“Do you care if your father and I don’t come into the city on that Friday night?” my mom had asked a few weeks earlier. “The dinner is really for you and your friends, and I’m going to have a house full of people.”
“That’s fine, I guess,” I said. But I wondered, wouldn’t people think it odd that my parents had skipped my rehearsal dinner? Maybe even odder was that I was more concerned about public opinion than the glaring fact that my parents wanted to skip my rehearsal dinner.
Alan was clearer. “I’m really disappointed,” he said. I was worried that he’d taken it personally. But not worried enough to do anything about it.
The day of the wedding was stifling, the hottest of the year with sweltering humidity. I wore a cream colored Badgley Mischka gown with a skin-tight bodice and flouncy raw silk skirt that I’d found at the Saks sample sale. I spent the afternoon getting ready with my bridesmaids in an upstairs room at the club, having our hair and makeup done while we threw back bottles of champagne and ate chocolate-covered strawberries.
My dad proudly walked me down the aisle and both a priest and a rabbi married us as two hundred friends and family members watched and fanned themselves, thanks to a failed air conditioning system at the club. I nearly fainted under the chuppah, but I blamed it on the heat, not fear or the full bottle of champagne I had already consumed by myself.
Within minutes of wading into the crowd during the cocktail hour, Alan and I separated. Our reception area comprised several of the club’s rooms, and he and I spent most of the cocktail hour apart. The party was a swarming ant farm of energy and activity, and we connected with our guests independently.
Through the evening, I drank only champagne and was grateful that I had gotten a good amount into me before the ceremony. It was hard to get a drink, especially when everyone wanted to talk to me, and I could feel my buzz starting to die. My stomach was too tight to grab any of the shrimp, mini quesadillas, pigs in a blanket, or other standard wedding appetizers that the formally attired waitstaff offered around.
“Here, you have to eat something,” Devon said, shoving a plate of mixed pasta toward me. Her blonde hair was swept up and she wore smoky eye makeup and bright pink lipstick. Bent on avoiding every possible tradition trap, I had I let my bridesmaids wear any black dress they wanted.
“No thanks, sweetie. I’m good for food,” I said. “But who do you have to fuck to get a drink around here?”
Devon laughed and said, “I can’t believe you’re married!”
“Me neither,” I said. Oh my God. Married. It certainly didn’t feel different. But why didn’t it feel more blissful? Would that happen after the wedding? Would marriage make me normal?
Through the crowd I could see Jerry and David rushing frantically toward me. “Hurry up!” David blurted. “The band called you for the first dance!”
“Seriously? The cocktail hour is over? Can somebody get me some champagne, please?”
“Yes, but let’s go!” They tried to cut a path through the crowd, but people kept stopping us to grab a minute with the bride. When we finally made it to the parquet dance floor, I gasped, “Where’s Alan?” as my head darted around like a neurotic bird.
They both shrugged. “He’s your husband,” Jerry said.
“What should I do?” I begged David as the eight-piece band began to play “our” song. Perspiration broke out on my back and chest under the gaze of dozens of guests who stood in a half circle, murmuring and bobbing up and down as they craned their necks to look for the groom. The air conditioning had been fixed by then, but that didn’t keep me from sweating.
“Let’s dance!” David gallantly held out his arm like an awkward prom date trying to hide his discomfort behind theatrics. I grabbed the hand he raised high in the air and rested my other hand on his shoulder, and we started slow dancing. I tried not to meet anyone’s eye, imagining my mother trying to fake a smile as she watched this unfold.
Midway into the second verse, Alan came crashing through the crowd as if he were trying to make it through the doors of the A train before they slammed shut.
“I’ll take it from here,” he said, as he cut in on David and flashed a broad smile. David dipped forward in a dramatic bow and scurried off.
“Sorry, dear,” Alan said into my hair. “The guys had me at the bar. I’m really sorry.”
“It’s OK, it’s all right,” I said, nodding to people with exaggerated smiles as we circled the floor. I caught my mother’s eye and couldn’t tell if the tight look on her face was sadness or worry.
“How are you doing, honey? Are you OK?” my mom asked three months later as we did the New York Times crossword puzzle together over the phone. “We miss you so much.”
Alan was out for a long Saturday run with one of his buddies. Because he didn’t drink the way I did, he was still able to train for marathons and stay in great shape. I, on the other hand, had all but stopped exercising for the first time since college. But I hadn’t stopped drinking. I’d gained seven pounds since the wedding.
“Yeah, I’m good,” I answered. The wine swirled around in my oversized glass as I fought back tears.
By the end of summer I had deemed noon on Saturday the official start time of the weekend cocktail hour. This didn’t make me feel guilty at all, especially if I’d had a particularly productive morning of shopping, laundry, and miscellaneous errands. Once the car was officially settled back in the driveway, it was safe to start opening bottles.
My chronic unhappiness had gotten worse since the wedding, but I was determined to fight through it and make this thing work. Although I knew it wasn’t helping, I couldn’t put the bottle down. Alcoholism was the monster I had planned to leave in New York, but it had followed me to Pittsburgh where it cast a long shadow across my shiny new life.
How easy it is to keep drinking to excess despite living under the same roof with a normal person. Even though Alan and I had gotten drunk together many times, it was almost always at my instigation. And as was the practice with most normal people, as he had gotten older he drank less. I had hoped that our life together would show me what that felt like, but instead I just found places to hide the bottles.
At my wedding shower, someone had given me cookbooks, and I’d managed to learn to prepare three dishes: bowtie pasta with shrimp, filet mignon with walnut oil dressing, and linguini with chicken and peppers. One night after work as I stood in the small, charming kitchen of our small, charming house, I was making the linguini dish and drinking wine.
“Do you want a glass of wine?” I called out to Alan.
“Sure,” he said from the den where he was watching the evening news in front of a roaring fire and flipping through the New York Times.
I was already a couple of drinks ahead of him. I’d learned quickly that making dinner offered the perfect way to knock back wine unobserved. And there was a great hiding place for extra bottles behind the cleaning products in the panty. Alan never cleaned.
While the pasta cooked, I carried a platter of cheese and crackers into the living room, lit candles, and admired the perfect scene. Cocktail hour with my husband, just as my parents had done it. Then I went back into the kitchen and slugged down another enormous glass of wine while I put dinner together.
“Mmm, this is great, thank you,” he said, as we dug into dinner in front of the television. Against all trendy advice about How to Bond, How to Live the Old-Fashioned Way, How to Make the Most of Your Marriage, and How to Create Intimacy, we usually dined seated on the couch and facing the screen. I curled up next to him with my bowl of pasta on my lap. Alan rubbed my shoulder and kissed my head. My work was done and my buzz was fully formed. Be happy, I thought. Look at how lucky you are. Think about how many women would happily cut the brakes in your car to have this guy, this house, this life. Ungrateful bitch.
As we watched a repeat of Law & Order, I kept losing the storyline. My head was bobbing, and when my eyes closed the room began to spin. I was dangerously close to slurr
ing, so I stood up and said, “I’m wiped out. I’m going to do the dishes and then go read in bed.”
“OK, I’ll be up a little later,” said Alan, kissing me sweetly. I carried the bowls into the kitchen and filled my glass with cabernet before I started the dishes.
Alan was a night owl and I usually passed out early, so most nights ended with our finding the way to bed separately. In the mornings, Alan usually sprang from bed with energy that trumpeted, “Behold! Another day is upon us! A glorious chance to do glorious things!” For me, morning usually meant nausea, headaches, lightheadedness, and waiting until Alan left for work before I soaked a pillow with tears. On the morning after the linguini dish, the tears wouldn’t wait.
“Babe, what is it?” he asked me. Showered, dressed, and ready to leave for work, he sat on the side of the bed. I curled around him in a fetal position and cried and cried and cried. He stroked my hair and pleaded, “Has something happened?”
“I don’t know,” I gasped the words through my sobs. “I’m just so miserable all the time. I don’t know why. I’m just so sad.”
“Tell me how I can help. Whatever you need,” he said, which made me cry harder.
The words were right there—I can’t stop drinking. They were simple and clear and would have offered a bright red signpost to the road out. But I wouldn’t say them. If I said them, people would try to get me to stop drinking. I was drinking every day and increasing my intake with every passing week. I knew that this pace meant that I was probably going to lose my job. It meant that I would probably devastate my family. It meant that I’d probably die young. But to let anyone try to take away my alcohol? Nothing was more terrifying.
Alan and I agreed that I would start seeing a psychologist for my depression. Stacey wasn’t much older than I, and she seemed to want to overshadow her youth with seriousness. On Thursday evenings in her waiting room, I’d watch the little rock formation water fountain and try to relax. But the minute I walked into her office, warm tears would begin streaming down my cheeks. Embarrassed by the depth of my grief, I would put my hand to my face and sob as quietly as I could, but there appeared to be no bottom to the reservoir. Stacey would wait silently as I wept. Soon she prescribed an antidepressant, and I took it religiously.
When I didn’t feel any better after a couple of months, she asked me, “How much do you drink?” Shit. I knew that alcohol and antidepressants were a bad combination.
I feigned surprise. “Not much,” I lied. She must have asked me this when I first saw her and I must have lied then, just as I did when asked the same question by any medical professional. “A glass or two of wine a night,” I lied again.
She saw through me and I knew it. Hadn’t I hidden my shaking hands? Could she read my thoughts? Did she know that in every session I conducted a silent countdown until the moment I could get home and drink?
“Mmm. I don’t think the wine is helping you. Do you think you could cut it back to maybe a glass or two a week?”
“Sure, yeah.” Absurd.
“You know, if you can’t there’s help for that. Twelve-step groups and others.” She waited until she realized that I wasn’t going to respond and then said, “Just give it a little thought.” Uh-huh. That’s exactly how much thought I’ll give it.
I vowed never to utter a remotely honest word to her or anyone else about my drinking.
Barely a year after our wedding, I chose to end my marriage in the parking lot of a mall. Alan and I were walking to our car after another miserable lunch during which I cried into multiple glasses of chardonnay and moaned about my chronic unhappiness. “I can’t do this anymore,” I finally blurted. “I’m going back to New York.”
“You’re giving up?” Alan said. “I know you’re having a hard time, but we’ll change whatever we need to. We’re a team and I want to help you.”
My heart was breaking. He was genuinely good and I was genuinely awful. And he had no idea how utterly desperate I was for another drink.
I moved back to New York a few days after September 11, 2001, right in the middle of the chaos, horror, and grief. People all over the city clung to the people they loved, and I was grateful to be once again surrounded by my closest friends.
In Russell and Jessica’s apartment, Jerry and David told me their stories. Jerry had been in his office just a few blocks from the Towers. “It was a fucking horror show. Everyone just hauled ass out when the second plane hit and got as far away as they could. I was covered in the dust and shit. Some dude and I just kept walking uptown—then the Towers came down. People were screaming and crying. Some of them were running toward the buildings. They must have had people they knew in there.” Devon had sprinted out of her downtown office as well. Russell had been on a business trip in London and David had been in Midtown.
The city was enveloped in fear. There was fear of anthrax, fear of war, and fear that something else unexpected and devastating was coming just around the corner. Almost everyone I knew had a connection to someone who had died. A cousin’s husband, a former colleague, a friend from high school—it seemed that no one was unscathed. We lost two friends from Fire Island, Luke and Martin. Luke was at Cantor Fitzgerald, and Martin just happened to be at Windows on the World for a breakfast that day. I read that a group at Windows had gotten onto the roof and were calling loved ones, waiting for help. I pictured Martin in that crowd, calling his wife and two young kids. Every time I thought of it my stomach surged. When I read that some people at Cantor had died instantly with the first plane’s impact, I hoped that Luke was among them.
Everyone we knew was drinking harder, as if the end was near. The bars were overflowing with people talking and talking about that day and the fallout. Many people couldn’t work in their offices, so it was easier than ever to drink around the clock. Suddenly my drinking didn’t look so shocking.
Despite the circumstances, I luckily found a job in legal marketing at another big firm in New York. I had subleased my apartment when I moved to Pittsburgh because Alan and I had heard rumors that it was going to go co-op. If that happened, we wanted to buy the apartment and flip it for a profit. But it didn’t happen, so when the subtenant’s lease expired I moved back in.
Walking back into my apartment, I felt a renewed sense of doom. It was as if all my alcoholic ghosts had remained, lurking in the eaves. And oh how happy they were to see me home again. “Welcome back, my lady. May I pour?”
The first call I made was to Stuyvesant Square Liquors on Second Avenue. All they needed was updated credit card information, and soon a case of double bottles of cheap Yellow Tail cabernet would appear at my door. Finishing the transaction sent a warm sense of comfort through my body. Then, as we were about to hang up, the clerk said, “Good to have you back.” I thought I might barf.
9
Just yards from my apartment, there was a great bar with hamburgers as thick as drugstore paperbacks. Kenny’s Place was dark and cool inside, with a deep brown wood bar and red-and-white checkered tablecloths. It was a favorite hang for my friends and me, thanks to the bartenders who knew our names and more than forty Rolling Stones songs in the jukebox. Before long, I found myself at Kenny’s every night, even if I went alone. The most consistent regulars were the retired schoolteachers and firefighters who lived in the nearby Stuyvesant Town apartment complex.
In the later hours, Kenny’s attracted a seedy crowd. I struck up friendships with these dusky people—the kinds of friendships that left out basic facts like professions, last names, and just about everything we did beyond the pub walls. The most significant relationship that came out of that bar was the one I formed with cocaine.
The first time I tried cocaine, I was fifteen years old. It was at a high school party in a friend’s basement, and one of the guys had pilfered some coke from his older brother. People kept going in and out of a small bathroom where there were lines laid out on a mirror. It felt cool to be open to trying drugs, to hold a cut-off straw in my hand, to sniff and then squeeze
my nose as I’d seen people do in movies. That first hit was like fireworks going off in my brain, fireworks that wrote across my face, “I’M FUCKING HAPPY!” But it made me shaky and the buzz wore off quickly.
In the years that followed, coke was often slinking around the periphery of parties; it was there, but people never waved it around like tequila shots. I didn’t crave it or even ask around for it, but I never minded bumping into it. Cocaine was like a fling from my young years: I remembered him fondly, didn’t mind seeing him at parties, maybe even helped set him up with a new chick. But he couldn’t turn my head because my boyfriend was booze. Then came the nights at Kenny’s, where my fling and I were reunited. And this time we clicked. This time it was love.
One night, one of my first-name-only bar buddies pulled out a small glass vial with a tiny spoon attached to the cap and slipped it into my hand under the bar. I thanked him and headed into the bathroom where a teeny spoonful in each nostril felt so magnificent, the moment could have been punctuated by its own Led Zeppelin intro.
Being scorched by the pressure of my competitive New York law firm, I was ripe for the return of cocaine. Coke made everything flash brighter, faster, clearer. I could work with intense focus for hours. I could work through a night and into the sunrise without yawning, and I’d churn out the work of three unaltered people. And the best part of all: coke made it easy to keep drinking.
Coke and alcohol got along beautifully! If I’d drunk so much that I was getting slurry and slushy, coke snapped me up crisp and straight. If too much coke had me wound up and toe tapping, booze would mellow me back down. Each drug helped me hide the other. They were like two illicit lovers who together could fulfill all my needs, and neither one minded sharing me. I knew then how viciously addictive cocaine is, but I didn’t care. I believed I could control it or stop using it at any time. For some reason, I thought it would be different for me than alcohol, which by then I knew I couldn’t control.
Girl Walks Out of a Bar Page 11