By mid-2003, my phone held the numbers for three drug dealers, and I called them as often as I called my mother. Having drugs delivered to an apartment in New York City is as easy as ordering a pizza or a hooker. Somehow the simplicity of the transaction made it feel less illegal. Of course, I understood that as a legal professional, my new activities meant that I was dabbling in disaster. A drug bust, an arrest—those would bring more than shame, more than a record or even jail time. They would mean the end of my law career. But my life was like that joke about the guy who can’t be persuaded to give up cigarettes. His wife begs, “Why don’t you believe that smoking can kill you?” He says, “Hasn’t killed me yet.”
Each time I bought coke, I hated myself a little more. I knew that I was spewing more poison into an already toxic swamp of dysfunction, but I needed to keep drinking, so I invited coke to find a cozy spot at the edge of the swamp. Not long after rediscovering the happy white powder, I was fully hooked. I no longer worried about the consequences. I just needed the drugs.
Henry was my primary dealer. He was a good-looking half-Greek, half-Cuban kid in his early twenties with wavy black hair, full red lips, and scruffy stubble. A part-time business student and a full-time drug dealer, Henry was a smart kid just stupid enough to convince himself that dealing was a good way to pay for school. He usually showed up at my door with the New York Post in hand, complaining about Mayor Bloomberg’s administration.
“Hey, Lisa, what’s going on?” Henry brushed past me into the apartment one evening when I was working on a client proposal. His visit was critical, as I needed coke to support the all-night drinking I had planned. He instinctively craned his neck all around to make sure I was the only one home, and I stood back to let him perform his routine inspection.
“Not much,” I replied. “You busy today?” It’s the rhetorical question people ask each other in law firm elevators.
“Always busy, always busy,” he mumbled as he made himself comfortable on the couch and unzipped his backpack. He looked like any other student on the street, but instead of asking him about how his classes were going, I cared only about his drugs.
“Want a Heineken?” I asked him as I fished in my giant handbag for my wallet.
“Yeah, sounds good. What do you need today?”
“Can I get an eight ball?” I asked. I handed him a beer and yanked together the large, heavy navy curtains in the living room window. Someone had told me that if you could see the Empire State Building from your apartment, the government could spy on you.
“Sure, sure. No problem,” he said, pulling out seven miniature plastic Baggies that each held about a half gram of cocaine, some of it already crushed into a powder. I put $250 on the coffee table and he counted it.
By the time we finished the transaction, Henry’s cell phone was buzzing with his next call. After he left, I triple-locked the door and rubbed my hands together in excitement.
When I finally closed the laptop at around three o’clock in the morning, I had written a strong proposal and emailed it to the partners. Receiving work product at that hour isn’t unusual in a law firm, so it didn’t raise red flags. Frequently, it garnered points for effort and commitment. I often wondered if the partners would mind at all if they knew that any of us were doing coke. I wondered if any of them were doing it themselves.
There was a new problem, though. Sleep. At this point, I was more likely to get Brad Pitt in my bed than a restful seven hours. I was probably averaging four hours a night, and it showed on my pale face. That morning, my body shook all over and my stomach was sick from the combination of wine, coke, enough cigarettes to plug a porthole, and no dinner. It’s no coincidence that coke had long been the fashion industry’s drug of choice. No appetite means “no food” which means “no fat.” I was sick as hell and the kind of skinny I’d always dreamed of.
The hangover was immediate. I could feel it the minute I closed the laptop. I lay in bed naked wishing I were just straight booze crashing, which by comparison felt like a cup of warm chamomile tea. But anytime I did coke, I drank more wine than I would have without it, and the combination of the two was like a baseball-bat concussion.
In addition to all the physical symptoms, the come down from coke and wine meant a crushing, black-hearted depression. Tears streamed from my eyes and the chorus of self-hatred raised its voice. It told me that life had no meaning, I was a fraud, I’d never have real love, nothing was ever going to get better. The mind fuck went on for hours as I thrashed my way through broken sleep.
Somehow I managed to get to work the following days, swallowing potentially toxic levels of Advil and industrial-sized cups of coffee. I considered drinking booze to kill the pain, but I stopped myself. Morning drinking was only for serious alcoholics, not high-functioning partiers like me.
Then one night I had a blind date, a guy somehow connected to my cousin Robbie. All I knew was that he was a “nice, good-looking, Jewish lawyer named Jeff,” and that was enough for me.
At Jeff’s suggestion, we arranged to meet for a drink at the P&G Bar on the Upper West Side at eight o’clock on a Thursday night. The P&G was a dearly loved dive bar that everybody had a good story about. Great pick, I thought. I’m going to like this guy. But there was one big problem: I’d already be drunk by 8:00 p.m. In those days my drinking started the second work ended. I couldn’t remember the last time I would have been sober enough for a blind date starting even as early as 6:30 p.m. The situation called for a plan.
I ducked out of work early, and by five I was home getting ready. I poured myself a glass, more like a goblet, of cold chardonnay and brought it into the bathroom while I showered. The glass gathered condensation beads as the heat of the room took the chill off the wine. I reached for it and took a gulp as I toweled off. OK! I thought, feeling the first threads of relief. Blind date. No more than two glasses first. Jeff can’t think I’m some kind of drunk.
I stood naked with my hands on my hips in front of my closet, staring at my wardrobe. Separate from my work suits hung about ten different pairs of black pants. They were indistinguishable on the hanger, but they were in a variety of materials, some fit tighter than others, some had lower waists, and some had flared legs instead of straight. Some made me feel sexy, some sophisticated, some young. Some of the pants hung next to duplicates I’d bought while shopping drunk. I stood there and debated which would more likely lead to a successful date with Jeff, the Jewish lawyer. On most nights out, I would pair these pants with a black or white camisole, topped by a sheer shirt, usually a tight one. Some of the shirts had buttons and some were pullovers. Some of the shirts were silky and some felt like netting. I had several colors and styles, but they could all be called “dark.” I chose a pair of tight pants that made me feel sexy and finished the outfit with a pair of high black leather boots. It was a standard uniform for the New York City alcoholic too lazy to put outfits together.
As I dressed, I continued drinking, only gradually, and stopped frequently for cigarette breaks in the living room. Then I put on makeup and finished my outfit with giant silver hoop earrings and a diamond necklace. When I went to refill my wine glass before doing my hair, I realized that I had made a terrible error. I was at the end of the bottle. I had finished the whole thing off. It was just after 6:30 p.m., and there was still almost an hour before I had to leave. This was a treacherous moment. One wrong move and I would slip into an inescapable pit of getting too drunk and destroying the night. Three options came to mind, none of which were guaranteed to get me to the P&G in a date-suitable state.
First, I could just stop drinking until I got to the bar—maybe have a coffee until then. Hilarious. Second, I could open another bottle of wine and just sip over the next hour. That would make me tired. Orrrr … I could do some coke to straighten out and feel like a supermodel by the time I got to the P&G. Not exactly a dilemma.
Out came the drugs, the mirror, the spoon, the blade, and the straw. The brilliance of my decision was confirm
ed by the spectacular rush that went along with the ritual: sprinkling the coke on the mirror, crushing it down with the back of a spoon, carving just-thick-enough lines … That first prickly blast into my nostrils followed by the chemical drip down my throat told me that it was going to be a fantastic night.
Time flies when coke is on the mirror. The next thing I knew it was 7:30 p.m., time to go. I put away the coke paraphernalia, guzzled another glass of wine, and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and gargle hard.
Shit, I thought, suddenly staring into the mirror. A five-year-old could see that I was flying. It was only seven thirty on a Thursday evening, but I was already wearing my Saturday midnight face. There was nothing I could do about it.
I hoped that Jeff had been out with people after work and might be riding some kind of buzz of his own. Please, Jeff, please be a boozer. Please be a cokehead.
Walking into the P&G, I recognized him immediately. The rumors about him had been true: he was hot. He had light brown curly hair, blue eyes, and long eyelashes. He wasn’t tall but he was fit. His handshake was firm and his smile was big. But wait, jeans and a leather jacket? Shit, those aren’t work clothes. Damnit, he went home after work. He might be completely sober.
We parked ourselves on stools near the back of the bar and the bartender came over quickly. “What can I get you two?” he asked.
“Absolut Citron and soda on the rocks,” I answered, trying to give Jeff a sexy smile with my side glance.
“I’ll have a Diet Coke,” Jeff said.
WAIT, WHAT? Apparently I gave him a look as if he’d just killed our first baby. “Um, I’m not a big drinker,” he must have felt compelled to explain. “I might have a couple of beers on the weekend, but I don’t really drink during the week.” Holy fuck. I’m a bottle and a half of wine and a quarter gram of blow into this thing.
“Oh yeah, that’s cool,” I lied. “I don’t go out much during the week either.” Two beers in a week—might have two beers in seven days? That meant he also might not. He was one of those people. “So what else do you do besides work? Since you’re not getting wasted in bars and all.” It was meant to be funny. He didn’t find it funny.
“I’m training for the marathon,” he said. Of course you are. “I had to run before we met. That’s why I said eight.” Suddenly, I felt annoyed, as if I had been lured on this date under false pretenses. Who suggests meeting at the P&G at eight on a Thursday night without any intention of drinking? Freak.
We didn’t have a lot to talk about, so I managed to find common ground: the Yankees game on the bar television. Spending so much time in bars, I had become proficient in pretending to care about the Yankees. And sometimes I’d even pretend that a Yankee game was my reason for being in a bar.
Not having brought any coke to counter the alcohol and keep me from getting sloppy, I was doomed. I tossed back two Citron and sodas, and as the coke wore off so did the illusion of my sobriety. By the time the bartender poured my third drink, I was flat out, drunk-ass wasted. By now the bar was packed, but neither a rocking party atmosphere nor even a sense of chivalry compelled Jeff to order so much as a light beer.
What happened next can never be undone. It can’t even be forgotten, although the details have never been any more than fuzzy.
Seeing me a little wobbly on my barstool, Jeff reached out for my arm to steady me. My drunken brain mistook this as a gesture of affection. Clearly, he was already falling in love with me! As he held my arm, I leaned in toward him, grabbed him by the neck, and pulled him toward me with my eyes closed, going in for the kiss. That was more movement than my sloshed body could handle, and as I lunged forward I slid off my barstool and crashed to the floor, my shoulder and hip hitting first followed by the rest of me in a thundering heap.
I didn’t want to look up, and the first thing I heard was the “Whoa!” of the crowd that had just witnessed my tumbling display of jackassery. To make it worse, nobody moved. For what felt like at least ten seconds, the shock of the crash froze all the gawkers. They just stared as if they were waiting for a director to yell, “Cut!” Eventually my date slid off his barstool and tried to lift the mess that was me. Clearly repulsed, Jeff rushed me out into the street and hurled me like a shovel of shit into the first cab he could find.
When I woke up at 7:20 a.m. the next morning, I saw a second bottle of wine, empty, on my kitchen counter. I was throwing up by 7:30 a.m., but I had to be in the office for a ten o’clock meeting. I can’t do it, I thought.
But I couldn’t miss the meeting. My boss was in town from Portland, an unusual circumstance. His being based on the West Coast had made it simple for me to work from home whenever I liked, which helped to keep my drinking and drugging undetected. If I kept my wine and coke use in balance, I produced good work without a problem.
That morning, though, I had to be in the office and not appear completely wrecked. Tremors shook my entire body. How was I going to get my act together in an hour?
There was only one sure way I knew of that would calm me down and give me some semblance of equilibrium. Ironically, it was drinking. Booze would mellow my headache and stop my shaking. Many times I had promised myself that I would never drink in the morning, but this was no time to quibble over empty promises.
In the kitchen, I pulled the bottle of Citron out of the freezer. Then I opened the refrigerator door and found no orange juice or other mixer. It would have to be straight. I took out a shot glass and threw back two quick belts. My whole body shuddered as if it was just waking up from a bad dream, but the vodka was settling me down.
Who drinks in the morning? What kind of person wakes up after a night of boozing feeling shaky and nauseated and weak and then tips back a bottle of vodka? How was I going to rationalize this fucked-up development to myself? After a night of getting blasted, normal people wake up feeling shitty, moan their way to a bottle of Advil, go back to sleep, and then, once they can bear the idea of food, chow a greasy cheeseburger and fries and vow never to drink again. What did it say that my answer to near alcohol poisoning was more alcohol?
In fact, I found it all fairly easy to rationalize. My slide into round-the-clock drinking was something I was entitled to. It made me ashamed and it made me despise myself, but it also made me feel better because it was a crucial weapon in the fight against being me. I felt entitled to do whatever it took to win the battle against the unfair circumstances of my life, this life in which I played by all the right rules and still ended up miserable and lonely and riddled with self-hatred.
I learned to master the art of keeping things separate. There was my real life with all its alcohol-soaked secrets and there was the role I portrayed in the stage play of my life. In the play, the protagonist was healthy, strong, and the successful envy of ambitious career women around the world. But every day at 5:30 p.m., she took her bow and the curtain closed. Then the actress sat in front of the vanity mirror framed in bright round bulbs and slowly wiped off her stage makeup with cotton balls … while knocking back highball glasses of Grey Goose.
It wasn’t as if I’d worn myself weary of living some super-woman life I’d carved and now, exhausted, I’d turned to a bottle to escape. That wasn’t it. The crazy thing is I had never been the person I pretended to be, and the cracks in the façade were spreading. And into the cracks began to flow more and more booze.
On days when I had to go to the office, I could survive a dry morning by counting the hours until I’d be able to drink at lunch. One of my favorite drinking spots was Kaju, a sushi restaurant not far from my office but not close enough for my coworkers to frequent. It was small and family-run with a long sushi bar. The rolls, sashimi, and sushi under the glass always looked fresh and tempting, but the real draw was the machine at the end of the sushi bar that heated up the sake. It looked like a polished, metal soft-serve ice cream machine.
One morning in the office, just after eleven, it became clear to me that I couldn’t hold out until twelve-thirty to drink. I could
n’t concentrate on anything on my computer screen. My hands shook too much to keep a pen steady and my legs were bouncing up and down like a punk band drummer’s. A thin layer of sweat covered my neck and chest.
Screw it. “Marie, I have an early lunch. I’ll be on my phone if you need me,” I said to my assistant. I slung my coat and purse over my arm and swished past her, not meeting her eye.
I sneaked out the back of the building and jumped into a cab. My knees bounced during the entire ride and I buried my head in my hands. Let’s go.
“Hello!” the owner’s wife said with a big wave as I walked into Kaju at 11:30 a.m. Her hair was up in a tight bun and she wore an apron with what appeared to be the restaurant’s name spelled out in Japanese letters.
“Hi!” I said, utterly relieved to be in the dark restaurant with the magic sake machine.
“The sake is not hot yet. Very sorry,” she said. She switched on the machine and it whirred into action. I should have been embarrassed that at eleven thirty in the morning she felt compelled to apologize for not having my booze ready. Instead, I sat at a table for four and stared at the machine, watching for a sign that it was time.
Relief finally came in the form of the three hot sakes that accompanied my California roll. With my body calmed down, I went to the restaurant’s bathroom and pulled out the toothbrush and toothpaste I always carried. Three brushings and three sticks of gum later, I headed back to the office. It was almost 1:00 p.m. Now I would count the hours until five o’clock.
10
Not long after the morning drinking started, cocaine also found its way onto the breakfast menu. Amped up on coke, I never felt drunk, and I never looked drunk. I looked happy. “You’re always smiling!” colleagues often chirped at me.
“It’s the coke!” I wanted to say. “And I’m putting on an act! I’m a complete fraud! I’m actually an addict who can’t get out of bed without wine and a line!” But, I didn’t say that. I’d say things like, “Life is good!”
Girl Walks Out of a Bar Page 12