It was mere moments before my life became an alcoholic hell again.
I woke up with a hangover that didn’t feel comfortable so much as it felt familiar.
Dying of thirst, I opened a two-liter of Diet Coke and stuck my head under the faucet for water. My head was pounding, my eyes wouldn’t open all the way, my hair was stuck to the side of my face, my head was foggy and broken.
I went into the bathroom and dry-heaved into the toilet. I laid my face on the floor and hoped the cool of the tiles would ease some of my discomfort. I tried to fall asleep on the floor but I couldn’t.
“Fuck,” I murmured under my breath. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I couldn’t think of another word. I couldn’t feel a single thing. I knew only that I knew how to handle this feeling – this unbearable, agonizing sickness that had become a part of my daily life for so many years.
The only way to handle this feeling was to drink more.
It wasn’t a conscious thought. It wasn’t an I’m-gonna-drink-again consideration. It wasn’t a decision.
My reasoning – if it can be called “reason” – was simple. I thought: I hurt. I need alcohol.
There was simply no room in my head for anything else.
I smoked cigarettes in my bed and waited.
Kitty leapt into the bed with me, reminding me that she existed. I got up and fed the cat, cleaned out her bowls, opened the window so she could sit on the sill.
I crawled back into my bed.
Eventually I brushed my teeth. I still had yesterday’s clothes on, but I had to go. This time, for sure I was going to get a six-pack – just a six-pack – and my hangover would dissipate. I went to the store and bought a 12-pack.
I drank one as soon as I got home, and I felt normal again.
After three cans, I walked out the door. I went back to the bar down the street, but it was closed.
It was Sunday.
I had to find an open bar. I wandered the streets of Swissvale until I found one, and I went inside. It was empty, except for me and one other person. I pretended to be Larry and did the little head-nod, but I didn’t feel confident. I didn’t like that bar.
It was too bright. I stayed anyway, drinking another couple of drinks before I decided to call Gregg from the payphone on the wall.
“Meet me at the bar on the corner!” I slurred. “I’ll buy you a drink!”
Gregg didn’t ask why I was drinking, or where the bar might be. Knowing our little town as well as he did, he just showed up. We picked up right where we’d left off, all-night party buddies, except without the marijuana.
When the marijuana returned about a week later, I didn’t stop drinking.
Drinking was way, way more fun than I had remembered. I would never make the mistake of quitting something so wonderful again.
The shooting star and my stolid resolve to stay sober became a distant memory.
Before I picked up the glass – which was not necessarily clean – I considered only briefly what I was doing. I knew that if I thought too long about it, I would stop myself from drinking.
And I was desperate to escape myself.
So I picked up the beer and took a sip with too much foam. It was warmer than I expected and tasted like I imagined horse urine might taste.
I almost gagged, but I didn’t want to waste it.
I instantly regretted drinking it, and immediately wanted another.
The first beer was gone in one minute.
I drank two, then three drafts, spending all of $1.50, before I looked up from the bar. The jukebox, which had been playing quietly in the corner, had somehow gotten louder, more noticeable. People had wandered in from the street and now there were seven of us inside. There were two women now, including me, and I felt slightly safer.
After three beers, I forgot to feel guilty.
After beer number three in fact, I forgot to feel anything at all. I wondered: Why did I stop drinking for so long? This is the best I’ve felt in months!
To capture the feeling and hold onto it forever, I drank another, and another. Suddenly I needed something more than just beer. I ordered a shot of root beer schnapps – the one drink I’d actually missed in my months of non-drinking.
Five beers and one shot was not enough.
I needed music. So I walked over to the jukebox without noticing that someone else was already there. He said, “Just pick whatever you want.” He dumped in four more quarters and I had a blast choosing songs.
When I returned to the bar, I felt a swagger as I climbed onto my bar stool. I forgot the dirty glass, the ripping barstool, my awkwardness with people.
I had no craving for marijuana; I felt peaceful. I felt good, comfortable, calm.
In fact, I didn’t remember the last time I’d felt so good.
Many, many years ago, I thought. Maybe in college, maybe at a party, maybe with friends. I felt like I’d found friends again, even though I was utterly alone.
My best friend was whatever liquid was in the glass in front of me.
I drank for hours, chatting freely with the bartender and whoever else wandered past.
I mentally sang along to the music from the jukebox, so I wouldn’t sing aloud like the embarrassing lady at The Hood. For the first time, I didn’t seek out a man to buy me drinks.
I had my own money. I had my own life. I could do what I wanted.
And I felt good.
I bought a six-pack at closing time, so I could keep drinking. A twelve-pack would have been too heavy for me to carry for the three-block walk. I don’t know what brand I bought.
I dropped one beer on the way home, and it bounced down the hill. It rolled considerably before I caught it. I planned to drink it last.
I stumbled home to my clean, organized house. Kitty greeted me loudly, reminding me that I hadn’t fed her since breakfast. I stumbled into the kitchen and threw food into her bowl, barely able to hold myself upright.
Then I blasted music and drank until the wee hours of the morning. I passed out on the floor instead of opening the sofa into a bed.
When the sun came up, I woke up … and drank the last beer, then passed out again.
With my childhood box in my new apartment, it was whole. I felt like an adult, a whole person. I wasn’t drinking. I was a college graduate. I had a job. In fact, I got a promotion to Shift Supervisor! I was making strides.
I still smoked pot every day, thanks to the guys at work and Gregg, so it was easy to be “sober.” I stayed away from Barry and Kim next door, since they drank alcohol. Gregg and I stayed inside and got high instead.
But one Saturday morning, there was no pot left. Steve, Gregg’s friend and our drug dealer, said there was no new pot coming in, and we were stuck.
I was stuck.
I picked a fight with Gregg, who had let me down by not providing for my basic needs. I told him to get out; I needed time to think.
“I was in a relationship for a long time,” I said. “And I don’t want to just jump into another one. I want to have my own place for a while.”
Gregg and I had been together for several weeks, and I’d never alluded to anything but pure bliss. But Gregg left at my request.
I sat with my cat, smoking cigarettes and watching the clock.
I turned on the TV. I turned off the TV.
I turned on the stereo; I played my favorite Flash and The Pan album – a dark, sorrowful group of songs that reminded me of my deep loneliness. (I stole this album from the Mount Union College radio station, where it was never played, and as far as I knew, no one knew any of these songs.)
I spent the entire afternoon recognizing the loneliness I hadn’t allowed myself to feel since the night I saw the shooting star in England. I’d been without alcohol for more than three months.
And then, sometime after the sun went down and quite suddenly, I found myself putting on my coat and walking out the door.
I walked to the 7-11 and bought a pack of cigarettes, then I sat on the curb and smoked. I made it through half of one cigarette before I got up again, antsy, and just started walking.
I walked into the bar without really thinking about it.
The nondescript building had no apparent name and a Rolling Rock light in a small, glass-block window. I just walked right in.
I needed something, because nothing wouldn’t do.
The horseshoe bar had three old guys chatting on one end, and no one else was in there. It was dark. So, so dark.
The bartender appeared from nowhere.
“Can I get a six-pack of IC Light?” I asked without thinking.
“We only have IC Light on draft,” said the bartender. “We don’t sell it in cans.”
I considered this. Should I try a different brand? Ask for whatever they had in cans?
My brain justified my subconscious decision: You’ve been in your apartment all day, it said. You could have one drink here while you figure out what kind of cans to get.
“Okay,” I said. “Just give me a draft for now.”
I sat down at the barstool furthest away from the other customers while the bartender poured my beer.
There was too much foam, which infuriated me. If I’m drinking a beer, I thought, I want it to be a whole beer, not half a glass of foam.
I waited ten seconds for the foam to clear. It did not.
After I left Pitcairn, Larry skipped town, evading overdue rent and clean-up fees, including the cost of scouring the orange spray paint I’d left all over the attic walls. Larry ended up in Chicago where – while supposedly grieving the loss of our relationship – he met Brenda, who rode with him back to Pitcairn on the motorcycle.
I know this because Larry called me on my new phone in my new apartment and told me.
“Hey Baby,” Larry said into my ear, and my stomach flip-flopped like it did back in our early days. “How ya doin’?”
I stuttered over my words for a second, looking around for something to ground me. “I’m okay,” I said.
“That’s good,” he said, like a proud papa. Eventually he said, “Hey, I have something for ya.”
I nearly drooled at how sexy Larry sounded over the phone. “You do?”
“Yeah, you left a box at Danny’s. Can you meet me at Barry’s tomorrow?”
My new neighbor’s name was Barry, but I knew what Larry meant. Barry’s Bar. How long it had been since I’d gone to Barry’s Bar!
But did I need that box? Did I even want to see Larry?
I didn’t think for long. “Sure,” I said to Larry. “What time?”
“Noon,” Larry said. “See ya tomorrow.”
I remembered all the happy lunches I’d had at Barry’s Bar so many, many moons ago – the jukebox, the burgers, spinning on my barstool like a child.
“Okay,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”
At Barry’s the next day, there was Larry with the girl from Chicago. She looked younger than me, with a round face, filthy brown hair, and a tattoo. Her voice was low and crass.
As I approached, Larry noticed me and she got quiet. I deemed myself prettier and ignored her.
Larry and Brenda were drinking cans of Miller Lite.
“Still not drinkin’?” Larry asked, smiling that oh-so-familiar smile.
“Not drinking,” I said.
“Okay, c’mon,” Larry said, heading toward the door. We left Brenda at the bar.
Larry led me into the Pitcairn Hotel, to our old apartment, where his brother still lived.
We stood where Larry and I had once lived, along with Danny and his heroin-addict girlfriend, sharing a bathroom with no door and a kitchen with no food only two years before.
The bed was still unmade.
Larry pointed at my box. I recognized it instantly. Inside were things my mom had saved for me: my baby book, report cards, coloring pages, a shark I’d made in shop class, my kindergarten handprint in plaster.
My whole childhood was in that box.
“Wow, thanks,” I said. “I didn’t even know I left this here.”
“Sure,” Larry said. And then he put his hands on my face, and bent down to kiss me. We kissed with such passion, I thought my knees would buckle. I melted.
My stomach flip-flopped as our tongues intertwined, his scent consuming me, his hands simultaneously gentle and rough. The world disappeared until finally, we stopped.
I breathed. I couldn’t speak.
“Remember that,” Larry grinned. “Just fuckin’ remember that.”
“Okay,” I said. I couldn’t say much else.
“I have a feeling you’ll be coming back to me,” he said.
Larry carried the box to the Camaro, and put it in the trunk. He closed the trunk the way he’d closed the trunk so many times before, shrugging the cold from his shoulders, a cigarette dangling from his lips.
“See ya later, Baby,” Larry said with a smile, then crossed the street back to Barry’s Bar.
I have forever remembered that kiss. But I never saw Larry again.
Living in my own apartment felt like being released from prison. I had all my own personal stuff, much of it donated by family who was thrilled that I was no longer a raging alcoholic.
From Larry’s I took my boombox and my clothes, which was all I really needed.
Larry also gave me the Camaro. “You earned it, Baby,” he’d said, handing me the keys. The “title transfer” concept never crossed anyone’s mind.
From my parents’ house, I grabbed my stereo and my albums, which made my life complete for the first time since high school. I no longer had to survive on Larry’s collection of ancient country crooners; I could listen to Prefab Sprout and Led Zeppelin and REM and The Cure and … and … and ….
I could listen to anything I wanted. I could do anything I wanted. I could go anywhere I wanted. I could be whoever I wanted to be, and I didn’t have to kowtow to Larry’s vision of a “chick.” Biker life was behind me; I could be smart again.
I was poor, but I had a job and my own money. I was independent. I had my own pots and pans, and I learned that I could boil water, cook my own pasta, and pour sauce from a jar on top. I called that “dinner.” Sometimes dinner was cereal with milk. Lunch was almost always peanut butter and jelly.
Gregg introduced me to peanut butter and banana sandwiches, so that expanded my horizons.
Unlike Larry, Gregg didn’t require me to become like him. Gregg didn’t take over my world. He was simply there while I created a new life for myself.
Gregg was 26; I was 23. He’d lived in Swissvale his whole life; he knew the whole town. And even though I went to high school a mile away, Swissvale felt like an alien planet. I was happy to have his connections, too, since I trusted Gregg to supply the marijuana for my new life.
What I discovered, whilst living without alcohol, is that I was a fiend for organization. Even though I smoked cigarettes which ruined everything in my tiny abode, I dusted religiously. I picked up all the errant dirt from the middle of the floor in my one room.
And I organized my albums as though I would be giving tours to my fans. I organized alphabetically, then chronologically based on acquisition, then by color, then bands versus solo artists, eventually landing on an “I’ll just reorganize these every week” plan. I loved organizing my albums.
I also loved having my own personal pet. I cleaned out Kitty’s litter box every day; I never wanted my house to smell like cat poop. I made sure Kitty always had clean water and enough canned Friskies for a feline army, and I washed out her bowls after every meal. It was a small apartment, so sometimes Kitty and I sat on our porch. She wandered away sometimes but always came running back when I went inside.
In the evening, while I smoked cigarettes and stared at the ceiling, sometimes Kitty would climb onto my lap, kneading my belly to make a bed. She purred.
As a drunk, I’d never heard her purr.
Life in my new place was better than I could have ever dreamed. I was so grateful to be not drinking.
But I smoked pot every work day with my colleagues, and every night with Gregg, and never thought a single thing about it.
I moved 15 minutes away from Pitcairn to a town called Swissvale, with brick streets and old houses.
I had my own space for the first time in my life: no parents, no roommate, no Larry. I was finally free.
My apartment was part of an old house, renovated into three apartments: one next door, one upstairs. Mine had one room with a tiny kitchen offshoot. I’d acquired my grandmother’s sofabed which, when open, filled the apartment. If I stood on the arm of the couch, I could reach my tiny closet.
I had my own entrance in the back of the house. Another door opened into the front hallway, which led to the other apartment.
After I’d moved in my meager possessions and my parents were gone, Jeff the landlord – who lived in the apartment upstairs – came to check that I was okay.
I hadn’t smoked pot for two days and I hadn’t been drinking. I felt great.
“Cool,” Jeff said. “There’s a party tonight if you wanna come.” Jeff was maybe 30.
“A party?” Without drinking? This sounded terrifying.
“Yeah, next door. Barry and Kim do something every Saturday,” he said. “Just c’mon over. You don’t even have to knock.”
That night when the music started blasting, I knew I’d been invited.
But I sat in my own little apartment, listening to my own albums, turned way up so I could hear my songs over the booming stereo next door. I sat on my couch – bed put away for “daytime” use – and sang along, happy to be on my own.
Finally. My own place.
This lasted 90 minutes.
Eventually I thought, I was always alone when I was with Larry. I need to meet new people.
So I brazenly turned off my stereo and carefully put away my album. I walked over to meet Barry and Kim, whose front door was wide open. I ran smack into Jeff, who was headed upstairs.
“Come in! Come in!” Jeff welcomed as he walked out.
So I went in. There were four guys and a girl inside, some standing, some sitting. They were young adults, like me. Young. I was thrilled.
Their place was very small, but my efficiency apartment was one-third the size of this place.
The girl jumped up when she saw me. “I’m Kim!” she yelled over the music, spilling her Rolling Rock a little. “Come to the kitchen! I’ll get you a beer!”
“No thanks,” I yelled back. “I don’t drink.”
Saying this felt good! But I felt awkward.
Kim just nodded and sat down.
Fortunately Jeff walked back into the room moments later.
“Do you toke?” my new landlord asked, waving a little baggie and rolling papers. POT!
“Sure,” I said too quickly.
I stood by the wall next to a guy with a bird-beak nose and glasses. He was sipping his beer and looked as awkward as I felt.
But as soon as Jeff started passing the joint, everything got better.
One hit, and I introduced myself to Glasses Guy.
“Gregg,” he said.
As the joint went around, we talked more comfortably. Gregg was tall with sandy blond hair and a dimple in one cheek. It was easy to just talk to one person, instead of trying to mingle with neighbors.
“Wanna see my new place?” I eventually asked Gregg.
“Sure.”
We walked the ten feet to my door.
Gregg had pot, so he stayed the night. Then he stayed another night, and much of the following week.
Larry spent an inordinate amount of time telling me how easy it was to go without drinking.
“I drank a fuckin’ six-pack every day for 20 fuckin’ years!” he would say, grinning that joyous grin. “I think my jeans are gettin’ loose!” He’d pull out his waistband to show me.
The man was almost 40 years old. He actually cared about how his jeans fit.
For me, every day was a struggle.
I hadn’t realized it was possible to smoke more tobacco, but I was doing it. When I wasn’t smoking pot, I was irritable beyond irritability. Every day involved me sleeping as long as was physically possible, then rolling over and looking for a roach in the many ashtrays scattered around the house.
(A “roach” is a tiny piece of a joint that sometimes contains a small amount of marijuana. While we had cockroaches in every other apartment, we thankfully did not have live roaches in this one.)
If I couldn’t find any pot, I would blame Larry for smoking it. And sometimes he had. Then I would start whining about when we were going to get pot again. We had to deal with so many factors: waiting for our weekly pay, finding time outside of work to get it, and making sure the drug dealer was available – i.e., not imprisoned.
None of this allowed me to live the all-day inebriation and instant-gratification lifestyle I preferred.
In other words, I had gone from being a raging alcoholic to being 100% focused on pot, even though I did not enjoy the sensations it provided.
Some might wonder what happened to all the cocaine I had done previously. Oddly, no one ever approached me with offers of cocaine when I wasn’t drunk. Smoking pot somehow made me less attractive to the coke-heads. So sometimes I had to go hours without drugs.
And Ronnie, bless his heart, decided that it was better for me if he didn’t share his cocaine anymore. In fact, Ronnie found me rather boring when I wasn’t drinking, and stayed away.
Meanwhile, I found Larry rather boring. He went from being a superstar country singer on the stages in my alcoholic hazes to being a complete buffoon. While Larry took himself very seriously and believed everything he said, suddenly I found myself living with an imbecile who, I finally realized, was supposed to be my caretaker.
I didn’t have one iota of respect for the man. And without alcohol, I didn’t need a caretaker.
“I can’t live with you anymore,” I said one day, rather out of the blue.
Larry laughed. I’d given him no indication that I couldn’t stand him.
But I didn’t laugh. “I can’t drink,” I said. “And I can’t be with you when I’m not drinking.”
He gave me a big hug. “It’s okay, Baby. We’re gonna be okay.”
I nodded into his chest, then squirmed away. “No,” I said. “I’ve got to get my own place.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” I said. Suddenly it was the most brilliant idea on the planet, getting my own place. I could taste the freedom that would provide.
“If that’s what you want to do,” Larry said casually.
“It is,” I said.
It was March, and my parents were recently back from Europe.
When I told my mom I was leaving Larry she hesitantly asked: “Are you drinking?”
“No!” I replied honestly. Since she didn’t ask, I didn’t mention the marijuana.
“Well, this sounds like a step in the right direction,” she said.
A couple weeks later, they helped me move into my own place.
My plan was brilliant: I would give up alcohol and just smoke pot. Alcohol was my problem. This had been confirmed by God Himself. The plan was to never drink again.
But I needed something to help me mentally escape from the horrors of the life I was living.
With solidarity Larry declared, “I’m not gonna drink beer either.” And Larry, the non-alcoholic, quit drinking alcohol without hesitation.
One night, we had a pizza and Larry said, “This is the only fuckin’ time I miss beer. I like beer with my pizza.” But he didn’t drink one.
He made sure to always have marijuana on hand – which was not easy, since it was illegal.
I hated the way pot made me feel. I felt stupid. My life screeched to a halt whenever I smoked it. I couldn’t function. I couldn’t drive. I could barely speak. I was just a lump, sitting, being high.
Without alcohol, I swore I would be a better person. I never, ever got into arguments – let alone fist fights – when I was high. I never got into any trouble, never had sex with the wrong person, never even vomited. And think of the money I would save! I could remember stuff when I wasn’t drinking, although smoking pot guaranteed that there was never much to remember.
I was too high to feel any passion.
Otherwise, my life returned immediately to what it was before Europe: I smoked cigarettes incessantly. On weekends I went to the bars and drank Diet Coke, stepping outside every hour or so to smoke a joint. I went to work three nights a week, and got high with my friends at lunchtime. When work was over, I got high again, then passed out on the floor. I didn’t bother listening to music and wailing along with the boom box. I was too stoned to care.
This went on for weeks.
On Valentine’s Day, Larry informed me that he was going out with another girl – someone named Apryl (“with a ‘Y'”). I asked him if he was going to have sex with her. Larry said, “Nah, I just told her I’d take her out on Valentine’s Day.”
I couldn’t have cared any less if Larry had said he was going to screw a donkey. Or make a sandwich.
Thanks to pot, I didn’t care about anything.
Still, when Larry didn’t come home after the bars closed, I freaked out a little. High and bored, I went to bed, then stayed wide awake. Waiting. I didn’t care about the girl. I just wanted to feel safe.
Finally, Larry stomped up the stairs. I rolled over without a word and went right to sleep.
For the first time since high school, I had three weeks sober.
I felt good. I felt like life had meaning again, purpose, like there was some reason that I’d been saved from both my suicide attempt and my more recent stupidity on New Year’s Eve. I had God – a real, tangible God – who was on my side, who confirmed that it was in my best interest to stop drinking alcohol.
I flew home from London without my family; I needed to get back to work after taking an entire year’s worth of vacation. I rode on a huge jet where they offered me – legal at 23 – many options for alcoholic drinks.
But I didn’t feel compelled to drink. I could smoke on the plane and, without any parents around, I smoked a lot. I also slept a little. But mostly I sat anxiously awaiting my re-arrival in the United States.
Finally I got off the plane, purple duffel in tow, and there was Larry. He was standing right at the gate, waving wildly in front of the waiting crowd, grinning that crooked-toothed smile that I’d grown to love.
Except suddenly I didn’t love that smile anymore. Suddenly I was super-conscious of the crookedness of his teeth. His hair was so stringy; when had it gotten all stringy like that?
Larry was obviously going bald, and he was older than I remembered. When did he get so old? He looked older than my father – like somebody’s grandfather. How had he aged so much in three weeks?
Was I really dating this man?
“Hey Baby!” Larry said in that beautiful, gravelly voice. He lifted me and my duffel and swung us around wildly, right in the heart of all those people, grinning right into my face and whacking some very unhappy lady in the face with my bag.
He didn’t even notice; he kissed me like we were in a movie, like we were being reunited after a war.
And while I kissed him I thought, Who is this guy? When did Larry turn into this socially inappropriate old man?
He grabbed my duffel in one hand and put his arm around me with the other, reeking of dirt, oil, and obnoxious exuberance.
“I fuckin’ missed you, Baby!” he yelled. “I’m so glad you’re fuckin’ home!”
I hadn’t sworn in three weeks. Larry’s repetitive use of the f-bomb felt unusually uncomfortable.
In fact, everything was uncomfortable. Larry felt uncomfortable, unfamiliar, like a caricature of himself.
At the airport, I didn’t realize that I’d never seen him through sober eyes before. I didn’t know that it was me who had changed. I’d reconnected with a part of myself I thought I’d lost forever; I was still getting to know the real me.
And now I was reconnecting with Larry, who seemed absurdly flamboyant. I didn’t like this new Larry, the guy he’d always been. He was boisterous, loud, unkempt and unclean, and absolutely ancient.
Suddenly I felt out of place in the world, like Larry was pulling me away from a place I actually belonged. As we walked through the airport, I could feel the angry tug away from myself.
Larry’s boots were loud. He squeezed me too hard. I didn’t want to be with him. But I truly had nowhere else to go.
I need a drink, I thought immediately. Then: But I’m not going to drink.
I really didn’t want to drink. I’d seen a shooting star.
But as we reached the car, another thought slowly crept into my brain, a brilliant idea.
If I had been drinking, I would have missed England. Instead, I was fully present.
We shopped and strolled the streets of London and saw a handful of punk rockers who, with their rock-hard hair and nose rings, were so cool it made my stomach flip.
We actually rode on a double decker bus.
We visited church after church after church where the ceilings were so high, looking up felt like studying a decorated sky. We saw Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, where I marveled at the names: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Bronte, Dickens – and my favorite, Dylan Thomas, who drank himself to death in his thirties. (I liked him because he was Bob Dylan’s namesake; I didn’t know he was a drunk and I am no poetry scholar.)
We went to restaurants where they served us the world’s greatest fish and chips wrapped in newspaper, grease dripping as we carried it outside. We ate a dozen different kinds of potato chips from the market and called them “crisps” as we tried to perfect the elusive English accent. We went to a place where I ordered something called “prawns” which the server said was “shrimp” but the little dead things came with their heads on, and I could not eat them in spite of the prawns’ ultimate sacrifice.
We rode the London Underground, which had nothing to do with slavery like I’d originally thought. My dad read the maps and we all stood behind him, waiting for him to figure out which train we were supposed to ride to get to where we wanted to go. Sometimes we had to hop off at the next stop and go the other direction, but we actually laughed when this happened.
I laughed with my family.
We toured Oxford where I stood awestruck in the library and never wanted to leave. We toured Cambridge and The Open University, where we saw my dad’s personal parking spot near his Open University office. We saw the heart-wrenchingly beautiful Les Miserables at the Palace Theatre, where I wept aloud.
As I started to feel things again, I felt proud of my dad for getting the Fulbright. I started to like my family again; I felt close to my sisters. We quipped and shared inside jokes.
I started to feel interested in the things around me; the grayness lifted and I could see some light. I felt lighter, happier, more comfortable in my own skin. I wasn’t healthy by any stretch, but I was getting better.
I could feel it. Every day, I could feel it. I felt better.
And then, at the end of three weeks, it was time for me – just me – to go home: sober, clear-headed, brain fog lifted for the first time since high school. I was finally able to be myself, free from the chains that had shackled me for so long.
But I knew what was coming: I was going back to Larry, to biker life, to Pitcairn.
I did not want to go.
So I dragged out my departure. Before arriving at the airport, I forced my long-suffering father to take me to the London Harley-Davidson shop so I could buy myself a Harley-Davidson t-shirt, transitioning my brain by buying a British t-shirt from a distinctly American motorcycle store. I was more than a little insistent that we buy that shirt, in spite of the distinct threat that I might miss my plane.
No one was happy with my behavior, but somehow we made it to Heathrow on time.
I waved goodbye to my family, and headed back to the States.
