by Rick R. Reed
I used to spend a ton of time here, so much so that all the help knew me. Most of the patrons did too.
I dealt here.
I even stole here. One of my biggest heists took place out of room 302. See, the walls here that surround all the little cubicles they call rooms don’t even reach the ceiling. There’s about a two-foot gap between the cubicle tops and the dusty, cobweb-infested ceiling. One night, or early morning really, I was super high and filled with good ideas. The place was close to empty when I managed to pull a bench from a common area up to the wall of a cubicle I knew was occupied by a fellow dealer, who just happened to be in the shower when I got inspired. I scrabbled up to the top and swung myself over and into his room, landing on the bed. I tore through his stuff quickly, breathing hard, one eye on the door, and before I knew it, I was heading out with about three thousand dollars’ worth of meth, all his cash—another thou—and his iPad.
I didn’t stick around that night to see if I’d be caught. I wasn’t that high! I even had the presence of mind and the good sense not to set foot in the place again for the following month.
I was lucky. I was suspected but never caught. Not really.
But people began to distrust me after that. My credibility dropped. How much credibility does a meth-head, drug-dealing slut have anyway?
I just didn’t care.
I was too high almost all the time. And I kept myself busy, texting boys who were looking for a gram or more and those who were cruising online for sex. There was an endless supply!
It seems like the life of a different person now. Sometimes when I look back at my recent past, it’s like a movie unspooling in my head. It doesn’t even seem real, except as a story that happened to someone else.
Except it doesn’t. Not when I’m sitting here at Seattle’s oldest—and filthiest—bathhouse.
Why, it’s like I’ve come home!
I’ve taken the cheapest room on the menu. There’s a single bed. Next to it there’s a particleboard cube that serves as a nightstand. The room’s décor is completed by a gray locker, rusting along the bottom. A mirror clings to the wall opposite the bed, reflecting all that charm back. There’s no monitor for watching porn—I don’t have the cash for that upgrade. The linoleum floor’s gritty against my bare feet. I shudder to think of the bacteria that’s probably blossoming on its surface. Don’t even get me started on the mattress!
In the room next to me, I can hear a guy getting fucked. How do I know? Because he’s practically screaming things like “Yeah! Fuck me harder!” and “Breed me, man!”
Charming, right? A real Hallmark moment.
Right now, I’m curled up on one side, legs drawn up to my chest. I came here all fired up to say fuck it and simply use again. I could practically feel the rush of the drug in my veins as I bounced from foot to foot at the check-in window, waiting for my towel and my room key. I had decided. I had flipped that switch. I was going to use again. The hell with two years sober! What had it really gotten me anyway?
Right then, a little oblivion, a little escape, sounded just perfect. A ticket to bliss.
It wasn’t until I got to this tiny room, with its stiff white sheets and its disinfectant smell, and closed the door behind me that I drew in a deep breath to quell my pounding heart and wondered:
What the hell am I doing here?
In spite of the question, I took off my clothes and hung them in the locker. I locked it and wrapped the key, on a springy bracelet, around my bicep.
And then I tied the towel around my middle and sat down on the bed. I simply stared for the longest time at my reflection in the mirror.
The guy looking back at me was not the same guy I used to see in mirrors around this joint. It wasn’t just my physical difference—now there was more weight, short hair its natural color, piercings removed—it was the whole vitality thing.
Even in the dim and dingy light of the room, I could see my eyes were bright. My skin was clear. Back in the day, I had sores all over. I never knew what they were but assumed they were from the drug, which sweated out through my pores. I called ’em speed bumps. But today I exuded a kind of energy. A kind of light.
Eventually I had to turn away from myself. Looking at the way I am now was like a reprimand. It was too painful a reminder of how far I’d come.
How could I go through with this if I had to look at this handsome, wholesome boy? How could I do this to him? Someone I’m supposed to love….
So I lay down and turned to the wall, which is where I now find myself, trying not to hear the pounding taking place next door. Trying to shut out the dank smell that seems to have seeped into every surface in this hellish place.
I know what I should be doing, what I imagined doing as I walked over here. It was what I had done thousands of times before. You cruised the two floors of the place, looking for open doors. Guys waited in those rooms, and many, many of them had little glass pipes hidden, along with tiny glassine bags filled with shards. I visualized those things as I made my way here, saw them the same way a thirsty man in the desert pictures an oasis.
But then I got here, in this tawdry little room, and I knew how it would go.
The fact that I would find someone who was partying, even though it was a weekday during the day, was certain. As I mentioned, there was always someone partying at Mangroves. It was party central. When I was dealing, I could walk out of here after a weekend with thousands of dollars in my pocket. As long as I had product, people bought.
The “candy man,” someone once called me.
Now all I needed to do was go into a guy’s room, maybe make a little small talk, maybe not. Because really all that needed saying was Are you partying? And we’d be off to the races. If they weren’t, I’d just move on. The next guy, or the guy after that, was sure to be holding.
And then I’d bring the pipe to my lips, fire it up with most likely some sort of butane lighter, and watch as the glass bowl filled with lovely clouds of white smoke. Draw it in; exhale it into the air.
Even thinking of it now fills me with a paradoxical need and dread—all at the same time. This potent mix of want/not want is what has me immobilized, lying here on this bed in a fetal position, actually contemplating sucking my thumb.
God, it’s been years!
But old habits stick around. They’re always inside us, just below the surface. We only need to reach in deep to access them.
A part of me urges Get out of here. Go home. It’s not too late.
And another part feels like that idea would all but kill me. Leaving is an intolerable notion.
What am I going to do?
How can I leave? How can I stay?
Do what you came here for, a seductive voice says. One time isn’t going to hurt anything. One lousy time—you deserve that much. It’s not so much the words that get me to my feet; it’s the need. A need that, once awakened, can’t be denied.
I cross to the door, open it.
Things have gone quiet next door. The door opens, and a swarthy man, completely naked, sweaty, emerges and hurries by, his eyes cast down at the dirty carpeted floor.
Someone moves at the end of the hallway, and I jump a little when I realize it’s my own reflection in a mirror.
I stare at myself and realize I’m just another dude at the baths. Go on. Get you some.
On the second floor, I find a likely prospect. The room is dim, but a skinny guy with a Mohawk and too many tats lies prone on the bed, a damp towel thrown loosely over his dick and balls. He has a septum piercing. His ribs stick out. He’s got one of the rooms with a video monitor, and even though the sound is muted, the screen casts flickering light upon him. He eyes me warily and plays with what’s under the towel in an almost bored way.
On the little table next to his bed is a tub of lube, a couple of cock rings, a pack of Marlboro Reds—even though city ordinance forbids smoking cigarettes indoors—and a pipe. He doesn’t even bother trying to hide it.
My gaze nar
rows in on it, like my eyes are a camera with a sophisticated zoom lens. I can see the white residue, the black film at the bottom. I can taste the smoke in my mouth.
He motions with his head for me to come in.
I step in and stand there, paralyzed by want, paralyzed by a need to flee. My heart pounds.
“Close the door,” he says in a husky voice.
I do.
I sit down on the edge of the bed and watch as he loads a shard of Tina into the pipe’s stem, tapping the top of it so it falls into the bowl. He hands me the pipe with a little cockeyed grin. He gropes under the bed and brings out a lighter. He gives that to me too.
I stare down for too long, my mouth suddenly dry, ice running through my veins, blood roaring in my ears so loud I can barely hear him when he asks, “You gonna hit that or what?”
Am I? Am I gonna hit that? I turn the pipe so the shard moves around inside. I imagine putting a flame to it, watching it as it turns first to a dirty liquid, then smoke, bringing it up to my mouth, drawing in….
I look in the mirror and see myself gripping the pipe. It’s a vision I thought I’d never see again. When you get certain of something is when you’re in trouble. “Just when you go thinking you’re clean, that you’re cured, is when you are absolutely not safe, sweetie,” I hear Miriam say.
She must have been in that place of certainty when she swallowed all those Oxys that one afternoon and then got behind the wheel of her car.
Did she do it on purpose?
Did she see only one way out?
I turn the pipe in my hand, looking at it as though I expect it to come to life or something.
I have more than one way out. I know that.
I glance up in the mirror again and see not the skinny guy with the Mohawk at the other end of the bed, but Miriam. It jolts, almost as though a wave of electricity courses through me. She’s just sitting there, knees together, designer purse clutched on her lap. She’s wearing a pantsuit, and there’s a patterned scarf wrapped around her neck. If she notices me staring, she gives no indication.
I drop the pipe. It bounces on the floor but doesn’t break.
“Watch it, man!” The guy hops off the bed and scoops up the pipe. The towel around his waist slides to the floor. His ass is skinny and covered with sores. Did I ever find guys like this attractive?
He stares at me, clutching the pipe. “What the fuck, dude? You don’t want to party, just say so.”
I don’t have to think. “I don’t want to party.”
I set the lighter back down on the bed. And then I stand and leave the room.
“Hey!” the guys calls. “You comin’ back?”
I pause for just a second, waiting to see if he’ll say more, trying to pull me into his web. But he doesn’t. The door slams shut behind me. And I imagine him hitting the pipe. Alone. Because you always end up alone.
I start toward my room, and as I go, my determination, my sense of liberation, increases with every step I take. A smile spreads across my face.
I feel like I’ve been holding my breath forever. Now I can breathe again.
I cannot get out of Mangroves fast enough. I dress quickly, head downstairs, and wait for the guy at registration to release me. I know we can never be sure of anything, but I’m as sure as I can be I won’t be coming back here. This is a place for the dead, the walking dead… the waiting, the lonely.
As I press on the door that will take me from shadows into sunlight, my breath catches for my brothers inside. They’re trapped. My heart goes out to them, wishing there was a way I could help ease them out of their chains, but no one knows better than I do that the key to unlock our chains is not in someone else’s hands, but in our own.
Always.
Outside, a familiar face waits. He leans against one of the machines where you pay for parking, a look of concern in his dark eyes, arms crossed over his chest.
I don’t say anything. I simply move toward him, and he takes me in his arms. He feels like skin and bones. But he’s warm, and he smells clean. His faded flannel shirt is soft against my cheek. He strokes my hair. “Did you…?” His voice trails off. We both know how that question ends.
I look up at him. He’s not Miriam, but he’s the next best thing. Because he cares. My roommate. My Kevin. In answer to his question, I simply shake my head.
“Good,” he whispers and lets me go.
We say nothing for several moments as the traffic moves by us, east and west, and pedestrians pay us no mind. Two gay guys hugging on the sidewalk in Capitol Hill? Move along, folks, there’s nothing to see here.
“How did you know I’d come here?”
Kevin closes his eyes for just a second, as though I’ve asked the stupidest question I could possibly blurt out. “C’mon, man. Where else would you go? Especially when you were such a fuckin’ coward as to sneak out on me when I was in the shower. That was smooth.” He shakes his head as he looks me up and down, but a grin plays about his lips in spite of the head shaking. It makes me feel loved.
“I could have gone lots of places,” I say.
He shakes his head again. “No. I know you because I know myself. This place is where you’d come. It’s where I’d come if I was lookin’ to score. Ground zero for the tweaker.” He pinches my cheek. Hard. “And that’s not us, right?”
I nod.
“Right?”
“Yes. It’s not us.”
“You sure you didn’t smoke a little, maybe? Just a taste? You need to be honest with me, Jimmy.”
“I didn’t, man. I swear.”
He starts moving down the hill, steps purposeful. I follow.
“Why not?” he asks.
I think of Miriam, the incongruous image of her sitting in that shadowy, desperate bathhouse room. I don’t think seeing her in that mirror was my imagination. She was there. My despair, my need for salvation, I believe, was so great in that moment that it called to her from wherever she is. Her light and love made it through—for just a second.
But a second was enough to change everything. A second was all I needed to really see. I heard someone say once that life changes in an instant. It can seem like change takes years, but those years are just building up to a moment of transformation.
I see Miriam again in my mind’s eye, her dyed red hair and too-white teeth, her matronly designer clothes—and the sweet, sad kindness of her expression.
And for her, I almost want to drop to my knees right here on this sidewalk, in front of God and everyone, and give a great big heaving thanks. Because she cared. And she still cares.
I don’t tell Kevin about Miriam, though. For one, he’s too practical to go in for what he’d refer to as “hippy-dippy spiritual shit.” For another, he’s always been a little jealous of Miriam. He’s always sort of been in her shadow. The former mentor versus the current one. He’s stuck with being alive, being imperfect. He doesn’t have this convoluted history of sweetness and tragedy—the woman who helped me beat my own demons but was unable to vanquish her own.
Kevin’s just a guy. A guy, I realize now, in spite of our sort of makeshift existence, who loves me and cares about what happens to me. And he’s something Miriam, sadly, was not: a survivor. He shows me that quality every day.
He cares. He loves me. Why else would he have been waiting for who knows how long outside Mangroves?
I stop him with a hand on his shoulder, forcing him to look at me. I want to give his question the most honest answer I can. “I realized, almost too late, what I was throwing away.”
He nods.
“And I knew one thing—my need to use was not as strong as my need not to.”
He continues on down the street, talking out of one corner of his mouth. “Well, that’s a lot of twelve-step bullshit, but it’ll do because it has the ring of truth. I think there’s more to it than that, and maybe someday, when you’re ready, you’ll tell me what the more is.”
For just a second, I think about spitting it all out. The vision
, everything.
But then he says, “You hungry?”
And I realize I’m starving. I haven’t touched a morsel since last night’s dinner, and I feel depleted—for many reasons, food being just one of them. My belly growls as though to answer Kevin.
We laugh. “Yup,” I say. “But we can’t go to Becky’s. I called in sick.”
“Right. So no discount?”
“No discount.”
“Shit. We got bologna and—”
I finish for him. “Doritos at home. No.” I dig deep in the pocket of my jeans. I pull out a twenty and two ones, all crumpled. It’s all the money I have to my name.
“I think I got enough to treat us to Happy Meals.”
“That would make me happy,” Kevin says, quickening his pace. There’s a McDonald’s about three blocks away, but isn’t that always the case?
I look at him ahead of me and think sometimes just the act of being there for someone else is enough. But I also bring to mind the fact that he was waiting—and would have waited for who knows how long—for me to come out. He would have given me a hug either way, no matter what choice I’d made.
“Me too! Starving,” I say, catching up.
We’ll eat and we’ll figure out what to do. That’s what life is all about, right?
Right?
Friday
Chapter 12
MARC
SHOULD I go in to work?
A little voice inside, or maybe it’s the devil on my shoulder, tells me I deserve a three-day weekend. Just three days to loll around my apartment, feeling sorry for myself that yet another venture into love has come to naught. I can eat chocolate and ice cream, drink vodka straight from the bottle, binge-watch old black-and-white weepers on Netflix, drown in my sorrow. Commiserate with other losers at love. Hello, Bette Davis.
It seems to be the path I’m doomed to follow where romance is concerned.
Will I end up an old queen, like Don, alone and bitter, with only a couple of pets to keep me company? It’s sad that I can visualize that future a bit too clearly.