fridges and wonder how the heck they did that. I’d find myself staring at people’s home bars, recalling the day when I’d stocked my own bar and never took a drop from it except to make other people’s drinks at parties.
I realized then that this was more than a matter of will or of emotional highs and lows. I
Since I hit the UK I’d been jumping around like a grasshopper, moving more than fourteen times in four years to temporary homes in Bath, Winterbourne Down, the Ladbroke Grove and Westminster areas of London, and many other locations. I was done with moving, but I just couldn’t find the right place to hang my hat. The last time I’d been settled was in my home in L.A. where everything went to hell, so now I figured I’d make myself a hard target.
Then I had a series of accidents that forced me to slow down. I was walking around the streets of London, property guide in hand, looking for a place to buy with the proceeds from the sale of my L.A. home when I got hit by a guy on a Vespa. No major damage, just a sprained ankle, a chink in the armor so to speak. A few days later I made the mistake of going out in a pair of three-inch heels. The place I was living in had the steepest fucking stairs I’d ever seen in my life, and just as I was about to take the first step down, the injured ankle gave way, turning me around so that I fell backward down the entire flight of stairs, bumping the edge of every step as I went. It was like something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon, except instead of getting up and brushing myself off while everyone laughed, I found I couldn’t get up and that there was a baseball-sized lump bulging out from the back of my neck. I fished out my cell phone, only to discover that I didn’t know the UK emergency number. I’m dialing 911, and no one’s answering. Eventually one of my roommates found me and took me to the hospital. It turned out that it was a neck fracture. They put me in a neck brace, went over my X-rays, and then sent me on my way.
Alcoholics always overanalyze every minute detail of an incident in the hope of gleaning some insight that will help in the fight against the enemy. You’re like a military commander staring down at a map, studying the terrain.
So were the accidents just accidents, or were they my body’s way of slowing me down, of letting me know that I needed to stop moving and put down roots before things got really bad? Or was it the monster knocking me out of commission so that I’d be forced to sit still, grow impatient, and have a drink? My previous home had been a mixed blessing. I’d loved it, but it had also been a place of suffering and misery. Should I be looking for my own place? Would it make things better or worse?
You see how you can turn into a raving lunatic? You’re at war with yourself, you can’t trust yourself, you second-guess every thought and impulse. In short, life sucks.
I trusted my instincts and stumbled across the perfect place, a cute little flat in Notting Hill, and when I saw it I thought, “This is it. This is the place where I can make things right.”
I’d finished work on
I was back in my element. I could redo the flat and make it look exactly how I wanted. I had some money left over to allow me to live comfortably and fund my pet project. I started building closets and tearing down walls.
And I had another project that kept me busy—devising systems of alcohol regulation to manage my problem. I lived next to a charming pub and I made a rule that this was the only pub I was permitted to drink in and that I’d only be allowed one drink per visit. I never kept wine in the house, so if I had a dinner party I would make the guests take the half-empty bottles home with them. The wagon might have been teetering along on broken wheels, dragging its load behind it, but at least it was going.
Those rules helped me, but they also created a whole new series of problems. Social drinking is so common in London that I found myself coming up with a litany of excuses to explain why I couldn’t go out drinking with friends at other pubs. I’d started by saying that I was driving but once people learned that I didn’t have a car I had to come up with something else.
“I’m on antibiotics. I’m pregnant. I’m allergic.”
I’d say anything to avoid being conspicuous, and in doing so made myself incredibly conspicuous. Keeping to my self-imposed rules was hard. Having a glass of wine with friends is one of my favorite things in the world. Wine loosens the lips and helps people relax and unwind. You laugh more, you confide secrets, hopes, and dreams. I missed that. Then I’d remind myself that the same stuff can turn you into a screaming bitch or a bona fide whacko, and I didn’t miss that at all.
I finished the apartment, and as if on cue more roles magically appeared. They were in crappy action films made in Eastern Europe. I was glad to have them, but I just couldn’t seem to land any more parts in the UK. There were about a dozen Americans and Canadians in London—like Gillian Anderson and Elizabeth McGovern—who’d lived there for years and seemed to book all the expat gigs.
Not allowing myself to drink also made it hard to make friends in England. I had no work or social life and the flat was finished. I tried working on my social life. People were more formal and reserved than in L.A., so I found it hard to strike up conversations with new people. God knows I tried. I would blabber on and smile like an idiot, but even in the grocery store or in elevators people would ignore me.
I began to feel invisible, a feeling accompanied by a mild paranoia. Was it London or was I going slightly mad from alcohol withdrawal? Self-discipline is all well and good when it comes to drinking, but at the same time life seemed to have lost some of its color. That feeling wasn’t helped by the long, wet London winter. I began having dreams about riding my motorcycle down Sunset Boulevard, the warm L.A. wind rushing over my face carrying the smell of orange blossoms and the beach. I wasn’t sure how much of my depression was me and how much was the weather, so I actually went and got light therapy at a place where they stick you in a little box and zap you with UVA rays.
I started going stir-crazy. I had to do something, so I jumped on a plane back to L.A. for the family Christmas party.
During my time in the UK I’d travel back to L.A. every year for pilot season.
I’d prepare well in advance, getting totally sober and as fit as I could manage. I’d pack my bags and head back to Hollywood with big expectations. I was going to book something. It was comeback time, baby!
I’d look great and feel great and sit in this Archstone apartment that I was paying $3,000 a month for and wait for the phone to ring. I didn’t get one audition, let alone an actual part. I had a shitty manager who promised me the moon and delivered nothing—not one meeting or audition.
One year I stayed in L.A. for four months. The apartment complex was filled with people who dreamed of working in Hollywood, wannabes and stage moms, their heads in the clouds, and at one point I realized that I was no different from them. I couldn’t book work, I was back at the beginning, all I had was a dream and an ever- deepening hole in my savings. As I sat by the phone I could feel myself becoming increasingly drawn to the bottle with each passing moment. It would only be a matter of time. I needed to keep moving.
So I started treating Los Angeles as I treated London. I’d do little day trips. I thought that if I took the pressure off waiting for the phone to ring, it might actually ring. Sometimes it works that way; this time it didn’t. Then I got a call from London. There was a meeting. A producer wanted me to come in and read for a part.
“I’m in L.A.”
“I need you here tomorrow.”
“I can’t. Christmas is coming. I’ve just rented a place. I just can’t.”
It seemed that I just couldn’t catch a break.
The year I went back for the family Christmas I was in for a pleasant surprise. It was in Aspen and it was snowing. Everyone made an effort to be nice, there were no fights, and I managed to stay sober. But I was bored, and my dreaded fortieth birthday was bearing down on me like a runaway car. I felt like I’d been possessed by Bridget Jones. I stared out the window at the falling snow. The last five years of my life had rushed by in a blur.
I was due to fly back to London, and I resolved to do something, anything to shake things up and reclaim a social life. I needed distraction, I needed friends, I needed a sex life. And so, like any modern girl who has trouble
