My Fair Junkie

by Amy Dresner

  It’s very clear that I’m way too fucked up for him. And I tell him that.

  “I’m not worried,” he messages back.

  Well, I am. At this point, I don’t trust men or love or any of that stuff.

  “Would you go on a date with me? I’m coming to L.A. soon.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I say coolly. “Have you actually read my stuff?”

  “Yeah, I love it.”

  “It’s not fictional, you know. I did all that shit. Like, all of it.”

  “I get it, Amy.”

  “So why are you pursuing this?”

  “At the risk of sounding cheesy, I’m going to use a line from Avatar…”

  “Go for it. I never saw the movie.”

  “‘I see you.’”

  Fuck this guy. I know how this is going to end, and I’m not up for it.

  Ivy-actor-comedian boy is very persistent. Turns out he got a degree in aerospace engineering, which means he’s simultaneously a rocket scientist and a disappointment to his parents. He was also a yoga teacher who studied tantra and all kinds of esoteric shit. Hey, at least he’s not a boring fuckboy. I cave and message him my number.

  He texts me right away. Within hours, I’m blasting him with naked selfies—because I’m an idiot. I have an arsenal from my two years as a Tinderella. I might be a criminal ex-junkie living in a halfway house in my forties, but I’ve got abs that rival those of a twenty-year-old Olympic track star with a crack habit. Gotta lead with your strong suit.

  “Did u just take this?” he texts.

  “Yes, weirdo,” I lie.

  “How do I know that this isn’t from a bank of nudies u have on ur cell?”

  “What do you want me to do? Hold up today’s newspaper like some kidnap victim?”

  “Write my name.”

  “Yeah, I’m not doing that.”

  Amazingly, the next day I find myself scrawling his name in eyeliner on my stomach. Jesus, this is a lot of work just to snare a ginger.

  After a week into our texting, he confesses that he’s “terrified of relationships and marriage.” Umm, calm down. We haven’t even spoken on the phone yet, dude. And truth be told, though I respect his honesty, I really can’t handle another emotionally unavailable asshole.

  Late one Saturday night, he lands in Los Angeles and actually calls me like a gentleman.

  “Come down to my hotel by LAX.”

  Well, maybe not that much of a gentleman.

  “It’s one thirty in the morning,” I tell him.

  “We’ll just hang out in bathrobes, order room service, and talk like adults.”

  “Yeah, right. Look, I like you. I don’t want to fuck you right away. I always do that, and it never works out. Plus, it’s way past curfew.”

  “I like you, too. That’s why we need to see if we have chemistry. Because if we have physical chemistry, we are in trouble. But if we don’t, we can be friends, you know? And I’m not going to think less of you if you fuck me the first night.”

  “All guys say that.”

  I do not go down there that night, but I agree to meet and pick him up the next day, outside some weird Esalen-type self-help seminar he’s doing in Culver City.

  I pull up to the front of the building, and he waves me over. He throws his camouflage backpack into the backseat and jumps in the front passenger seat.

  “Hey!” he says.

  “This is so weird!” is all I can manage.

  “Why?” He smiles.

  He is gorgeous. He’s so charismatic that he fucking glows. His smile is blinding.

  My Vicks vapor stick is in the car console. Thanks to years of snorting anything that can fit into a nostril, I’m continually congested. I’m addicted to Afrin and anything that will let me breathe freely, if just for a moment. Bradley nonchalantly grabs my Vicks stick and sticks it up his nose and inhales. There’s a boorishness and a level of presumption to this that I find oddly endearing.

  We land at his L.A. crash pad, a place he stays when his good friend and fellow bicoastal actor is not in town. We sit on the couch, watching a movie and chatting about life. After my Xander fiasco, I try to hold back so I don’t come off as “rapey” or aggressive. But, as with any new behavior I try, I tend to swing too much the other way. I look down and notice I’m still wearing my winter jacket—a vintage seventies leather bomber with a fur-trimmed hood. It is zipped completely up to the top and my arms are crossed tightly over my chest. Wow. I must be petrified.

  It isn’t just my past romantic disasters that make me scared. Whenever you meet somebody for the first time, it’s always nerve-wracking. I mean, does he think I’m hot in person? Everybody puts their most flattering photos on Facebook. Do I look like my photos? He’s sitting to my right, getting a profile view. I gotta be honest, my profile is pretty Jewy. Maybe he thinks I look too much like an ex-junkie. Maybe he thinks he’s too good for me. Maybe he thinks—

  Suddenly, Bradley’s mouth comes crashing down on mine. The chemistry between us is heady. As soon as his tongue goes into my mouth, I can almost feel my eyes roll back into my head. All of my mental chatter stops. I forget my pledge not to fuck him and, next thing you know, we are lying naked in his bed, freshly fucked. Oops.

  “You’re so funny,” he says, running his finger down the bridge of my nose and touching my lips. “You’re like part porn star and part little girl, with Elaine Stritch’s voice and perfect Christmas Barbie hair stapled to your head.”

  “Who’s Elaine Stritch?” I ask, at the cost of sounding uncultured.

  “Oh, my God—only one of the most famous Broadway actresses of all time…”

  We stay up till four in the morning talking about everything: past relationships, personal growth, spirituality, addiction, stand-up. Before we finally fall asleep, I warn him that I snore.

  “It’s really bad,” I say. “Like if a chainsaw and a rhino had a colicky baby.”

  “I like white noise,” he assures me. He cradles me in his arms and holds me all night.

  I immediately feel like this is my person. I know that sounds stupid and trite and maybe like I’m just grasping for yet another guy, but he is the whole package: smart, funny, handsome, deep, a good fuck, likes Jews. I’ve been waiting for you, I want to whisper. But then I remember what he said: “I’m terrified of relationships and marriage.” Yeah, let’s not get too excited here. Lady Luck hasn’t been too keen on us lately. And if Tinder taught me anything, it’s that it’s easy to get laid and hard to find love. Sex is just sex. It doesn’t mean they love you, even if they spoon you after.

  Don’t get me wrong, I love those stories of people who are like, “we met and we just knew, and we’ve been together every day since.” It’s just never been my experience. My experience is that people are confused and terrified, and even if they want to be with you, they still have to cross their own vast field of land mines around trust and intimacy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Bradley is in L.A. for the next week, staying at his crash pad, doing stand-up, going to auditions. He calls me every single day, and we have two more fantastic sleepovers. I even spend the last night with him, agreeing, like a sucker, to drive him to the airport the next morning.

  “My friend, who I share this place with, is super anal. I can’t leave any trash,” he says.

  So we go through the apartment, dumping wastebaskets, sweeping off counters, filling up a giant black Hefty bag of trash which, of course, ends up in the trunk of my car.

  At the airport, I get a tight hug and quick peck on the lips. I try not to overanalyze it.

  Once he’s on the plane, I get a text: “You’re a true gift in my life.”

  I drove you to the airport and I have your trash in my trunk. You bet your sweet ass, I’m a fucking gift, I think.

  But I decide not to be an asshole and just text back, “Awww, thanks. You’re sweet. Xoxo.”

  A couple days go by and nothing. Once Bradley is back in Manhattan, it’s a little
out of sight, out of mind. Maybe he has a girlfriend there. Maybe he has a boyfriend there. Wouldn’t be the first time…

  I finally text, “Hey, what’s up?”

  A day or so later I get back a “Hiiiiiii.”

  I can’t help but answer: “Takes you 2 days to come up with that clever response?”

  He texts back, “Here we go…”

  There are a few more of these super-delayed text responses, and I finally just think, No. I’m not putting myself through this again.

  I decide to drop the hammer via SMS: “This is not what I’m looking for. You’re great but I think we want different things. Be well.”

  This prompts a flurry of phone calls from him, telling me about how “real” our connection is, but how he doesn’t want to have a long-distance relationship, because they don’t work, blah, blah, blah.

  “I don’t want a girlfriend right now. I’m focusing on my career,” he says over the phone.

  “Because it’s impossible to have both. I get ya…”

  “Very funny. Okay, here’s the truth: I don’t want to have to take responsibility for another person, and that’s what a relationship is.”

  “Wow… that’s romantic.”

  “It’s just where I’m at.”

  “I get it. And I think that’s lame and infantile, and that’s where I’m at.”

  I stop calling him, and I delete his number. I don’t quite have the balls to block his number, but I’m tempted to. He keeps calling me from New York, about once a week. I tell myself not to pick up when I see the 917 area code, but I always do. I don’t say much. I’m pretty shut down because I don’t think this thing has legs anymore. He chatters away, always sounding like he’s a little out of breath—stressed, rushing around crowded Manhattan to auditions or gigs. I, on the other hand, am in L.A., stuck in a small shared room in sober living, leading a life that feels slow and uneventful.

  This bullshit goes on for months. When he is in town, I’ll get an “I’m here!” text. I want to blow him off, but he’s charming and I do like him. But when he leaves, it’s like he puts me in a little box on some shelf in the back of his head, compartmentalizing our time together and going on with his life in New York. He’s like a dog. Wherever he is, that’s where he is. Not in the future, not in the past. Just totally in the present.

  Most of my friends tell me to dump him: Don’t waste your time. You deserve better. Fuck that guy. Two people tell me to carry on. Only two. One is Elizabeth, who’s convinced that Bradley and I are going to end up living together. She tries to school me in some weird manipulative withholding thing she does.

  “You give, and then you pull back suddenly. Then you give again. Be really sweet and then pull back again and ignore them. It makes them obsessed!” she says gleefully.

  “That’s called intermittent reinforcement: give, withdraw, repeat. It’s actually how and why people get addicted to gambling.”

  “You’re so smart. I wish I was smart like you.” She sighs.

  The other person who tells me to hang in is transgender comic Ian Harvie, whom I used to tour with back when I did stand-up. He just looks at me and says, “Love is messy. Let it be messy.”

  As an addict, I’m not good at being patient or tolerating ambiguity. Bradley is making me do both. This is rough for me. I want what I want now. And I need to know what’s going to happen. I don’t like not knowing. It gives me anxiety. It opens a space in my head of “what if?” which is filled with extremes—only ridiculous fame, love, and fortune or homelessness, heartbreak, and tragic death. There’s never anything in the middle, and that middle, that in-between part, is where normal life happens.

  Because of this orientation, it is a real struggle for me to do nothing. I get that doing nothing is an action in itself. However, as an addict, my instinct is to always do something, even if it’s to sabotage, because then at least, I know how it will end. Badly might not be ideal, but at least it’s definite.

  I’ve gotten pretty good at holding off on my impulses, but one day, on the phone, I blurt it out: “I love you, and I have for a while.” An awkward beat follows.

  “Love is gay,” he says, his attempt at a little comic relief.

  “Not exactly the response I was hoping for,” I say.

  “Look, I’ve said ‘I love you’ to way too many people who have completely vanished from my life,” he tells me. “Romance is just something that Hallmark and Hollywood created so they can push product.”

  “I’m not talking about romance. I’m talking about love. Like what your parents have. How long have they been married?”

  “Fifty years.”

  “That’s fucking love. Love is commitment. Love is doing it when it’s hard, not just when it’s easy.”

  “Then why are you divorced?”

  Ouch.

  “It wasn’t a good match. It wasn’t right. And I wasn’t ready.”

  “And… you tried to stab him.”

  “Oh, my God! I didn’t try to stab him, I just…waved a knife—”

  “I know, I know… calm down, Benihana!”

  I laugh with my signature snort. He’s derailed the conversation with his humor. And then he drops an emotional grenade.

  “I think my parents are resigning themselves to the fact that I might very well die alone,” he says.

  I don’t answer.

  “Hellooooo?” he asks.

  “I heard you. You know… there is nothing cool or badass about never having been married or engaged or about being anti-relationship. It just makes you seem… like a frightened, pathetic little boy.”

  It is his turn to not answer. Eventually, he does.

  “You’re probably right.”

  A week later I’m complaining to my Vietnamese manicurist, David. He, as usual, has a mouthful of relationship advice for me.

  “You whole package, but you not man. Let man be man.”

  “David, what does that even mean? And don’t make my nails so pointy. You’re making me look like Nosferatu.”

  “See! You bossy bitch.”

  “Oh, my God…”

  Suddenly my phone dings as a text message comes in.

  “That him. I tell you.”

  I eagerly look at my phone. But it’s not Bradley, it’s my ex-husband asking if it’s true that I recently got kicked out of the Rainbow meeting for being loaded.

  I make the mistake of responding. “No. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m the secretary of that meeting on Thursdays.”

  And now it’s off to the races. Among Clay’s gems are things like:

  “Do your thing for the time you have left.” “I’m just glad I survived you.” “You’re still an embarrassment to me.” And my favorite, “I’d just assume you die.” He also makes a point of telling me that he’s remarried and how “awesome” it is.

  This time, I try to explain how much guilt and shame I have around my behavior toward him and how much I’ve changed.

  “How are you different? That’s a joke. You are more fucked up than ever from what I hear.”

  Jesus, he’s still so fucking angry. My shaking hands belie the calm formality of my next text. “I’d like the opportunity to make amends to you.”

  “It’s been over three years. You’re not capable so I won’t waste my time.”

  Okay then.

  I see another ominous gray bubble on my screen meaning he’s in the process of typing more. He obviously still hates me, and I can’t change that. How do you prove to somebody that you’ve changed or that you’re sorry when they’re unwilling to hear it? You can’t, and—moreover—you don’t have to. I know I’m sorry and I know I’ve changed. That’s all that matters. I block him. And like magic, the bubbles disappear.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  It’s my last day of community service. I’ve been waiting for this day—my “graduation,” as it were—but now that it’s here, I almost feel sad. I’m put on the Vermont sweeping route. I take two Tylenol before m
y shift. It’s been six months of this shit. I know the drill.

  “You so happy, flaca,” Esteban, my favorite crew boss, says. “It’s your last day.”

  “I can’t believe it. I’ll miss all you bozos. Maybe I’ll get arrested again so I can come back.”

  “No, no… you come visit anytime, guera.”

  I’m sweeping this one block on Vermont and Normal—which, yes, is actually the name of a street in L.A.—and suddenly, I’m surrounded by three homeless dudes, all singing and dancing around me at once. It’s so bizarre and so magical that I just drop my broom and crumple onto the sidewalk, laughing. They smile toothlessly back at me, pants stained and drooping, hair knotted, faces dirty.

  Our crew finishes early, and we’re allowed to go into the Rite-Aid to get a drink or a snack or just hang out in the air-conditioning for a bit. Two fellow chain gang members and I slump down on the patio furniture display. A vagrant with an eye patch walks by and laughs at us. With a fucking eye patch. That’s when you know you are at the bottom of the food chain. Even homeless pirates think you’re a joke.

  I get my paper signed for the last time. I feel like I might cry. Yes. I fucking did it. I started something that felt horrible and undoable and I finished it. I did all 240 grueling hours. It took me more than six long months. I’m proud of myself. It’s easy to do things that are easy. And that’s what I’ve been doing my whole life. But this was exhausting and humiliating and awful—and I did it. Every goddamn second of it.

  I realize that I’m not ashamed that I did community labor. In fact, I’m grateful.

  I take my completed signed form from community labor and trudge back to the volunteer center.

  “I finished!” I beam.

  The woman with severe painted-on eyebrows is unimpressed.

  She copies my paper, enters something into the computer, and prints me out some official form.