Back at the house in Myrtle Beach, sunrise brought a flurry of activity. Every adult in the house was awake, making breakfast and packing to go home.
My mom’s sisters looked up as we came inside.
“Kirsten!” my aunt said.
Another aunt hugged me. “We’re glad you’re back.”
My mom had been fairly silent for the entire walk, and this didn’t change. “Pack your stuff,” she said, heading upstairs. “I’ll tell Daddy you’re back.”
My whole extended family had forever graciously accepted me into their homes for visits and holiday dinners. These people had raised me as though I were one of their own, and loved me even though I didn’t love myself. These were happy non-alcoholics who had never tried to change me.
And I’d run away. I’d left them, purposefully, and made a plan to live on the beach rather than go back to Pennsylvania and spend my life as part of this loving family.
My reason? Nobody drank.
I didn’t fit in. I didn’t feel like part of this loving family. I felt like an outcast, a reject, a person undeserving of their love. I felt like an imposter. Childhood Kirsten, who made straight A’s and loved animals and just wanted to do the right thing … that person was gone.
I packed quickly, then walked out onto the porch to look at the ocean one last time, this time in daylight.
I lit a cigarette.
My cousin’s wife stepped outside. “Can I talk to you?” she asked. When a prodigal returns, I guess it’s customary to be wary.
“Sure.” I took a short drag on my cigarette, confused.
She was quiet for a long moment. She didn’t seem to know what to say.
Finally, carefully, she said, “Please stop drinking.”
This was new. Addressing the elephant in the room when it was standing there felt unfamiliar, crazy. No one in my family, other than my parents, had ever really addressed this enormous, fat beast.
But this woman was doing it, and she did it with love.
“I’m trying,” I squeaked.
“Try harder,” she said. “Please quit. It affects everyone in your life, even if you don’t see it.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know,” she said. Her eyes welled with tears.
I didn’t understand. “You do?”
“I do.”
Her eyes filled with pain from someone in her life who’d also been an alcoholic. She made quick work of telling me her story, purposefully not crying, choking a bit on her words, then got quiet quickly. I’d never heard her story, never known any of this.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I felt numb and guilty. I didn’t know how to do better.
“You don’t have to be sorry for me,” she said. “Just don’t do it to anyone else.”
“I’ll try,” I said.
I meant it. Although … what had trying gotten me thus far? My family was disappointed in me again. I’d hurt people again. This time, I’d hurt more people than I realized.
And I hadn’t even gotten to live on the beach.
Soon, we all got into cars and drove to our respective homes. I crawled into the backseat and fell asleep, dreaming I was sleeping in the sand, and that sleeping in sand was beautiful.
I woke up hours later, sweaty and parched, achingly alone.
I felt terrified that I was going to drink again, that I’d never be able to quit, that I’d never have a real life.
But I felt – again – like I needed to try.
It had been eight months since I’d seen that shooting star, and somehow I was still a drunk.
While I was drinking, several of my family members went out looking for me. Like any loving parents, mine were worried that something bad had happened to me.
Meanwhile, I was sucking in as much alcohol as I could find. I had decided to move to Myrtle Beach permanently; I was never going home. I wanted sun and sand and freedom. I wanted the things I believed I’d been promised when I moved with Larry to Florida. I wanted the things Scott had when he lived on raw potatoes. I wanted no responsibility and no consequences.
I didn’t know yet that consequences emerge directly from evading responsibility.
Then, quite suddenly, I decided that I wanted to die. Something about that teenage boy not wanting me anymore…
Wasted, I left the party and wandered down to the ocean. I stared into the abyss. It was so dark, I couldn’t see anything but black.
I wondered if I could drown myself. I thought about The Awakening, a story I’d read in school. Spoiler alert: at the end of The Awakening, the main character walks into the ocean and purposefully drowns herself.
This seemed like a pretty good plan.
I’m drunk enough to drown, I thought. I deserve to drown. My head was woozy with alcohol; the dark was holding me captive. I stood with my feet in the water; I took a few steps forward. The water was warm.
I took a few steps into the water and considered my options. I could just keep going, but …
Wasn’t I just thinking about living at the beach forever?
I imagined life eating raw potatoes and realized: I don’t even like raw potatoes. But I like peanut butter sandwiches! Why couldn’t I eat peanut butter sandwiches instead of raw potatoes?
I could.
The fickle nature of alcoholic mood allowed me to abruptly forget about drowning and stand there for another moment, listening to the waves in the blackness, while planning to be a vagrant – another good plan. Then I headed back to the party for another beer.
I didn’t notice the sunrise, but the sun was shining when I saw her.
And she saw me.
My mom was standing at the bottom of the steps near the hotel where the party lingered. Drunk beyond even my own comprehension, I wished hard that I was imagining her presence.
But no. She was there, locking eyes with me as I haltingly started toward her. The closer I got, the clearer her face became.
Hers was the saddest face I had ever seen, sad in a way I couldn’t characterize. Her skin was freckled and pale, her cheeks hollow, her eyes dark and sorrowful, almost crying. She looked as though someone had died, an infant maybe, or a beloved pet.
Maybe she was grieving for her own beloved infant.
For the first time in my life, I saw the pain in my mom’s eyes, and I knew without a doubt that I’d caused it. I felt real remorse: a deep, agonizing regret for hurting this woman who loved me. For the first time ever, I didn’t feel just shame and guilt; I didn’t just feel anger.
I felt empathy. My mom was human.
She waited until I got close enough for her to almost whisper: “Let’s go home.”
I wanted to tell her I was staying, living in Myrtle Beach forever. Instead, I put down my beer and walked with her silently in the sand, all the way back to the beach house.
And I knew, once and for all, that I’d never live on the beach.
Shortly after the debacle with Kurt, my parents invited me to go to Myrtle Beach with them. Every year, the entire extended family – aunts, uncles, cousins, cousins’ kids, sometimes even family friends – got together and rented a house.
I had no permanent job and nowhere else I’d rather be, so I quickly accepted the invitation. We’d gone to Myrtle Beach every year when I was a kid, and I’d missed a few years as a biker chick, so I could hardly wait to go again.
I didn’t mind sleeping on the floor; it’s a small price to pay for a free trip to the beach. My family had to step over me until well past noon; they might have minded, but I was happy.
I spent days in the ocean with my family, body surfing and watching the sand sift through my fingers. I spent evenings walking to the pier, playing video games, and admiring the waves from the porch, and the rising moon from my space on the sand.
Everything went well … until the night before we headed home.
I wasn’t thinking about drinking when I went for a walk alone. I hadn’t had a drink or a drug all week, so I figured I had everything under control. I was just enjoying the summer evening.
I walked about a mile from our beautiful beach house, in front of the giant oceanfront hotels, just generally being barefoot and alone. Everything was cool.
But when some teenage boy said, “Hey, ya want a beer?” I nearly jumped into his arms. A single beer was useless; that boy awakened the beast.
After one beer, I felt free. After two, I felt healthy. After three beers, I felt invincible. The week with my family vanished from my memory; the carefree, careless, completely irresponsible version of me reappeared as though conjured from dust.
Suddenly I never wanted to go home; I didn’t want to face what I’d made of my life. I didn’t want to work temp jobs, or pay rent, or date men who called me a coke whore. I didn’t want to deal with adulthood in any form.
What I wanted, I realized, was to live in Myrtle Beach, right there on the sand. I thought of Scott and how he’d lived off the land, subsisting on raw potatoes and being free from responsibility. I didn’t think about his post-beach life as a grocery store stock boy, or how he’d moved back in with his parents, or whatever came after the raw potatoes.
I just thought: I want to stay and live in Myrtle Beach.
So I drank, and drank some more. The youngster who’d invited me to the party figured out pretty quickly that I was not only older than he thought, but a total lush. I climbed all over him in the outdoor hot tub and made an ass of myself. He suggested that I go home but there was still free beer.
I thought about how I would live just like this, going from party to party every evening, getting drunk and high and sleeping on the sand until sunrise.
I imagined the sunrise as this beautiful thing that would somehow wake me and make me beautiful, too.
The drunker I got, the more I believed my own dreams were possible.
It never occurred to me that anyone from my beach house – my family – might expect me to return, that I might want to share my plan. I figured I’d just “run away” and no one would care.
I didn’t know my actions were already affecting my family.
After months of living and drinking in Swissvale, I discovered a bar with an electronic darts game. To me, this was the ultimate fun: drinking and playing darts. It reminded me of college and The One, who taught me how to play. Even better, the machine kept score so I didn’t have to try to remember numbers when I was too wasted to think.
I’ll call the bar Fannie’s, because I can’t remember its name. Drinking at Fannie’s meant that I could play darts all evening and – drum roll, please – not have to pay for my fun with sex. When I went to Fannie’s, I paid for my own drinks and always went home alone.
The real reason for this is it seemed to be a guy’s bar – a place where groups of guys congregated. And I don’t mean “grabbed a drink after work” groups of guys. I mean “retired ten or twenty years ago” groups of guys.
Nobody bothered me at Fannie’s. They watched me run back and forth from the bar to the dart machine, but only in a vague sort of way. Nobody leered at me. Occasionally people bought me a drink, but we didn’t hold court over it. I thanked them and went back to being alone.
After many years of drinking to the point of losing complete control of my decision-making power, and after latching on to so many, many men who took advantage of my powerlessness, I finally recognized that the only safe thing for me to do was to drink alone.
My dream was to buy two, three, maybe four cases of beer and hole up in my own home. With a couple of cartons of cigarettes, I figured this would allow me to do what I truly wanted to do: listen to my albums. I wanted to lose myself in music, chain-smoke without judgment from onlookers, and sing as loud as I wanted to sing without anyone telling me to “turn it down.”
That was the dream.
I had already forgotten that I’d lived exactly like that with Larry, during those hours after the bars closed. I had already forgotten that it had been the loneliest time of my life.
Somehow, though, I never bought cases of beer. Somehow I ended up hanging out alone at Fannie’s.
I regularly saw a guy who intrigued me – a gray-haired fellow who could have been 45 or 95. He looked so sad, sitting at his regular table, his eyes both vacant and longing. I would smile at him as I passed on my way to refill my glass, and he would lift the corners of his lips in return. Every time I went to Fannie’s I saw him, and every time I saw him, he seemed sad.
He broke my heart in a new and different way. I wanted to help.
So one night as I strode past the sad old guy, I stopped.
I smiled directly at him and he looked up, his eyes momentarily bright. Then I leaned down and kissed him. I kissed him for a solid minute, then two, maybe three. Finally I rested my forehead against his forehead, my left hand on his neck, my eyes still closed, vaguely aware of a murmur from the other old guys at his table.
Then I stood and smiled again. He beamed at me with a true, happy smile. I blew him a kiss and walked away.
Standing at the bar, I hesitated.
Then I put down my empty glass and I walked out the front door. I never went back.
Gregg showed up at my door the following weekend. It had been several weeks since the money-under-the-chair incident, and I assumed he was checking to see if I had forgiven him.
I had not.
“What do you want?”
“I just wanted to talk to you.” Gregg looked like a lost puppy with glasses.
“Well you can’t come in,” I said. “What do you want to talk about?” I stood inside behind the screen door and waited.
Gregg paused, standing on the porch. Finally he said, “It’s about Kurt.”
He’s dead, I thought. The man I love is dead and I am alone again.
Then I remembered that Kurt was none of Gregg’s business. How did he even know I’d been spending time with Kurt? And what could Gregg possibly know that I didn’t already know?
“What the fuck do you know about Kurt?” I spat, suddenly seething.
I could see that this was not how Gregg had expected it to go. He’d expected to be welcomed in, forgiven, hugged and coddled, before being forced to say anything about his reason for being there. In fact, it felt like Gregg was just waiting to be invited inside.
That was not going to happen. Whatever Gregg had to tell me, he could do it from the porch.
“Well it’s something Kurt said,” Gregg started cautiously.
I blew cigarette smoke directly through the screen into Gregg’s face. “Okay, what?” I said. “What do you have to tell me about Kurt?”
Gregg shifted nervously on his feet. He looked behind him, then looked at me again. Finally he said, “Well, I was talking to Kurt and a bunch of guys a few days ago. And your name came up.”
I waited.
Gregg waited.
“Okay, so I’ve been seeing Kurt,” I said. “How is that your fucking business?”
“It’s not,” Gregg stammered. “But I thought you should know what Kurt said about you.”
“Okay,” I said. “What.”
“Kurt called you a coke whore.”
“What?!?” I nearly screamed. “He did not!”
“He did,” Gregg insisted. “I just wanted you to know what he’s saying behind your back. Kurt isn’t …” He trailed off.
“You’re lying,” I said. “Get the fuck off my porch.”
“I’m not …” Gregg began. Then I slammed the door in his face. The door never shut tightly without an extra push, though, so it took a second for me to close it completely.
I turned away and slid to the floor, like people do in dramatic movies. I pulled my knees to my chest and buried my face in them. Then I slammed my head against my knees until it hurt.
Kitty rushed over to see what I was doing on the floor. I ignored her.
Suddenly everything made sense: why Kurt never looked at me, why he rarely touched me, why he never kissed me, why he raced to the tub after we had sex.
Kurt thought I was a literal whore, that our sex had been payment for cocaine.
I thought I loved Kurt. I would have done anything he wanted! Wasn’t that love?
But the only thing we’d ever done together, really, was smoke cocaine.
Obviously I didn’t know Kurt at all.
Was I a coke whore?
I got off the floor.
Then I went out and got blind drunk without looking at a soul.
I never spoke to Kurt again.
Kurt and I didn’t spend a whole lot of time together, but the time we shared was quality.
Or so I imagined.
We actually spent most of our time with Fish, and often with Fish’s other friends. We did nothing but smoke cigarettes, freebase cocaine, and drink warm beer. Fortunately, I didn’t need much beer when I was doing so much cocaine.
Plus, I only cared about Kurt. I was crazy for him. He barely looked at me, but I spent most of my time staring at the side of his face: his long eyelashes, the tiny crinkles around his eyes. If Kurt didn’t know I was gawking, his friends probably did.
Of course everyone was a junkie, so nobody was really taking stock of the relationships in the room. Everyone was focused on the coke.
While I stared, Kurt paid almost no attention to me. He rarely spoke, he didn’t look my way, and he only smiled when the other guys laughed, usually at a sexist remark. I was oblivious.
In fact, I’d developed a super power. Whenever I smoked cocaine, I became telepathic.
While everyone was laughing about really dumb stuff, I looked around the room and analyzed the thoughts of all the other people.
Because I could do that.
At the end of the table, that woman with the dark, super skinny legs was thinking, You guys need to gimme some respect. I heard her clear as day, but she wasn’t talking.
I heard Fish: I am the most important man in the world. He didn’t say it, but I heard it.
I was as sure of these thoughts as if they’d been spoken aloud. I believed it was an added benefit of the drug. But I was only interested in Kurt’s thoughts.
I heard things like, You are so beautiful, I’m afraid to look at you.
I heard: I have never wanted anyone the way I want you.
I heard: You are my soul mate.
And I sent telepathic messages to Kurt, too: Please be with me.
I would telepathically emit: I love your eyes.
And: Be with me NOW. Please, just be with me. I craved that physical connection with him. I needed to confirm his love; sex was the only way I knew how to do that.
I sent repeated, urgent messages to Kurt without ever uttering a word: I’m falling in love with you.
One day, quite abruptly, Kurt pushed back his chair and looked at me.
“C’mon,” he said, actually speaking with his mouth.
Finally, I thought. It’s time!
I followed Kurt upstairs into a bedroom. Immediately he leaned down and bit my shirt, pulling it up from my stomach with his teeth. We did not kiss. We had sex on the floor, Kurt writhing underneath me like a venomous snake.
Afterward Kurt showed me the skin on his back, raw and bleeding. He shared these post-sex gouges and scrapes as though they were a badge. Then he walked naked, emaciated, across the hall to a bathtub with a handheld shower. He hopped in and rinsed himself off.
Kurt didn’t ask me to join him. I was so happy to have finally consummated the relationship, I didn’t even recognize that the whole experience was rather lousy.
With our clothes on, I followed Kurt back downstairs. He told Fish, “I’m gonna take her home.” Fish handed us the pipe, which we both hit, then the car keys.
Kurt and I drove back to my place in silence.
You’re so beautiful, I telepathized. I completely love you.
Kurt transmitted nothing. I went inside alone.
Recovering addicts sometimes say, “My worst day clean is still better than my best day high.”
I have been testing that theory for more than 30 years. Every time it gets so bad that I think I can’t take it anymore, I pull out the file in my brain of my very best day high.
That night at the lake was my very best high day.
The summer air felt incredible; the sky was amazing. The guys played music and laughed amongst themselves; I had the whole evening to myself, out in summer’s overwhelming natural beauty.
I watched a spider spin its web – a magical experience that would never be replicated. I wandered through the little neighborhood of tiny houses, all identical yet completely unique. I imagined the families inside, considering the breadth of it all, realizing for maybe the first time that I was one with the world, that humans are just animals, living our lives in unison.
It was like watching a National Geographic special about spiders and people. The way I have always seen the world is from a distance – and this was the ultimate distant exploration.
I don’t remember having any meaningful human interaction. Maybe that’s why I had such a glorious time.
And if I’d quit drinking when I saw the shooting star, I never would have had that day.
It’s no coincidence that all of my “good” non-sober days happened when I was outside appreciating nature. If I walked in the woods, climbed a tree, played on a playground, or went four-wheeling in the snow … that was always a good day.
I was sober for many years before I realized that drugs weren’t the key to making those days wonderful.
Nature made those days brilliant.
Not surprisingly, I turn to nature now when I’m having a really bad day sober. I go for a walk in the woods. I go kayaking or build a snowman or look for rainbows. I watch the birds at the feeders, the deer munching leaves in the yard. Nature is still glorious.
But that beautiful day at the lake – the one with the spider? It could never rival even my worst day sober.
I was so high that night – the way I was every night – that I couldn’t do anything but stare at the spider. I couldn’t learn anything from it, or commit it to memory, or even discover what kind of spider I watched. Like most days, I was a walking zombie.
I couldn’t connect.
Now though, even on my worst days, I am able to feel. I am able to be here, to be present and fully engaged.
Sometimes feeling hurts – it can be agonizingly painful, like being unable to breathe. Still, I know now that feeling pain is better than being dead inside. Drinking and drugs kill all feelings – joy included. I can only feel real happiness when I am completely drug-free.
Drugs didn’t give me the miracle of nature, the spider, the lake, the stars, the summer air. I just happened to be there that day. Drugs only guarantee that I have no control over where I go, what I do, or what comes next.
I can’t choose anything if I’m high. I can only go wherever the drugs take me.
One day – one day, in 15 years of intoxication – I watched a spider spin a web. That was cool. But it’s nowhere near as cool as waking up in the morning and going wherever I want to go.
Now, today – every day – I can choose anything … and today I choose to be present.
One summer night I was wandering down the street toward a bar in my cutoff jeans shorts and bare feet, as always, when Fish’s car pulled up. He held his arm out the window at me, a sort of wave.
The car pulled over. I hadn’t even been looking for Kurt, yet there he was in Fish’s car again – this time in the passenger seat.
“C’mon,” Kurt said. I forgot all about the bar.
A new guy was in back. “Ed don’t bite,” Fish said, then pulled out.
We drove way out of town. We landed in a secluded spot near a lake, where the guys hopped out and popped the trunk. Inside was enough drug paraphernalia to ensure that we could all go to jail for a very long time. I never questioned it; everyone did a tab of LSD immediately.
Tripping with Kurt? Yes, please!
Fish set up a workshop of sorts in his trunk, and started making rocks out of cocaine again.
“Is this crack?” I whispered to Kurt. I’d only recently heard about crack.
He shrugged. “Freebase,” said Kurt.
“Isn’t that the same thing as crack?”
Kurt shrugged again. And that ended the conversation. They passed the pipe.
LSD and freebase cocaine was the ultimate high. Combined with the gorgeous summer night, the full moon shining on the lake, and the tunes playing at just the right volume from the car radio, I was in heaven.
The guys were jovial and chatting with one another, but I had nothing to add to their conversation. I was more interested in the trees and light trails of leaves and sparkling dots on the water.
I wandered away from the guys to explore nature more fully. About fifty yards from the car, where the guys huddled and mumbled, I caught a glimpse of a yellow dot. I walked to where I could see it more closely.
With only the stray rays from the headlights, it was hard to find – but I found it. In the dark of night, there on a leaf, was a huge yellow-and-black spider, stealthily moving amongst the branches of shrubbery. As it continued darting back and forth, I leaned in closer. With only the moonlight as my guide, I realized that the spider was spinning a web.
I’d never seen anything more spectacular in my life. I stood and watched its intricate movements, its repetitive patterns, stalking from one space to another, silky threads combining to make a glorious, completely unique structure.
Kurt wandered over with a flashlight. “What’s goin’ on?”
I pointed. Kurt aimed the flashlight and stared. “Wow,” he said. It was even more wondrous under the light, but the spider stalled.
“Cool,” said Kurt, dousing the light. He went back to the car and I could hear him raving about the spider.
Time stopped while I was entranced by the web.
Later I sat on the ground, hitting the pipe occasionally, embraced by a brand new sense of serenity. The music played; the night’s warmth soothed me.
Just before sunrise, I wandered away again – this time into a neighborhood of saltbox houses, their windows still dark, laundry flapping in the morning breeze. I walked and walked, awestruck by the tiny yards and the feeling that anyone could live there, that we were all so human, so unified by our similarities, so insistent on our differences, even in each little house.
I watched their lights flick on, one by one, spellbound.
When the car pulled up and Kurt ushered me in, I despaired. I never wanted to leave, but it was time.
I hopped into the long, low sedan that Kurt had been driving when he’d taken me “for a ride” before. I finally understood that this was Fish’s car.
This time Kurt was out cruising with Fish and another friend. As we squealed away from the gas station, I looked at the dark-skinned, rail-thin guy in the passenger seat.
“That’s Chip,” Kurt said. He didn’t bother telling Chip my name. I wasn’t sure Kurt knew it.
Chip turned around and grinned, revealing a broken front tooth in his wide, yellow-toothed smile. “‘Sup,” he said. Then he turned back to Fish and started talking so fast, I couldn’t understand what he said.
Kurt, as usual, said nothing. I was okay with his silence. It made him mysterious.
After a few minutes, with Chip still rattling on to Fish at breakneck speed, I leaned over and whispered to Kurt. “Did they do that on purpose?”
Kurt lifted his chin at me and said. “Do what?”
“Fish and Chip,” I said. “Did they come up with those nicknames on purpose because they hang out together?”
Kurt, who obviously had never considered this, laughed out loud. “Yo,” he said to the front seat.
Chip stopped talking and turned around, since Kurt never said anything. “Yo!” Chip said.
“She said you’re Fish and Chip. Like the food!”
Fish and Chip roared with laughter. I wasn’t trying to be funny, but I laughed, too.
Mid-laugh, Chip started rambling again, about foods he wanted. We stopped at a CoGo’s and he bought beef jerky. He offered it to all of us and, when we all turned him down, Chip ate the rest of it himself. The whole car smelled like beef jerky.
We passed around pipes, drank warm beers. Everybody chain-smoked. We tossed our cigarettes out the window without a thought.
Fish drove with one forearm on the steering wheel, taking the turns ultra-wide, like we were in a school bus. Sometimes he swerved wildly in the middle of the road, or hit the brakes hard for no reason. We were moving very, very slowly compared to the other traffic.
I didn’t think about how wasted they must be; I guessed we were safe.
We drove around and around and around. We were in the suburbs, in the country, in the city. We really were just going for a ride.
Fish and Chip were yelling back and forth at one another, making no sense to me in the back seat, but I didn’t have anything to add. Kurt stared out the window, glanced at the guys once in awhile, smiled once in awhile. Once, he even put his hand on my leg and squeezed, but not for any apparent reason.
It melted my heart. I stared at him, at the side of his face, watching his dark eyes gleam. He never even glanced at me. I was pretty sure I was in love.
We passed a girl on the street and Chip leaned half-out the window and yelled: “I gotta get some work!” He sat back down and yelled louder: “Gotta get me some WORK!” It went on for half an hour.
We passed another girl, then a group of girls. Chip never stopped. “I GOTS to get some WORK!”
Finally he said, “Some WORK, ya know what I mean?!” Fish chuckled; Kurt snickered.
I had no idea what Chip was talking about. Why didn’t he just get a job? I was completely befuddled.
Eventually they dropped me off at the gas station and I walked the mile home.
Almost immediately, I wondered when I’d see Kurt again.
The house where Kurt and I first “hung out” belonged to a guy they called Fish. I never knew Fish’s real name, or why they called him Fish.
I got to know Fish that day, just a little bit, from watching him create rocks from cocaine, and from listening to him talk. Fish was not a nice man.
I didn’t understand why Kurt would befriend him.
Fish talked a lot, and ridiculed everyone who wasn’t in the room. He demeaned his wife who was probably working to pay the rent. Fish demeaned all women. It didn’t matter that there were a smattering of women at the table.
At one point, two little boys came into the house. All the junkies were sitting at the table watching Fish make rocks, and those two little boys ran right over to Fish. They were maybe 9 and 11 years old.
Each boy stood on one side of Fish. “Daddy,” said the older boy, tugging on Fish’s sleeve.
Fish didn’t even look up. “Daddy,” the kid said again. No response from Fish. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” he said, pulling on Fish’s arm. “I have to ask you something.”
Finally, Fish sat up straighter without looking at the boys, seemingly annoyed to be bothered in the midst of his project. The boys lit up.
“Daddy, can we take our bikes to Rodney’s house?” said the older boy. Fish considered the request, shrugged, and nodded. Fish never looked at either of them. He never said a word.
The boys grabbed his shoulders and hugged him, then ran out.
My jaw dropped. This man had children and he didn’t even look at them. He didn’t even talk to them. And they were exposed to the use of illegal drugs the same way I was exposed to Oreo cookies.
This broke my heart in a way nothing else had broken it before. I’d never considered the effect my actions might have on children, because I never saw any children. There were no children in the bars. There were no children at my jobs. And while I knew children existed in the world, it never occurred to me that children were aware of, say, cocaine.
I didn’t know parents used drugs.
I wonder whatever happened to those boys, if they survived to adulthood, if they became junkies, too.
But back then, I said nothing. I did nothing. I tried to forget they existed. I tried to forget that the guy making rocks was also named “Daddy.”
I only wanted to be with Kurt anyway. After that first gas-station-to-house date, I went looking for Kurt every chance I got.
Kurt never went looking for me.
I didn’t drive anywhere except to work, but I would walk all over town. I would walk to the gas station and wait. I would walk through the neighborhood, looking for that long car. I would go into bars and have a beer, scan the area for Kurt, then try another bar. Kurt was a very hard man to find.
Then one day, Kurt appeared again at the gas station. He climbed out of the backseat of a car and there I was, just waiting for him.
I’d almost forgotten those beautiful eyes.
Kurt nodded at me. “Wanna ride with us?”
“Sure,” I said.
I had no cool when Kurt was around. I didn’t even care that Daddy-Fish was driving. I would have done anything to hang out with Kurt. I just wanted to stare at him and absorb his vibe.
“C’mon,” he said.
I jumped in the car and off we went.
