But the limp noodle had a mind of its own. God damn traitor!
"Fuck. It just won't get hard right now," I finally conceded.
I lay down next to her and kissed her ridiculously amazing breasts.
"I think my dick is intimidated by you," I said.
"Why would you be intimidated by me?" she laughed.
"Because you're too damn perfect."
She smiled: "Aww, thank you. You're not too bad yourself. Don't worry about it. It happens. Next time you won't be nervous."
Next time? Did she just say next time? Was she just saying that to make me feel better? Or because she really wanted to come back and try again? I really hoped to see her again.
We cuddled for a little bit and fell asleep.
The next day, she slept until the afternoon. I guess she really hadn't slept in a while. When she woke up, she was dope sick and asked me to drive her to Wendell's house so she could get high.
I tried to talk her out of it. Well, I went through the motions, but I knew that nothing I could say would get through to her. When an addict gets dope sick, the craving to get high is so intense, it's all they can think about.
I told her that now would be the perfect time for her to get clean: "Just stay with me, sleep for a few days and detox."
"Thank you," she said. "I will when I'm ready. But not today."
Yeah, yeah. Not today. Never today. Always the same story.
She asked me to drop her off down the street from Wendell's house. I guess she didn't want him to know that she had spent the night with me, and not at her mother's house.
HALEY
"Where it hurts, you develop a callus. That happens in your soul, too."
Boris Becker
A few days later, Haley messaged me on Facebook: "Hey stranger! Long time no see! How have you been?"
She told me that she had been sober for over a month and reminded me that I had promised to take her out on a real date if she managed to stay clean for this long.
I had emailed her a Kindle version of the book. I asked her if she read it.
"I loved it! And it made me cry! As soon as I finished it, I read it a second time!" she said.
I was glad she liked it. I wasn't sure how she would react to the book, since she was probably the most tragic character in it.
We made plans to go to an aerial acrobatics show at the airport in Punta Gorda. I picked her up at her grandparents house. They made her promise that she'd be home before dark.
Haley had gained a lot of weight in jail, and even more weight at her grandparents' house. I hadn't seen her since she almost peed in my car last year, and I dropped her off at McDonalds, where she stole a car and ended up in jail. Back then she was really skinny. Now she was twice the size. But it didn't matter to me. She had a great personality, especially now that she was sober.
We had a lot of fun at the airplane show and laughed the whole time. We just kept cracking each other up with stupid jokes.
After the show I was gonna drive her back home, but she said: "I don't wanna go home yet. It's so boring at my grandparents' house. It's so great to finally get out and do something fun! I've really been looking forward to seeing you!"
"Me, too," I said. "I missed you."
She gave me a kiss and smirked: "Let's go to your place!"
What she really meant was: Let's go have sex.
"It's gonna take us at least an hour to get to my place. And then an hour and a half back to your grandparents' house," I said.
"It's ok. Just for a little while. My grandparents won't mind if I'm a little late," she said.
So we got in the car and drove to my place.
We went straight into the bedroom. She took her clothes off and showed off her breasts: "Look how huge they got! My boobies are ginormous!"
We both laughed. "Yeah, last time I saw you, you were way too skinny. Your boobs looked deflated. They were dangling like floppy pancakes!"
She acted insulted, got on the bed, pressed her chest on top of my face and pretended to try to choke me to death with her giant boobs.
I made gurgling sounds like I couldn't get any air, and she laughed again. Then I sucked on her nipples. She reached between her legs and stroked my dick while grinding against it with her lips. I got hard pretty quickly and she gently pressed it into her pussy with her hand. She rode me cowgirl style.
She seemed to be having a pretty good time too, and looked like she had an orgasm. I came a few minutes later.
Afterwards she told me: "That was the first time I had sex in almost a year!"
"Seriously? You didn't make out with anyone in jail?"
"Nah, I'm not into girls. Not even in jail. I like dick. So I was celibate in jail for ten months, and then I went straight to my grandparents' house. You're the first guy I've slept with in almost a year! You should feel honored!"
"I do! I do feel honored!" I said and laughed.
We got dressed and headed back to Port Charlotte. In the car, Haley asked: "Do you mind if we stop at Palm Beach Boulevard for a minute? I just wanna say hi to Lorne."
Lorne was the 70-year-old one-armed guy Haley had been living with when she was at her worst.
"No, I'm not gonna drive you to Palm Beach Boulevard. You're gonna relapse!"
"Oh stop it. No I'm not. It's fine. Trust me. I just wanna say hi for a minute," she insisted.
"No, I'm not stopping there. You'll relapse. I'm not bringing you back to that shit."
Haley scoffed: "Oliver, I relapsed a long time ago."
"Huh?! What do you mean? I thought you've been at your grandparents' house this whole time."
"I was. And I was good the first few days. But then I discovered an old bottle with my grampa's Vicodin in the medicine cabinet. I started taking them. First it was just one here and there, but then I took more and more until they were gone. And then I tried all the other bottles. I wanted to get high so badly, I took his cholesterol medicine, his high blood pressure pills and everything else I could find. And I've been drinking," she said.
I should have known. I was so disappointed in her.
"I don't care," I said. "I'm still not gonna stop at Palm Beach Boulevard."
"Then just let me out of the car!" she demanded. She was getting angry.
"If I drop you off on Palm Beach, you'll be right back to your old life in no time. Do you really wanna be a barefoot crackwhore on Palm Beach again? Do you wanna go back to fucking Mexicans for ten bucks a pop?"
"Whatever!" she yelled. "Just drop me off! I'll be fine!"
The highway exit for Palm Beach was coming up next, and she started to play with the door handle, like she was gonna jump out of the moving car.
"Ok, fine. Whatever!" I said. "But don't fucking call me up crying in two days and ask me to come get you."
I pulled off the highway and stopped the car in a fast food parking lot: "This is as far as I'm gonna take you. You'll have to walk the rest."
"Can you give me some money?" she asked.
Unbelievable.
"I didn't bring my wallet," I lied.
She got out of the car and slammed the door. "Fuck you!" she yelled.
I drove home and called George. I had to tell someone.
A few days later, Haley called me. I didn't answer the phone, so she left me a bunch of voice mails. She was crying. Gee, who could have seen that coming?
"I'm so stupid! Please come get me! I know you're mad at me, and if you don't want me to stay with you, can you please bring me to my grandparents' house? If I stay here, I'll die. Please, please, please come get me!"
I felt bad. The next time she called, I answered. She was sobbing: "Please please please come get me. If I stay here I'm gonna keep doing drugs until I die. I have to get away from here!"
"Ok, I'll come get you and bring you to your grandparents," I said.
I drove to the crackhouse where she was staying. It was dark, and this was a really shitty neighborhood.
I texted her: "I'm here."<
br />
No answer.
"Come on, let's go."
No answer.
"If u made me drive all the way up here for nothing I'm never talking to u again."
No answer.
I beeped the horn. I hated doing that in this kind of neighborhood. You really don't wanna attract attention when you're parked in front of a crackhouse.
She stood me up. Motherfucker! I drove home again and swore to myself that I wouldn't answer the phone the next time Haley called me with one of her stupid fake emergencies.
A few days later, Haley called me again. I didn't answer, so she left me a message: "I'm so sorry! I didn't hear my phone. I was sleeping!"
Yeah, right. If I had a penny for every time a drug addict told me that. Addicts ignore your calls and then pretend they either didn't hear the phone, or they were sleeping, or the phone was dead.
And it had been almost a week since she made me drive all the way to that crackhouse on Palm Beach. Did she sleep for a week? Is that why she didn't get back to me sooner? Bullshit. She was busy getting high for a week, and now she needed a ride or something, so now she suddenly remembered that I exist.
Over the next few days, she kept calling my phone, leaving one message after another. Always crying, always sobbing, always pleading. I felt guilty, because she had run back to Palm Beach on my watch. I felt responsible for what happened to her.
Finally I caved and answered. She told me that she was at Lorne's house and needed me to drive her to her grandparents' house.
"Ok, but this is the last time. If you stand me up again, or try to trick me and make me drive you to a drug dealer, I'm never gonna talk to you again."
When I got there, I parked in Lorne's driveway. I texted her, and she came out: "Come inside! Lorne wants to meet you!"
"I don't really wanna meet some old guy you have sex with," I said.
"What? No! I don't have sex with Lorne! He's too old for that! He's like a father to me. Or a grandfather. He looks at me like a granddaughter. I help him around the house. I have told him so much about you, so he said he wants to meet my boyfriend," she giggled.
I didn't want to hurt her feelings and make it a point to tell her that I'm not her boyfriend. And I was kinda curious to see this guy. I had never actually met Lorne. I had just heard about him from Haley. When she stole my hard drives, she had sold one of them to him.
We went inside. It was a tiny old house. Typical for the old neighborhoods of Fort Myers and Lehigh Acres. He had a lot of odd, very colorful decorations. Every inch seemed to be covered by old flea market toys, second-hand dolls and vintage signs. There were some rainbow-colored Christmas lights blinking in the background. Apparently he left them up all year.
It felt like a Venus flytrap that tried to attract girls with shiny things. For some reason it reminded me of Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch. Lorne's house was the Neverland Ranch for crackwhores. He seemed like an interesting character. There was probably a book or two in him. How did he lose his arm?
Haley had told me that she wasn't the only Palm Beach crackwhore who stayed with him. She said his house was a bit like a highway rest stop. When the Florida sun got too hot on Palm Beach Boulevard, a tired hooker could always knock on his door for some water or to use his bathroom for a quick shower or to shoot up.
He was sitting at a small, old table in the dimly lit kitchen.
"Nice to finally meet you," Lorne said. "Want some weed tea?"
"Oh, you have to try it!" Haley laughed. "Lorne makes the best weed tea! But be careful, it's pretty strong."
She offered me her cup and I took a sip. It tasted kinda gross.
"Thanks, but I still have to drive," I said.
Lorne cackled like old men do, and took a big slurp out of his faded flea market mug.
"I just gotta go to the bathroom, and then we can go," Haley chirped and disappeared.
Lorne and I were sitting at the table and attempted to make small talk.
"She's something," he said.
"Yeah, she is," I nodded.
He pointed at one of the old kitchen cabinets: "You see that?"
"What? The hole?" I asked.
"Yeah. That's a bullet hole. She was drunk and found my gun. She shot up my kitchen. There's bullet holes everywhere now."
We both shook our heads knowingly and chuckled. It wasn't the craziest story either one of us had to tell about Haley.
She came back and sat down at the table with us: "What are you guys talking about?"
Her eyes were glazed over. Obviously she had just done some drugs in the bathroom.
"I told him you shot my kitchen!" Lorne yelled.
Haley gave him a dirty look and sulked: "I told you it was an accident."
Lorne took another big slurp of his weed tea and asked me: "Have you ever tried red ant extract?"
"No, never even heard of it. What is that?" I asked.
"It's like Viagra," Lorne explained. "It makes your dick hard. Works like a charm for me when I fuck Haley."
"Oliver doesn't need red ants," she scoffed.
Suddenly this conversation went from slightly awkward to extremely awkward. And Lorne just told me that he was fucking Haley. Grrreat. I really needed that mental image.
I think he was doing exactly the same thing as Albert a few weeks ago. Lorne looked at me as "the other guy." Like we were two men vying for the affection of the same girl. He was trying to get under my skin by rubbing in my face that he regularly had sex with Haley.
I told Lorne that it was nice to meet him, but I really had to go. Haley kissed him good bye and we got into my car.
"Can I come home with you?" Haley asked.
I gave her a dirty look. Should I yell at her for putting me in that awkward situation in there? Or for lying to me earlier when she claimed she didn't have sex with Lorne?
Ahh, what's the point?
"Please? My grandparents probably want nothing to do with me anymore. I haven't even talked to them since you picked me up and we went to the air show."
"That was almost two weeks ago!" I yelled. "You gotta call them! They must be worried sick about you! They probably think you're dead!"
"I'll call them tomorrow. I promise. I'm too high right now. I don't want them to see me like this."
I agreed that facing them in her current condition probably wasn't the best idea: "Yeah, you're right. You should be sober when you talk to them. You need to apologize. They have been going out of their way to try to help you, and you just ran off like that. Well, I guess one more night won't make a difference at this point."
We drove back to my place. She didn't want to go to bed yet. She said she still had some drugs left and wanted to do them before she went back to Port Charlotte.
She disappeared in the bathroom and finished her heroin.
When she was done, she asked me: "Can I detox at your house? It hurts so bad, some people shit themselves when they detox! I don't want my grandparents to see me like that. It's humiliating."
"Sure. But no matter what, I'm not driving you back to Palm Beach tomorrow. You can either stay here and detox, or I'll drive you to your grandparents. Those are your only two options," I lectured her.
We watched some TV in the living room, while eating ice cream. She passed out on the couch. I let her sleep and went to bed.
The next morning I found her on the couch, still sleeping. She slept all day, into the night. I didn't want to wake her up. I figured her body needed the rest, because she probably had barely slept since I dropped her off on Palm Beach nearly two weeks ago.
And being asleep while you detox is probably better than being awake and having to experience the excruciating withdrawal pains.
I went to sleep. The next morning, Haley was still sleeping on my couch. How was that even possible? How can someone sleep 48 hours without having to go pee? Was she peeing in her sleep? Was she peeing all over my couch? Was I gonna find a big smelly stain on my couch once she finally wakes up?
Was she even still alive? I checked to see if she was breathing. She was. Ok, so at least she was still alive. Maybe she was in a coma. How can you tell the difference between sleep and a coma? I had no idea. She was sweating. All over my couch. Great. Even if there wasn't gonna be a pee stain, she was getting sweat all over my damn couch. Gross.
Finding Happiness in Los Angeles Page 9