Pretty Girl, Good Lay

A recovery memoir by Ms. X

The Sewing Needle

We lived in an old Shaker farmhouse. My mother called it a saltbox. It sat on a solid granite foundation. I was the youngest of four children. My father was a published poet. He had his Masters in Education and taught high school French, English and History. My mother was a paralegal secretary. We had a black and white television that received only three channels by way of a spindly antenna on our roof. We were middle class. We were Catholic. Our house had the musty smell of old books and mothballs. The first book I remember my mother reading to me was “The Hobbit” by JRR Tolkien. Books were where I found my refuge. I was reading Poe, Shakespeare and Robert Frost at an early age. The first movie I remember seeing was “Star Wars” during my sixth year. We saw it at the local drive in a mustard yellow station wagon with wood paneling. I remember sitting in the back with the tailgate down curled up in a sleeping bag.

I auditioned for the play “Annie” during my eleventh year. I memorized “The Brook” by Alfred Lord Tennyson. I didn’t get the part. I was in plays. I played a little boy battling a bully in “How to Eat Fried Worms” and I played the detective Marmaduke in “Babes In Toyland.” I can remember a few traumatic experiences from childhood. I have a long thin scar on my right thigh. I think I fell off a granite wall onto some broken glass. Around the same time my sister and I were digging for earthworms in the garden. She accidentally struck me between the eyes with a shovel full of dirt. Then she ran and hid in our cellar. I was left just standing there, blindly wobbling back and forth with a clod of dirt in my eyes. I also stuck a sewing machine needle up my nose and it went down my throat. We watched it travel through my body via X rays until it was expelled.

During my 11th year, my mother’s father died. He had sclerosis from alcoholism. One year later my father entered a retreat in Vermont. They discovered he was alcoholic, bi-polar and mildly schizophrenic. My father lost his teaching position and my mother divorced him. In turn she was excommunicated from the church. We all stopped going. Within a few years she had converted to Judaism. My father would not leave our house and 5 days before Christmas he hit my mother and the police took him to jail. My brother was 18. He protected my mother that night. I had my first drink within the next year with my best east coast friend Brenda,:scotch and apple juice. The first time I was throwing up drunk was during my thirteenth year: Bacardi and Diet Coke. I can’t drink either to this day without gagging. The first time I tried to smoke pot was with Brenda. We stole a plant from my brother’s room and smoked it without drying it out. We had no idea how to smoke pot. I pretended to be high and crashed my bike into a field,  just to make her laugh.

Scars

Bridge of my nose - shovel in the garden
Right knee - fell off bicycle into bushes
Right knee back - dragged by sister under woodstove
Right thigh - fell off granite wall onto glass
Right big toe - dropped pile of wood on foot
Right wrist - mirror accident after play “French Toast”
Left palm - hand through window at my apartment
Left shin - running on bleaches in cleats
Left cheek - burned with a curling iron
Inside right cheek - dog bite
Middle finger right hand - cigarette

Sunday Bloody Wrist

Small towns are boring and getting wasted was pretty much the norm for troubled teenagers. My mother soon had a boyfriend who lived 2 hours away and she spent many weekends there while I had parties and trashed the house. My sisters went off to college. We had cable installed and I discovered the beginnings of MTV. It wasn’t long until my hair was strawberry blonde and shaved on one side. U2, Prince, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper.

During my thirteenthh year I was in a play called “French Toast.” I wore a blue velvet dress. Opening night my boyfriend didn’t show up and I was upset. Upon arriving home I raced up to my room and blasted U2 “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” My mother kept screaming for me to “Turn that Damn Music down”. My brother was working for a Mirror and Glass shop at the time and had given me a large piece of cut mirror. I had placed the mirror on the top of my bureau and then set my stereo on it. When I went to shut the power off on the stereo I slammed my wrist against the edge of the mirror and cut two tendons and 2 arteries. There was also a mirror behind the stereo. My wrist was pulsating blood onto that mirror. What an image. I was paralyzed with fear and shock. I went downstairs holding my wrist and told my mother, “I need to go to the hospital”. “Let me see it” she screamed. I told my sister that if I died she could have all my stuff. Twenty two stiches and a miracle saved my right hand. I performed with my wrist in an ace bandage the next night.

During my fifteenth year my house burnt down a week before Christmas. It was an electrical fire. Everything was pretty much destroyed. In January I had a party in my abandoned, burnt–to-the-ground house. Everyone smelled like soot the next day. We rebuilt the house and at least it didn’t smell like old books and mothballs anymore. That summer I lost my virginity to my boyfriend, Bryan. We were drunk. I was a semi-athlete in high school. I played field hockey in autumn, skied in the winter and played softball in the spring. My grades were below average until senior year, first semester, when I realized I wasn’t going to get into college. I did as little as I could to get by and then was struck dumb to realize that I wasn’t going anywhere. So in turn, I put great effort into whatever was going to get me somewhere. Last minute cramming was a specialty. I was the senior editor of my yearbook and “class partier” in the superlatives. By the end of my senior year I was a bed wetting black-out drunk. I decided I wanted to be a journalist.

I was accepted to college based solely on my senior year first semester grades. It was a private college and I had to take out a loan. I was in a coed dorm freshman year and I couldn’t stand my roommate. She stole my stuff and put it on her side of the room. Deadhead 90’s hippy chicks lived next door. They didn’t shave their legs, wore Indian skirts and played guitars all day. I found refuge many nights drinking tea, smoking pot and listening to Phish. Then there were plenty of rich, preppy girls. They received the J. Crew catalog, brandished Mommy and Daddy’s gold card, wore real pearls around campus and bragged about vacationing at Hilton head. I intended on majoring in communications, studied psychology, English, art History, film, and classical music.

My drinking was still out of control. I was dubbed “Pee Pee” by a sophomore guy from New Canaan. I passed out in his room and wet his couch. I had been talking to my sister in L.A. about how Pierce was so expensive. I discussed this with my communications professor and he said if I wanted to work in the film industry to just go to L.A. and work. He said that I really didn’t need a degree. It was about experience. My father had his 1st stroke that summer after college. I remember sitting with him on the granite steps of my house telling him that I was going to California. He looked sad and worried. He gave me $200. I sold all my stuff, including my car and packed some clothes in a trunk. In August of ‘91 I took my very first flight.

College?

During the plane’s descent into Los Angeles, nineteen years old,  tiny turquoise kidney-shaped pools in my eyes. My sister lived here with her girlfriend. I intended to finish college, but within a year I was working in the film industry. I never received that little piece of paper that proves you can sit still and study for four years. Um…I think it’s called a Bachelors Degree. My other sister moved in with us and the three sisters ended up getting our own place. Let’s just say that it was a bad idea. This living situation lasted a year. My sister was on a plane back East. My other sister got a roommate and I moved in with Dickie.

“Dickie”

I got into a relationship with a Latino alcoholic/addict. I didn’t know the city. I had no wheels, no friends and no idea how to live on my own. The Los Angeles riots put me into such a state of fear that I clung to the first strong native I could find. We were together for 3 years, during which he introduced me to crystal meth, cocaine, speed and hard core porn. The relationship was a high speed motorcycle ride on the 405. We were in North Hollywood. There was an earthquake sometime in the middle of it all. I weighed 110 lbs., a waif holding on for her life and he loved me. We lived together for a year and drank and did drugs every weekend. I saw that I was going down hill fast. On New Years day, I was making dinner for my sister that stayed and her boyfriend. When they showed up, Dickie was passed out on the floor from drinking screwdrivers at 9am. He bought a 1971 black Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce convertible. He let me drive it and he took his bike. After living together for a year I bought a new Ford Escort. I gave him the stereo and speakers we had bought with my good credit and I left him. I moved into a room in a house with two guys from UCLA. I remember doing rails on a picture of my dad. Dickie stalked me. He stole compact discs from my roommates. I let him keep the hook in. He kept me in drugs.

“Television”

I have worked in post production in thankless positions for 8 years. I ran film late night from LAX to Hollywood. I learned my way around the city by trial and error with my Thomas Guide. I met “Television” at work. I was a receptionist in a high end post house and he worked in the vault. Everyone and everything around me revolved around Art. We would rotate the art in the facility every few months have have openings for our clients. My boyfriend and I were young, clean scrubbed, Gap clad and idealistic. Some of the fanciest parties and most glamourous years of my life. My father died of his second stroke and I flew home on Christmas for his funeral. Television and I were living together in Los Feliz and I thought we were going to marry. We dated for 2 years, lived together for a year. We met each others parents. He did not appreciate it when I drank. I read the book “Drinking—a Love Affair” by Caroline Knapp, which had a profound affect on me. I went to my first AA meeting and I put together 6 months of sobriety.

Thomas Guide - Edition 1991
Pretentious little climber
The things I did to be better than
Ambition, naiveté, innocence
Frayed, dog eared, coffee stained Thomas Guide
The same companies with shiny new labels
The same old boys rotating
Re: heating like wilted hot dogs at 7-11

Jade and Skydiving

I sabotaged the relationship with Television by drinking again (that is what my therapist said). I moved into my own place a block away from my snoring Television. My co workers gave me a bed and a black cat named Jade. Jade cried all the time and peed on my shoes if I left her for too long. I jumped out of a plane, hoping that skydiving would make me happy and snap me out of it. It didn’t. I lost 20 lbs. I could not eat, sleep or focus at work. I loved to drink alone in my apartment. I did join AA for 60 days to try to show Television that I had changed. When he started dating, I started drinking again. One drunken rainy night, I ran to his apartment in my pajamas. He was with his new girlfriend listening to Sinatra and I put my fist through his window. The only way I knew how to cope was to numb out with alcohol. My therapist put me on an antidepressant/mood stabilizer. I joined a couple of softball leagues. The team went to a barbecue, we all got drunk and I slept with a co-worker. He told me it was a mistake. I harassed him. Things went ugly and I was written up. I ended up getting laid off. I stopped watching television and I began writing and painting. I went into a gothic phase. I met “Mr. X” at a party at X studio in Hollywood. He was wearing a Yankees cap. There was a pool table made out of sheet metal that was banged into flames there. He was on mushrooms and I was doing rails. We sat on a red bean bag chair and discussed movies. We went up on the roof and I climbed out on the ledge. You could see the Capital Records building. My bangs were cut super short and my hair was streaked red. Mr. X gave me his hand and helped me down from the edge.

Starfucks

I went to work at a studio and started hanging out with this rebound guy. He was a misogynist, an atheist, and a pot head. He was as verbally abusive and immature as Dickie. They both played dashboard keyboards in the car. I didn’t care what he thought of me. My heart was empty. After “Television,” I became kind of a man eater. I dated quite a bit and was really good at letting guys know how psychotic and awful of an alcoholic I was. He pursued me for six months with random phone messages and a few rounds of golf. One night at his place, he was playing his guitar ad I was wasted so I kissed him.

He had written some scripts. The sex was fun and casual. I use to call it bedroom acrobatics. There were no ground rules. There were plenty of parties and I was free to roam the city unsupervised. I dated other guys but rarely slept with anyone but him. Sometimes I loved him, but most of the time I hated him. I picked on him. I poked fun of the Yankees, and I did everything I could to piss him off. Even so, the sex was great. I climbed a tree onto his balcony when I was drunk and rummaged around for pot.

First Incident with LAPD

I felt like a degenerate poseur, hanging with a crowd of starfuckers. One drunken Saturday night I went out dancing with a wannabe model to Club Sugar. My hair was in braids and I was sweaty from dancing. We went to an after party. It started getting lesbian and I bailed. I was driving home at three a.m. on Sunday. My clutch went out and I broke down on the 110 near downtown. I called a tow truck, but the police made it first. There were like, ten squad cars there. Arrested on a DUI. I called Mr. X from jail and he made me laugh. He wouldn’t come pick me up because I was in Compton. I took a $50 cab ride home. I went to court , sitting there reading scripts and periodically laughing out loud in front of the judge. They reduced the DUI to speeding in excess because my breathalyzer was .08 and .09.

I was written up for being visibly drunk at my Christmas party. Mr. X told me to sober up. I took a cab back to the studio, got into my car and realized about three miles into it that I could not drive. I pulled over in front of a church and passed out. I woke up in full daylight, the sun hot and glaring into my windsheild. My head was pounding and my silk and velvet gown soaked. I frequented the clubs and bars late night. I attended after parties and dinner parties. I started feeling disenchanted with Hollywood. I went to Lilith Fair and tried mushrooms. They had no affect on me, so I drank and got lost in the parking lot at the Rose bowl. Mr. X had a girlfriend and was cheating on her with me. He was fired for insubordination and he sued for anti-Semitism. They used our emails in court. I think I wrote some really nasty de classe stuff like “You have a big dick and you know how to fuck.” I started to drink every night alone at my place. I was frequenting bars alone and hanging out with strangers. I discovered the drug ecstasy at a moonlit rave in the desert. I really, really liked it and if it was around, I was on it. I think I called into work saying that my grandmother died at least three times.

Mr. X impregnated me. I ’m very fertile; I’ve become pregnant, even while on the pill. It just happens. He said he would hate me and the baby. He took me to have an abortion and then went to play golf with his girlfriend. I was absolutely pathetic during this time and I had no morals. I was drinking vodka on Vicodin that day. I started therapy once again. My therapist asked me if I thought I was an alcoholic. There was no doubt in my mind that I was. He told me to take advantage of a trip to a treatment center. He stated that I couldn’t be fired if I went to rehab. So I went.

Zebras and Giraffes - July 1999

The Treatment Center had an amazing program and I was educated on addiction and alcoholism by the finest. I was directed not to read the newspaper because I was too sensitive as to what was happening in the world. I met people that I probably would have never met.

I spent 31 days in the desert. I grieved and left the memory of my father there. I grieved and left my unborn children there. I forgave everyone who had ever hurt me. I let my sisters be my sisters, my brother be my brother, and I let my mother be my mother. I was radically changed by my time in this place.

Raw with Little to No after Care

I returned to my apartment in Los Feliz. I was back at my job and communicating with Mr. X. I was drunk within 60 days. There was one episode in particular where I met Mr. X at “Lush. I got very drunk. We went back to his place, had sex, and then he threw me out.I hopped onto his balcony. I banged on his sliding glass door and he whipped it open and put his hands around my throat. He let go and I curled up in the fetal position on his kitchen floor. He poured a pot of water on me. He threw me out into the hallway and I stumbled across the street to a 7–11, where I hitched a ride home with a random dude. I had lost my keys, so I put my hand through the window of my apartment. I ended up losing my job when I relapsed. (I credit this to not having changed my relationships nor my environment) I cannot blame anyone or anything for my poor job performance. I had started painting quite a bit by this point. Functional pieces like bookcases, chairs and pottery. My art and partying had taken priority over everything. I just wanted to drink and paint.

Run! July 2000

I spent the summer drinking on unemployment, freelancing in publicity, and candy dripping at moonlit raves in the desert. One random morning I woke up in one of my many party dresses with my hair in pig tails. There was a 21-year-old DJ sleeping on my couch. He was friends with a peace activist, whom I had met through my friend Megan. He was selling pot out of my place. I found 3 hits of ecstasy in an Altoids tin in my car.

I was freelancing in international film publicity and my boss was a screamer. Finally, I told her she was verbally abusing me and I quit. I quickly got another job as a project coordinator. On my first day I was on the 110 stuck in traffic during a heat wave and I was sick and exhausted. I remember looking over at a woman with a cup of coffee that spilled onto her dash every time she braked. The sun was blaring and I really wanted to die. Upon arriving to work I promptly told them that I needed to go back East to take care of my sick grandmother.

I had a tag sale. I gave away or sold all of my things. My sister took me to my favorite restaurant, gave me some money, and said goodbye. It was our last dinner together. I drove cross-country with my cat Jade. There was a lightening storm in Nevada. I had a flat tire. I hit a nasty pothole in New York. When I arrived in Vermont I was drunk. I ended up living in the middle of nowhere with my brother. I partied with my circle of friends from high school. I experienced delirium tremens and either cocaine withdrawal or alcohol induced audio/visual hallucinations. It was either culture shock, post traumatic stress disorder or I must have fried my brain. I was moonlight walking around the graveyard behind the 18th century church near my childhood home. Witchy stuff. I went to LaSalette Shrine and got on my knees and crawled up the stairs to the Virgin Mary statue saying the rosary on each step. It was major spiritual insanity. I attribute it to my Catholic upbringing. White noise sounded like angels singing to me. God was fucking with me. I heard voices in my car. The clouds formed visions of little feet and I thought I was Mary Magdalene. I had to get back to Los Angeles because Jesus was coming and I had to anoint his feet with oil. I came close to attempting suicide at my brothers. I called Mr. X and he told me he was getting married. I was drunk putting my brother’s revolver to my head. I wanted a bullet. I spent many blustery autumn nights listening to Ella Fitzgerald, speeding down wooded, winding roads to New London to attend AA meetings. I met a philosophy professor in the Program. He told me about a cosmic theory called Saturn Returns, which is a period of self examination. Maybe that was the deall, that I knew I wanted to be an artist, not a professional.

Nor’easter December 2000

After several more hallucinations, I checked myself into the Psyche Ward. I stayed for 2 weeks and was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. I specifically remember while I was in a waiting room one of the young doctors looked at me and mumbled under his breath “Pretty girl…good lay.” I was given Haldol and went to live with my mother.

I began a position as a hostess at a local restaurant. I would tip Cosmopolitans after hours and chat up local ironworks artisans. It was particularly boring and dreadful and I soon found myself puking my guts out after smoking some weed at the manager’s apartment. I could not for the life of me quit drinking.

My family was done with me. I was cast out of town by my mother on New Years Eve during a Nor’easter. She sent me to live with the black sheep of her family, my Aunt Susan.

I will always remember the look on her face. It was the long face of worry and suffering, and then she turned away from me. Soon I was driving, my car full of my possessions once more, during a blizzard. The street was desolate and the white show was pelting my windsheild so hard I couldn’t see the road.  I cried through most of the drive. I found a “Cheers” bar in town and drank with locals. I ended up passing out on the floor of the women’s room and some guy took me home. I woke up in a sleeping bag in the basement of a strangers home. I was with Aunt Susan for a week and after pleading with a friend, I got a ticket and flew back to Los Angeles.

Naked under a Sound Blanket January 2001

I tried to get back in the Program and stay sober, but I could not keep a job. I worked at a recording studio as an assistant director on voice over projects, but I ended up getting drunk with an editor and passing out naked in one of the recording bays. It was rather sad because one of the engineers had said he was proud of me. I started couch hopping. I kept jumping from one situation to the next, hoping that it would be better. I went to Santa Monica and shacked up with an old timer. I slipped in the Palisades and kept slipping. Finally, my sponsor put me in a recovery home for women. I was there the week when the Twin Towers in NY were destroyed. I really thought it was the end of the world and that pretty much confirmed it.  I missed a meeting and I would not pee in a cup in front of the counselor. I was kicked out.

The Concept of Never

At this point I had never served any time in jail aside from the few hours in the drunk tank. I had never shot up heroine. Never is a word I no longer use casually. All doors were becoming closed to me.

Second Incident with LAPD October 2001

I started driving around aimlessly looking for somewhere to stay. My friends had had it with me. My best West Coast friend was kind of freaked out by my desperate behavior and called the cops to get me off her doorstep.I ended up driving out to an LA suburb and found a house that was being restored. I was exhausted. I unloaded my car and placed my things inside the house. I was hearing voices again. There was a car similar to mine parked outside with the keys in the ignition. The voices told me to take the car. I drove to a strip mall and parked. I left my purse with my ID in the borrowed car. I was wandering around the parking lot and I threw up. Someone called an ambulance. They put me in the ambulance. They took me to a hospital where they shot me up with something.  They released me after a few hours and I started walking towards North Hollywood. I went into my friend’s backyard and got into his hot tub. He took me to get my car and dropped me at the Sheriff’s station. They arrested me for grand theft auto on the spot. I spent three to four days in Twin Towers Correctional. They released me on OR. My car was at AAA. A friend took me to get my car. I drove to a church on Wilshire where I’d gone to meetings. I went to a Halloween Party at UCLA with some hobo off the street. I was arrested on a Public Drunk. I was taken to Van Nuys Woman’s Correctional where I got into a scuffle with the cops. They hog tied me with a chain and razor cuffs and threw me in a cell. I could not stand up to get to the toilet so I wet my pants. They opened the door, took Polaroid’s of me and said, “So what look what happened. You got drunk and now you are lying in your own urine.” I spent Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years there.

Around the world in 80 days

I was strangled my third day here. A woman stepped in and broke it up. She was seven years sober. Her name was Octavia Nash. She was my dogg. Theresa was her boo. Theresa was Italian and was Miss Orange County back in the day. She was a heroine addict, in for petty theft with a prior. Octavia and I laughed. She said “Niggas is geeks.” She said “Why you be over there kicking up dust”. She said, “Some people gotta die so that I can live.” She was great. She ripped off a bottle of Cool Water cologne from JC Penny. She was from Compton, an overweight lesbian and tough as nails. She taught me how to play spades and what a spread was. She made me cry all the time. She stole my glasses when I was sleeping on a daybed. We debated about a lot of racial stuff. She always brought it back to Thomas Jefferson. It always ended with Thomas Jefferson. There was Chair and her dogg Slow and so many others… There was a lot of sadness in there. We had a lesbian wedding. We took our white county issued blanket and made a dress. Then we dyed toilet paper flowers with the food coloring off of Skittles. There was Slim and Selene. I was in the pregnancy pod. I told my Public Defender that I was just pretending. He commiserated with me. He got me off the felony charge of grand theft auto. I had him access my medical records. I ended up pleading no contest to a misdemeanor - unlawfully taking a car, aka joyriding. The key factor was that the keys were left in the ignition of the car I unlawfully took. I wrote Octavia a letter when I left after being incarcerated for 80 days. It started out something like, “I was born in 1971 and I had nothing to do with slavery” and then “I’m a Yankee and my relatives fought to abolish slavery” I can’t remember the rest. When Theresa read it she cried.

Ode to Octavia Nash
I met you in my County Blues
And then you stole my shower shoes
I wove you a beautiful ring
Unraveled my blanket for the string
That one day that you shared your spread
Then threw me off of my daybed
I miss the way you did my braids
And when you taught me to play spades
You had a petty with a prior
Compton form Winona Ryder
I had a public drunk and GTA
Good girl gone bad modern day
Not a day goes by that I don’t Thank God
For 80 days in 261 A Pod.

Mujeres means women

M+ The bedroom is filled with midday light. The window is open, but the curtains are drawn. You can hear birds and small children playing outside. Our furniture consists of standard brown wood veneer on particleboard bureaus and nightstands. One of the bureaus has a bulletin board with various pictures and colorful ribbons tacked to it. There are two twin beds with tacky yellow and blue bedspreads. You can hear the muted chimes of an ice cream cart as it passes. A young girl from Nicaragua with long wavy black hair is laying down on one of the beds. Her eyes are closed. Her six-month-old baby is cuddled on her chest. Tiny snores escape his nose as he rises and stretches out. The room is quiet, peaceful, all but the ticking of our clocks and street noise that drizzled in. The bass of a tricked out stereo thumping rap music from a passing car vibrates the house. The baby flinches and coughs disturbed. His breathing becomes heavier and Mom pats his back.

I am lying on the other twin bed. My hand is furiously scribbling in an old school Mead composition notepad. My nail polish is chipped and my hands chapped from scrubbing the walls with bleach that morning. I am wearing a frayed faded green sweatshirt. Last October I spent my thirtieth birthday in a hotel room with a stranger. I had been staying in a recovery home when I had left on a pass to go to a meeting. Instead I had gotten lost and arrived past curfew without a signature on my meeting card. Upon refusing to pee in a cup in front of the staff I was asked to leave. I packed my clothing into my little car and headed east into Hollywood.

I had heard the term “squatting” before but it had always sounded more like an unpleasant trip into the woods when there was no restroom available than something I would actually seek out. I just happened to end up “squatting”. I had nowhere to go. I used to have an apartment, a car, a well paying job and a lot of friends. I also used to have and will always have a drinking/drug problem. I checked myself into “Camp Betty” in August of 1999. I was there for 31 days. I met some very excellent counselors and believed that I would be on the road to a better life once I returned to LA. A month later I lost my job. I relapsed. Six months later I lost my mind, gave up my apartment and moved to the east coast. Where I spent six months partying with old friends and eventually ended up checking myself in to the psyche ward. I was having audio and visual hallucinations of a spiritual nature. In short I thought I was Mary Magdalene. I believe they are called delirium tremens and are the number one true sign that yes…you are an alcoholic.
 

Lost weekend in Sausalito

I spent 110 days in treatment then off to a sober living. I was once again kicked out for going to San Francisco to visit a man who had sort of proposed to me. We stayed at his friend’s house in Sausalito. I went outside to have a cigarette and he said, “Don’t let Menace out.” Menace was our hosts HUGE cat. Once outside I heard Menace’s claws at the door, which had popped open. I was slipping on river rocks trying to corner him. He got past me and scurried next door. I went back inside and told Y that I let the cat out and he said, “The one thing I asked you not to do!” He got out of bed, put his clothes on, and went outside. I heard him on his cell phone calling a cab. Next thing I knew, he was gone.

The hosts in Sausalito were kind enough to entertain me. A beautiful tall thin blonde and a sweet smart guy with soulful eyes and a shaved head. We went to brunch and called Y from the car. He told me to go back to Los Angeles. I had a glass of fine chilled white wine with ice in my hand by 2pm. So much for 7 months sober. We went to an exclusive party at a Cigar bar downtown and I ended up going to an after party in the Summer district with a Russian cab driver. I spent 5 days trying to get someone to bring me to the bus station. Finally, I took a bus into the city, then back to LA. I was thrown out of my sober living for four days and within a month I realized I was pregnant. I decided to have the baby.

Jackson is Zygote July 2002

I was 6 months pregnant and expecting a son. His father had disconnected his cell phone and woudn’t return e-mails. I heard he was using and somewhere in or around San Francisco. I was seeing a man who was supportive to me during my pregnancy. He made me laugh when I was crying the first time I had to use food coupons. He took me to see a Harry Potter movie. We would be having a discussion at his apartment and he would start pulling up clips of Annie Hall. We still see one another on occasion.

X—“Candy dish”

He ended up dumping me when I was seven months pregnant. In an intense depression, I slipped and had a drink. I was really crazy this time. I put on a pink negligee and drove to Hollywood to see DOA at the Martini Lounge. They had to keep getting me out of the mosh pit.

I recommitted to the Program. I was petrified and I had no idea what was going to happen to me or my child. The woman I was staying with was smoking crack. I just kept going to meetings. I did once again shack up with a different guy towards the end of my pregnancy. We were playing Scrabble. I had just met him really. He was blunt but sweet. Some of the words on the board were Destiny, Sperm, Kilo, Writer, Writes, Breve and Shitty. That night, my water broke.

Jackson, my son, entered this world at 12:15 a.m. on January sixth, 2003 six weeks premature. It was a natural birth. I was in labor for four hours. After the birth an intense feeling of high pure elation washed over me. There was all of this fuzzy light energy permeating the room. Because I was in transition I opted for my son to go to the east coast to live with my family. My brother and his wife flew out and now have a guardianship. A nurse in the NICU said “You will always be his mother. You gave him life.” 

I went to stay in an nurse’s pool house in Monrovia. It didn’t work out. Her spiritual advisor told her that “I was a risk”. Very strange. I went to stay with a guy in Highland Park. He lorded over me in utter weirdness. I stayed in Silverlake. I stayed in Los Feliz. . I jumped from my sponsors car in Van Nuys and wandered aimlessly for a week. I ended up in the laundry room of my old apartment building. I walked to the Catholic Church everyday for a week. I had hallucinations, both visual and auditory. It felt as if I was in a time warp and I kept seeing people from my recent past around. There were sideways people. They would disappear when they turned a certain way. I walked in front of a white van. It stopped so close to me that I felt my body go up and over the car. I was still standing there. I kept seeing X everywhere. I think it was the shock of being displaced so many times in a row after such a traumatic experience. I ended up getting picked up by the police and put in the hospital. I did not have my eyeglasses and couldn’t read or see a thing the entire time I was there. They observed me for a few weeks, then released me into the streets in front of the Public Social works building. I hopped a ride with some random guy off the street.

Healing May 2003

I stuffed my life into one suitcase and headed the Mt. Washington area of Los Angeles. An artist community. I met a sweet woman, an old hippy in Program. I was officially crazy and so was she.  We were roommates for 2 years. I slept with Mr. X once last summer. We both agreed that it was weirdness. He’s in a serious relationship now. I am now single. And yes, finally sober for over one year.

M + The little girl that I was. She is still at my core. She still wants to drink and use everyday. She wanted to change the world. She wanted to write, paint, dance, sing and act. Parts of her have slipped away with every drink, toke and broken promise to herself. Sometimes I hear her in moments of stillness telling me that everything is going to be okay and I realize that she is the strong one. She is also the alcoholic. She was the one with ideals, dreams and hope for the future. She was the one who protected me and held me up when I was too exhausted to go on. She was also the one who took me out. Maybe parts of her are my mother and father reflections on life said to me as a child. Maybe parts of her are the little girl singing in church. I listen for her always now and sometimes she whispers and sometimes she screams. Most of the time I think she just observes. I take her places so she can listen.

Ms. X lives in Los Angeles.