Finding Happiness in Los Angeles

by Oliver Markus Malloy

  "That fucking bitch!" Lucy said angrily. "She's so selfish! Don't send my aunt any more money!"

  "Look, this is ridiculous," I said. "If you really want to be my girlfriend, and you really want to have a life together when you get out, then we'll have to tell Nicole. I don't want to be stuck in the middle of this bullshit. If we're together, I need to make a clean break with Nicole, and the sooner we tell her, the better."

  "No, she'll be really upset," Lucy replied. "If we tell her now, she's gonna go nuts and beat me up. Let's tell her after I get out and live with you. Until then, let's not tell Nicole anything. I guess you can keep sending her money, but don't send her as much as you send me. Send her less, ok?"

  It's not like I wanted to send either one of them any money. And all these collect calls from jail were adding up to a lot of money, too.

  When Nicole called me back, she told me that Lucy was acting funny. "What is going on with her? She won't talk to me. She's avoiding me. What did you guys talk about?"

  "I told her that you didn't want me to send her any more money," I replied.

  "Oh my God! Why would you say that?" Nicole yelled.

  "Because that's what you told me," I said.

  "Yeah, but I didn't want you to tell her that it was my idea not to send her any more money!"

  "Look, I'm not good at lying and playing these games," I said. "I sent her a few bucks because I felt bad for her, because she doesn't have any money."

  "What?! Of course she has money!" Nicole replied angrily. "She's talking to a bunch of guys on the phone. She's not just calling you. Did she tell you she's only calling you? She's such a liar! She's calling Cho and Wigger and Las Vegas and Blizzard."

  "What?! Are you sure?" I asked incredulously.

  "Yeah, she's standing in the phone line all fucking day. She's on the phone all the time!" Nicole said.

  When Lucy called me later, I told her what Nicole said.

  "No, baby, I only call you, I swear!!" Lucy said in her most convincing tone of voice. "You know I call you several times a day, but I don't want Nicole to know that! But she can see me on the phone all the time. So after I hang up, and she asks me who I talked to, I don't tell her the truth. I don't tell her I'm talking to you. I just tell her that I talk to Blizzard."

  "Who the fuck is Blizzard?"

  "He's the dope boy I went to see at the Knights Inn. Remember when you dropped Nicole and me off, before you flew to Germany? It was his motel room. He's my friend, so that's why Nicole believes me when I tell her I call him all the time."

  Great. So who the fuck was she lying to? Was she telling me the truth and lying to Nicole? Or the other way around? This shit was right out of Red Sparrow. Lucy could have been a Russian superspy.

  "You swear you're not calling anyone else besides me? The last time you were in jail you kept talking to that Cho guy and you swore you weren't. You kept lying to me until I put Cho and you and me on a threeway call," I reminded her.

  "No that was totally different then! I'm your girlfriend now," she tried to reassure me.

  "That's what you said last time," I replied sarcastically.

  "Fine! Believe Nicole over me!" Lucy yelled and hung up.

  Nicole also called me more than once a day, but not as often as Lucy. When Nicole called me back, I told her how angry Lucy got when I asked her whether she was talking to anyone else besides me.

  "That sneaky bitch!" Nicole said. "She's on the phone all fucking day. That's all she does all day long! She told Blizzard that she loves him, so he'll send her money. And she told Cho the same thing."

  If that was true, it would explain why Lucy didn't want to tell Nicole or anyone else in jail that she was supposedly my girlfriend. She didn't want Blizzard or Cho to find out about me through the grapevine, any more than she wanted me to find out that she was taking to them.

  What the hell happened to NO MO HO? I had told myself I wasn't gonna get sucked back into this shit. And yet, here I was, up to my neck in drama. I think a tiny little part of me missed it. I would never admit to anyone that I like drama, and I really don't. But why the hell else would I put myself through this shit again? Why didn't I just not answer the phone when Nicole or Lucy called me? Why the hell was I spending all this money on collect calls, and putting money on their jail accounts, if the only thing I got out of it was drama? I didn't even get to have sex with either one of them while they were in jail.

  I didn't understand it then, but I get it now. In retrospect, it's pretty obvious why I was doing it. I wasn't giving them money to have sex with them. I was giving them money because I was painfully lonely. And I didn't know how to fix that, because I was just as broken as they were. I wanted to feel needed. I wanted someone to call me all the time. I wanted to be important to someone. I wanted someone to act jealous about me. I wanted to feel loved. I was craving so badly to feel loved, I was willing to do anything, believe anything, forgive anything, and accept anything, just for that glimmer of hope that I'm going to be loved.

  During all these phone calls from jail, I had mentioned to both of them that I was writing a book about all the crazy shit that had happened. Nicole thought that was awesome. She loved the idea of being a character in a book, and she said she couldn't wait to read it.

  But Lucy was weary: "What are you gonna write? Are you gonna write bad things about me?"

  "Well, I'm gonna write down exactly what happened. And some of the things you did have hurt me really badly. I'm gonna write about that, too," I said.

  THE NEW GIRL

  "The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting."

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  When Veronica and I used to date, she was in and out of jail several times. She actually spent more time in LCJ than out. She was still in jail when Lucy and Nicole were arrested on Christmas morning. But she was in a different dorm.

  Haley was still in jail too. She was in the same dorm with Lucy and Nicole. So while I was in Germany, writing my book, four of the girls I had been dating were all in jail at the same time.

  Yeah, I know, it's hard to keep track of all the girls in this soap opera, so I'll remind you who they are as we go along.

  Veronica was my ex-girlfriend. Worst person on the planet. I had been dating her before Lucy and Nicole. She cheated on me countless times and every word out of her mouth was a lie. I found her in bed with a drug dealer. The final straw was when I found out that while she was in jail, she was dating this ugly little freckle-faced, red-haired weasel named Wendy.

  Haley used to be a singer and ran a karaoke bar, before she turned into a hardcore drug addict. She and I were pretty close. She always called me when she had an emergency, and she had a lot of emergencies. But then she had stolen one of my hard drives. When she wasn't living in shitty motel rooms with drug dealers on Palm Beach Boulevard, she lived with a 70-year-old man named Lorne. He only had one arm.

  Haley kept calling me from jail all the time, but I didn't accept her collect calls anymore. I was trying to stick to my NO MO HO rule, even though I had already broken that rule for Lucy and Nicole.

  When you make a collect call from jail, there's a three second window where you're supposed to record your name, to let the other person know who is calling them. The person on the other end only hears that short recording and can then choose to accept or decline your call.

  A lot of the inmates used that three second window to tell you an important message really fast.

  When Haley found out that Lucy and Nicole were back in jail, and that I was talking to both of them, she called my phone every chance she got. She kept leaving me three second messages:

  "It's me, Haley! Pick up! Why won't you talk to me anymore?"

  Then she called back immediately with a new message:

  "I can't believe you'll talk to Lucy and Nicole but not me."

  Next message:

  "All these bitches always lie to you. I'm the only one who never lied to you!"<
br />
  Then:

  "You've known me so much longer than you've known them."

  And another:

  "Answer the damn phone! PLEASE!!"

  Sometimes she cried during the message:

  "Why didn't you ever love me the way you loved Veronica and Lucy?"

  "I wish I had someone who loves me like you love them."

  "You are the only person in the world who ever cared about me. PLEASE answer!"

  "Why are you punishing me? I didn't do anything wrong! I love you!"

  I tried to avoid her calls, but I had to answer the phone and listen to the message every time I saw LCJ on my caller ID, because it could be a call from Lucy or Nicole.

  I tried not to let Haley get to me. But it was no use. I felt so bad for her. She was a sweetheart when she was sober. We had known each other for a few years now and we had been through a lot of crazy adventures together. Now that she had been in jail for a few months, ever since she had stolen that car in the McDonald's parking lot, she was sober. So why the hell wasn't I talking to her? I really didn't seem fair. Especially if it was true that Lucy was talking to other guys behind my back.

  Finally I caved and answered the phone. Haley was so happy I answered, she cried again. She told me that she was sad I was dating Lucy, but she said she always wanted to be my friend. I asked her if she knew whether it was true that Lucy was talking to other guys besides me.

  "Oh Oliver," she said with a sigh. "Don't you ever learn your lesson? Of course she's talking to other guys."

  "How do you know? Do you know that for sure, or are you just saying that?" I asked.

  "I know for sure," Haley replied. "I overheard her talking about some guy called Blizzard. And some guy called Cho or something like that. And there's some other guy she talks to, but I don't know his name."

  "Yeah, Nicole told me the same thing," I said. "But Lucy told me she's just saying she's talking to Blizzard, so that Nicole won't be jealous and get pissed because she's really talking to me all the time."

  "Listen to yourself," Haley scoffed. "This is high school drama. You're a grown man. Why are you wasting your time with this bullshit? You need a girl who's mature. Someone who loves you and appreciates you for the amazing person that you are. You need a woman like me."

  Haley was laying it on pretty thick. But she was right about one thing: What the hell was I doing? Why did any of this even matter at this point? I had sworn I would not let myself get sucked back into this shit. I was thousands of miles away, in Germany, and here I was, worrying about whether or not a crackwhore in jail was talking to other guys besides me. I needed someone to slap me across the face and yell: "Snap out of it, idiot!"

  I guess this is what it must feel like for a drug addict to relapse. The rational part of you is just a tiny little voice of reason in the back of your head, while the rest of you is racing to get dope and get high. And even while you tie off your arm, you know you shouldn't shoot up. But that doesn't stop you from doing it anyway.

  I also told Haley I was writing a book about all this shit. She said: "I can't wait to read it! I always wanted to write a book about my life. Maybe now I don't have to anymore, because I'll be in your book."

  I told her that I would drop off a copy for her at the LCJ library, so she could read it while she's still in jail.

  When you're in jail you really have no privacy. The toilets don't even have doors. Everyone in the dorm can watch you poop or shower. And you don't have lockers. The few personal possessions that you're allowed to have are in a drawer by your bunk bed.

  When Veronica and I were still dating, I always used to send her a postcard every day. I printed them on my computer, with a very small font, to fit as much text as possible on both sides of the blank 4 x 6 card. I filled the card with funny jokes, cartoons and memes, to help her pass the time. And I wrote her a little letter on the card each day, to make her feel like someone on the outside cared about her and that I wasn't forgetting about her.

  One of the worst things about being in jail is that feeling that you have been forgotten by everyone and the world goes on without you, like you don't even exist. You feel like nobody even notices whether you're alive or dead, because everyone just continues to go about their business without you. That's why inmates cling to people on the outside.

  Veronica used to proudly show off my postcards to her inmate friends. But drug addicts aren't really friends. They will stab each other in the back in a heartbeat, if there's something to gain.

  When Veronica showed her bunkmate some of my postcards, her bunkie secretly copied my new phone number from one of the cards. Veronica had asked me to change it so other girls who I had dated before her couldn't call me anymore.

  One day, while Veronica had a court date because she hadn't been sentenced yet, her bunkie called me. It was the first time someone I didn't know at all called me from jail.

  She gave me a wrong name and told me that Veronica had given her my number so she could call me. She said she was about to be released from jail later that day, and asked if she could come stay with me. She said we would have a lot of fun together.

  By the time Veronica returned to her dorm from court, her bunkie had already been released. I told her about that strange phone call. She was pissed! She told me that she would never give my number to some other bitch in jail, because she knew they all would just try to wrap me around their finger and have sex with me in exchange for taking care of them and letting them live with me.

  Back then she made me promise to never talk to other girls from jail, and demanded I change my number again. I didn't know then that Veronica was worried some other girl would call me and try to get on my good side by telling me the truth about what Veronica was doing in jail behind my back.

  Even though Veronica tried to be careful to never let anyone see my number, other inmates found my number anyway. Maybe her bunkie sent it to one of her inmate friends on a postcard once she got out and realized I had no interest in meeting her. Or maybe one of the inmates went through Veronica's personal drawer while she wasn't looking, and found her list of phone numbers.

  Over time I was getting used to having random girls from jail call me occasionally, because they somehow got their hands on my phone number. Sometimes I refused the collect calls. Sometimes, when Veronica and I were arguing because I had a feeling she was lying to me again, I answered the phone if a stranger called me from jail and left me a mysterious three second message like: "You don't know me, but there's something you need to know about Veronica."

  That's how I ended up getting warnings from 14 different people, many of them inmates, about Veronica's lying and cheating.

  But that was a while ago. Veronica and I weren't dating anymore. Now I was dating Lucy. Or was I dating Lucy's aunt Nicole? I wasn't sure myself. Was I even really dating either one of them? Did I really want to return to Florida and go right back to the same crap I tried to leave behind?

  Both of them kept calling me from jail every day. I hadn't been getting any more collect calls from strange girls in a while.

  One day, while I was still in Germany, writing my book, I got yet another collect call from jail. I figured it was either Lucy, Nicole or Haley. All three of them were constantly calling me now.

  But it wasn't any of those three. It was a girl I didn't know. Her name was Ashley.

  She said she needed to talk to me about something important. After I answered, it turned out that she really didn't have anything to say. She just called me because she felt like she was all alone in the world, and she had no one to call on the outside. She said she had heard a lot about me in jail, and figured that I deserved a real girlfriend. Someone like her. She said: "I'm not like all these other hoes. I'm not even really an addict. I would never suck a dick to get drugs! That's disgusting! I just do some heroin here and there. I would never touch crack."

  Funny how they all used that "I'm not like the other girls" line.

  She asked me if all the crazy
stories she had heard about me and Veronica, Lucy, Nicole and Haley were really true. I said yeah and told her I was actually writing a book about it. I figured I might as well get the word out and promote the book a little. She thought that was hilarious! She laughed: "That book is gonna be a bestseller! Everyone here in jail is gonna wanna read it!"

  She was right.

  BACK IN FLORIDA

  "Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it is against his will."

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  I had sent the source file for my book to the printer while I was still in Germany. A few days after I landed in Florida, I received the first paperback copies of my book Sex and Crime. I was so excited! It's a pretty cool feeling to hold a book that you wrote yourself. I looked at it from all angles and admired the cover, double-checked the blurb on the back for typos, and ran my fingers along the spine of the book. It felt good in my hands. Smooth and heavy. It was almost 500 pages. The book told the story of my life: Growing up as a teenager in Germany, moving to New York, and all the crazy stuff in Florida.