The first gulp burns, but then the second soothes. The alcohol instantly hits me and my head is flooded with warmth and obscene happiness. I order a second and a third and leave the restaurant hungry for more, only leaving because order number four is what draws concern in a nice restaurant. I walk out into the street, weaving a little now, feeling the sun on my neck, on my back, over every inch of my skin.
I feel like I’ve been given my superpower back; I’m full of life and hope and optimism. I realise how empty I’ve felt for the last three weeks. How hollowed out. I flag a cab and head downtown, finding a dive bar on the Lower East Side that people like me can seek refuge in. I order a pint of beer and a whiskey shot. Then, as always, I feel the trickle, the stain of sadness beginning to spread inside, into every bit of me. Reaching up through my bones, infecting my body and my brain, until all of the joy has been drained out and I’m just a black hole.
I call my friend Rachael though I don’t know what I say. I think I say I’m in trouble. I might have told her that I want to die again. Because right then and there, I do. Because here I am, back again so soon. Back, peering into the abyss I’ve climbed out of so many times before.
I’m loaded and lost and can’t see or speak properly to tell her where I am, but somehow she still finds me and we’re in the back of a yellow cab and she’s talking to me and I think I’m crying. She takes me to my apartment and puts me to bed, sitting in the darkness of my living room all night in case I choke on my own vomit. When I wake in the morning, she’s gone, but has left a message for me, written on a take-out receipt and sellotaped to a cabinet in the front room. It says simply, ‘You are loved’, and I cry and cry when I read it. I don’t believe it, don’t feel it, but the possibility feels like something.
A week later, I do something I’ve very rarely done in any city, never mind a foreign one I could be deported from: I order cocaine directly from a dealer. I then go to the liquor store on Avenue A with bullet-proof glass between you and the clerk. I buy the biggest bottle of strong vodka, drink it and take the cocaine on the floor of my bathroom, while methodically plotting how I will die.
Each time I go back to rehab, fail the test and say, ‘I relapsed’, the group leader sneers and rolls his eyes:
‘You actually have to have sober time under your belt to be able to say you relapsed. You just keep using.’
Then he moves on to the next person with a flick of his eye. I feel worthless and ashamed. A nothing. A nobody. I stop going to rehab, stop going to AA.
I decide that I’m not, in fact, an alcoholic. I just want to die. And booze seemed like the quickest, easiest, most efficient way to do it. I remember the nights that I took note of how much it took to kill others who’d drowned in booze and made sure I was poured out the same amount. In the moments before it went black, the resignation and relief would fall. And then rise again when I woke, flinching in the sunlight, still here. Next time, I think. Next time. I up my amounts, switch to liquor, and still the results are the same.
My wish is for death, and until I wish to live, nothing will change.
CHAPTER 30
Nothing gets better magically overnight. In fact, it gets worse. I’m back working sixteen hours a day – I’d been back at my desk the morning after my discharge – and drinking the rest of the hours away. At first, I think I have it under control, but it soon becomes clear it’s anything but.
Six weeks after I stepped foot outside the hospital, I sign a big-name Hollywood actress to guest-edit the magazine. It’s a coup and, as ever, I feel a chunk of me restored by managing to pull it off. My self-esteem, my fragile outline, is built around work, and when the call comes – an easy, ‘yes, she’d love to do it’ – the shape of me throbs in thick black, fat with fleeting happiness. It never stays, but for that moment, it’s everything.
I’m invited to meet her in the club she co-owns to discuss the details. Our meeting is not until nine p.m., which leaves a handful of lurking, dangerous hours in which to build my bravery out of booze. I have a couple of drinks before leaving my apartment in the East Village, tying and re-tying the headband that matches my dress. I take a cab uptown, jumping out two blocks away – a short walk to steady my ankles and my jangling, clanging nerves.
I descend the stairs of the club, shoulders back, a slash of red becoming a slapped-on bright smile. I’m there before The Hollywood Actress, but her team offer up drinks and more drinks. I order the strongest thing I can think of. It’ll help. The confidence and belief trickles down my throat and blooms warmly in the soil. I know I can do this now.
When she arrives at almost eleven p.m., she’s polite and kind and generous. I’m absolutely, beyond hammered. We talk about her
