I didn’t drink all day on Monday – which wasn’t hard since I’d slept until evening. Still I felt proud.
Gregg suggested that we take a joint to smoke on the way to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, but I declined. I wanted the AA people to see me at my best, and I knew “high” wasn’t my best. I knew “drunk” wasn’t my best.
I didn’t actually know what “my best” looked like; I only knew what it wasn’t.
So I was terrified. I didn’t know what AA was all about. I expected to walk into a board room – like the meetings my dad had at work. There would be old men sitting around a table, a white board maybe. Everyone would be very serious. And, I imagined, when I walked in, they would all look up and glare at me. I’d be wearing the wrong thing, and my hair would be wrong, and I wouldn’t be smoking but I knew I would stink.
I took Gregg with me because I couldn’t face these people alone.
And I held off as long as I could. The AA meeting started at 8:30 p.m. Gregg and I arrived at 8:12 and sat in the car until 8:29. We didn’t talk. I watched people walking toward a very large church – going in, not coming back out. Lots of people. I imagined the church was having some other kind of service, too, because these people didn’t look like old, judge-y men. There were people of all ages, dressed in all attires, going inside.
At 8:29 I said, “Okay let’s do this.”
Gregg looked genuinely surprised that I was actually getting out of the car. He got out of the car, too.
He tried to hold my hand but I shrugged him off. We walked toward the church where all the people had gone in, and walked inside.
The room was enormous, like a warehouse inside a church. It was nothing like the room I’d imagined. A guy with a mustache reached out his hand as I walked in and said, “Welcome!” He smiled and reached toward me. I shook his hand.
I didn’t want to talk to this man. I looked around at the room – dozens of tables, all with people sitting around them. So. Many. People.
I didn’t know what to do. I followed the people in front of me, who went to a long, rectangular table with cookies and coffee and cream and sugar.
I didn’t want cookies and coffee. I wanted to sit down and/or vanish from sight as quickly as possible. I saw two empty chairs far away from coffee, and raced toward them as the room started to quiet and a voice spoke over the din.
I looked toward the front of the room where all eyes were pointed, and there was someone talking. A woman. Blah blah blah, I heard. My stomach was in knots. Someone new stepped up to talk, another woman. Blah blah blah, I heard. And then, without even meaning to, I started to listen.
For the rest of the meeting, the woman told stories. She talked about puking in the bathroom in high school, and losing her car when it was a block from her house, and getting arrested for peeing in somebody’s garden, and spilling vodka into her cereal and eating it anyway.
And people laughed. I laughed. We laughed.
They were the funniest stories I’d ever heard. She talked and we laughed and I felt, for the first time in forever, that I fit in.
Even in my active addiction, I tried very, very hard to be honest. And I thought everyone understood the importance of honesty. I thought everyone told the truth, except when talking to parents about how much alcohol had been consumed. Then lying was often necessary.
Otherwise, I was the most trusting soul on the planet, in spite of a strong history of occurrences that should have encouraged me to be distrustful.
But I had never met a pathological liar before.
I let Gregg back into my apartment, my life, my underwear drawer, because I believed wholeheartedly that he would never, ever steal money from me again. I didn’t think much about his helping me look for the money, all the while knowing he was responsible for its disappearance. That was too weird to consider.
I attributed Gregg’s behavior to his mother’s death when he was 14 and his (living) alcoholic father.
Gregg did zero self-analysis.
“Don’t ever touch my money again!” I told him sternly, like an angry parent. Gregg’s response was very childlike, too: no actual remorse, just shame and embarrassment at being caught.
“I won’t,” he said. And then he changed the subject. “What are you doing this weekend?”
“I’m going to a bar … by myself!” I didn’t need a thief in my life.
“Wanna smoke a joint first?”
I did.
So I did.
And then Gregg went with me to the bar. And home from the bar. And we got high and watched Pee Wee Herman and My Little Pony in the morning. Then we went back to the bar the next day, and danced around a lot, and then went back home together the next night. We had sex until the sun came up and then passed out.
By Sunday morning, I’d realized that my life was exactly where it had been before, when I’d lived with a biker I didn’t like and jumped out a window and been raped by friends and strangers and spent long, lonely nights wailing With or Without You to the boombox.
Except now I was in a one-room apartment living with a guy I couldn’t trust who was snoring on the pillow beside me in spite of stealing every cent I had. And I couldn’t imagine my life without him because who would dance with me?
I’d finally found a friend, technically a boyfriend, who wasn’t an old man. But without trust, what did we have? We had … sex, drugs and rock-n-roll. We had the things I’d always believed I needed to make my life “cool.”
But Gregg had broken my trust. I’d thought we were friends. I thought he loved me. I never for a moment thought I loved him, but here he was.
And here I was – feeling completely and utterly alone – loneliness beyond comprehension in my own home. Again.
I focused briefly on Gregg’s issues. I could blame Gregg for my life being uncool because he stole my rent just as my life was starting to unravel again.
Still, somehow I knew that the problem was not entirely Gregg. Something was desperately, impossibly wrong with me. Was drinking really the problem?
Was I the problem?
I shoved that thought aside. But I remembered my mom telling me about the AA meeting – that one meeting that could somehow cure me of my unhappiness, and I decided to go.
But first, Gregg and I spent another drunken Sunday together.
We slept all day Monday and then, on Monday night, I took Gregg with me to my first AA meeting.
Gregg and I had been co-habitating, for lack of a better term, since I moved into my new apartment. I’d invited him back for one night, and he just stayed there. Sometimes Gregg disappeared for a couple of days at my request, but we were a couple, for convenience sake rather than choice.
With Bonnie in Akron and Larry (and therefore Ronnie) gone, Gregg was my only friend. So he became my boyfriend. I didn’t want to be too alone.
Gregg was fun, in the way that someone who mirrors your every move can be fun. Everything I wanted to do, Gregg did. Every time I wanted to go out, Gregg wanted to go out, too. Every time I wanted to eat, Gregg wanted to eat, too. Every time I wanted to drink, Gregg wanted to drink, too. Every time I wanted to get high, Gregg wanted to get high, too.
So when I extolled the virtues of cocaine, Gregg wanted to do cocaine, too. He went out and got us some cocaine, which we snorted all weekend while drinking ourselves into oblivion. It was a particularly fun weekend that I barely remembered – which had become my pattern again. I regularly blacked out.
A lot. Again.
On Sunday, as I wandered around the apartment with my last can of beer, I reached into my underwear drawer for some cash, and there was no money there.
“Fuck!” I screamed.
“What?” Gregg asked from where he sprawled innocently on the bed.
“My money’s gone!” I dug around inside my drawer, tossing underwear all over the apartment. I still didn’t wear underwear, but there was lots in the drawer. “My money is completely gone!”
Gregg jumped up. He helped me dig. “Fuck!” he repeated. “Where could it have gone?”
“I don’t fucking know!” I yelled. “That’s all the money I had in the world! I can’t buy any more beer!”
“Fuck!” Gregg said again.
Then I realized that it was May 1st. My rent was due. Immediately. And all of my money was completely gone.
“How am I supposed to pay the rent?” I shrieked. “It’s due today!”
Gregg continued to dig in the drawer. “I don’t know!” he said, seemingly flabbergasted.
I threw myself onto the floor with my beer. My last beer. I would have cried, but I no longer felt my emotions.
“Fuck,” I whispered. I put my head in my hands. “What the fuck am I going to do?”
Gregg plopped down next to me on the floor. He put his arm around me and dipped his head onto mine in solidarity. “I don’t know,” he said.
It took me three hours of whining about the missing money before I realized that I had not left the apartment all weekend, so I couldn’t have spent my rent money during a blackout.
The realization hit me like a brick: Gregg took my cash.
“It was you!” I said, shocked. “It’s only been in there since Friday and we didn’t go anywhere all weekend!”
Gregg sat silently, suddenly hanging his head in shame. Finally he whispered: “I didn’t have enough so I used it to buy the coke.”
“That was my rent money!” I screeched. “How am I supposed to pay the rent?!”
Head still hung, Gregg shrugged. He did not apologize.
“GO.” I spat. “Get. Me. My. Rent. Money!”
Gregg got up off the floor and left without looking back.
On Friday, Gregg reappeared with $250 – the full amount for rent, but not the entire amount he’d stolen.
He stayed, because I had not one other friend in the world.
Given how much my life changed overnight, I recognized pretty quickly that I was drinking too much. Again.
But I didn’t know what to do about it. My life slid right back into the despairingly lonely place it had been before, and this time I couldn’t blame it on Pitcairn or Larry. Briefly I considered blaming Gregg, but he hadn’t yet proven himself to be a problem.
Many people whose lives are crumbling like a stale cookie beneath them are able to see it right away. They look at the cookie and – aack! it’s crumbling! – and then they do something about it. But alcoholism makes it really hard to see that the cookie is crumbling; in fact, it makes it hard to see that anything we do is the cause of our angst. So it took a shooting star for me to recognize that drinking was my problem.
If I’d learned nothing from the shooting star, I had learned that. So why was I drinking again?
I had no idea.
So I did what I always do when I don’t have any idea what to do next: I called my mom. “We can’t help you,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked, completely baffled. They had always helped before!
“We can’t help you if you’re drinking,” she said. “We can’t give you any money.”
Suddenly I realized that I did need money, and I hadn’t needed it before I drank. But I said, “I don’t need money. I need to know what to do.”
“Do you think you’re an alcoholic?” she asked.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Do you want to get help?”
“Maybe.” I didn’t think I needed help; I just wanted to go back to not being so messed up. “I don’t know,” I said.
Mom told me about a woman with whom she worked. She had mentioned Annie before, because Annie chain-smoked cigarettes in the office and it drove my mom crazy.
But she was also my mom’s friend. “Annie goes to AA meetings,” Mom said. “Alcoholics Anonymous.”
That sounded dreadful. “How is a meeting supposed to help me? I don’t want to go to a meeting.”
My weary mother sighed. “Well I don’t know what else to tell you to do.”
I sat quietly for a minute, wondering if I had any other options. I looked around at my apartment, ashtrays overflowing, cat hiding in a corner, crumpled beer cans strewn about. Finally I muttered, “When is the meeting?”
“Let me call you back,” Mom said.
I imagined walking into a board room with a bunch of old men staring at me in my cutoffs and bare feet. I didn’t like the idea, but I believed that if I went to one meeting of AA, I’d be cured. So I seriously considered going and getting my life back on track.
Then I considered begging my mom for five dollars instead.
Minutes later, the phone rang. “There’s a meeting on Monday in Shadyside,” Mom said. She gave me the day, time, and an address, and I wrote them all down.
“Is Annie going to be there?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” my mom said. “But if you want help, you can go anyway. It’s every Monday.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said, and I hung up the phone with no intention of ever going to any meeting, ever.
The first thing to disappear when I started drinking again was self-care.
I stopped brushing my teeth; I barely brushed my hair. I showered only sporadically. I barely ate. I stopped washing dishes – so I stopped using dishes. My “meals” were found at the 7-11 when I bought cigarettes, mostly Little Debbies snack cakes and fruit pies. I called the pies “produce” and felt proud when I could get one down.
I stopped washing myself, my hands, my clothes. Laundry piled in the corner, then fell onto the sofabed, which I no longer called a couch. I did not dust, let alone organize or reorganize my albums. I was lucky to put them away as I tossed one aside and started playing another. My decorations – toys and magazine photos – were ignored and subsequently devalued. I stopped emptying ashtrays. I no longer cleaned up dirt in my carpet and instead flicked cigarette ash with complete disregard for cleanliness.
Possibly the greatest calamity, though, was my complete disregard for the cat I loved most in the world.
Since leaving Larry, Kitty had gotten used to my constant care. I’d fed her religiously morning and night, making sure she had plenty of treats in between. I’d played with her when she wanted to play, and cuddled with her when she wanted to cuddle. We were bonded.
But I broke that bond when I started drinking again. Sometimes I forgot to feed Kitty until well after sundown, and then I realized I didn’t have any food for her. If I was lucky, I’d have some lunchmeat to toss in her direction. I stocked up at the grocery store but couldn’t seem to keep enough food in the house for her anymore.
Kitty couldn’t trust that I would care for her.
We didn’t cuddle; we didn’t play. If she purred, I don’t remember it. Blackouts were constant.
Kitty had no peace. I jumped on the sofabed, sprawled on the floor, puked in the sink. I threw empty beer cans at the wall, mercilessly terrifying my pet. She had nowhere to hide.
Kitty spent a lot of time on top of the refrigerator in the kitchen. At first, I found it amazing that she was able to leap up there from the floor – it was a standard-sized fridge – but then I realized she seemed to be happy there.
But I think she just didn’t have anywhere else to go. My apartment had gone from a relatively pleasant place to be where sometimes the music was a bit too loud … to an unsafe, horrifying place for any living creature. It was mayhem.
Sometimes I would sit outside with Kitty, but then I’d forget her. I’d go back inside without her, or walk down to the bar, or hop in the car and drive away. I’d come back 10 hours later and find her racing to the door, soaking wet or freezing cold, always starving.
Kitty was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and I basically just forgot about her.
I’d like to say that this improved, that finding her in the snow once was all it took, but that didn’t happen. When I didn’t take care of myself, I didn’t take care of Kitty, either.
And Kitty had no way to take care of herself.
Somehow my dear cat – the runt of her litter, and my only feline pet – lived to be 18 years old.
I like to think I made up for all the neglect by getting sober and treating her like a princess, but that behavior was still a long time away.
The best thing about my new drinking life is that I could drink how, when and where I pleased. I had money and no reins.
Other than intoxication, the only thing I cared about was music. In Pitcairn, I could only listen to my favorite music after Larry had gone to sleep. Larry used to say, “That music will fuck up your singin’!” He believed in country.
In 1988, I could go to the places I’d always wanted to go, especially the Pittsburgh and Oakland bars where collegiate drinkers abounded and where America’s youth danced the night away. There were often live bands, and some huge names came to these tiny bars just before they got huge.
Having heard about these bars from the radio, I’d always wanted to go – but I’d been with Larry since before I’d been old enough to legally drink.
And I had a friend who, as long as I paid his way, would gladly go with me.
So, with money in my pocket from my new job as Shift Supervisor, Gregg and I headed out. We went clubbing. We danced at Metropol and Confetti’s, where Gregg exploded from the dull person he was sitting on our couch into an insanely obnoxious dancer who loved waving his rather hefty butt around to Da Butt, a song that I couldn’t stomach – but his dancing made me laugh.
It didn’t hurt that I was constantly inebriated. Gregg was never funny.
We went to Graffiti, where bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nine Inch Nails and They Might Be Giants played before anyone had ever heard of them. We went to The Decade where Bruce Springsteen, The Police, Aerosmith, U2, Stevie Ray Vaughn and The Ramones had played before they were big, and the bands who performed there felt touched by greatness.
We didn’t see any big names, although I was in a blackout most of the time so maybe we did.
The one I’d been dying to visit, though, was the Electric Banana – the venue with hardcore punk, the kind of place I’d dreamed of finding in London. Neither of us had any punk attire, but they let us in – and we thrashed and banged ourselves against the other patrons with great vigor, trying to fit in.
Even with copious amounts of alcohol, I knew I did not fit in at the Electric Banana. I was a drunk geek who wanted to be cool, and it was insanely obvious from that visit. After years of believing I was a punk rocker at the core, I realized I didn’t even like punk rock. We didn’t go back to the Electric Banana again.
But I bar-hopped in Oakland with the best of ’em – riding the bus into town, since it kept me from driving drunk. Sometimes we had to leave the bar early so we could catch a bus before the transit authority stopped for the night.
We’d flop down onto a relatively empty bus, loud and happy and wasted, for the long ride home.
I remember feeling like I’d been in a fairytale all evening. With its insanely boring interior and the cruel irony that we suddenly had to be fairly quiet, that bus always brought me back to a sad reality.
Something … was still … wrong. I just couldn’t remember what it was.
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.
