“Kevin” kept walking after we got outside, beckoning me to follow him.
“C’mon,” he said. “It’s right around the corner.”
I glanced at the bar, considered going back inside. But I wanted that cocaine.
“Okay,” I murmured, and followed him around the corner. He struggled with the key then swung open the door. A staircase loomed in front of me, clean and carpeted.
As we walked upstairs, his breathing was heavy behind me, like his footsteps. I got to the top of the stairs, noticed that the room was completely empty, and turned around to face him.
“Where’s the co- ?” I started, but didn’t finish.
He pounded me once in the face, knocking me onto the floor. I was stunned and confused. He landed on top of me, his weight enormous, his knee on my neck. I couldn’t breathe; I couldn’t move; I couldn’t scream.
He started to growl at me: “Shut up you cunt,” he said.
His knee lifted slightly, just enough for air to get through, as he unbuttoned his jeans over my face. “Shut up and suck it,” he said.
“No, I just – ” I started – and WHAM! he slapped me across the face, hard.
“Suck it cunt!” he bellowed. “Now!”
He smelled like rotting garbage, but I did as I was told.
He did not get hard. I stopped. “I don’t want to do this.” SMACK!
I kept going. Still, he didn’t get hard.
“No,” I said.
BAM!
He hit me and screamed obscenities and I tried to do what he wanted but I just wanted to go home.
“Stop you fuckin’ bitch!” he yelled suddenly. I stopped.
Still flaccid, he decided to try vaginal sex. He held me down with his elbow as he manipulated himself, his hair greasy, fruity-smelling in my face, as he tried to find a way to penetrate me.
“If you could just – ”
“Shut up!” SLAP!
I pleaded for him to let me go. I asked to go back to the bar. I asked to use the bathroom. Again and again and again, I spoke and he smacked me.
I was like a broken appliance.
“I just want to go home,” I cried. WHACK!
I stopped speaking.
I thought about home. I realized that home wasn’t with Larry. I missed my parents and my sisters and my dog and my real life, my real home. I wanted to go home.
Meanwhile this guy shoved his fist into my crotch, repeatedly punched me between the legs.
I felt nothing.
I thought: I could die. They’ll find my body in this empty apartment, the rotting carcass of some drunk girl.
Then I had the most awful thought – not about my death but about afterward, about the person who loved me most in the world.
I pleaded: “Do you know what my mother would say if she saw me now?”
SMACK!
I shut up.
He shoved himself into my mouth again, tried to get inside me again. He punched me in the crotch, in the gut, in the face. He couldn’t do what he wanted to do.
After an eternity, he stood up and zipped his pants.
In the quietest voice I could muster I whispered, “I won’t say anything to anyone. Please, please, just take me back to the bar. I’ll buy you a drink. It’ll be like it never happened.”
He towered over me, his rancid sweat dripping onto my half-naked body.
“Get dressed,” he slurred.
I didn’t know if he would kill me or not.
I only had one thought as I stood up: I didn’t even get any cocaine.
It was during one of Bonnie’s visits – this time in November – that it happened. Sometimes I think I wouldn’t have survived without her support. By November, Larry felt like an extra appendage: sometimes useful, mostly just unnecessary and out of place.
Having Bonnie in town meant everything was fun. Her presence made me young again, free again, able to laugh and talk and be beautiful again. I believed that Bonnie and I were soulmates. We rebelled against the world together with all the gusto we had, even as we did absolutely nothing to change it.
Best of all, Bonnie and I drank exactly the same way. There were no fights about someone wanting to go home or go to sleep, because neither of us ever wanted to stop drinking. Nothing else mattered, except cocaine, and both of us would have done coke until our hearts exploded if enough had been offered.
As long as Bonnie and I were together, we believed in ourselves, did whatever we wanted to do, and felt emboldened by the presence of someone who was also willing to sell her soul for another taste of whatever was in front of us.
Larry was playing with his band at a new place, a dive bar somewhere in Homestead. Bonnie and I were having an absolute blast, ignoring the band playing in a tiny corner of the tiny bar. We babbled incessantly, laughing hysterically at each other, reconnecting as the best of friends.
We drank and drank and drank. With Larry’s singing a mere echo behind me, I felt young, wild and immensely free.
I had no idea how short-lived that feeling would be.
At the bar, guys bought us drinks. Some of them sat briefly at our small table. When we got bored with the guys we’d point at Larry, gushing at our Great Protector, and the guys would skedaddle. I felt in control and invincible. Having Bonnie around always made me feel invincible.
So when a short, burly, coal-skinned guy sat down and took up too much of Bonnie’s space, we expected a short-lived visit. He introduced himself to us (“I’m Kevin”) and we chatted with him for awhile to be polite. He neglected to buy us drinks, which particularly irritated Bonnie. She rolled her eyes as he spoke slowly, dully; I giggled a bit maniacally under my breath.
“I’ve gotta go,” Bonnie said, laughing suddenly and loudly, yanking herself away from the table. She walked to the bathroom, waving a hand behind her head without looking back.
As soon as she was out of sight, the burly man leaned over the table and whispered: “Want some coke?”
Ah there’s my kryptonite, I thought.
“Fuck yeah!” I said a little too enthusiastically. I frequently snorted cocaine in restrooms so I suggested, “We can go in when Bonnie comes out.”
“Nah, not in there,” said Kevin. “Let’s go outside; I know a place.”
Outside? I considered this. “Okay, when Bonnie comes back we can ….”
“Nah,” said Kevin. “Just you ‘n me. We’ll be right back. C’mon.”
My mind rattled with an attempt to prioritize my visiting friend over cocaine; the coke was winning.
“Can you give her some when we get back?”
“Sure,” he said.
I looked toward the bathroom door. Cocaine kept calling.
“Okay,” I said. “As long as we come right back.”
“We will,” he said.
So we walked out the front door, Larry still singing in the background, Bonnie still in the bathroom, and me on my way to experience something brand new.
Bonnie had left Mount Union – and me – behind. She had a new group of friends, plenty of reasons and places to party, and she’d spent the school year at University of Akron.
During summer, I compelled her to come and visit me. I promised unlimited alcohol if she’d visit for a weekend. So she did.
I was thrilled to see her, instantly reconnecting at a deep level that was impossible for me to have with anyone else. No one else felt like I did, saw the world like I did, was willing to do what I did.
No one else drank like I did. Bonnie and I were soulmates.
We went to see Larry’s band play on Friday, like I always did. She met Ronnie, who was intrigued to find another woman who was open and loud about her opinions and ideas. Ronnie provided some cocaine, which kept the conversation flowing, and we all kept drinking.
Bonnie slept on the bare mattress in the attic room. Midway through sleeping – probably around noon – I left Larry’s bed and curled up next to her. We had no blankets or sheets.
Larry had gone out, which was his custom during daylight hours, and was nowhere to be found when I headed upstairs. When he came home, he found us and woke us up with a pizza and a 12-pack of Miller Lite, properly chilled.
I grabbed the boombox and blasted music so we had to yell to hear one another in the tiny room. It was like being in college again: Bonnie and me, plenty of beer, feeling freer than ever.
It was just like old times.
Unfortunately for both of us, Larry inserted himself into the mix. He kept showing up, a lead weight pulling down two balloons.
I knew I owed him my life – he’d bought the beer after all – and Bonnie acquiesced. So when Larry suggested we all have a threesome, and we were plenty enough drunk to agree, Bonnie and I nonchalantly gave it a try.
Larry kissed me, then he kissed her. He fondled me, then he fondled her. I thought: This is going to be fine, right? But as this “threesome” continued, I felt repulsed. I realized quite suddenly that this was not okay with me; I did not want the two of them to be together. My insecurities did not allow me to just sit back and watch – even for one moment – as the two of them started moving together.
I stood up and screamed: “NO NO NO NO! FUCKING STOP! I’M NOT FUCKING DOING THIS!”
Larry startled. Bonnie laughed. They stopped.
We all stopped.
Bonnie reached out, naked, and pulled me down next to her on the bed. “It’s okay,” she said. “I fucking love you! We don’t have to do this!”
Realizing it was his only play Larry tried to hug us both, although he truly didn’t fit into the equation no matter what we’d just been doing.
“Right,” he said. Larry kissed my forehead, which both comforted and nauseated me.
“I just wanted to drink beer and listen to music.”
This was true for … everything. Always. I just wanted to drink beer and listen to music. Everything else I did was rubbish.
I looked at Larry. “Can you just get us some more beers?”
“Sure, Baby!” Larry gallumphed down the stairs.
I lit a cigarette. Bonnie took it.
I lit another one.
For the rest of the night, Bonnie and I drank beer and listened to music. Larry stayed at a distance, allowing us to be happy again.
The stories I remember best are those that changed me in some way: took away my innocence, made me feel brave, hurt me beyond repair, frightened me into submission, caused me to rebel, caused irreparable damage, broke my heart, made me lash out, gave me hope, tried to kill me, reminded me I had reasons to live.
But the feelings are what I remember most – the emptiness, the angst, the bottomless pit of sorrow and loss. When trying to accurately describe the depths of my constantly depressed state, I googled the word that came to mind over and over.
The word was “despair.”
de·spair
/dəˈsper/
noun
the complete loss or absence of hope.
Yes, I thought. The complete loss of hope. That’s it.
Coincidentally, Google – not me! – used the word “despair” in a sentence, to show just how desperate a despairing person might be.
Google’s sentence?
“in despair, I hit the bottle”
For the terribly literate, Google was not suggesting that I slap my hand on a bottle of lemonade if I am in despair. Google was suggesting that if one is despairing, one might do something so desperate as to drink alcohol.
And of course, I was drinking alcohol as often as was humanly possible, not relating it to my despair at all. I was drinking alcohol because I was a complete and total drunk. I had crossed over that invisible line without realizing it, and had taken to drinking and doing drugs with all the gusto of a starving man who had just been presented with a buffet.
I did this every single day, without fail, not because I was in despair – but because I was an alcoholic. And being an alcoholic caused me to be in despair every single day. I was 100% stuck in a life that I did not want, and had absolutely no way to get out of it.
I had jumped out a window, landed on my head, and lived. I had survived my one serious suicide attempt and made an instantaneous deal with God that I would go on.
But I didn’t want to go on. I lived with zero gratitude.
I hated my life. I hated waking up with an unbearably dry mouth, squinting to filter any light in the room, wanting to vomit but empty inside. I hated not knowing where I’d been the night before, what I’d done, with whom I’d done it, or where I was now. I hated feeling ostracized by the world for being a drunk, ostracized by my family for being a biker chick, and ostracized by the bikers because I was nothing like them. I hated my life. I hated everything I did. I hated everything I’d become.
And yet I could not fathom for even one moment that there was anything I could do to make the pain stop.
And so I was in a constant state of despair. I had no hope, not for a single moment of any day. I didn’t feel like something good was just around the corner. I didn’t feel like anything would ever change. I couldn’t see a way out of the predicament I’d gotten myself into – but I thought the predicament was Larry, and Pitcairn. I didn’t know yet that the predicament was Alcohol and Me.
So I woke up without hope. I drank and had sex and did drugs. I blacked out then passed out. And then I awoke, again, without hope.
I was in constant, agonizing despair.
And I tried to numb the despair with alcohol, a sadly temporary solution to a permanent problem.
I am still an addict, even though I am sober. I don’t think about drinking all the time; life isn’t like that anymore. In fact, the obsession with drinking is completely gone, which is one of the great rewards of being sober.
But addiction is a huge part of who I am. I have an “addictive personality,” which never really changes.
I am obsessive to the point of insanity. I am drawn to the emotional, rather than the logical. I worry incessantly. I isolate. I am especially sensitive and not especially resilient. I focus on prior, traumatic events instead of taking steps toward a happy future. I vacillate between anxiety and depression, never going far from either. And I have a very negative outlook, no matter how good a situation may be.
Some of this is just me; some of it is addict behavior. I have no idea how to discern which is which, since I have always been like this, and a whole lot of addicts are like this, too.
When I drank, every day looked like this:
- Wake up: Oh no. What time is it what did I do where am I where do I need to be?
- Lunchtime: How much longer do I have to do this stupid stuff before I can drink?
- Evening: Finally. I can drink without anyone bothering me.
- Night: Why am I here? I don’t want to be here. This is not where I want to be. I just wanted to drink!
I would survive whatever situation I’d gotten myself into, and then start over the next day. I would hope that the next day would be different, that I would be able to drink the way I wanted to drink without ending up in the wrong place.
This never, ever, ever happened. I never just sat around and drank by myself, which is what I really wanted to do. Every time I picked up a drink or a drug, I ended up somewhere I didn’t want to be. Sometimes I ended up in the wrong place for years.
When I was drinking, the only thing I knew is that I would do absolutely anything to stay drunk – and that I might have to sacrifice my morals to complete my mission.
The thing about being sober is: I now have control over where I end up. I have control over my attitude and my actions. It’s a glorious thing to be able to decide what I want to do, and then just do it. It’s like a gift from God, honestly.
Now that I no longer drink, given my addict mentality, my days go something like this:
- Wake up: Oh no. What time is it? I don’t want to get up. I have to get up.
- Lunchtime: What can I eat? I should have something healthy. I can have anything I want!
- Evening: What did I eat today? I should allow myself to have junk. I should not eat any junk!
- Night: I should not have eaten the one thing I ate today that I allowed myself to have.
I have mostly just switched “alcohol and drugs” to “chocolate and popcorn.” And yes, I have a weight problem. I have a me problem.
But at least, today, I have a choice.
On especially wonderful nights, Larry and I would go out to eat after the bar closed.
I was never awake in the morning so I only got breakfast in the middle of the night. And the one place open late that offered breakfast at 4 a.m. was Denny’s.
Being the only place open after the bars closed meant that Denny’s was always crowded. We would stand in line and wait for “party of two” to be called – or “party of four” if we could get Leo, the bass player, and my best bud Ronnie to come along. Often Larry and I were the only two who were willing to wait in the line.
After an hour or two, we’d waddle home, still sluggish from drinking, full of nutrition-less food, and pass out.
But one night, while we were in line, we met a guy and started chatting with him. Larry enjoyed conversing with him, so we invited him to sit with us.
Gus was a truck driver – the kind who actually drives for a living, using an 18-wheeler as both an apartment and a job.
“I always wanted to be a truck driver!” I announced.
When I was in 8th grade, my friend’s father drove a truck, and her mother drove a Bookmobile. These sounded like thrilling occupations, always traveling, making deliveries.
Listening to Gus talk about his travels, I was fascinated. I wanted to know a million things about driving a truck. Where did he eat? How far did he drive? What did he listen to on the radio? Did he have a CB? Did he have a CB handle? Did he have a dog?
Most of what I knew about truck drivers, I’d learned from Smokey and the Bandit.
The three of us walked out together and Gus said, “Wanna go for a ride?”
“Now?” I looked at Larry. “Your truck is here?”
Gus laughed. “Where else would it be?” He pointed to a semi parked in the back of the very large lot.
“Yes! Yes I do!” I was jumping up and down with excitement, quite literally. “I wanna go!”
Then I remembered Larry.
“Can I go?”
“Sure, Baby,” he said, kissing me and waving me off. “See ya at home.”
Getting into the truck was the most exciting thing I’d done in eons. I had to climb – literally climb – hanging onto a metal bar and yanking myself into the passenger seat. It was like climbing a tree, but cooler.
I plopped myself down and waited for the ride of a lifetime.
Gus hopped in and started the engine. It was absurdly loud. He pushed a bunch of buttons, grabbed the giant steering wheel, and the truck started moving.
“Where do you live?” he asked.
“Just over that hill!” I said. “Just go straight and I’ll tell you when to turn!”
“10-4,” Gus said, then pulled out onto the very dark road.
It was so loud!
“This is great!” I squealed, unable to contain my excitement.
Gus turned the truck onto the rather steep hill. Technically, it was the side of a mountain.
We inched forward.
The truck groaned and spit.
Rrrrrrrrmmmmffffrrrrrrrrggggg….
Inch by inch, climbing that hill.
Inch.
By inch.
Still climbing.
We’d gone maybe a hundred yards before I was bored beyond belief.
“Is it always this slow?” I guessed.
“On the hills, yeah,” Gus laughed.
It took us a million years to get to my house, right over that hill.
Larry was still awake when I got home. “Still want to be a truck driver?” he asked.
“No,” I said. And I meant it.
I can’t stress how incredibly alone I felt during the depths of my alcoholism. “Lonely” doesn’t begin to describe it. I was vacant, my body uninhabited, void of all joy. There was nothing left for me. I was empty.
My few “friends” were at work or lived in another state. And while I was somewhat safe in spite of my behavior, we were very poor and couldn’t always afford the excesses I wanted, most notably: cocaine. Larry bought a lot of marijuana and I smoked it, but it wasn’t mellowing me out the way he’d hoped. Smoking pot made my head fuzzy and that made me want cocaine to snap out of it. And since we rarely had cocaine, I drank more beer instead.
I wanted to find the perfect cocktail of drugs to put into my system to make me feel normal.
This was, of course, an impossible task. So I just kept drinking. And Larry just kept feeding me.
Larry was never truly mean to me. I knew he liked me, maybe even loved me as much as he knew how. He only hit me those two times, and they came from a place deep down in his upbringing that had nothing to do with me.
But as fall approached, and Larry started to feel caged in by the weather, and I started to lean into my friends at work for real conversation and disappear as often as possible to bars while Larry stayed home … things shifted a bit. We weren’t just rolling around on the floor or sitting around smoking pot or playing guitar and singing together anymore. Larry shifted out of the role of lover and more into the role of fatherly figure at some point late in 1987.
For my part, I didn’t just feel increasingly alone; I felt deprived. I felt deprived of companionship, of intellectual stimulation, of intimacy, of meaning. So as life went along, I went along with it, just trying to find good stuff, to feel happy.
One day, I was sitting on the back of Larry’s bike at a red light, smoking a cigarette and waiting for the light to change, when I saw something I hadn’t seen before.
It was a gorgeous sports car, white and shiny, sitting just across the intersection, revving its engine and waiting for its own green light. I loved that car.
Excitedly, I tapped Larry on the shoulder with my non-cigarette hand. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing.
“What?”
“That car!” I said. “I love it!”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes!” I said. It was adorable and sporty in just the right way for me. “What is it?”
Larry turned his head to go full throttle on me: “GET OFF THE FUCKIN’ BIKE!” he roared.
“What? Why?”
“THAT’S A PIECE OF JAP SHIT!” he said. “FUCKIN’ JAP SHIT!”
I was stunned. We’d been having such a lovely day. The light changed, but Larry didn’t move. “GET OFF THE FUCKIN’ BIKE!” he said again. “YOU CAN WALK HOME!”
As I realized he was serious and climbed off the Harley, Larry was still muttering about “Jap shit” under the roar of the engine. He peeled off so fast, his front tire flew up in the air for a second.
I stood there, wondering how long it would take to walk home from the next town over. And I realized: I wasn’t just deprived of friends, intimacy, intellect and sufficient drugs to kill myself. I was also deprived of the right to have my own opinion.
It was a long, long walk home.
As the knocking got more persistent, I glanced toward the door. Light streamed through the glass block, indicating that the sun had come up.
I’d been at Paul’s Place since early evening the night before, showing up barefoot and irritable. I drank nearly non-stop; it hadn’t occurred to me to sleep. The cocaine kept me going, and I’d been busy paying for it downstairs.
Now I sat at the bar flanked by Paul, Rich, and two very old men who, I suddenly realized, probably lived at Paul’s Place. Maybe underground. Those men were always at Paul’s.
I wanted to be one of them. I wanted to go into a dark corner, crawl up, and die with a can of beer by my side.
Someone yelled outside, like a kid on a distant playground. It had never occurred to me that Larry would care what I was doing. But now he was banging on the door as hard as his biker fist would allow.
From inside the bar, the sounds were distant and muffled, no more threatening than a fly buzzing in my ear. If I hadn’t recognized the rumble of the Harley, I wouldn’t have even guessed it was Larry.
The building was a concrete jungle; Larry couldn’t have gotten in if he’d come with a sledgehammer.
From a long, long way away, I heard distinctly-Larry’s voice say: “I know she’s in there! The fuckin’ car is out here!”
I’d forgotten about the car. With its racing stripes, it was hard to miss. In the empty lot. At this tiny bar in Wall, Pennsylvania.
Paul spoke first, not even looking up from where he was mixing himself a drink behind the bar: “Just ignore him. He’ll go away.”
I considered this. It sounded like a good plan. “He has to go to work,” I said.
I didn’t move.
The banging got louder. Larry had apparently found a large stick and was whacking the sides of the establishment with all the force he could muster.
Again: like a fly. What he needed was a brick.
Suddenly it occurred to me that he might find one. Or maybe he’d pulled out his knife and was brandishing it like a movie villain. Maybe he’d borrowed somebody’s gun.
I started to panic. My heart started to beat a little too fast, my head started swimming. It was probably time to go.
Larry turned off his motorcycle. The familiar rumbling stopped.
We sipped our drinks. I wished I’d done more cocaine, then I wished I’d done less. I reached over the bar, refilled my beer, and chugged it.
We waited. The sounds got louder, though still not loud. It went on for five minutes, ten, maybe twenty.
Finally the banging stopped. It was deathly silent. I breathed.
Then Larry’s grumbly voice came through, loud and clear, as though a microphone had been set in front of him. It was coming from the front door, directly through the keyhole: “Just tell her to come out so I can see her. I just want to know she’s fuckin’ okay.”
I glanced at Paul, still silent, who nodded.
I grabbed my cigarettes and walked to the door. I opened it and there was Larry, old and pathetic, standing lamely outside. He reached in and grabbed me, pulled me outside, hugged me tighter than I liked.
Larry held me away from him, staring. “Let’s go home,” he said. “You can’t fuckin’ drive.”
“Okay.” I hopped on the back of the bike, still in bare feet.
Larry dropped me at home, then went to work. I went to bed.
In my quest to get away from Larry without actually leaving him, I started fights with him and then disappeared to bars. I walked to the Sharwood, then drank with whatever guy bought me drinks.
But one night I wanted to go to my favorite bar, Paul’s Place, across the bridge, so I took the car. I settled in with the dinner crowd, and I was still drinking when the bar closed.
I was smashed.
Owner Paul was the bartender. A man in his mid-forties, Paul never struck me as being particularly interesting or attractive. But on this night, with Larry nowhere around, Paul suddenly showed great interest in me. I drank for free all night long and at the end of the night, Paul had a surprise.
“Wanna do a line?” he asked.
I had never known him to do cocaine so I was very enthusiastic. When would I not want to do a line? “Sure!” I said.
“We’ve gotta go downstairs,” he said. “I don’t want to share with just anybody.” I looked around at the smattering of people – all old, wasted men – and I nodded. I didn’t want to share with them, either.
So Paul and I went downstairs.
We walked into a bedroom – a bed, a dresser, even a bathroom in the basement under a cinder block building. No windows, no light.
Paul turned on a tiny lamp and pulled out a vial of cocaine. He laid out two lines on a mirror and snorted one immediately. He held the mirror for me carefully, and I snorted my line obediently. Paul took the mirror and straw – a rolled bill – and put them down.
Then he kissed me. Hard.
Oh, I thought. I guess we’re doing this now.
Paul and I were on the bed before I knew what was happening. I wanted more cocaine, but it wasn’t my cocaine to dole out, so I just had the sex instead.
At some point, when I was having sex with the bartender I did not like, there was a knock on the door.
Paul yelled, “Come in!” as though it were a party.
In walked Rich, a man I really didn’t like.
“Hey,” Paul said. He hopped up, naked, and laid out three lines of cocaine.
We each did one, two of us naked.
Paul tossed himself back down on the bed. “C’mere, Sweetheart,” he beckoned.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. Rich was still standing there, staring.
I started to get up and walk away, back to upstairs, back to the safety of the bar, but Rich blocked my exit with his whole self.
Paul laughed. Then Rich laughed.
I was happy about the new cocaine. But I did not laugh.
“Just join in whenever,” Paul said, and he started kissing me again, both of us falling together onto the bed in the tiny room.
As though my payment for the cocaine was to do whatever Paul wanted me to do. And I guess it was.
I’d been drinking for eight hours, at least. I’d had two lines of cocaine and four million beers. My head was fuzzy and spinning, and there was nothing in me that deemed this little game “okay” but I figured it made more sense to go through with it than to try and fight these two old men.
When it was over I begged for another line, and they laughed.
They laughed a lot.
I got another line. I’d paid for it.
Upstairs, I ordered another beer and drank until the knocking started.
And the yelling.
Larry was outside.
One night at the bar, I asked Ronnie if we’d still be friends after Larry and I broke up.
“Are you breaking up?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “But if we did, would I still be able to find you?”
“Yeah,” Ronnie said. “I guess. My last name is the only one in the phone book that starts with B-Z.”
“What’s your last name?” I asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” Ronnie said. “Just remember B-Z and you’ll find me.”
“OK, B-Z,” I said. “If Larry and I break up, I’ll check the phone book. And I’ll always think of you when I hear Driver 8.”
Ronnie worked in the steel mill. He once told me that the R.E.M. lyric “we’ve been on this shift too long” repeated in his head every day.
“And I’ll think of you when I hear The Catch,” Ronnie said.
“The Catch?” I was curious. This Cure song wasn’t one of their most popular, but I loved it. “Why does that remind you of me?”
“I don’t know,” Ronnie said. “It just does.” I got the feeling he didn’t want to tell me, so we went back to drinking.
Later I listened to The Catch on my boombox, carefully discerning the lyrics and questioning their meaning to Ronnie. I listened to the song over and over again.
The part that stood out was this:
Sometimes we would spend the night
Just rolling about on the floor
And I remember even though it felt soft at the time
I always used to wake up sore
After repeating the song 2,000 times, I determined that my one sexual romp with Ronnie must have resulted in pain somehow. I started to feel bad for him, bad for myself, worried that I’d hurt him.
I wanted to apologize for my behavior, however it happened. I wanted Ronnie to be happy. And I wanted him to like me again.
At the bar the next week, I blurted: “I’m really sorry,” without so much as a greeting.
Ronnie looked up from his drink. “Sorry?”
“I’m sorry for hurting you,” I said. “If I did something that made you sore.”
“What are you talking about?” Ronnie asked, genuinely perplexed.
“I listened to The Catch, and I am afraid I hurt you.”
Ronnie thought about it for a second. A minute went by. Another minute. Finally he said, “I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”
“You told me The Catch – you know, The Cure song …?”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “I know The Cure song.”
“You said it reminded you of me. I spent the whole week trying to figure out why.”
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah. You just fall down all the time.”
I considered this. I was drunk all the time, especially around Ronnie. I woke up bruised and battered with no idea why. I probably did fall down all the time; I just didn’t remember it.
“Oh,” I said. So basically, I thought, I’m just a lush.
I had enjoyed the song so much more when I thought it was a secret message from my best buddy.
I went home and I listened to The Catch more carefully, hearing the more simplistic message more clearly. Unlike the soft-and-sore part, the falling-down lyrics repeated twice.
And I remember she used to fall down a lot
That girl was always falling again and again
And I used to sometimes try to catch her
But never even caught her name.
I tried not to wonder whether or not Ronnie would try to catch me as I fell.
I always read a little bit too much into things.
