People in LA knew our story.
I finally had an identity, and I needed to hold on to that.
So we planned on getting married.
I made payments on a goddamn ring.
We made love all morning—all night—all afternoon.
We never wanted to get out of bed.
She told me her secrets. She gave me her past.
But then, well, then we went down.
Relapsing—shooting heroin, cocaine, crystal—popping pills till we couldn’t even feel them anymore—smoking crack. We sold our clothes, books, CDs for drugs. We fought—yelled—screamed at each other. I felt her fingernails dig into my face—tearing. I ran to get away as she bit down hard at the bridge of my nose, pounding her fists into me—accusing me of hiding drugs under the tiles in the bathroom floor.
We stayed locked in our apartment.
I went into convulsions shooting cocaine.
My arm swelled up with an abscess the size of a baseball.
My body stopped producing stool, so I had to reach up inside with a gloved hand and pull out solid pieces of excrement the size and density of goddamn hockey pucks.
We both lost most everything we had—our relationships with our families, the respect of our friends.
And then I tried to steal a computer from my mom’s house. The cops showed up, and I was faced with the choice, you know: detox or jail.
I chose detox.
But my family was determined to get me away from her, so they shipped me out here to Arizona.
She went into UCLA’s county program, and then the owner of the old sober living we’d both been at allowed her to come back for free.
That was over a month ago—three days before Thanksgiving, to be exact.
And at first, you know, we talked all the time.
Her detox was even worse than mine, and my detox was the worst hell I hope I’ll ever have to know.
But I’m twenty-three—my body’s still pretty young.
She’s almost forty, and her body just couldn’t take it.
First two major seizures landed her back in the hospital, and then they discovered she had gallstones, which had to be removed.
She was sick, fucking sick.
But I talked to her every day, borrowing people’s calling cards so I could dial out on the one phone they had set up for us in a little enclosed room off the kitchen.
I’d sit in the wooden office chair that rocked back and forth, listening to the static hum of the space heater and my love’s sweet, sweet voice. I’d have to close all the blinds ’cause I’d be crying so much—my body still vibrating with tremors from my own detox—freezing—always freezing, in spite of the space heater and the jackets and sweaters I’d borrowed from my roommate ’cause I had almost no clothes of my own.
She would tell me she loved me. We’d make plans for when I’d be able to get back to LA.
But then one morning before group, I called and things were different.
It was her voice—vacant-sounding, the sweet seductiveness gone.
I told her I loved her.
She said she didn’t even know what that meant anymore.
My stomach went all tight suddenly—twisted up—knotted—the pressure building like I’d been swept down, down into the deepest ocean.
I called everyone I knew, asking for money to help me get back to LA to be with her. No one would even speak to me. I guess I’d used up every last favor from every last person in my life.
At one point I even thought about hitchhiking.
But, honestly, I’m still too weak.
And, besides, I know damn well she’s not gonna fight for me anymore.
I mean, at one point she would’ve.
At one point she actually believed in me.
Before we relapsed, I’d been offered a book deal to write a memoir about my life. I’d finished half the manuscript, and I’d received nothing but positive feedback. I’m pretty sure she saw success in my future. Hell, maybe that’s why she stayed with me.
But now I’ve lost all that. The book is on hold. Actually, I may have blown the whole thing completely. I have no money—no place to live—no car—no cell phone—nothing. My only prospect of getting out of here is to go into sober living and start working some shit-ass minimum-wage job. I’m just not glamorous enough for her anymore. She’ll find someone else—someone with money—someone in the entertainment industry who can open doors for her.
I know how she works. I know her so goddamn well.
We explored each other fully.
Physically and otherwise.
There was a time making love, locked in our goddamn apartment, where she lay on her back. Without really thinking about it, I began rotating my body, fucking her from every angle until I was facing completely away from her, and then back around the other side.
Goddamn, I still want her so much.
She can’t be the one to leave me.
She just can’t.
So I will leave her.
I won’t call her—not ever again.
It’s over.
I’m gonna start telling people today.
I mean, I’m gonna go do it right now.
So I walk up to the smoke pit.
It’s been over a month of this shit already.
It’s time to end it.
Ch.2
The Safe Passage Center in Arizona is basically just made up of a bunch of cheaply constructed little boxes on the top of a barren, dry, dust-blown hilltop about an hour and a half away from Phoenix. All the groups and weird, New Age-y therapies are held in these sort of converted trailers at the base of the property. The clients, or patients, or whatever we’re called, all stay in a bunch of shoddily built imitation log cabins—usually three people per room. The only privacy comes from a cheap wooden screen set up between the beds. I actually try to spend as little time in my room as possible. It’s pretty depressing in there. Plus, whenever either of my roommates comes in, I get stuck talking to him forever. Mostly, I just hang out in the main lodge—playing board games—trying to teach myself guitar on this acoustic six-string someone left behind. One of the rooms has a fireplace and, for
