My misery in the backyard did not go unnoticed. My parents occasionally yelled outside “can you please turn down the music” or “we have dinner if you want any” or “it’s midnight! turn it down!” … things like that.
I didn’t feel happy and I didn’t feel free. I’d lost my treasured “independence” when I left Larry. I felt like a prisoner. Again.
I couldn’t drive – since I didn’t have my own car – so I didn’t go anywhere.
My parents suggested that I earn some money and buy a car. As a show of good faith, which I did not deserve, they let me use their car for job interviews.
I’d wanted to be a journalist for years, since I believed “journalist” was the only version of “writer” who could earn enough money to survive. So I applied for jobs with every publication I found in the Post-Gazette classifieds.
Since I’d done no internships and had zero experience, the few callbacks I received were from entry level sales positions that had little to do with publications. I went to some awful group interviews and listened to presentations. Sometimes I got free donuts. But I left wondering what was wrong with me, since those “interviews” took forever and implied that I’d need something called “commission” to do their work.
Finally I got a job at a place called the Pennysaver.
The Pennysaver was a multi-page magazine full of nothing but ads, a Jurassic-era Craigslist. It was something I’d seen every week in my parents’ mailbox. Like the colorful grocery pages announcing “GROUND BEEF $1.40/LB,” the Pennysaver went into the garbage immediately.
We’d never heard of recycling.
My job was in downtown Oakland, so I could take a bus to get to work. Best of all, I worked with people I adored. Kim and Jennie were also new college graduates, and we spent a great deal of time laughing as we did paste-up for the publication.
“Paste-up” meant that we tried to find full-page, quarter-page and eighth-page ads that were jumbled into a huge wall of ads in front of us. We’d find the correct ad, “paste” it onto a giant piece of cardboard, then carry the cardboard to a place where it would be photographed and turned into print. Then we’d take all the ads off the cardboard and put them back on the wall, where we’d find them again for the next slab of cardboard.
It was a fun, collaborative effort. We played music and laughed like we were in college, preparing for a party.
I loved this job with every ounce of my being. Work was great. It was like playing Concentration all night. And it was all night … because it was a night-shift job, three nights a week, from 5 p.m. until the wee hours of the morning when the work was done. We worked more than 40 hours in those three days, but then we had four days off.
I spent those four days lying in the yard, moaning and singing at the sky, wishing I could “be free” and believing I was locked in a cage.
I complained every day about the hellhole that was my warm, safe, comfortable, dry home. I whined about the basement being too cold. I whined about making my own (free) food in the kitchen. I whined about sharing a bathroom. I whined about absolutely everything, feeling miserable and lonely and alone.
So I was thrilled and not the least bit apprehensive when, about a month after I’d left Florida, a visitor showed up on my parents’ doorstep.
When I wasn’t visiting college friends, I tried to stay entertained at home. I couldn’t just sit around drinking with my non-drinking family, and I hadn’t kept in touch with many people from high school.
Covertly I drank from my parents’ wine stash. The bottles were “hidden” under the stairs in the basement, where I now lived. Gifts to my parents from long-ago dinner guests, they’d been forgotten. I’d chug a little wine and then add water to the bottle from the basement sink.
After a week, the bottles contained mostly water that smelled like wine. Since my parents didn’t drink, I figured no one would ever know.
Apparently my parents gave that “wine” to future dinner guests. Oops.
Drinking was unusual, though. I slept until afternoon every day. When I finally crawled out of my bed, I only made it as far as the backyard. I took cigarettes, a blanket, my boombox and my new R.E.M. cassette tape. I sprawled in the yard until well past midnight, loudly singing every song over and over.
Fall on Me was my favorite, its lyrics offering the sky a chance to fall right out of space to crush me, right there in my parents’ backyard. I’d stare into the void and sing at the top of my lungs, daring that sky to “faaaall on meeeee!”
I didn’t realize until years later that the lyrics actually told the sky: “Don’t fall on me.”
I was a doomsday seeker from way back; it never occurred to me that the sky wasn’t coming down.
While I lay there in the yard, night after glorious summer night, I started to realize that there was something beyond cigarettes and a falling sky. I started to notice that someone young and beautiful was nearby.
Quite literally, I discovered the boy next door. He wandered by an open window, listening to my music (along with the rest of the neighborhood) and I started to pay attention to what he was doing – which, from what I could tell, was not much of anything. He’d walk back and forth in front of his open window, disappearing and reappearing, sometimes shirtless on a warm summer evening, and I grew intrigued.
I mentioned him to my mom, asking if she knew his name, and she did not. But – given that anyone was better than Larry – she encouraged me to walk over and knock on the door and ask his name.
After several days of total boredom, I did just that. Rob answered the door and told me that he was part of the National Guard (which was very cool) and so he only worked during certain days of each month. He made me laugh in our two-minute conversation, so when he then asked me out, I said yes.
Rob took me to a nice dinner where he made me laugh and laugh and laugh until my stomach hurt and my cheekbones ached and I thought: I could never date a comedian and we kissed for an hour at his house, still laughing.
I went home and closed my door and hid in the basement so that I would never, ever be subjected to the constant laughter that Rob caused ever again.
Of course he found me; I was literally next door. So I had to tell him I didn’t think it was going to work out between us, which was fine because he was shipping out to somewhere to take care of some national emergency anyway.
Rob left, and I went back to lying in the yard and wailing at the sky.
After hanging out with Bonnie in Ohio, I realized it was no big deal to leave home whenever I wanted to go. I had my own entrance after all, so who was going to stop me?
My parents – who never thought Bonnie was a particularly good friend for me – suggested that if I wanted to go somewhere, maybe I should visit my more responsible college friend, Debbie, who lived in Norfolk.
I’m sure they expected Debbie to be a positive influence on me. While I’d always considered Bonnie to be “my other half,” Debbie was my other other half. Debbie had genuine love and respect for my inner child; that was the part of me she knew best. She saw my drunken episodes as things I did, not who I was – unlike my view of me. I knew better.
I imagined Debbie as the person I would have been if I’d never picked up a drink. She was sweet and naive and responsible. She had a job in public relations. She had her own apartment, a car, and a whole weekend to entertain me.
She picked me up at the Greyhound bus station, and we cried and hugged like we hadn’t seen each other in forever, even though it had only been a couple of months.
We went out to eat and talked as though no time at all had passed. She told me about her job and her co-workers and her new crush, Norman – whose name was ironically also her father’s name – and I told her about Larry and Florida and leaving.
Then we went to a bar, where I drank enough to knock out an elephant.
As part of the fun, Debbie pulled me aside for an hour to discuss whether or not she should go home with Norman. While Debbie and I talked, I made googly eyes at a blonde guy across the room. He was wearing a flannel shirt and smiling at me as though I were the only woman in the entire jam-packed nightclub.
His smile was perfect.
After a few more rum-and-cokes, I wanted to talk to the guy instead of Debbie. I convinced her to go home with Norman – right now. Debbie left with Norman, giggling and thrilled, leaving me with her home address on a napkin so I could find her later.
I walked over to the guy with the flannel shirt. “Can you drive me home?” I asked, by way of introduction.
He blinked, briefly cocked his head, then said, “Sure!”
Minutes later, I was getting a tour of Norfolk from a complete stranger who was driving drunk through town. An hour after that, we stopped in the middle of the road to have sex. We laughed like children, like lovers, like friends. As the sun started to rise on the horizon, I told him that this was the best night ever, and that I wanted to keep his flannel shirt forever so I would never forget him or the most incredible night of my very young life.
He wrapped me in the flannel and I wore it, along with my cutoff shorts and bare feet, as I carried my sandals to Debbie’s door, knocking and smiling as a blissful Debbie answered.
Forty years later, Debbie is heart-wrenchingly dead and I don’t even remember the guy’s name. But I still have his shirt: disintegrating, huge holes, stuffing coming out. It’s my favorite shirt. It reminds me of my drunkenness, my stupidity, my good fortune, and my youth.
I wear it like a badge, an albatross, and a blanket.
My new “apartment” meant that I could go wherever, whenever I wanted. It was my chance for freedom while living with parents. But of course, I had no car.
I wasted no time calling Bonnie to discuss possibilities. Bonnie had transferred to the University of Akron but it was still summer, so she was bored.
Bonnie came to visit my new digs immediately. She was more thrilled than anyone that I was no longer tied to Larry. She had her best friend back, and I had mine, and we could be young and free and wild again.
Bonnie wasn’t legal drinking age yet, but she still had her fake ID. We determined that a hotel bar would be less likely to card us.
“And a hotel bar would have rich guys to buy us drinks!” she said. She surmised – and I agreed – that only rich people stay in nice hotels. I generally slept on the ground or under trailers, so I probably couldn’t afford hotel bar prices.
So we went to the local Marriott. We found plenty of “rich” guys to buy us drinks – and take us to their hotel rooms. The fact that the two we found were married didn’t matter at all. We all stayed together in one room, as was our usual custom. We were always safer if we stayed together.
The next night, Bonnie and I went to a biker bar, since old habits die hard. Two of the bikers followed us home on a beautiful summer evening after we’d all drunk substantially more than our share. When we got back to my parents’ house, we kissed our safety-keepers goodnight.
After the kissing, one of the guys said we should all go for a longer ride. “I know a place,” he said. “It’s out in the country.”
“That sounds great!” I said.
But Bonnie grabbed my arm, pulled me aside, and stared hard into my eyes. “I can’t ride on a motorcycle,” she said.
“Whattaya mean?” I asked. I thought she, like me, loved motorcycles.
“Please don’t make me go!” she whispered – loudly, panicked.
I looked back at the guys, their engines sputtering in front of my parents’ house in the middle of the night. “Sorry guys, we can’t go,” I yelled.
They waved and drove off, no problem.
“What’s wrong?” I looked at Bonnie, who I’d never seen look more upset, ever.
She paused. “It’s my face,” she said. “I don’t care if I die; I’m not afraid of death. But if something happens to my face….” She paused. “My face is all I have,” she said. “I can’t let anything happen to my face.”
“Okay,” I said, hugging her, drunk, in the front yard. “Nothing’s going to happen to your face.”
We went inside and played music until we passed out on the basement floor.
The next day she drove us to Ohio, where we could both legally drink. We got wasted and went to The Smiths concert, but spent our evening on the bathroom floor and missed the entire show.
The next day we went to see Micki, from college, whose cat had three-week-old kittens. One of them was crawling up my arm.
“Can I have this one?” I said.
“You can’t take her yet!” Micki warned. “Come back in five weeks!”
“Okay!” I promised. I was so rad; I hadn’t even asked my parents if I could get a kitten.
I was having a great time with all my freedom.
Flashback a few years, when I still lived at home.
My younger sister, Tracy, wanted to go to a party but didn’t yet have her license.
“I’ll drive!” I volunteered. I was rarely invited to parties, unless you count the ones where I invited myself – like this one.
My mom looked at my sister, who shrugged. “That’s fine,” Tracy said.
“Okay,” my mom said. “But be careful! And be home by midnight.”
This party happened long before anyone knew what I was.
“Okay!” I said, and my sister and I headed out the door.
The party was maybe a mile away, near our high school. (I frequently walked to our high school when I missed the bus.) And while I didn’t know many of my sister’s friends, I was excited to be going to a party – any party – instead of staying home.
And man, did I party. I drank whatever spiked punch they offered, as many cups as I could drink, before midnight. I don’t remember talking to anyone or doing anything. I just remember drinking. A lot.
At 11:55, Tracy urged for the tenth time, “We’ve got to go! We have to be home in five minutes!” I chugged what was left of my drink and hopped in the driver’s seat. Tracy got into the passenger seat and we pulled out of the driveway at Tracy’s friend’s house for our one-mile drive home.
As we were driving, Tracy said, in a very high voice, “You hit a telephone pole!” She sounded panicked.
“I did not hit a pole!” I said. I was not afraid.
“You did!” she insisted. “You hit a pole and you need to pull over!”
“I did not hit anything!” I said. “We’re fine!”
“You did!” she said again, then got quiet. “You could have killed me.”
Accidentally, I turned the wheel wildly as I turned my head to look at her. I righted it before we were hit by an oncoming vehicle coming around a bend and said, “I could not have killed you.”
“You need to pull over,” she said again.
“We’re almost home!” I replied. “I do not need to pull over!”
She stayed quiet for the rest of the trip.
We arrived at home perfectly healthy and safe.
I looked at the car in the driveway, where she said I hit a pole. “See?” I said. “There’s nothing there!” I had no idea what Tracy was talking about. So I went inside and went into bed.
The next day my parents and I went out to have a look at the family car.
It was still parked nicely in the driveway.
Stretching all the way from the front panel to the back end, and encompassing both doors on the passenger side, was a two-foot-high dent that looked like Godzilla had run a claw across it.
“Wow,” I said, genuinely surprised. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t think I hit anything.”
My parents were not genuinely surprised.
I could have killed her, I thought.
Flash forward to 1986 when, after leaving my biker life, I moved into my parents’ basement.
“Can I go out?” I asked one night.
“Sure,” said my dad. “You can take the bus.”
By 1986, we all knew what I was.
While my dad and I were driving back to Pittsburgh, my mom was building me an apartment. My upstairs bedroom was moved to the basement and meticulously decorated so that I had a quiet place for myself.
My parents worked hard to make my homecoming both welcoming and kind. They weren’t force-feeding me expectations; they wanted me to feel at home, but not obligated to take part in the Brady Bunch atmosphere of my childhood. They gave me space; they gave me the essentials. And they asked for absolutely nothing in return.
Which is exactly what they got.
When I saw my new home, I whined. “It’s cold and dark. There aren’t even any windows down here.”
“But you have your own separate entrance,” my mom said, putting a positive spin on things, as usual. “This can be like your own apartment!”
I had no kind words for the woman who had daily kept me entertained at my doldrum job. Suddenly she was just another authority figure who hadn’t done things the way I wanted, though I truthfully had no idea what I wanted.
“I don’t even have my own bathroom!”
“But you have a sink,” my mom said, gesturing. “You can brush your teeth down here, and you can use the powder room upstairs for everything except showering!”
“I’m going to have to climb two flights of stairs just to take a shower?” Only a few months earlier, I’d been sharing a shoebox with three people and a bathroom with no door.
Maybe living in my parents’ house wasn’t going to be the soft, warm place to fall that I’d imagined. In my view, I was not only crawling back to my parents for help and comfort, but I was being banished from the family into the basement.
Both thoughts irritated me immensely.
Illogically, I wanted someone to take care of me, so I didn’t have to learn to care for myself. And I wanted total independence so I could do whatever I wanted. This in-between stage felt completely wrong. I wanted to go back to being coddled and warm, while also wanting to bolt from where I’d just arrived and never come back.
I have no idea if this is how all young adults feel; this is the only experience I have with growing up. I only know I was a complete alcoholic mess.
My dad pulled the U-Haul around to the back of the house to unload my stuff.
“I don’t even want my stuff in here,” I said. “If you want to put it in here, you can unload the truck yourself.”
My exhausted dad, hearing this response to my new digs, finally blew up. “You are going to unload the truck alone! It is your stuff,” he said. “And I can’t even fathom how you could possibly say anything other than ‘thank you’ for what your mother and I have done for you.”
“Whatever.”
Dad took a breath, ran his hands through his hair, and then looked me dead in the eye. “What exactly is it that you want from us?”
Finally, my parents wanted to know how I really felt, what I really wanted from them. Finally! So I told them.
“I want you both to stay out of my way until I can figure out a way to get the fuck out of here!”
My dad got quiet. My mother blinked. They stood at the bottom of the stairs for a second.
“Okay,” my mom said.
And they walked upstairs into their warm, safe, beautiful home, leaving me alone.
My dad and I drove as far as we could go and stopped at a roadside motel. He went into the room while I stayed outside to smoke.
It was the first day in forever that I’d had no alcohol. I didn’t know that going without it would affect my mood. I didn’t even know there was an invisible line, let alone that I’d crossed it.
I didn’t know that the person I’d become was not the person I’d always been.
My dad didn’t know either. He stepped outside, ready for bed. It had been a very long day for him. He’d flown to Florida, rented a U-Haul, found his wayward daughter at a gas station, packed up her stuff, driven hours and hours, and buried a couple of hamsters along the way.
“Do you think you’ll be coming inside anytime soon?” he asked. “I’d like to get some sleep.”
I snapped snarkily: “How am I supposed to know when I’m coming inside? I can’t tell you when that’s going to happen!”
“Well it’s been a long day and ….”
“I know it’s been a long day!” I interrupted. “My hamsters are dead! I left Larry! And I’ve been sleeping all day so I’m not exactly sure that I can just lay down on a bed and go to sleep right now!”
My dad stepped back, stunned. “It would just be easier for me if ….”
There wasn’t an ounce of empathy in my body. “Easier for you?! I’m the one whose whole life is over! I’m the one who has to go back to living with my fucking parents because I have nowhere else to go!”
My dad finally reacted to my pushing. “Are you serious? I did this for you! I could have stayed in bed instead of flying to Florida, but you needed our help and ….”
I cut him off again, yelling now: “Maybe it would be easier for you if I didn’t come home with you at all! How ’bout if I fucking live right here! Would that be easier for you?! Maybe I’ll just live right fucking HERE!” I was spitting acid.
“I just wanted to …” he tried.
“Fuck you!” I screamed. “Fuck you and whatever you want! I’ll find a place to live right here! I don’t need your fucking help!”
I stomped across the parking lot, heading for the highway, heading into darkness again.
My dad – who had a good eight inches and 50 pounds on me – walked quickly and caught me. He grabbed me around the waist, nearly tackling me before I could start hitchhiking.
I refused to break. I was going to be free, dammit; I was independent! I punched at his face behind my head and when he grabbed my arms to keep me from punching, I started flailing in the air, kicking him in the shins, nearly knocking his feet out from under him while he constrained me, completely off the ground.
“Let me go!” I screamed as I kicked. “Let me fucking gooooo!”
He held me until I stopped kicking, until I stopped screaming, until I wore myself out and collapsed on the ground in front of him.
My dad stood over me for a minute, waiting to be sure I was done running, fighting, kicking, screaming, at least for the moment.
Finally he said, “I’ll leave the door unlocked. “Come in when you’re ready.” Then he walked back into the room to sleep.
Half an hour later I walked in, too, and cried myself to sleep.
I left Florida. Goodbye, Larry, Dave and Ed! I never called my boss; I just never went back to work at the window company.
I wish I could say that, after leaving Larry’s house, I thanked my dad profusely for rescuing me from my self-imposed hell. I’d like to say that I hopped into that U-Haul, asked my dad about his trip, recognized him for the hero that he’d always been, and helped him navigate our long trip back to Pittsburgh. But that’s not what happened.
I got into the truck, plopped the hamster cage onto the floor beside my feet, and promptly fell asleep.
Previously I’d been awake for at least a day and a half, so I needed some rest. I slept until we stopped somewhere in Georgia.
The U-Haul needed gas and my dad needed lunch, so he parked the truck behind a restaurant. I moaned about not wanting to wake up, but I needed a restroom anyway. So I opened my door to get out of the truck, accidentally kicking the hamster cage.
Oh right, the rats.
I was glad that the hamsters required less attention than they had on the motorcycle, but it was still hot. I picked up the hamster cage and put it on my lap, and encouraged them to awake.
“C’mon, guys,” I said. “Wake up; let’s get some water!”
Chippy, who always sniffed the air with his eyes closed, did not sniff the air. And Dozer, who always rustled about under his bedding, did not rustle about.
“C’mon, guys!” I implored. “Wake up!”
I opened the cage door and touched Chippy, who remained motionless. Doubting my own eyes, I poked at Dozer, too. Neither one of them moved.
Or breathed.
My dad was standing outside the truck when he heard me wail; he raced to my side.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think they’re dead!” I sobbed. “They’re both dead! I don’t know what happened! They can’t both be dead!”
My dad looked in the cage, saw their little lifeless bodies, and confirmed that they were, indeed, both dead.
My sobbing came in huge heaves, my throat screaming in agony as I cried. My dad took the cage from me and placed it on the ground so he could hold me as I howled in anguish.
I hadn’t thought about the heat on the floor of the U-Haul. After all the care I’d taken when they rode on the motorcycle, I took no care at all to comfort them or save them from the elements during this trip. I thought they’d be fine with me watching.
But I’d slept through their suffering, their intense need for help. I’d slept through their deaths.
I knew instinctively that I’d killed them because I’d been selfish and stupid and reckless. I knew that I’d killed them. And that fact made their deaths absolutely unbearable.
My dad – who had still gotten no respect for his heroic part in this adventure – let me cry until the wailing turned into quiet sobs. He repeated “I’m sorry” and patted my back and did everything right.
“We have to bury them,” I said. We found a metal rod near the dumpsters that worked well enough for digging. And my dad silently dug.
I placed their tiny lifeless bodies in the tiny lifeless hole, tears pouring down my cheeks. My dad covered their bodies with dirt while I tossed their cage and all of their supplies in the dumpster, knowing I would never get hamsters again.
I couldn’t even take care of myself.
My dad wasted no time driving the U-Haul to Larry’s house to get my stuff. I knocked on the door, Daddy by my side.
A smiling, shirtless Larry flung open the door, cigarette in one hand, and started to say, “I knew you’d be back!” But he trailed off and stopped smiling when he saw my dad. Dad was not smiling.
“What’s going on,” he said flatly, nodding in my dad’s direction and holding the door open for us.
“I just need my stuff,” I said, ducking past Larry and heading into the bedroom. I started shoving my clothes into the boxes from whence they’d come, some into the duffel that had been strapped onto Larry’s motorcycle only a couple of months before. I should have known I was in trouble when I got choked up packing my filthy black Harley-Davidson t-shirts.
But I squashed my tears and shoved my crap into bags and boxes. I handed all the boxes to my dad, grabbed as many packs of cigarettes as I could find and, finally, headed for the hamsters.
Larry watched me in disbelief. While my dad was outside he asked, “Are you sure you wanna do this?”
“I’m totally fuckin’ sure,” I said, spitting the words at him. Suddenly I was furious with Larry for forcing me to live in this hellhole, this beastly hot place with no air conditioning and no guitars.
Suddenly everything was Larry’s fault.
I fumed silently, shoving hamster food into torn plastic grocery bags. When Larry tried to pull me toward him, I pushed him away with my head, shrugged him off.
I would not be held.
This was the only time I ever realized that real Dad was better than fake Dad, although I still didn’t understand the Freudian aspect of what I’d been doing. I left Larry in Florida almost exactly a year after I’d found him, and I tried hard to burn that bridge before I left.
From a young age, I’d believed that being angry would protect me from my angst about loss. I weaponized my anger against my sadness and took it out on anyone associated with me. Every time I learned we were planning to move, I started to hate the place we were leaving. I thought anger turned me into something more stoic than the lost child I ignored. When I moved away from places I loved – schools, homes, even vacations – becoming angry kept me from crying. I thought anger would make leaving less painful.
In actuality, I ignored pain completely. Along with everything else, alcohol robbed me of any distinct feelings. My pain disappeared along with my love, my hate, my fear, my joy, my excitement, my mind. In the process of trying to destroy my pain, I destroyed every feeling I’d ever had.
At the age of 21, I was already dead inside.
My dad took the last of the boxes to the U-Haul and started the engine, cooling the cab while he waited for me to say goodbye. He didn’t need to say anything to Larry.
I grabbed the half-bag of wood shavings, then picked up the hamster cage – waking up both furry critters, their noses crinkling at the sky, confused, their eyes still closed. They were adorably ignorant.
Larry gently grabbed my arm, shaking the cage. “What can I do to make you stay?”
“Not a fucking thing,” I said, yanking my arm from his grip.
He let go without a fight and watched me walk out the door without another word.
My dad – who had been awakened in the middle of the night by a panicked drunken daughter screaming and crying into the phone – threw some stuff into a bag and hopped on a plane to Florida.
I assume my dad claimed a “family emergency” in order to temporarily ditch his prestigious job at Carnegie Mellon. Then, I assume, he spent a ton of time on the phone calling airlines to get a fast flight. Then my mom – who was likely shaking from fear the entire time – probably drove my dad to the airport so he wouldn’t have to pay for parking, then drove herself home dazed by the terrifying thought that her daughter was standing on the side of a road somewhere, waiting.
I assume all of this because I wasn’t there. I was the drunken daughter; I didn’t do any of the heavy lifting.
I sat on the curb by the pay phone smoking cigarettes and waiting for hours and hours and hours. I didn’t have anywhere to go, anything to do, or any money to spend. Unsurprisingly, no one invited me to party. I looked like I’d been dragged out of bed and trampled by a horse.
It was pitch black for a long time, yet I sat in the parking lot wearing my pitch-black shades. Then the sky lightened, and lights started turning off in the nearby neighborhood. Then people started appearing at the gas station, heading to wherever they might be going on that sunny summer day.
I sat on a curb; I sprawled in a patch of grass. As the alcohol metabolized and my appetite started to return amidst my usual morning nausea, I bought two liters of Diet Coke, a Fifth Avenue candy bar and another pack of cigarettes. Then my money was gone.
I started shaking – my normal after-effects of extreme alcohol consumption combined with cool morning air – and worrying that I’d be living at the gas station forever. I called my mom to make sure that I’d be rescued.
“Daddy’s coming to get you,” she said. She sounded calm, reassuring, not as though she were dying inside. Everything seemed fine.
So I waited. The day got warmer.
Meanwhile my dad boarded his flight, tried to get an hour of sleep on the plane, and landed in Tampa. Then, thinking ahead and knowing that changing residences requires more than a phone call to one’s parents, my dad rented a U-Haul, pulled out a map, and drove that U-Haul to find me at that gas station.
I had no idea when I saw the U-Haul that my dad was driving it. He parked in front of me, climbed out and walked around to where I was still collapsed on the ground.
I stood up, a complete mess. My dad opened his arms and I walked in. He hugged me and I cried; he hugged me harder and I cried harder.
It’s hard to feel safe when you’re self-destructive. The destruction takes on a life of its own. The cigarettes, the alcohol, the drugs, the sex, the motorcycles … it just masks the desperate need to feel okay, to feel a sense of belonging, to feel safe in a world that’s always so disappointing.
I felt free with Larry, but I never for a moment felt safe, even when Larry was beating the crap out of someone in my honor, even when I was brawling in a bar, even when I thought I was so unbreakably tough.
But I felt safe at that gas station in Daddy’s arms, knowing I was finally going home.
