“Wow. I grew up Catholic too, but I spent my make-believe time pretending to be Ann-Margret falling off of a Vegas stage. I don’t know what’s gayer.” He laughed. “Were you celibate the whole time you were a priest?”
“Well, I’m still a priest, just on leave. Yep. I was celibate. The entire fourteen years.” Fourteen years? I can’t imagine being celibate for fourteen hours. “A lot of my fellow priests used to sneak over to Minneaaapolis and spend entire weekends at the baaths. But I never strayed.” He took a sip of coffee from the mug he held with both hands and looked past me with a blank stare. “Celibacy fucked up my life.” Then he broke the mood by scolding me. “I was pretty drunk laast night, but you, my son”—he shook his index finger at me—“were very drunk.”
I hung my head in mock shame. “Forgive me, Father John, for I have sinned, and I have the hangover to prove it.”
I chuckled at my mock display of contrition while I winced inside at having pulled another all-nighter. Michahaze and I had classified our marriage as “modern” years ago. We went through couple’s therapy for a brief time after the Zurich trip. Neither of us could stand the therapist, an Ernie the Muppet of a man whose earnest smile hovered over praying hands while he spewed a litany of therapy jargon—“comfortability,” “anger transference,” “projecting”—in hushed tones. But he did get us talking to each other about what we wanted. It came out that Michahaze was no angel either, just not as sloppy in his transgressions. (My drinking never came up. At that time I didn’t get the equation that too much booze equals you never know where you’ll end up. I was always bad at math.)
End result: we loved each other and our life together, but wanted the excitement of other men, so, like many gay couples we knew, we decided to have an open marriage. Old salt that I was at thirty-three, I believed from experience and observation in two kinds of long-term gay-male couples: those who fuck around and are open about it, and those who fuck around and lie about it. Whenever I espouse this theory, I get three different reactions: straight women’s faces fall; gay men nod in agreement; straight men are jealous.
But the deal was no love affairs, and no sleepovers—always come home. I repeatedly broke the “always come home” part of the bargain. Once I was out there and a couple of drinks became half a dozen, I couldn’t stop until I found sex. I had to have it. By the time I found it, it was often so late, I’d pass out in the strange bed I was in before I could pour myself into a cab. It meant my head hung in real shame, profuse apologies, a couple of days of silence from Michahaze, and a slow thaw over the week. A social engagement could melt the ice into manageable cubes, when we’d put on a good face for our friends, pour some booze over those rocks, and by the end of the evening have put on good faces for each other too. Wash. Rinse. Spin. Until the next dirty load piled up.
After that first night with Father John, I remember slinking home soiled with guilt and shame, hoping Michahaze had already left the apartment to have his Sunday alone so I wouldn’t have to face him. Oh, shit. I remembered that my friend Kelly and her nine-year-old son were coming over to retrieve that filthy, caged rabbit they called a pet. Michahaze and I had kept the rabbit for a week while they were on vacation. Great. What’s Michahaze going to tell Kelly? I turned the corner onto West Eighty-second Street, and Kelly and her son were walking down the stoop of our building carrying the rabbit in its cage. They could have been a photo in a real estate brochure for the family-friendly Upper West Side. I felt naked. I ducked into the entrance of a closed restaurant and hid. How long should I hide here? How long can I hide?
* * *
During the rest of that autumn I helped Father John make up for those barren fourteen years. We usually met during my lunch hour, so no more all-nighters. And sex only. Some heavy affection, but no love. Then he disappeared until right after the New Year. He called me at the office with a nervous catch in his voice. “I’ve got the claaap. Gonorrhea.” Ah, that explains the silence. Nothing kills a beautiful thing like an STD.
“Oh, dear. I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Have you, um, noticed anything?”
I told him that I hadn’t. Glad we always used condoms. I promised to get checked out, but I never saw Father John again.
EIGHTEEN
Lost in Rio
“I’ll make this book a bestseller if I have to suck every cock in Manhattan!” I said to my boss, Liz. She doubled over in laughter and let her auburn bob fall across her broad face. She composed herself and grinned with a twinkle in her half-moon eyes, which resembled lunette windows, and replied, “Use whatever works, I always say.” I was in her office discussing the publicity campaign for a book that we had huge bestseller dreams for, the kind of book for which I had been hired as publicity director.
I had been born again two years prior when I left the dismal employ of Duh Wah. Not only had I landed back in publishing, but at the top of my field as a vice president, executive director of publicity, at a respected publisher of serious nonfiction. I was going to bring razzle-dazzle to its dusty shelves with my glossy résumé. It was a bit highbrow for my taste—the likes of Joan Collins and Eddie Fisher would never spill ink there—but I was running the show. And there was Liz. Harvard-educated, robust, former lover of black men, current lover of one woman, Karen, self-described “gay man trapped in a woman’s body.”
Liz. I think I fell in love with her the first time I noticed a signature look of hers. She gave this look when someone was talking to her and spewing drivel—saying outrageously stupid things, inane things, crazy theories, offensive remarks, blah, blah, blah. She would cock her head in disbelief, her already-narrowed eyes turning to slits, her eyebrows raised, staring at the oblivious person who was prattling on. The look was almost involuntary and for the benefit of the person behind the person talking, usually me.
Our conversation turned from my bestseller-making strategy to Lent.
“Are you back on Lent?” she asked.
We had been out the night before with colleagues after an author event, and Liz asked me if I wanted my usual martini. After a slight hesitation, I said, “Sure, why not? But I’ll be breaking my Lenten vow to abstain from firewater.”
Her infectious grin had dissolved into a look of panic as she extended her hand like a stop sign. “By all means, don’t break your vow for me.”
“No worries. One night won’t hurt.” For a few years running, I had given up alcohol during the forty days of Lent, but it was getting harder to keep the vow.
“Last night is behind me,” I assured her now. “And I have the headache to prove it. But I’m back on the Lent wagon. It’s always good to give up something you love.”
“Good for you. My aunt Joan couldn’t. She’s been sober for years now and made tons of money as a stockbroker.” Just like Mama Jean, I thought. The money part, not the booze part. “She’s pretty fabulous. A striking, rail-thin woman with a shock of spiky, silver hair and Lucille Ball–blue eyes. Oh, but the stories she told me about her drinking days. She did crazy things, like give away fur coats to strangers.” I didn’t mention the much-lamented Persian lamb. “Aunt Joan always said that with her, there was a giant dial for booze that was either all the way on”—Liz pantomimed turning a dial to the right—“or all the way off.” When Liz turned the dial to off, she cocked her head and made a clicking sound with her tongue. “Sad, really.”
As soon as Lent was over, I turned the dial back on. I had another of those Persian-lamb-coat nights where two drinks after work turned into twelve. Whenever I told Michahaze that I was going to have a “quick drink after work,” I wasn’t lying. I had every intention of only having two—or three—martinis.
I started where I usually did, across the street at Mesa de España. This Spanish restaurant served mediocre paella and had murals on the dining-room walls, red vinyl booths, and a front, L-shaped bar with knotty-pine paneling and a large mirror behind it. The geriatric waiters in red dinner jackets were from the same school as those at the
Gramercy Park Hotel. I had made this place my watering hole and routinely took my staff there. We’d make fun of the sad-sack regulars, many of whom drank alone, staring through their reflections in the bar mirror.
I left Mesa around eight-thirty. Somehow eight-thirty fast-forwarded to three in the morning across town, where I was deep in a wintry mix at a seedy Greenwich Village bar. I was doing coke (which I had paid for) with four young guys. When I returned from the bathroom, they were gone and so was my wallet.
I raced after them. They were a block away. I screamed and pleaded with them to take the cash but leave me my wallet so I didn’t have to cancel my credit cards and get a new driver’s license. Again. This sort of thing was happening so often that on some evenings I acted as a sober minder of my inevitable drunk self by stuffing twenty dollars of security money in my shoe and removing all but the necessary credit cards from my wallet. This was not one of those evenings.
The boys laughed at my plea and ran away. I stumbled to a pay phone and called the credit-card companies to cancel the cards. I’d become expert at this. Sometimes I’d call the credit-card companies the next morning only to be told that “someone” had already canceled them the night before. Oops.
The bars had just closed and the streets were crawling with lonesome men who had scattered like cockroaches when the lights came on. Here’s the insane part: I had a sniff or two of coke in my pocket and five dollars, just enough to pick up someone, have some fun, and get home. The night isn’t lost! I staggered along the streets searching for a playmate like a diviner who, instead of locating water, can find the debauched and willing. It didn’t take long. We passed each other on the street and spoke. I don’t remember what we said, but “Hey you” was the gist of it. He was cute. I think. I had the coke. He knew of a party. We hopped into a cab. I spent my last five dollars on that cab ride. We got to the party and bypassed the bawdy revelry in the filthy living room and went straight to the bathroom. He started to undress. I pulled out the dime bag of coke. Almost nothing was left.
His look of maniacal anticipation morphed into merely maniacal. “That’s it?! That’s it?! Man, you lied to me!” Lied to him? We had jumped into a cab one minute after meeting each other. This relationship is based on lust, not trust.
I was scared, but I tried to calm him by grabbing at his crotch to remind him of the other reason we were in the bathroom. Too late. His pants were already going back up. “We can still have some fun, right?” I said weakly—no—pathetically.
“Fun?! Man, I’m straight!” Great. I have picked up a genuine coke whore. “Get out!”
I did.
Back on the street, dawn was breaking. The birds were chirping against an anemic morning sky—an in-between blue as if it were backlit by a fluorescent tube. Nothing is worse than a Disney sound track of birds tweeting to remind you that another day is starting and you haven’t gotten over the wreck you’ve made of the last one. You can’t hold back the dawn.
I wandered the streets for a while, not wanting to arrive home and face Michahaze before he left for work. Finally, around seven A.M., merely twelve hours since my night began, I decided to head home on the subway. I had no money, so I jumped the subway turnstile, feeling like trash—or as Mama Jean would say, “Not even trash. Garbage!”
As soon as I got to the empty apartment, I made myself a screwdriver. I stared into the drink and started to cry. I thought of the only sober person I knew, or, rather, the only person who was like me and now sober: my former boss Jack. I picked up the phone and called him at his office. I blubbered and blabbered into the phone. “Jack, I can’t do this anymore.”
“Jamela, you don’t have to.” He left work and came to my apartment. He sat with me as I drank my second screwdriver and smoked.
I looked at the drink. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, precious angel. You need it.” I told him how bad it had gotten—the constant all-nighters, Father John and the clap (well, his, not mine), getting rolled repeatedly. Perched on the edge of the sofa, he drew deeply on his Benson & Hedges cigarette, and when I got to the part about the coke whore telling me he was straight, Jack exhaled a dragon’s puff of smoke and laughed hysterically as he fanned the smoke away. “I’m sorry, darling.” He put his hand on my shoulder and rubbed my back. He stopped laughing and curled his lips over his teeth. “But you have to admit it’s funny. We have to laugh at this stuff, ya know.”
“I know.” I simultaneously laughed and groaned with my head in my hands.
“Can you not drink tomorrow, honey?” he asked. “Today is a wash.”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. Where did that come from?
I didn’t drink. And I didn’t drink the next day, when Jack took me to my first sober meeting. I loved it. Well, I was freaked out by everyone standing in a circle and holding hands for a closing prayer. When that happened, I looked at Jack with eyebrows raised. He whispered, “I know, honey, but you get used to it.”
I loved the stories I heard other sober drunks share, many of which were worse than mine—getting fired, suicide attempts, detoxes, rehabs, jails, prison. Jesus Christ! Maybe I’m not so bad after all. At the gay meetings every other story seemed to involve debauched tragedy and humiliating loss at the Rawhide. Nothing good ever came out of the Rawhide.
Thirty days went by and I didn’t drink and I came home to Michahaze every night. He told me he still loved me and I told him I loved him. But I didn’t tell him what I was learning at those meetings. I didn’t tell him that the one thing I was supposed to do perfectly was not drink.
I asked Jack if he would be my sober mentor, and through an exhale of smoke and emphatic left-right nods of his head, he said, “Oh, God no! Darling, you need to find someone who’s not a friend. If I were your mentor, we’d both end up back in the gutter.” So I found someone in the fellowship just like Jack to mentor me.
* * *
Like the best little boy that I wanted everyone to think I was, I wanted the world to know I was sober. I started with Mama Jean, of course. I heard other sober people say that their parents reacted in disbelief, couldn’t handle that their children were alcoholics. Mama Jean? Her head came through the phone when I told her. “Well, thank God! Oh, I’m so proud of you.” I didn’t go into any of the gory details, and remarkably, she didn’t ask. But when I was in Beaumont for the usual Thanksgiving visit, she couldn’t contain herself for long. After a day of pushing for more details, then retreating, she finally burst out, “You didn’t end up drunk in Harlem, did you?”
Well, no, but I did pick up a straight coke whore on the street, I almost said. Instead I answered, “Oh, no, of course not. I just decided I’d had enough.”
“Well, okay,” she said, clearly not satisfied. She didn’t push, but she gave me the same look as when I told her how Michahaze and I first met in Central Park.
I also told Liz. She listened patiently with a beatific smile on her face. When I finished, she put her hand over mine, winked, and wished me all of her love and support. I would learn that it’s not a good idea to share news like that unless you’re sure that you’re done with drinking, or rather, that drinking is done with you.
I had about fifty sober days under my belt when Michahaze and I took a vacation in the Caribbean. I’d been told that it isn’t a good idea in early sobriety to take trips, go to parties, hang out in bars, basically do all the things you used to do when you drank. But I didn’t listen. I’d be fine. I could handle it on my own. Two days into the vacation I ordered a beer. I don’t even like beer.
“You know what? We’re on vacation. I don’t have that many days sober anyway,” I told Michahaze and myself. “I can always get sober after vacation.” What’s one day off from Lent?
Michahaze looked skeptically at me with his head cocked and his lips pursed. After a silence he said, “Are you sure about that?”
When we returned, I went right back to meetings and started a new day count, but it was hard not to drink. And I coul
dn’t let go of my persona as a drinker. I felt that it was the one thing I did exceptionally well. People were used to seeing me with a martini in one hand and a cigarette in the other. It made them happy. It made me happy. Of course, they rarely saw how the rest of the evenings played out.
I’d read that if you’re going to be in boozy situations (such as a work function), to bookend the booze event with a sober meeting before and after. I inverted this advice. I drank before and after the meetings. At least I am still going to meetings.
I did one of those bookends at a pre–sales conference party. I drank at home, went to a meeting, and drank at the party that night. I had a ball. The next morning I was still giddy from the night before, so I decided to keep the buzz going. I had a pop with my morning juice before heading to the sales conference, at which I was presenting on the dais. I wasn’t prepared, but I wasn’t worried. I was always quick on my feet and superb at winging it. I started with a “Titties up, girls!”—a line stolen from Jack—and threw in some off-color jokes. I didn’t hear a lot of audience response over my own laughter. Still, I thought I had aced it.
After the conference I left with Liz. We stood on a corner in the black and brisk winter night under a streetlight whose harsh rays shone down like a policeman’s flashlight. As I told her that I was off to one of my sober meetings, I could swear she was giving me that signature look of hers: head cocked in disbelief, eyes narrowed, eyebrows raised. “Really?”
“Yes.” I really was. Maybe I didn’t ace the presentation.
On the way to the meeting I had a quick pop. The love I had for the strangers in those meetings had begun to sour. Through the fog of booze I saw them as whiners who used the meetings to find friends and talk about their problems. I had plenty of friends. I knew what my problems were. Besides, I wasn’t as bad as they were. I was functioning. So I zigzagged on that path—dial on/dial off—but kept going to meetings.
Dangerous When Wet: A Memoir Page 14