Girl Walks Out of a Bar (15 page)

“I'll have a Diet Coke,” Jeff said.

WAIT, WHAT?
Apparently I gave him a look as if he'd just killed our first baby. “Um, I'm not a big drinker,” he must have felt compelled to explain. “I might have a couple of beers on the weekend, but I don't really drink during the week.”
Holy fuck. I'm a bottle and a half of wine and a quarter gram of blow into this thing.

“Oh yeah, that's cool,” I lied. “I don't go out much during the week either.” Two beers in a week—
might
have two beers in seven days? That meant he also might not. He was one of
those
people. “So what else do you do besides work? Since you're not getting wasted in bars and all.” It was meant to be funny. He didn't find it funny.

“I'm training for the marathon,” he said.
Of course you are
. “I had to run before we met. That's why I said eight.” Suddenly, I felt annoyed, as if I had been lured on this date under false pretenses. Who suggests meeting at the P&G at eight on a Thursday night without any intention of drinking? Freak.

We didn't have a lot to talk about, so I managed to find common ground: the Yankees game on the bar television. Spending so much time in bars, I had become proficient in pretending to
care about the Yankees. And sometimes I'd even pretend that a Yankee game was my reason for being in a bar.

Not having brought any coke to counter the alcohol and keep me from getting sloppy, I was doomed. I tossed back two Citron and sodas, and as the coke wore off so did the illusion of my sobriety. By the time the bartender poured my third drink, I was flat out, drunk-ass wasted. By now the bar was packed, but neither a rocking party atmosphere nor even a sense of chivalry compelled Jeff to order so much as a light beer.

What happened next can never be undone. It can't even be forgotten, although the details have never been any more than fuzzy.

Seeing me a little wobbly on my barstool, Jeff reached out for my arm to steady me. My drunken brain mistook this as a gesture of affection. Clearly, he was already falling in love with me! As he held my arm, I leaned in toward him, grabbed him by the neck, and pulled him toward me with my eyes closed, going in for the kiss. That was more movement than my sloshed body could handle, and as I lunged forward I slid off my barstool and crashed to the floor, my shoulder and hip hitting first followed by the rest of me in a thundering heap.

I didn't want to look up, and the first thing I heard was the “Whoa!” of the crowd that had just witnessed my tumbling display of jackassery. To make it worse, nobody moved. For what felt like at least ten seconds, the shock of the crash froze all the gawkers. They just stared as if they were waiting for a director to yell, “Cut!” Eventually my date slid off his barstool and tried to lift the mess that was me. Clearly repulsed, Jeff rushed me out into the street and hurled me like a shovel of shit into the first cab he could find.

When I woke up at 7:20 a.m. the next morning, I saw a second bottle of wine, empty, on my kitchen counter. I was throwing
up by 7:30 a.m., but I had to be in the office for a ten o'clock meeting.
I can't do it
, I thought.

But I couldn't miss the meeting. My boss was in town from Portland, an unusual circumstance. His being based on the West Coast had made it simple for me to work from home whenever I liked, which helped to keep my drinking and drugging undetected. If I kept my wine and coke use in balance, I produced good work without a problem.

That morning, though, I had to be in the office and not appear completely wrecked. Tremors shook my entire body. How was I going to get my act together in an hour?

There was only one sure way I knew of that would calm me down and give me some semblance of equilibrium. Ironically, it was drinking. Booze would mellow my headache and stop my shaking. Many times I had promised myself that I would never drink in the morning, but this was no time to quibble over empty promises.

In the kitchen, I pulled the bottle of Citron out of the freezer. Then I opened the refrigerator door and found no orange juice or other mixer. It would have to be straight. I took out a shot glass and threw back two quick belts. My whole body shuddered as if it was just waking up from a bad dream, but the vodka was settling me down.

Who drinks in the morning? What kind of person wakes up after a night of boozing feeling shaky and nauseated and weak and then tips back a bottle of vodka? How was I going to rationalize this fucked-up development to myself? After a night of getting blasted, normal people wake up feeling shitty, moan their way to a bottle of Advil, go back to sleep, and then, once they can bear the idea of food, chow a greasy cheeseburger and fries and vow never to drink again. What did it say that
my
answer to near alcohol poisoning was more alcohol?

In fact, I found it all fairly easy to rationalize. My slide into round-the-clock drinking was something I was entitled to. It made me ashamed and it made me despise myself, but it also made me feel better because it was a crucial weapon in the fight against being me. I felt entitled to do whatever it took to win the battle against the unfair circumstances of my life, this life in which I played by all the right rules and still ended up miserable and lonely and riddled with self-hatred.

I learned to master the art of keeping things separate. There was my real life with all its alcohol-soaked secrets and there was the role I portrayed in the stage play of my life. In the play, the protagonist was healthy, strong, and the successful envy of ambitious career women around the world. But every day at 5:30 p.m., she took her bow and the curtain closed. Then the actress sat in front of the vanity mirror framed in bright round bulbs and slowly wiped off her stage makeup with cotton balls . . . while knocking back highball glasses of Grey Goose.

It wasn't as if I'd worn myself weary of living some super-woman life I'd carved and now, exhausted, I'd turned to a bottle to escape. That wasn't it. The crazy thing is I had
never
been the person I pretended to be, and the cracks in the façade were spreading. And into the cracks began to flow more and more booze.

On days when I had to go to the office, I could survive a dry morning by counting the hours until I'd be able to drink at lunch. One of my favorite drinking spots was Kaju, a sushi restaurant not far from my office but not close enough for my co-workers to frequent. It was small and family-run with a long sushi bar. The rolls, sashimi, and sushi under the glass always looked fresh and tempting, but the real draw was the machine
at the end of the sushi bar that heated up the sake. It looked like a polished, metal soft-serve ice cream machine.

One morning in the office, just after eleven, it became clear to me that I couldn't hold out until twelve-thirty to drink. I couldn't concentrate on anything on my computer screen. My hands shook too much to keep a pen steady and my legs were bouncing up and down like a punk band drummer's. A thin layer of sweat covered my neck and chest.

Screw it. “Marie, I have an early lunch. I'll be on my phone if you need me,” I said to my assistant. I slung my coat and purse over my arm and swished past her, not meeting her eye.

I sneaked out the back of the building and jumped into a cab. My knees bounced during the entire ride and I buried my head in my hands. Let's
go.

“Hello!” the owner's wife said with a big wave as I walked into Kaju at 11:30 a.m. Her hair was up in a tight bun and she wore an apron with what appeared to be the restaurant's name spelled out in Japanese letters.

“Hi!” I said, utterly relieved to be in the dark restaurant with the magic sake machine.

“The sake is not hot yet. Very sorry,” she said. She switched on the machine and it whirred into action. I should have been embarrassed that at eleven thirty in the morning she felt compelled to apologize for not having my booze ready. Instead, I sat at a table for four and stared at the machine, watching for a sign that it was time.

Relief finally came in the form of the three hot sakes that accompanied my California roll. With my body calmed down, I went to the restaurant's bathroom and pulled out the toothbrush and toothpaste I always carried. Three brushings and three sticks of gum later, I headed back to the office. It was almost 1:00 p.m. Now I would count the hours until five o'clock.

10

Not long after the morning drinking
started, cocaine also found its way onto the breakfast menu. Amped up on coke, I never felt drunk, and I never looked drunk. I looked happy. “You're always smiling!” colleagues often chirped at me.

“It's the coke!” I wanted to say. “And I'm putting on an act! I'm a complete fraud! I'm actually an addict who can't get out of bed without wine and a line!” But, I didn't say that. I'd say things like, “Life is good!”

Addiction seemed to be playing a game with me, upping the stakes and waiting to see if I'd fold. I needed to drink a bottle of wine to get the buzz that used to come from one glass. I had to become quicker and cleverer with my lies.
How
did I get this bruise on my arm? An honest answer would have been “I have no idea. I probably fell out of a cab.” But like lightning I could launch,
“
Stupid subway door was closing just as I was getting out.”
Why
didn't I show up at your wedding shower? “I was
just
going to call you! You won't believe this. I got food poisoning—ended up in the freaking ER.”

Then there were the “out of sight” transgressions. Nobody knew that I had stopped contributing to my 401(k) because I fully expected to be dead by forty. No one would have guessed that I never got manicures anymore because no matter how much I drank I couldn't keep my hands from shaking. And I had to work harder to convince myself that the paranoia didn't mean I was going crazy. I lived in constant fear of being found out, and that made me more and more reclusive. The less time spent with people, the less chance of being discovered. But snorting cocaine alone on my couch also made me feel like a degenerate. Thanks to addiction I was desperate to be alone and I dreaded being alone.

My brother's first child was born on a rainy Wednesday in July 2003. When my mother called at 3:00 p.m., I was at home working on a proposal and doing lines of cocaine off of my favorite mirror. I switched the call to speaker and picked at what I hoped was just ground-in cigarette ash on the navy blue cotton slipcover. Then I opened a new pack of cigarettes.

“Wait, you're not making sense,” my mom said. “If you're not in the office, why can't you just get in a car now and leave for the hospital before rush hour? The bridge is going to be murder after four o'clock.” I was silent, distracted by the stain on the slipcover. “For chrissake, Lisa, your brother had a baby! What are you doing that could be more important?”
You really don't want to know what I'm doing
, I thought. I picked up the razor and scraped perfect little white powder rows on the glass.

I took a deep breath. “I told you, I'm working! I stayed home so I could concentrate on this pitch without the phone ringing all day. I'll get in a car as soon as I get this out. I promise.” The part about the pitch was true. The implication that it needed to be done that day was a lie.

“All right, do what you want,” she said. “I'll see you whenever you get here.” I pictured her shaking her head while trying to figure out how to end a call on the cell phone. I made sure the call had disconnected and then screamed, “Get a clue! I don't give a shit!”

My family had already been at the hospital for hours—all of them right there since my sister-in-law Andrea had gone into labor. Why was I dragging? Was I jealous of my brother's happy marriage and new kid? Was I upset to be pushing forty without any love prospects? The real answer was that because I didn't have to show up in the office, all I wanted to do was be alone, drink, and do coke. Nothing was more important, not even the birth of my niece. That was how my brain now worked. It wasn't my brother's happiness that I resented. It was being lured away from drugs.

It stinks in here
, I suddenly thought, sniffing under my bare arm.
Did I shower yesterday? Probably not
. I'd been alternating between cold shaking and sweating for the past forty-eight hours so I was gamey.
Where did I put those scented candles?

I grabbed the straw to do another line. OK, two. But I had to be careful, I was running low. Sitting back, I watched my right knee bounce up and down uncontrollably and felt my pulse thunder. I didn't dare check my heart rate. A loud buzzing sound thrummed through my head.
Why do they even care if I'm there? It's not like the baby is going anywhere.

The phone rang again. I jumped. It was my brother. I coughed, took a deep breath, and sat up straight before answering. “Yo, Big Daddy! How's it going?”

“Good,” he answered. “When are you getting out here?” Great. Mom had put him up to calling. I'd become a family project.

“Soon, soon. I'm just finishing up here. I'm about to call the car service. I can't wait to see you guys!”

There was no way to put off seeing the baby. Then I'd be the sister who didn't care. Any normal woman would be excited to become an aunt for the first time. She'd be speeding to the hospital, already having ordered a monogrammed silver bracelet and a handmade baby blanket. Not Auntie Lisa. I sat right there on the couch wondering if any small baggies of coke might have fallen behind my dresser.

My entire body was trembling, a low-grade, insistent rumbling as if someone had dropped a quarter into a vibrating couch. Henry hadn't called me back yet about when he could get here with more coke, so I resorted to calling his cell phone and leaving a message. This direct contact was a breach of the drug service's protocol, so I violated it only in emergencies. I would have called him directly more often if it wouldn't have gotten Henry in trouble, or worse, gotten me blacklisted from my best drug connection.

The thought of going without booze while crashing from a two-day bender was terrifying. I pictured myself huddled in some hospital corner drenched in sweat and catching vomit in my open hands. Maybe the hospital cafeteria sold wine? If they did, I could say I was having a drink to celebrate. “Anyone else want one?” I could ask. Or even better, I could pick up a bottle of champagne on my way out of the city to celebrate. Excellent idea! But then I'd have to share it with all those people and I'd get barely a full glass.
Bring two bottles? Three?

I padded barefoot into the kitchen and emptied the last of the double bottle of Yellow Tail cabernet into my juice glass. In a ritual held over from college, I hummed “Taps,” as the glass bottle clanked among its fellow dead soldiers in a plastic bucket at the bottom of my kitchen pantry. I had to be careful
about throwing them away. Recycling items in my building were to be left next to the elevators on Mondays and Thursdays. That meant that everyone on the floor could see what was being tossed, so I dumped my empties on different floors each week.

Damn, it's so much easier to stay stocked up with wine than coke
, I thought as I willed Henry to call me. The guys at Stuyvesant Square Liquors loved me. They were always right there with a case of double bottles shortly after I called, and in return I tipped the delivery people well. I also tried to tidy myself up before they arrived. I'd wipe off smeared makeup and pull my unkempt hair into a ponytail. There was usually no time to do much about my outfits, so I'd just try to find a clean t-shirt and boxer shorts. Maybe they'd think I'd been busy cleaning. I'd throw strewn clothes into my bedroom and clear away evidence of smoking or drinking from the view of someone standing at the front door. Then I'd take a deep breath and plaster a fake smile before opening the door. But around that time I had developed a weird, sporadic twitch in my right eye. The delivery guy might have thought I was winking at him. God knows who else thought I was flirting. It was just another reason not to leave my apartment.

Back on the couch, I lit another cigarette. I pictured my brother about to let me hold his newborn, and I realized that my extended hands looked as if they belonged to someone who had just witnessed a murder. There was just no stopping the tremors. He'd be appalled, wouldn't he?

Wait, why didn't I tell my family that I have a cold?
They never would have let me near the newborn. I used a work excuse—rookie mistake. I was slipping, losing my ability to stay one step ahead. A year or even a few months ago, I would have answered the phone coughing.

Shit
, I thought.
I have to do this
. I crawled onto my bed and called the office car service, giving myself an hour. Standing up to go to the bathroom gave me a massive head rush, so I braced myself against the door frame. The fluorescent light reflected the yellow bathroom walls, increasing the pallor of my already hideous yellowing skin.
Jesus, my face looks like an old religious scroll. Do I have jaundice?
My eyes were bloodshot and my eyelids puffy enough to be popped.

As I stretched back out on the bed, my slow-motion brain assessed the bruises scattered across my legs. They were yellow, green, and purple. I poked at them, noting which ones appeared to be healing, which were new, and which ones could be linked to a memory. A few had come from banging my legs against the glass coffee table, which I did regularly getting up and down from the couch. Sliding the coffee table farther away would have solved the problem, but then it would have been more difficult for me to lean over for coke, so I just kept adding bruises. I had read that alcoholics bruise easily because their livers don't function properly. Huh. Interesting. Where did I leave that wine glass?

While for most people showering was relaxing, for me the shower was a place of discomfort and even lurking danger. The spray felt like piercing pellets of sleet against my skin. And I had to be careful to never let my eyes close for long because I could easily lose balance and fall over. And the rhythm of the falling water, the smell of soap, the texture of shampoo—everything seemed to be trying to nauseate me. I tilted the spray straight down and crouched into the tub, grabbing the sides to steady my way down to sit. The water sprayed my head and ran down my face and back. I scrunched myself as far forward as I could, put my head between my knees, and readied myself for what often came next—the heaving followed by vomiting liquid followed by more heaving.
God, I'm so sick
, I thought.

Post-shower, my hands and feet always swelled up, red and throbbing. I made a mental note to research whether that was also an alcoholic thing. After another huge glass of wine, my heart rate seemed to slow down. I grabbed a few Tums from the giant plastic bottle I kept on the dresser, trying to pick through for the cherry ones. They were the least disgusting.

What did I need to wear? Something nice? No, everyone would be exhausted and casual. Jeans and a sweater would be fine, but they couldn't be in bad shape. Even though this was going to be all about the baby, my mother would inspect me anyway.

I never opened my bedroom curtains, even on beautiful days, so I always dressed in semidarkness. Sometimes the result was that midway through the day, I'd realize that my shirt was stained or my sweater had a few bad pulls in it. It didn't really matter to me, but I worried that people at work would notice. “Why can't she keep her clothes clean or replace that worn out sweater?” I imagined them asking each other. “She makes money. It's called a dry cleaner, for God's sake.” My mother, however, would happily comment on my clothes. “What is that? A ketchup stain? Lovey, I know that's one of your favorite sweaters, but it's time for it to go. Really. Don't even give it to Goodwill. It's too late.” I took a pair of dark jeans and a black sweater into the light of the living room for inspection.
What a pain in my ass.

I pulled my hair into a ponytail, and before attempting to put on makeup, I wrapped a couple ice cubes in paper towels and pressed them to my eyelids as I lay across my bed. My heart beat hard every time I stopped moving. Was this going to be the day I fell over from a massive cocaine-induced heart attack? That would ruin my niece's birthday.

Heavy makeup seemed like a good idea for the trip to New Jersey. By the time I was through painting over the battered
landscape of my bare face, I thought I looked decent, definitely not my best but better than most of the people I saw getting arrested on
Cops
, so that was something. At this point in my life, my standards had shifted. Just an hour earlier I looked like the kind of drug hag the Feds drag from the door of a trailer as she screams that she doesn't know anything about the meth lab inside.