamed.

  My friends and I used to believe in jinxing things. It’s the direct opposite of The Secret, a book, a movie, a way of life, a Hallmark card, detailing how the secret to success lies in envisioning what you want in minute detail and asking the universe to hand it over. For example, if you want, say, an infinity pool, just make a vision board depicting exactly what you desire. Cut pictures of your dream house and pool from Architectural Digest and glue snapshots of you and your loved ones splashing around in the water; park that red Porsche off to the side and say out loud: “Universe, I want an infinity pool.” You can add pictures of anything or anybody you might want, too. (Mine would include a photo of really good abs!) Then you’re supposed to hang the board above your bed or across the room, where it’s the first thing you see when you wake up and the last thing you see at night, and one day it will all come true!

  I do question this philosophy a bit. If this vision board thing really worked, wouldn’t every teenage boy be banging Sports Illustrated bikini models?

  But at the time—in those pre-Secret days—we thought if you said it out loud, then you’d jinx things and keep them from coming true.

  Regardless of the jinxing, I knew in my heart, yes, I think Peter could be “The One,” but so as not to jinx it, I kept that to myself. Peter and I dated very consistently, seeing each other every weekend and once or twice during the week.

  Then about three weeks in, Greg, a good-looking guy I knew through friends, asked if I’d like to go to the Bachelor Ball with him. A Bachelor Ball is a charity event for bachelors to bring dates. Everyone dresses up as famous couples. It was basically all former USC fraternity guys. Peter had not asked me out for that Friday night, so according to The Rules, I was to accept this other invitation, especially because at this point, Peter and I were not exclusive. That Friday night as I was driving from my parents’ house to my apartment in Brentwood to get ready for the Bachelor Ball, my cell phone rang. It was Peter.

  “So what are we doing tonight? Do you want to see a movie or go to dinner and rent a movie?”

  This was all so great! This couldn’t have worked out better. I needed to write those two New York bitches who wrote The Rules a proper thank-you note because I followed Peter’s question with line 23 from The Rules, Chapter Five: “Always appear to have other male suitors even if you do not and have not been on a date in a decade.”

  “Oh, I can’t. I have plans tonight,” I said, savoring the pause that I knew was the result of Peter feeling insecure. “I have this charity event to go to.” I knew that he would find out about it through our mutual friend, Jamie. “So, I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” I said and hung up.

  As I continued driving, I immediately sat up straight, opened up my sunroof, and tossed my head about in sheer delight. That’s right, dude. I have other plans. I am a creature like no other. Sit and ponder that all night, Peter.

  The Bachelor Ball was fun. Greg was entertaining and attractive enough, but as we made out in my apartment afterward, I couldn’t help but feel like I was cheating on Peter. I just wanted Greg to leave. I guess he picked up on my telepathy, because he did.

  The next morning at about seven forty-five, my phone rang, waking me up. It was Peter asking if I wanted to meet him for breakfast in Beverly Hills. He was absolutely checking up on me to see if (a) I was there and (b) if someone else was there with me.

  Obviously, he was relieved when I answered and agreed to meet him. We ended up spending the whole day together. After breakfast, we went Rollerblading in Venice Beach.

  By the way, does anyone but me even Rollerblade anymore? I don’t even think it is very good exercise because all you’re doing is rolling. I usually hate active dates, but Peter was a good Rollerblader and helped me down a steep hill. The last time I went Rollerblading with a guy, he made fun of me for rolling too slowly and rolled ahead of me the entire date. What a freaking dick—and not a very big one from what I remember of his spandex shorts.

  By our eleventh date, Peter had been blue balled pretty badly. I had spent the night numerous times after long make-out sessions where we were both completely naked, and every time I’d say, “No, I don’t know you well enough,” Peter would just say, “OK,” and we would both go to sleep, until a couple hours later when I’d feel someone knocking on my back door and it was Peter with a big boner. Then we’d make out some more, in which I’d turn him down again, and the knocking would restart around seven a.m. That is the best. I do miss the knocking. The only knocking I get now in the middle of the night is from my kids wanting to come in my room.

  I had lost my virginity a couple months prior to meeting Peter with Ray, but we had only done it a few times. So when I finally decided in the middle of a Mel Gibson movie I was watching
with Peter that tonight he was going to get some, I started laughing, which brought me a lot of attention, since the movie was not a comedy. Again, I just love being a woman. The woman decides when and if you are going to have sex. I decided yes, I want to make love to Peter, and we are going to have full-blown intercourse in about an hour and nine minutes from now, and sweet Peter is just sitting next to me completely confused as to why I can’t stop laughing.

  Like I had always promised myself, I was taking the birth-control pill regularly for the past six months, so when the moment came and I said, “OK, do you have a condom?” Peter was so shocked, he asked, “Are you sure?” And I was sure. It was very good and fun and I was madly in love.

  10 The Courtship of Mackenzie’s Father

  Months passed and we were all set to spend the Fourth of July weekend with Peter’s brother Tim, a divorced daddy from Las Vegas. Tim, Peter, and I went to our friend’s party in Manhattan Beach. This was my first time meeting Tim, and I obviously wanted to impress him. In retrospect, Tim is an easygoing guy who’s worked in casinos his whole life. It wasn’t like I was meeting Jackie Kennedy Onassis at Le Cirque.

  As our day at the beach progressed and I enjoyed my vodka and cranberry juice a little too much, I decided to leave the group and walk down the bike path to another beach house where some of my friends were also partying.

  Peter is the most nonjealous person in the world. He couldn’t have cared less that I left. If he was to ever catch me sitting on an NBA player’s lap, he’d probably introduce himself and ask about getting box seats at the Staples Center.

  The other party was filled with hot shirtless guys and skinny bitchy girls. I had some more drinks, laughed, flirted, and then headed back to our party for dinner. I continued to be my charming, funny self until dinner was served. We all sat down to barbecued chicken and corn on the cob, when somebody poured me a big goblet of Chardonnay. (Little tip: Do not drink Chardonnay after consuming numerous vodka drinks in the blazing hot sun.)

  Halfway through the dinner, my eyes started to roll back into my head and I could no longer form sentences with words from Webster’s. Wendy, the hostess, said to me, “Let’s walk down to the shore and watch the fireworks.” When I got up, I could barely stand. My skinny calves were as wobbly as a baby colt just being birthed and attempting to get its footing for the very first time.

  Later, Peter told me that he and Tim had to basically carry me to his Expedition and place me in it before the fireworks even began. Then as we were driving home on the 405 freeway, I rolled down the window and puked. At 60 miles per hour, the vomit ended up decorating the side of Peter’s Expedition like a Jackson Pollock painting. Priceless!

  The next morning, I woke up feeling completely humiliated. I had tried to impress Peter’s brother and instead ended up looking like a total lush. Out of my hangover blur, I sat on the step that divided the living room from the dining room in his condo and asked, “Where is this going?”

  Can you believe after my performance the previous night I had the audacity to ask where this relationship was going? I’m surprised he didn’t respond, “It’s going to the car wash. Do you not know what you did to my Expedition?”

  Instead, he said, “Well, who knows where anything is going, but I love you and we’ll see.”

  I apologized and insisted that I must have been “rufied” at the other party. What else could explain my behavior? When Peter brought up the fact that people who are slipped “rufies” pass out almost immediately and are not conscious enough to vomit, I suggested maybe it was food poisoning. I told him how I get food poisoning all the time.

  I told him how once I went to a really good French restaurant and had about seven drinks and some chicken crepes and got totally sick. I don’t know how the restaurant was rated, but obviously something was wrong with their food that night. What else would explain my illness? They had great drinks but very sick food.

  When I realized I was not going to win my argument, I asked for Peter’s keys and took his car to the car wash. When I got there, I told them how my boyfriend got so sick last night and puked out the window as I was driving him home. “Isn’t he disgusting?”

  I had told a similar lie at the dry cleaners when bringing in the minidress with vomit on it. I said, “This is my sister’s. We just dropped her off at rehab. I’d like to have it clean for her when she gets home.”

  The woman said, “Oh, OK. Next Friday OK?”

  “No, I need this by Thursday,” I replied. She looked at me suspiciously, so I went on sincerely: “It’s visiting day and I want to show her that her last horrible binge-drinking episode did not ruin her favorite dress. Please. It will really lift her spirits if she could wear a Lycra tube dress to group.”

  Peter and I continued to date and fell deeper in love. I managed not to get rufied, food poisoning, or overly drunk for months, which was a miracle for me.

  He would say things to me like, “Wouldn’t you like to get a little house?” And we would both talk about how we wanted kids someday.

  About nine months into our relationship, we went to visit my sister Shannon and her husband in Palm Desert for the weekend. After dinner, Peter was acting really dickish and being argumentative with my sister and me. When we went to our room, I tried to save the evening by attempting to get romantic, but he got all annoyed and rejected me, so I asked him what was going on. He said, “I just don’t want to get anyone pregnant.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s why I’m on the pill.”

  “Well, someone is saying that I am the father of her child,” he stated.

  My first thought was that this child was a year and a half old. I don’t know why—that is just what popped in my head. So I asked, “How old is this child?”

  He got all flustered and said, “It’s not born yet.”

  What the fuck! Had Peter been cheating on me? He went on to say that the weekend before he met me at Jamie’s birthday party, he met a woman named Linda, they went on one date, and had sex. He then went on a date with me a few days later and decided to blow her off for me. He had not seen her since. He told me that she phoned him to say that he was the father of the baby, which was due in about a month.

  I thought I was going to faint. All my dreams of my perfect future were shattering before me.

  Peter said he’d wanted to tell me, but he kept chickening out.

  I could see why. Needless to say, the weekend was ruined. I asked what Linda was like. He said she was thirty-five and a hairdresser. Every hairdresser I’ve had has been very cool and artsy, usually sporting a few tattoos and always changing her hair color. He said she lived in Orange County and owned her own condo.

  I began with my firing line of typical questions. “What does she look like?”

  “She’s Asian,” Peter said tentatively.

  “Oh my God! The baby is not even going to look like me,” I cried. I kept thinking about how everything now had changed and would never be the same. I cried and I cried until I fell asleep.

  I woke up the next morning like most people do after a tragedy. Your first thought is, Oh, it’s morning, and then the dread sets in. Wait—did last night happen or was it a nightmare?

  Yes, it was real. I know it can’t be compared to a death, but it felt like the death of our relationship.

  There was a glimmer of hope that this might not be his child. We would find out after DNA tests were done, but Peter said he felt in his soul that it was his child. He told me that he had seen a lawyer to find out his rights and responsibilities and that he was going to be part of this child’s life, but that he would understand if I wanted to break up with him.

  I went through the timeline and knew he was telling the truth about when this child was conceived. There is a possibility that the conception may have happened that Thursday night, because he said he had plans and asked if I’d like to go out on our first date on Wednesday or Friday. Had I chosen Wednesday, would it have gone so well that he would have canceled his Thurs
day night date with Linda?

  He told me that she had contacted him once before when she first found out she was pregnant. Once it was established that she was keeping the baby, he told her that he had a girlfriend and was not interested in her romantically. She stopped calling. Then a month ago, she called again and said she was due to give birth soon, and that’s when he went to see an attorney.

  We went on with our Sunday. All the while, I pretended to my sister and brother-in-law that nothing was wrong. The whole day, I had a big pit in my stomach and I just kept thinking about the situation. What was going to happen? I have always loved children and never had a fear of being a stepmother or even one day adopting. I knew if we were to stay together, I could love this child like my own.

  I thought of the benefits of my potential stepmother role. Unlike being with a man who was married with a child, I would never have to compete with the child knowing her biological parents as having been together. I processed all of this information. That night I presented Peter with a letter telling him that I was going to stay with him and support him in this, no matter what the outcome might be. I did have the good sense not to share this with any friends or family. I felt we had to know the DNA outcome before I told anyone. Also, I didn’t want my friends bashing him behind my back. Peter was a thirty-three-year-old man who chose to have sex and not use a condom, and the result was a child.

  About two weeks later, I hadn’t heard from Peter all day and I kept calling and calling him. Whenever I start to worry about someone, my mind leaps to the worst possible scenario, death. I still do that today. I think which black dress I would wear for the funeral and what I would wear to the Rosary the night before. Would I go with a Diane von Furstenberg black wrap dress or stick with my tried-and-true black Theory pant-suit. Obviously, we’d have Brent’s Deli cater the wake (otherwise known as the “after party”). Hmm. Now, would we go with little premade sandwiches or do a meat and assorted cheese plate so that people could conveniently make their own? I would be crying so much that I would definitely not go with false eyelashes that day, but would I do full Jackie-O sunglasses?