Falling in Love

by Stephen Bradlee

  He pulled out a pair of black spiked high-heeled boots. I just stared at them. Jack grinned and I knew I was lost. I couldn’t believe that I was letting him draw me into his sick fetish. But I did. Like some kind of doll, I let him undress me. My head was swirling as he decked me out in a shear black bra and panties, black silk stockings and those boots. I told myself that my addiction made me powerless. I was a girl who could never say no. But I knew that was bullshit. Sure, he was dominating me by dressing me up like some sick Barbie, but when I gripped that rope, I felt a power, a seduction, that I had never experienced before—of being dominant over a man! Jack laid face down nude on the brass bed and I bound his hands and feet to the posts so tightly that he winced in pain as he grinned. That angered me. I didn’t want him to enjoy this. I wanted him to regret the humiliation that he was causing us.

  I grabbed his whip and whacked him hard on the ass. He squealed and squirmed, saying “Yes. Yes!” That enraged me even more. I hit him harder and he moaned louder. I loathed him for manipulating my trust in him and for causing me to slip again. I lashed out at him, even as I knew it wasn’t about Jack. I was unleashing my hatred for men, for my life, for myself.

  Something inside me snapped and I lost it. I began thrashing Jack faster and harder. To shut him up! To end this horror! If he was moaning, I didn’t hear him. Just that loud cracking whip’s snap and the throbbing rage inside my head. Like some insane robot, I whipped harder and faster, faster and harder. My arm ached. Fall off arm! I kept on flailing him faster and harder.

  Suddenly a sound broke though my fury.

  Jack was screaming, “Stop! Stop!”

  I stopped.

  I stood there, gasping for breath, waiting for my heart to pound out of my chest. I looked down and couldn’t believe the carnage. Not only was Jack’s ass a bloodied pulp but bloody gashes ran up and down his back and his legs and even his bloody matted hair. Deep red splotches covered the bedspread, the sheets and were splattered on the walls. Suddenly, I was afraid that Jack would bleed to death if I didn’t call an ambulance. But how could I explain this is the paramedics. I’d end up in jail.

  Jack’s pitifully whined, “I finished a long time ago.”

  Finished? Finished! I was supposed to stop when this sick bastard came! Suddenly, I was enraged again! I sprinted into the kitchen and grabbed the biggest knife I owned. I rushed back into the bedroom and furiously slashed at the ropes, freeing him.

  “Get out!” I screamed. “Get the hell out of here!”

  Jack rose and gingerly put on his white shirt. It oozed blood. “Look, I—” he started to protest.

  “Get out!” I shrieked. I thrust the knife in his face. “Out!”

  Looking like he genuinely feared for his life, Jack threw on his pants and shoes. He ran limping toward the front door as I pursued him, brandishing the knife a few inches behind his bleeding head. He staggered out. I slammed and locked the door. I heard him trip and hit his head against the hallway wall. He kept hitting his head against it, whispering, “Never again. Never. Never. Again.”

  I smashed my hands against my ears, trying to block him out. I sprinted back into the bedroom and slammed the door. He would again. Like I would again. Never again was a pipe dream! Elaine had been right. Addiction only got worse! I could never conquer this sickness. One day, I would kill someone or myself or both. I might as well just end my miserable life now!

  I yanked the knife up to my throat, commanding my fist to slit my throat in half. It refused. I started shaking and the knife began slicing into my skin. Warm blood trickled down my neck. Jab a huge hole! Make that blood gush out! My arm just kept shaking, refusing to kill me.

  I’m so pathetic I can’t even kill myself!

  At least I could maim myself for life. I held the knife up with both hands, taking aim between my legs, the center of all my pain and problems. The knife hovered over my spread legs. I thrust it down. Loud ripping filled my ears. I slashed the blade down again and again. More ripping. Stuffing exploded into the air, swirling around me. I looked down through the haze. I had only torn into the mattress. Again a failure! A complete fiasco!

  Spent and exhausted, I flopped onto the shredded bed, curled into a tight ball and cried uncontrollably for the infinite time of my life.

  MIDLOGUE

  Sherry broke down crying. She crumbled on my sofa, her head clutched in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. After a long while, she stopped, still covering her face. Finally, she wiped her eyes with a tissue from a packet that she had had the foresight to bring. She hadn’t just talked into a tape recorder. She had been reliving her sordid past. Her beautiful face was now twisted in pain.

  She desperately needed a break and probably some sleep. I feared the consequences of her continuing.

  Most of my projects had involved a lot of emotion and pain. I had doctored scripts for panicked producers and directors who had starting shoot dates but no scripts. I had ghosted celebrity autobiographies for despondent, desperate stars. No one ever wrote their memoir when they were on top. Autobiographies were excuses to explain why they weren’t working and usually frantic attempts to revive their careers. But I had never before experienced this kind of anguish.

  Sherry agreed to a break and we dined on Chinese takeout in my back garden. Despite claiming to be famished, Sherry just pushed her Sesame Chicken around her plate with her chop sticks, completely lost in thought. She didn’t want polite conversation. She didn’t want any conversation. Occasionally a tear slithered down her cheek, marking another moment of past agony.

  I wanted to know how Sherry’s story ended. What if we didn’t finish on time and there was no ending? I couldn’t create one. Sherry’s story deserved a real ending. Her words would have to reside in my unfinished-projects drawer, waiting for her return, if ever.

  I asked softly, “If we don’t get it all this weekend, can you stay an extra day?”

  “No,” she replied. “Monday morning, I have to be on a plane. Period.”

  Silence enveloped us again. Sheltered from the blaring streets by townhouses and highrises, we heard only the soft hum of air conditioners.

  I tried small talk and asked about her relationship with Candice. “We sat beside each other on a plane once,” she replied without looking up. “When we discovered we had Anonymous groups in common, we became phone friends.” That was all she had to say.

  Finally, I said, “We have to talk about business.”

  Sherry finally looked up, her aquamarine eyes stared at me. She shook her head. “If you think this is about money, you haven’t been listening. I’m not doing this to get things but to get rid of them. I don’t want anything except to be, well, ‘anonymous.’”

  I shook my head. “You have to be paid something and the typical token dollar seems a travesty.”

  Sherry hesitated a moment and then replied, “Candice says that you know about offshore accounts.”

  I nodded. I had once worked for a star who so desperately wanted to claim that the book was written alone that I was paid through an offshore account.

  “If the book makes any money, give a portion to charity, mainly ‘Anonymous’ groups. Put the rest of it in some overseas account and give the account number to Candice. Maybe someday I’ll be happy to have it. So we just did business, right?”

  I nodded. “I guess we did.”

  Although completely exhausted, Sherry wanted to press on. Having spent much of my life on deadlines, I knew how invaluable a few hours of sleep could be combined with strong coffee.

  “You can take a cab back to your hotel,” I suggested, “or you can stay here. You can have my bed. I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

  Sherry opted for the sofa bed.

  When I rose at dawn, Sherry had already showered and dressed and had made toast and very strong coffee. She looked like a runway model. I looked like a writer on a deadline. I didn’t bother to shower or shave or comb my hair. A clean T-shirt was the best I could do to greet the day.


  Within minutes, Sherry and I were again lost in her story.

  THE STORY

  PART TWO

  All night, I tried to devise a way to end my misery: pills, leaping off the Brooklyn Bridge, diving in front of a subway train. But I was a coward. A failure both in life, and in death.

  At dawn, I finally called Elaine. We met in Central Park. The sun shined brightly with the last vestiges of an Indian summer. The trees were ablaze with ripe oranges, brilliant yellows and rusty browns as a breeze swirled leaves down to carpet the emerald grass. Yet the park’s splendor barely filtered through my blotched eyes concealed by dark shades which matched my desolate mood. My turtleneck covered the bandaged cuts on my throat. We sat silently on a bench as skateboarders, cyclists, joggers and lovers ambled by. I shoved my hands beneath me to keep them from shaking.

  Finally, I said, “I could have killed him.”

  “I know. Fortunately, you didn’t.”

  “I think I was really trying to murder him because then I knew I would finally have to murder myself. I couldn’t face a trial, jail, living with what I had done.” I turned to Elaine. “I tried to end it all but I didn’t have the courage.”

  Elaine took me into her arms and embraced me. I felt her warmth. “We’ve all been there, Sherry. You just have to get up again.”

  “I can’t. I can’t go on.”

  “The irony is that for the first time in your life, you probably can. You’ve now seen your only two real choices. You go on or you die.” She leaned back but held my arms in her hands. “Take off your glasses.” I complied. Elaine stared straight into my puffy eyes. “Are you willing to do anything to get sober?”

  I looked away. It didn’t matter what I said. I would only fail again. I was doomed. Elaine grabbed my face and turned me back to her. “Are you?”

  I started crying and finally whispered, “Yes.”

  “Then no sex for a month?”

  I nodded, then added, “Except masturbating?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s the only thing that puts me to sleep.” Even on the edge, I was already backpedaling.

  “Try working out. Get tired.”

  “Can I at least kiss?”

  “No.”

  I didn’t want to be alone, not now. “But I can date though?”

  “No.”

  “But can I—?

  “—No.”

  A month seemed like one day less than forever. “For a month?”

  “Yes.”

  I had no choice. Was I such a hopeless fool that I could not to see that? I whispered, “Okay.”

  Elaine got up. “Come on. I’m buying you a present.”

  “What?”

  “A sweatsuit. You’re going to join them.” She motioned to two joggers cruising over a bridge. “The living.”

  That afternoon, I stood beside the Central Park Reservoir while wearing my spanking new sweatsuit. I nervously smoked a cigarette as I stared at the track encircling the still blue water and tried to summon the courage to complete one circuit. It looked like an awfully long way around. I crushed out the cigarette and started jogging. Fifty yards later, I stopped, gasping for breath. Since the purpose was to get myself tired, I tried again. I managed to circle the reservoir twice before I was sure that I was going to throw up or die, or both.

  After this extreme bout of exercise and my previous sleepless night, I expected to collapse into bed and fall asleep without having to masturbate. But for insurance, I bought two bottles of Napa Valley’s best. I had been trying to avoid alcohol because it usually led to acting out. But I swore to myself that I would not leave my locked apartment or touch myself, no matter what.

  I lay on the sofa and surfed channels until I struck upon a syrupy Doris Day-Rock Hudson film. I didn’t want anything even remotely provocative. I quickly became bored which I hoped would put me to sleep. It didn’t. Instead, I lay there for three hours, enduring Fifties comedies while slugging wine from the bottle. Eventually, the picture became hazy, the bottles became empty and I was passed out.

  Not surprising, I awoke with a crushing hangover but weirdly, I felt a small amount of pride. You did it, Sherry! I had just managed to go twenty-four hours without having any sex whatsoever. I couldn’t remember that last time I could say that. But it had been years.

  Afraid to be at home alone, I called a temp agency, convinced that since it was mid-morning, all the day’s positions would be filled. No such luck. Another temp had walked off a job and within ten minutes of replacing her I realized why. The job entailed typing and copying endless documents that had to be in court immediately while enduring screams to increase both my speed and accuracy by the lawyer who must have graduated from hell’s finest law school. I worked all day in a cold sweat, without taking lunch or bathroom breaks. It was horrible and great because I had no time to think about anything but getting out those damn documents.

  Upon my parole, I practically crawled out the door, slunk into a Mexican restaurant and ordered a pitcher of Margaritas. I knew that it would lead to extreme regret but I had a plan. Whenever a member of the male gender approached me, I would give him the same decibel level I had endured all that day. It wasn’t long before the manager asked me to leave. Triumphantly arriving home alone, armed with another bottle of wine and the largest strawberry cheesecake found anywhere in D’Agostino’s. I collapsed on my sofa and watched another syrupy movie while I swigged from the bottle and gorged myself on one creamy slice after another. Finally, I was sick to my stomach and hoped that I would crash from this weird alcohol-sugar high into a sound sleep.

  It didn’t happen. For the next several hours, I slowly sobered up into a horrible hangover, more and more certain that only Artie could coax me into slumber. I kept crossing my legs as if to squeeze out any desire in me but it was futile.

  I finally traipsed down to the corner deli for another bottle of wine but ended up with a bottle of nighttime cold medicine. Having endured a horrible experience with cough medicine when I was in junior high, I feared slugging it down but managed to sip it until I finally passed out. The next morning I awoke with another mind-crushing hangover and dragged myself to another temp job, managing to work two shifts before I finally fell on my bed well after midnight.

  Completely exhausted and figuring that I would have to eventually fall asleep without any crutches, I decided to go cold turkey—a good idea that turned out to be one of worst nights of my life.

  Seconds seemed like minutes. Minutes were hours. The longer the endless night went on, the worse it got. What began with an itch between my legs, turned into an entire body of cells demanding to be satisfied. My hands were shaking and I was sweating and breathing hard, feeling painfully sick. I knew I had to grab Artie from the drawer, rationalizing that I wasn’t really doing anything wrong. Masturbating wasn’t like acting out in some seedy bedroom with a bunch of guys. But the moment I touched the handle, I knew that if I opened that drawer it would be the end of me. I knew why Elaine had said I could do nothing, as in nothing! Because if I let myself slip the slightest bit it would turn into a freefall! I knew it was true even though I didn’t believe it. As I reached again for the drawer, I heard myself snap, “No!”

  I pulled back, only to waver again. “NO!” I screamed. The handle felt hot and seared me. The sweating and hyperventilation was becoming worse. I was going through physical withdrawal! How could that happened? Sex wasn’t a drug like alcohol or heroin. But it was! It most certainly was. I climbed out of bed and ran to the sofa, away from that drawer. I bundled myself up in an old thick robe for protection. I had to somehow survive the night.

  I tried Emily Dickinson, reciting any verses I could remember.

  “The flesh surrendered, canceled,

  The bodiless begun.

  Two worlds, like audiences, disperse,

  and leave the soul alone.”

  “I died for beauty, but was scarce

  Adjusted in a tomb

  When one who died f
or truth was lain

  In an adjoining room.”

  I barely heard the words above my heaving breaths.

  “He questioned softly why I failed?

  ‘For beauty,’ I replied.

  ‘And I for truth,—the two are one

  We brethren are,’ he said.

  And so, as kinsmen met a night

  We talked between the rooms,

  Until the moss had reached our lips

  And covered up our names.”

  I couldn’t remember anymore. Why? I knew countless verses. Was I losing my mind? Dizziness engulfed me and I slipped my hand inside my robe. My heart pounded furiously. I’m going have a heart attack! Great! Anything to end this night! My hand slid over to my breast, caressing it felt so wonderful. Too good! I yanked the robe tightly around me.

  I wasn’t going to make it through the night. I knew that. I began crying and dived down to my knees and whispered, “Please, God. If you exist, just help me get through this goddamn night.” Nice, Sherry, you swore! “Oops,” I said, “Sorry about that.” I prayed, “Our father who art in heaven, hallow be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” I couldn’t remember the rest. I tried again, “…thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”

  My strained brain couldn’t remember another word. I tried the Steps. “One, we admitted that we were powerless over our addiction. Two, we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Three, we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to God as we understood God. Please understand God!”

  Somehow, it helped. My breathing softened and my heart subsided so I just kept repeating the Steps all night, aching for daylight, which finally came.

  I threw on some clothes and dragged myself down to the corner coffee shop and sipped on mocha while trying to read a blurry Times. I didn’t even think about trying to go to some job. I just walked around the city all day, popping aspirins drinking coffee, and calling Elaine for support until it was time for group.