When I finally returned to campus for my first day of classes, it was a warm summer evening. I had left my place a little early because I knew how crowded the train out to the campus could be. I stopped at the coffee shop and got myself a chai tea and a snack. I was not going to be caught unprepared this time: All of the food places in the Tenderloin would be closed by the time I would leave class at 10:00 PM. The liquor stores would still be open, their doorways lighting up the blackness, inviting me to come inside. Time and time again I would refuse to give them a second glance.
I finally found my classroom. It was hot, and the windows were open to let in some of the cool sea air. The school was just two miles from the ocean—a world away from the place I called home. I pulled out my notebook—I had bought a few from the school bookstore—and pulled out my special pen, the Dr. Grip. I wrote my name in my notebook: Tracey Helton. I couldn’t help but smile to myself. Here I was, back in the classroom. No one was doing this for me. I was doing this for myself. I was older than the other students. I was also much wiser. A twenty-something pulled into the chair next to me, smelling like the winos I had passed at the train station. He nodded his head to give me a “What’s up,” but I already knew. I had been there. I had been that person. Now, I was just Tracey Helton. I was a student like everyone else. I was not the sum of my past, nor was I broken by it. I had a new self. I was unstoppable.
Chapter 7
FROM MR. RIGHT NOW TO MR. RIGHT
I would never describe myself as a woman who dreams of great romance. I never fantasized about a white knight sweeping me off my feet. Growing up in suburban Ohio, I assumed I could instead ensnare him with my smarts instead of the looks I didn’t think I had. Fortunately for him, I never got the opportunity. My lifetime of insecurities and lack of boundaries would have made for an ugly coupling. He may have started out valiant, but no doubt he would have run away as angry and confused as I was for many years.
Nevertheless, after I became sober a white knight did briefly come into my life. And like the legend, he swept me off my feet.
I was living in my little room when I met him. I had received my six-month key tag to mark my clean time a few months earlier. I wore it clipped to my belt as if to ward off evil spirits. I was still in my gender-neutral fashion phase, still was not settled into the fact that I was free to be a woman again, not a sexless creature who hid her true self to avoid violence. I would wear baggy jeans, a loose man’s shirt, colorful shoes, and rings on every finger. Jewelry is currency because you can always take it off and trade it for a hit. Although I was 100 percent dedicated to my recovery, old habits were tough to break. I still slept with a sweatshirt over my eyes as when I was homeless; I still pressed my clothes by putting them under my mattress to get sharp creases, as I had in jail; and I still wondered about the value of various items in the street economy. When the dentist asked me what kind of crown I wanted for my tooth, I requested gold. I joked with the dentist, “If I ever relapse, I can get a set of pliers and pull it out.” I’m not sure he appreciated the humor. I was well on the road to social acceptability, but I still enjoyed a bit of self-deprecating humor. To add to my improving dental situation, I had finally gotten some contacts, fancy hair products, and a little bit of makeup.
I was feeling unusually self-confident that Thursday night when I walked into the basement of the homeless shelter. I was really trying: branching out, doing different meetings, getting phone numbers from people. The meeting was mostly made up of residents who lived upstairs. The exposed bricks and glass blocks that led directly to the sidewalk up above made the room an icebox. I curled my hands around my coffee for dear life. My sponsor was the secretary every other week. I missed her that night. I was waiting for the meeting to start when the door opened and this glowing creature backlit in a halo of afternoon light walked in. He was wearing white from head to toe, his alabaster tracksuit, leather sneakers, and translucent skin lighting up the dim room.
I continued to cradle my coffee. I knew this man. Parts of me were now starting to get warm.
He took a minute to scan the group and then strode into the room. People parted to let him through, craning their necks to see where he was going. He walked up to me.
“Man, am I glad to see you, Tracey,” he said, embracing me like we were old friends. I suppose we were in a sense. We were veterans of the street. We had survived. Travis had been one of my few crushes. He had seemed like the type of guy you could depend on, even with a drug habit. I had been used to men who would blacken my eye over the last bag of drugs. Travis had never seemed like that. He was funny, handsome, and able to support himself without a life of crime.
Now look at us: We were both clean! And damn, he looked fine, too. My mind was spinning.
I hugged him, convinced the universe had brought us together. God doesn’t make mistakes, we were told in the meetings. He held on a little longer than an obligatory recovery hug would have required. At that moment I knew we were on. We made a plan to watch Monday Night Football in my room. I could not wait to have a real date.
When he came over to my place, I had somehow overlooked that there was nowhere to sit except for my bed. I didn’t have any other furniture in my tiny space, yet I felt so comfortable with him that I was not embarrassed. It didn’t take long before we were catching up on the status of our old friends. They were either still using, in prison, or dead, but instead of it being depressing, we bonded over the fact that against the odds, we had gotten off drugs. He was finishing a yearlong program, reuniting with his son. He was starting his journey as a single parent in recovery. I told him how much I admired his ability to be there for his child when so many children were lost to their parents’ addiction.
When he asked to give me a back rub, it didn’t feel like a ploy to get me in bed. The whole thing felt natural. I felt like we were meant to be, two damaged souls who managed to find love on the other side. It was like an addict’s fairy tale. When he took off my clothes, I did not feel self-conscious about my track marks, which were only slightly healed. My legs, my arms, my thighs, and even the backs of my hands looked like a roadmap to destruction. I couldn’t cover up my past. But with Travis, I didn’t need to. The track marks were battle wounds. His disregard of them only enhanced my feeling that we belonged together.
What proceeded was something akin to the sexual Olympics. Like Prince Charming, he really did sweep me off my feet, as well as bend me and move me all around. I felt such a strong attraction to him that I felt totally uninhibited, so much so that I managed to pull the muscles in my thighs. I could barely navigate the next day, or the next, or the next. I thought about how it would make him laugh when I told him about my strange gait. I waited for him to call. We had this incredible night—now what?
I began obsessing about his silence. Why didn’t he call me? I picked up the phone to make sure it was on the hook. I paged myself to make sure my pager was working. I called his work and hung up the phone. I was so fucking hurt and frustrated. I thought we had this incredible connection. For the next five days, when my legs were still sore, I went to bed after work feeling as I had felt after I started a run on heroin—tired, used, and angry at myself.
After it became clear he wasn’t going to call for a second date, I had to hit the pause button. This “rejection,” which in reality was nothing more than casual sex and instant gratification, was tempting me to use again. I knew I was not ready for any kind of relationship despite my body telling me otherwise.
People who claim opiates enhance their sexual experience have not been using very long. Once you start using regularly, sex becomes like a unicorn. It may exist somewhere, but you are not seeing it. Many men become impotent, and even if they can get an erection, they can’t finish the job. I lived with a man for six months while I was using. We never had sex, not once. We tried with mixed results and I was content not to push the issue. I had no desire. When you have heroin, sex is secondary to the feeling of the drug. Heroin is the sex. Ever
ything else takes a back seat to that feeling.
In the first few days to a month in recovery, guess what comes alive? Some men have an orgasm without even touching themselves. I was chastised in jail for having my hands down my pants when I was supposed to be getting my meal tray in the detox unit. I couldn’t help myself. The feeling can be overwhelming, even painful. So is it any surprise that the first thing a heroin addict in early recovery does is search for sex? Why not? It feels good and has immediate rewards. Thus, with a brain full of guilt and shame and a body full of hormones, we go off looking for pleasure, if not love.
I had no model of what a good relationship looks like. As a teenager I was extremely interested in boys, and catalogued their comings and goings in great detail in journals. I had different symbols for boys who were nice to me, who said hello or even just acknowledged my existence. If someone had been interested in me then, I would have jumped in bed with absolutely no boundaries, which of course was what happened when I got older. I told more than one lover, “I don’t need you to tell me the truth. I just need you to love me.” I would rather be lost in the illusion with someone who barely loved me than be alone. Unfortunately, reality always intruded. Men broke into my life as they did into cars, smashing the window, taking what they could get, and leaving shattered pieces. One man kicked down the door into my life—literally. I had gotten a hotel room, and after two days of dating he kicked in the door when I refused to open it. I had seen all the red flags, yet waved my white one in surrender. I gave up on trying to resist him in a vain attempt to be happy.
I had even dated women a few times. The pattern was the same as with the men. They used me, I used them, or we both used each other. My forms of communication included yelling, crying, and leaving. I never knew how to resolve a conflict. I never learned how to be accountable for my part. In many ways, I was replaying the dynamic I had witnessed in the relationship between my parents. In the early stages, I was just like my mother in relationships. I was overly trusting. I was supportive without question. I would also be unable to express my true emotions out of fear that this person would leave me. In the later days of my active addiction, I resembled my father in any relationship. I was the charismatic hustler who was frequently emotionally unavailable. While he had worked long hours most of my life, I ended up working 24/7 to support a drug habit. The parallels made me sick to my stomach.
My addiction was an extremely poor learning lab for my relationships. Love and sex were two totally separate entities in my world. Sex was about a power differential. Love was a weapon used to hurt me. I was trying to come to terms with what sex would mean in my sober life. The feelings that went along with it flooded me and overloaded my systems.
After my encounter with the white knight, I forced myself to stop to take stock. My life had been an endless cycle of searching for the next thing to make me feel okay. Men were just the next logical fix now that drugs were removed. Getting to know a person and being friends was the piece that had always been missing in my relationships. Just as I had with the man who kicked in the door, I would have sex first and then get to know someone after we were already “in a relationship.” In truth, love was just another drug to me. It was something to get me outside of myself. If I focused on the other person, I did not have to focus on my problems.
Dating, in or out of recovery, is an awkward dance filled with frequent crushing disappointments. The entire exercise is so completely random. There are six billion people out there. Isn’t finding the right one like finding a needle in a haystack? Or in my case, like finding a clean syringe at the trap house? At first, I thought there was no way I could ever date a person who was not in recovery. It seemed impossible that a person who had never gone through some of the things I had could ever connect with me. As I got deeper into the dating process, I saw that dating in the “rooms” of twelve-step could be an exercise in embarrassment. This one slept with that one, that one slept with this one. Then the soap opera was in full display as people sipped their coffee while whispering gossip to their neighbor. I admit, I participated as well. Then I began to hear a crude expression ring over and over in my mind: “Don’t shit where you eat.” During my dating adventures, it got harder and harder to sit in the same recovery rooms with men I was thinking about dating. How could a person be honest about her secrets when she was trying desperately to impress someone across the same room? I began to realize that, to truly change my life, I would need to let go of some old patterns. I would have to be willing to try to step outside my usual pattern of reaching for the closest thing that made me feel better. Eventually, I would have to step out into the unknown.
I decided to set up some guidelines for myself, some criteria. The first: no kissing and no sex until I got to know a person. This rule quickly weeded out men who were just interested in getting in my pants. The first guy I met told me he supported my recovery, but when I set limits he quickly lost interest. The second one had that neediness that drew me right in. It soon became clear he needed a counselor, not a girlfriend. I found it easy to break things off with him since nothing had really started. Was there a lesson there? The next man said he was just interested in spending time with me, no sex. I was almost offended until he disclosed that he thought he was gay, which he had suppressed with a decade of heroin use. I then met a man who gave me an uncomfortable vibe. It wasn’t that there was something wrong with him. I just got the strong feeling he wasn’t right for ME. In the past I would have hung in there just because he was so nice to me. This time, I followed my gut to stay away. It was hard, but I knew I was making the right choice. Another man I avoided put his next girlfriend in the hospital a few months later. I could feel myself changing incrementally. I was learning healthy ways of navigating the world of dating.
A friend of mine told me she wanted me to meet someone. I was open to it, thinking that maybe I’d have better luck if a girlfriend did the pre-screening. Out of millions of potential partners, I had become a deadbeat magnet, attracting men who had no job, no prospects, and often a chip on their shoulder. Because so many dates ended with me at home alone watching crime shows, I had no expectations when I met Christian with a group of friends outside a pizza place in a touristy area of San Francisco.
By this point I had slowly acquired a small, dependable circle of friends both in and out of meetings. I was no longer constantly afraid to go places by myself for fear that I would end up using drugs. I was still cautious, but I was learning that I could actually enjoy my life.
My caution about going out was not completely unfounded. Despite whatever progress I had made, I was still living in the Tenderloin, surrounded by the markers of my former life. To make myself feel safe, I had to have every detail of an evening planned out. How was I getting home? What time? Would these people wait for me to get in? More than one evening, I had come home late and been locked outside while the doorman completed his rounds of the building. Being locked out a few blocks from the open-air drug market at two in the morning was scary even for someone without my background. I was used to the day-to-day interactions, but late night was not a time for me to be on the street. Despite my newfound confidence, deep inside I was terrified that if I went out at night without a solid plan, temptation would kick in and I would wind up using. Over and over again I had seen residents from my building get sucked back into the mix outside. I didn’t want to be one of those people.
Fear had been my constant companion for so long, the company of friends was a joyous event when I eventually did go out. After being invited out by people in recovery a few times, I finally was able to briefly cast my fear aside and accept an invitation. I had met these friends through a mutual interest in seeing local bands. They were a mixture of people who did not drink at all and those who did but never seemed to drink in front of me, putting me at ease. Christian was one of those people. Right away, I knew he was different from most of the men I had met in my life. Tall and blond, he had boyish looks. He broke all my relationship st
ereotypes. For one, he was not tattooed as if he had stepped off the prison yard. He looked unused and untainted by life’s hardships.
I didn’t know many people in our group, and Christian tried to make me feel a part of the conversation. When I talked, he stopped to listen.
Someone told a funny story about some crazy people at her job. I nodded in agreement and someone asked me, “Are they crazy at your work too?”
Without thinking I said, “No kidding, I work with drug addicts like I used to be.” I had accidentally outed myself, something I told myself I wouldn’t do.
Christian saw my face flush. “Awesome,” he said, with such positivity and conviction that it paved over any awkwardness.
And that was that. No stumbling, no questions, no stigma surrounding my past. It was out there and everyone moved on. I wanted more of this, I thought. I don’t remember if Christian shook my hand when we met but I know he gave me a big hug goodbye.
When I was invited to join the same group to go to a club, I jumped at the opportunity because I hoped Christian would be there, and it was in a different part of town but close enough for me to walk home safely, avoiding the hustle and bustle of the drug market. My philosophy was, if something was triggering cravings, I would immediately leave that place. My recovery was more important than anyone’s hurt feelings over my departure. The most critical thing to me was keeping a needle out of my neck.
When I got to the club it was crowded; the venue was hosting a marathon of bands. We could be there for hours. Christian saw me looking around for a place to sit and with a shy smile said, “You can sit here.” He patted his knee.
The Big Fix Page 11