Sweet Hell on Fire

by Sara Lunsford

  “Nothing. Just working on the memoir.”

  “Aww. I love you.” She comes and hugs me. She wants to read it, but I won’t let her. There is so much in this book I hope she never has to know. I’m sure when she’s older she’ll snag a copy somewhere.

  That was a huge part of the decision about whether I should write this book. I never want her to blame herself for things that happen later. Either of my girls. I made my choices myself. But I decided it was important to share everything that happened to me if I could help someone else make it through.

  I hug her back. “If you need me,” she says, “I can listen. You know I get that from you.”

  Sometimes, I think her heart is big enough to love the whole world. With all my screw-ups, I wonder what I did to deserve her. Or my other daughter, who is just as wonderful and beautiful and just as loving.

  I don’t want to think that maybe I was their trial, their cross to bear, but if I was, and this was the worst they ever had to live through, then maybe I did something right after all.

  I can see that now, how lucky I am that all of my selfishness and immaturity didn’t maim them in some way. Back then all I could see was me.

  You know the stage of drunk where you feel the need to tell everyone how drunk you are? It’s not cute and everyone just nods in agreement, but really, they just want you to shut up. Unless they’re as drunk as you are and then you can laugh about it and take turns telling each other how drunk you are. “Oh my god, dude. I’m so fucking drunk.” And for some reason, that’s the funniest damn thing you’ve ever heard in your life. So funny, you fall over. But you’re too drunk to sit back up.

  Yeah, I’d passed that ten rum and pineapples ago.

  I was so drunk it felt like my stomach had said, “Fuck you, I’m out,” and got up and walked away without me. But I wasn’t ready to be done, not yet. The world was a horrible fucking place and I needed some tequila rose-tinted glasses to even look at the motherfucker.

  My stripper friend who kept buying me drinks on some guy’s credit card was crying in her beer, but with good reason. She’d just found out that a good friend of hers had been the previously unidentified, charred body they’d found outside some ghetto club in the city. She’d been having trouble with a stalker and he’d caught her after work, opened up her veins, and lit her on fire.

  This woman died screaming in an alleyway next to a dumpster and was discarded like so much trash.

  She was someone’s child. Someone had rocked her to sleep, made sure her cake had chocolate frosting on her birthday, and firmly closed her closet door to keep the monsters inside.

  And for every story like hers, there were hundreds more. For every horror that we hear about, as soon as we turn the page there’s another victim, another life, another river of blood on the pavement, and we look and nod and say that’s really fucking sad, but we go on about our business, ever thankful that it didn’t happen to us.

  Some guy slid in the seat next to me at our table. I looked at him. He obviously wanted something. He pushed a beer at me, but it was already opened. Even drunk off my ass I know better than to take an open consumable from someone I don’t know.

  He shrugged, as if to say: your loss. “Hey, so my bro over there?” He pointed across the bar. “That big, badass-looking motherfucker? Yeah. He thinks you’re hot.”

  I looked around the bar, and I was sure that maybe I was drunker than I originally thought because the only big guy on that side of the room was a guy who’d just gotten out of prison. He was huge, about six-foot-five, which was normally my type if he hadn’t been an inmate, but badass? I almost snorted my beer. He’d been in Pussy Control. Better known as PC, or Protective Custody. There are no badasses in PC. Take your lumps and stop sucking down eight balls you can’t pay for. Someone’s threatened to hurt you? It’s prison. Man the fuck up. Or cry like a little girl who lost her ice cream and go to Pussy Control.

  “I’m not his type.” I tried to go back to what I was doing—which was consoling my friend and pickling my own liver the hard way.

  “A big bitch like you? You’re just his type.” He looked me up and down. “And he just got out of prison.”

  “First, I said no. End of fucking story. Like you’re slick enough to talk me into fucking him, and the fact he just got out of prison—a place crawling with MRSA, HIV, and hepatitis—that’s supposed to make him attractive to me? Really? And second, can you not see my friend is upset? So, even if I were so inclined, which I’m not, I’m kind of busy.”

  “Fucking cunt,” he growled and slapped over a bowl of peanuts as he stood.

  “Is that what your boyfriend calls you when you’re sucking his dick?” I stood up as I spoke.

  He stepped closer to me and for one second, I thought he was going to hit me. And I wanted him to. I wanted him to hit me because all the rage I had—layer after layer built up inside of me—it was like a dam, and that crash of his knuckles into my face was all I needed to let that wall crumble. In those seconds, time stopped. I had exactly four things within my immediate reach I could use as weapons to defend myself: a pool stick, my drink glass, the chair, or the table. My buzz was gone; I didn’t feel drunk anymore, just ready to fight. He was a male. (I won’t say a man.) So what? I was bigger and I knew I hit harder. Plus he was an asshole. In my mind, the perfect target for me to vent all of my pent-up rage. I was fairly giddy with the idea of that kind of release.

  He didn’t say anything, just stared at me and took another step closer. As if that would intimidate me. We were only inches apart, and all he had to do was lay one little finger on me, and I’d break it and shove it up his ass. I was spoiling to fight.

  “I asked you a question, cocksucker.” I wasn’t going to be the one to throw the first punch because I had my job to worry about, but neither would I take his shit or back down.

  Everyone in the bar stopped what they were doing and looked at us. Or at least that’s what it felt like. The bouncers were watching, but they hadn’t acted. I think they wanted to see what would happen.

  Suddenly, the big guy was there too with his hand between his friend and me. “Hey, I’m sorry, he just—” And he broke off mid-sentence when he saw my face up close. “Oh, fuck. Sarge, I didn’t know it was you. You look different out of uniform.”

  He looked at me, and there was a certain plea on his face. He nodded for his friend to leave. I’m sure he didn’t want to get in trouble. He hadn’t maxed out his time and he was out on parole. So he probably shouldn’t have been in the bar to start with, but I wasn’t there to bust his balls. He had a parole officer for that.

  “Fuck that fat bitch,” his friend said and shoved his way over to the door.

  “He’s not doing you any favors, man,” I said to the former inmate.

  “Yeah, I know.” He looked at his feet. “But you do look pretty tonight, Lunsford.”

  My first thought was that only a guy who just got out of prison would think I looked good by that point in the night. Or a guy who was still trying to get his dick wet. I was drunk, my hair was wrecked from dancing, I was sweaty, and I was sure my eyeliner had run down my face, making me look like a raccoon on meth. But he picked up the bowl his friend had knocked over and put it back up on the table and turned to leave.

  Sometimes, when they get out, those guys just wanted to be acknowledged as men instead of numbers. Especially by us, the officers. It’s a little thing, just a nod or a word, but it goes a long way to how they see themselves. It’s not thug-hugging, it’s just human decency. And I guess I had a little of that left.

  “Hey,” I called out and he turned. “Thanks.” I took another drink. “And good luck. I don’t want to see your face in my house anymore, okay?”

  “No, ma’am. I won’t be coming back.”

  “Good to hear.”

  “Take care of yourself, Lunsf
ord.”

  “Yeah, you too.”

  He left and I dunked my face back into the sweet oblivion of my rum and pineapple. It didn’t take long for the buzz to come back or my stomach to revolt again. By two o’clock, my vision wasn’t just blurry, I almost couldn’t see. My head felt like it was spinning around on my shoulders like Regan from The Exorcist, and thoughts were coming to me half-formed. All I wanted was to be home so I could close my eyes.

  By this point in the night, I’d had two pitchers of Coors and seventeen rum and pineapples.

  I don’t think I told my friend I was leaving. I just wandered out of the bar and walked home. I’m lucky I made it. There was a small bridge I had to cross over and a spindly little creek below. I’m sure if I’d passed out and fallen, or just tripped and fell over the edge, I would have split my head open on the rocks below. I probably would have looked a lot like that guy I saw on the yard who’d had a lock in a sock taken to his head—rotten watermelon and sausage spread out all over the little creek.

  After staggering in the front door, I finally caught up with my gut. Remember, it had walked away from me earlier. It slammed back into me with the force of a wrecking ball and up out of my throat. I barely made it to the bathtub.

  It flew in a liquid projectile missile out of my mouth, and even having a solid count of the drinks, I didn’t realize how much alcohol I’d actually ingested until the bottom of the tub was coated with orange vomit. I choked and it shot out of my nose. I couldn’t breathe, my eyes were watering, and there was snot and liquor running down my face. My stomach heaved and convulsed, propelling everything that was inside out. I puked so hard the force of it burst a blood vessel in my eye and hot piss running down my leg, pooling on the tile beneath me.

  In that moment, I was suddenly outside my body looking down at my own head bent over the bathtub, puke in my hair, and piss on the floor—the absolute fucking train wreck I’d made of myself.

  There was a song that had become my anthem for a while. It was called “Thrash Unreal” by Against Me! and it played in my head over and over. That’s when I realized it wasn’t an anthem; it was an excuse. It was a crutch—it was a big tampon because I was being a giant pussy. (Sorry, Against Me! You rock. It’s not your fault I used your song to plug it up like a tampon.)

  Disgust bloomed bright and hot in my head and some of the lyrics came to me then too: “No mother ever thinks that their daughter will grow up to be a junkie, no mother ever dreams that her daughter will grow up to sleep alone.” No one ever dreams they’ll grow up to be a boozed-out, bar-whore corrections officer with no future and no dreams either. And that’s exactly what I was. If I saw someone else doing this to themselves, I would have had no pity, no sympathy. Fuck you, you’re doing it yourself. You have nothing to complain about. Pull up your fucking pants and do what has to be done. This is your fault, you sloppy bitch.

  And it was. Yes, cue the music and the light from above as the epiphany hit me with a brick. This was all my own doing. Yes, the world was in fact a horrible place, but I was making it worse all on my own.

  My kids deserved better.

  I deserved better.

  I’d had dreams once. That was the whole point in leaving my husband. We didn’t make each other happy. More than that, we were toxic to each other. But this wasn’t any better. I still despised myself.

  I hadn’t been any warrior woman. I wasn’t worthy of the Morrigan’s mark I’d put on my body. In prison gangs, if you mark yourself with one of their tattoos that you haven’t earned, they give you the option of removing it yourself any way you can, or they remove it for you. Usually by removing the skin with the offending tat. I didn’t deserve the raven watching my back. I hadn’t managed my hearth or my war. I hadn’t found me; I was even more lost than I had been before.

  And not that I thought that some avenging Irish raven goddess was going to swoop down out of the sky and peck her mark off my skin, but it was the embodiment of the strengths I’d thought I possessed and the ones I wanted to call my own.

  I decided in that moment I would make my life what I wanted.

  And I passed out on my bathroom floor.

  I awoke the next day with a hangover from hell.

  Of course, it was nothing less than what I deserved for being such a sloppy bitch and doing so many horrible things to my body. My head thumped like a freight train running on nitro, my stomach was sour, and my tongue was like a llama hide that had been left on the floor of a taxi cab.

  Every bone in my body ached. There were places on me that hurt that I didn’t even know had nerve endings. My muscles hurt—my stomach from puking, my arms from holding me aloft over the sea of orange puke, my legs from—hell, I didn’t know. My hip and ribs were sore from sleeping all night on the ceramic tiled floor of the bathroom.

  The stench of alcohol, curdled orange juice, and urine turned my stomach again, but thankfully, there was nothing left in my belly to purge.

  I remembered everything so clearly, especially that moment where I was outside my body. I half-wished I could do that again because being inside hurt like a bitch.

  But I guessed it would hurt for a while—until I straightened myself out. There would be no hanging out away from myself; I had to find a way to be comfortable in my own skin. If I didn’t like who I was, I had to change it.

  I peeled off my clothes, still disgusted with myself. I got the Comet and a Brillo pad to scour the tub, which was a feat of ridiculous proportions considering how hung over I was, but with every thrust of the pad against that orange ring, I got another flash of determination.

  This would not be my life.

  I would not be this person.

  I scrubbed that tub until it gleamed. The smell of the Comet played as much hell with my stomach as the other offending scents. I was thankful to rinse it away and replace it all with the clean tang of Pine Sol when I mopped the floor.

  I felt slightly crazy mopping my floor naked, but it seemed like something that had to happen. I couldn’t stand the filth for another second. Not the filth I’d brought into my home, spewed in my tub, or dribbled on the floor. It all had to go.

  I got into the shower and proceeded to scrub the filth from the previous night from my body. There was something therapeutic in that, almost like I could wash everything away with the dirt.

  Then I had to scrub my tub again.

  It felt good to be clean.

  I was scared that the rest of it wouldn’t be so easy because I wasn’t quite sure how far down the rabbit hole I’d fallen.

  Was I an alcoholic? Would I be able to stop by myself? I steeled myself for that eventuality, that I would need help. Would I get sick when I didn’t drink? Would I get the shakes?

  Then I shut all those questions down because it didn’t matter what the answer was to any of them because I was going to do it. I was done using the bottle to self-medicate. Whatever it took to change what I’d done to myself, I’d do.

  And if it sucked sweaty donkey balls, well, that was just tough shit. That was the price I’d have to pay to get my life back on track.

  I really thought it would be harder to stop drinking to get drunk. My psychiatrist friend told me that I was lucky I didn’t have an addictive personality or it would be something I’d have to fight the rest of my life. It was great she had so much confidence me because I didn’t. Not yet. I wasn’t naïve enough to think I could just decide to stop. I didn’t even know if I was an alcoholic.

  That sounds stupid, but I didn’t. Was I addicted? My behavior sure seemed to indicate so.

  And yet I did stop. Cold turkey.

  The first week, I was tempted. Who wouldn’t need a drink after looking at the fuck-all mess I’d made of my life? But I knew that wouldn’t fix anything. Understanding I wasn’t an alcoholic made it worse. If I was an alcoholic, I’d have a reason. Not t
hat it would excuse my behavior, but a medical condition was more forgivable than wanton fuckery.

  I didn’t go out with friends at first because I didn’t trust myself. Over the course of several months, I found I could go out with friends and not drink, but I didn’t want to go out with most of them because they weren’t conducive to the changes I wanted to make in my life either. They were just as bad as the alcohol, all in the same place I’d been in: miserable and self-medicating with nothing to look forward to but more of the same. So I made different friends.

  I still went out for the occasional game of pool, but those invites began to taper off and I was okay with that. They stopped calling me and I stopped calling them.

  I wasn’t lonely in that same way I’d been before. There wasn’t the same empty chasm I was trying to fill with the drinking and the partying. I was still sad and alone, but I could see some daylight.

  It was years before I had another drop of alcohol, before I could be sure that I was the one in charge. Sometimes I drink socially now, and I joke about how many glasses of wine I’ve had or how much it will take to get me to do karaoke (and believe me, no one wants that), but I always know where my line is and I never cross it because I will never be that person again. I will never choose to be numb no matter what life throws at me.

  When I made that choice, decided that I would never choose to be numb, I still hadn’t figured out that when I made those lines in the sand that Fate or the Universe, God, whatever, would test me. That’s what those lines are for; they’re ultimatums of a sort, a big, fat dare to the powers that be.

  The darkest part was still to come.

  Prison was still prison. Nothing changed there.

  That big blowup we’d been expecting never happened, but sometimes, that’s just how it is.

  I started thinking about school and maybe going back for a criminal justice degree. Or abnormal psychology. I had a brain, and when it wasn’t soaked in rum, it liked to be busy. I didn’t think about a journalism degree—that seemed too close to reaching for the stars, and I’d barely crawled out of the dark. I needed a safe dream that I knew I could reach for and obtain because I wouldn’t stop with the degree. I’d get ideas in my head and try to write books. Books that had one chance in a million of selling. I wasn’t ready to handle rejection yet, especially not something that was so personal, a piece of me.