Without the security of home ownership, a staff job, a spouse, or any kids, I was untethered from the things that usually anchor people down. On the one hand, that could be viewed as liberating: “If it’s any comfort,” one friend wrote me, “know that most women our age are at heart jealous of your freedom—or maybe that’s just me.”
Surrounded by moving boxes and trying to get an air conditioner, cable, and a phone line installed, I saw it from a different perspective: I wondered why I was doing this all alone.
—
FORTUNATELY, THE TRANSITION to Brooklyn was easier than I expected, and the nightmare of moving didn’t last as long as I’d feared (Daniel Gilbert was right!). But my new apartment was a lot smaller than the one I had sold, shrinking my home office, so I decided to join a workspace for writers—which had the added benefit of getting me out of the house. I made some new friends there, gossiping in the kitchen and playing on the softball team, and started swimming again, at the local YMCA.
I loved my new neighborhood. I finally felt like I lived somewhere I wanted to be. Every time I went away that summer, I was happy to come back home. I’d sit on the roof deck and watch the birds circling overhead, or water the flowers I’d planted—repotting the ones the squirrels dug up—and generally felt pretty good about my life.
As it turned out, I never ran into Graham. Not when I was buying paint at the hardware store, picking up groceries, or having dinner at one of the many new restaurants on Smith Street. We actually didn’t have any contact from May until August, after an email spat that started with Graham telling me to stay out of his business and ended with me firing back, “You don’t have to worry about me showing any interest in your life—time to let go.”
Even before that fight, our communications had been tapering off. After the first few hearings, I’d stopped going to court, because the proceedings felt like a charade. The judge would just adjourn the case and Graham was ROR’d—released on his own recognizance—even though it was obvious he didn’t recognize the trouble he was in. So when I got an alert later that summer saying Graham’s case was going to trial, I broke the silence, sending him an email asking what was going on.
“I’d rather you didn’t come to court,” Graham wrote back. “It’s not a place I feel comfy at the best of times never mind with you there—please.”
I understood why he didn’t want me to see him in that setting, branded as a criminal, still with no proof of his guilt. But I went anyway. When I’d asked David if he thought I should go, he told me I should act more on impulse—or just act, without deliberating so much. “Not having an experience is what’s dangerous for you,” he said, which was true. Sometimes seeing Graham kept me from dwelling on him, either idealizing how things were when we were together or worrying about how he was doing. It was a reality check I needed once in a while.
And despite his protests, Graham always appreciated my concern. He was like a teenager who slams his bedroom door but really does want someone to knock and ask what’s wrong. The difference was, Graham never had a problem talking. Sitting on a bench outside the courtroom, we filled each other in on our lives: Graham said he’d had a few jobs but no big commercial shoots, so he was constantly stressed about money; I told him about my apartment, articles I’d been working on, and a recent trip to the West Coast. It was always strange to see him and have these semi-normal conversations, then all these intense feelings would rise up and wash over me later, as if my emotions were set to a half-hour delay.
As it turned out, his case didn’t go to trial, but I was still glad I went—and so was he. His attorney seemed useless, which I told Graham before we parted, sending him an email later to drive home that point.
I really didn’t get the impression your lawyer is bringing his A game to your case. From what I’ve seen, he doesn’t seem to be all that aggressive about your defense. Shouldn’t he have noticed that the paperwork regarding the search warrant was missing? And would he have asked about that if I hadn’t asked him? I found it alarming that he didn’t seem all that prepared—or knowledgeable about the immigration issues involved.
You need an attorney who’s really going to go to bat for you, and who knows the implications if you get convicted or agree to some kind of plea. Setting aside all the emotional baggage we have together, I’m offering to help you because I don’t want to see you get sent back to jail or deported.
Graham wrote back: “Your right and I do want you to help. I’ll call you in a day or so.”
This time, I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t call.
Then out of the blue, Graham would text or email me—messages that made me feel like I was doing the right thing by keeping our line of communication open. They were also a sign that he was still capable of caring about me.
Just emailing to make sure your ok (I’m sure you are) and to let you know I am okay also. I was going to call you on one of those fine days last week to ask if you want to do something but got cold feet.
I actually was okay—writing about more interesting topics and traveling more for fun and for work. But Graham was clearly picking up speed in his tumble downhill. By the end of 2007, he’d been arrested a few more times for drug possession, and his financial situation was just as bleak.
In December, when he was trying to refinance his mortgage, he called me in a panic about the terms of the loan. He didn’t have enough cash to pay the closing costs, so I offered to lend him money to complete the deal. I asked him to drop off one of his vintage photographs as collateral, worth far more than the check I was giving him. Instead he brought a heavy portfolio with his whole collection—dozens of black-and-white prints by photographers like Bruce Davidson, Abelardo Morell, and Weegee—either overcompensating to prove I could trust him, or to make sure he didn’t sell them and blow the money on drugs.
I couldn’t be sure he really was refinancing, but I trusted him enough to take that risk. Graham had paid me back quickly when I bailed him out, and I really didn’t want to see him lose his house. Outside New York City, the real estate market was already tanking, and the economic downturn was clearly headed our way.
“Closed okay but it was very stressfull—my interest rate was 9.99%,” Graham wrote me. “I just had to go with it and hope that remortgaging in 3 months with my credit up and with stated income will bring it in at under 7%. Thanx for the money, it means a lot.”
He deposited what he owed me directly into my checking account, but he didn’t come by to pick up his photos. I was getting used to this cycle, so I tried to put Graham out of my mind—until Heath Ledger’s death a month later. He used to live down the street from Graham, but any news about an overdose was always disturbing for me. As the media churned through the usual angles—who knew, how could this have happened, why didn’t he ask anyone for help—I went to the courthouse one more time, hoping the headlines had also scared Graham.
In some sense, it was easier that he didn’t try to hide the fact that he was using—and using a lot, I guessed. But it was a shock when I saw him, literally wasting away. His clothes were filthy, his hands were shaking, and sweat was dripping down the side of his face.
Graham blew up when I said I was thinking of calling his parents.
“You’re not my girlfriend, you’re not my wife, it’s none of your fucking business!” he shouted.
“If you had a girlfriend or a wife, I wouldn’t be here,” I said—testy, but not raising my voice. “You obviously can’t handle this yourself.”
The truth is, if I’d had a boyfriend or a husband I probably wouldn’t have been there, either, but I hadn’t been in another relationship since Graham and I broke up. That’s not to say that I hadn’t met anyone I was interested in; I just couldn’t get past the crucial liftoff stage. David wanted to “problematize” my inability to find a new partner, but I’m not sure he fully appreciated what it was like for a single woman approaching forty, especially in New York City. I knew plenty of women who were frustrated by the pool of
available men—who seemed to have their pick of eligible women.
When a friend offered to set me up on a blind date, she warned me that the guy had “recently been through a terrible breakup” and wasn’t at all what she thought of as my type. I politely passed on that opportunity, envisioning an awkward night trying not to look at my watch.
Someone I’d met at a party canceled three times before we finally went out for a drink, both of us realizing it hadn’t been worth all that effort. There just wasn’t any spark between us—and he was eight years younger than me.
And a guy who’d been emailing me several times a day and calling for hour-long talks told me he liked our “deep connection” but wasn’t interested in anything more: “i certainly have only wanted to have a friendship with you, and from my perspective i never did anything to suggest otherwise. yes, of course i called you a lot and we had long conversations and sent each other a lot of e-mails…did i cross some line in male/female relations? maybe so. but how can i know unless you let me know?”
Guilty as charged. I should’ve addressed our ambiguous status sooner, but in my defense, I wasn’t sure I wanted to get involved with him. I think we both used our friendship as a replacement for exes we weren’t totally over—although he did admit to a pattern of leaning on women he didn’t want to date: “this has happened with at least four female friends, so i’m certainly open to the possibility of my own implication.”
Eventually we settled into a less frenetic friendship, and he was actually a valuable confidant on the thorny topic of my ongoing involvement in Graham’s life. When he told me it seemed like I was still in love with Graham, I disputed that theory, insisting that loving someone and being in love weren’t the same. I knew some people saw that as a dubious distinction, but I didn’t. Graham as I knew him didn’t exist anymore. As addiction overtook him, like vines you stop cutting back or trying to control, it was getting harder and harder to remember who he used to be.
But I’d still catch glimpses of him every once in a while, which was what was so frustrating for me. Graham wasn’t completely dysfunctional, he wasn’t totally gone—there was a part of him that was still somewhere in there. That’s who I kept trying to reach, through the thorny vines that kept piercing me.
After Graham’s outburst in January, I sent him the names of a few drug treatment programs a friend recommended. He wrote back to thank me, then a couple of weeks later sent a message saying, “just to let you know i’m okay.” I didn’t answer, and I didn’t follow through on my threat to call his parents, which probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference. Even if I had known who else to call, or had tried to organize some kind of intervention, I’m not sure who would’ve shown up. By that point, Graham had succeeded at pushing everyone away—even me.
—
AS 2008 UNFOLDED, a sadness settled over me as I succumbed to the fear about the future gripping most of the world. When I confessed that anxiety in an email to my friend Alex, another writer I’d recently met, she weighed in with her usual Zen-like counsel.
“Among your greatest strengths, in my opinion, is your ability to sympathize and empathize with others,” she wrote. “My advice is to accept the sadness, but take your energy away from dwelling on it and put it to productive use instead.”
I tried. Mostly it was the shrinking media landscape that was precipitating a crisis of confidence. With fewer outlets to write for, it was getting tougher to get pitches accepted, and I started to wonder if I was going to have to abandon the freelance life. I bristled whenever anyone suggested I consider a career change, and spent a lot of my sessions with David discussing healthy ways to handle rejection.
By summer, I learned that my thyroid hormone levels had plummeted, which partly explained why my energy level and mood had also gone downhill. Once I was on medication, things perked up pretty quickly—just in time for my sister’s wedding in July. She got married at our parents’ house in Michigan, in a beautiful ceremony overlooking the lake. I was the maid of honor, and probably didn’t fulfill my duties with bridal-magazine enthusiasm, but it seemed like everyone had a good time.
In October my parents came to New York to celebrate my dad’s seventieth birthday. I took them out for dinner, splurging on reservations at the River Café in Brooklyn, one of those restaurants where the setting almost eclipses the meal. As we enjoyed our dinner on a floating barge with a view of Manhattan—“a truly special nite that I will never forget,” my dad emailed me later—a message I’d gotten from Graham that morning niggled at the back of my mind. He wanted to pick up his portfolio of photos and wondered when he could come by.
I hadn’t written him back, partly because my parents were in town, but I was also trying to put off whatever emotional disturbance I knew Graham would leave in his wake.
A week later, he wrote me again. Since David was drilling into me the downside of avoidance, I figured I should get it over with, but I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when Graham stumbled in. He looked worse than I’d ever seen him, and shared news that blew me apart.
“I’ve got a new girlfriend,” he announced, without any preamble—or awareness of my stunned response.
He sat down in my leather chair, scratching his head and rubbing his eyes, as if he was about to nod out. I numbly asked questions, trying to fill in the blanks.
“What’s her name?”
“Tracy.”
“How long have you been together?”
“A few months—she lives with me.”
“When did she move in?”
“Just after we met—she needed a place to stay.”
“What’s she like?”
“She’s alright.”
“Just alright?”
“She’s got some problems. I’m trying to help her get clean.”
As each detail tumbled out, I felt another twist of the knife. It’s not that I hadn’t considered the possibility that Graham might meet someone else; I just thought it wouldn’t happen unless he got clean. And since he wasn’t exactly on a path to recovery, I wasn’t prepared for how much his moving on would hurt me.
It didn’t seem like much of a romance, but for me Graham’s indifference was almost worse. If he’d given up on love, he’d given up on turning his life around—especially now that he was involved with another addict. Graham was heading for an ending I couldn’t bear to see.
When I asked him about Liam, he couldn’t remember where his son was in college; he just squinted his eyes, shook his head, and blinked. Liam was the person Graham loved most in the world, so for a second I thought he looked as pained as I felt—but maybe that’s just what I needed to believe.
Seeing him in that state tore me apart, and that wound would take a long time to heal. But as it turned out, those photos weren’t the last link between us, and that encounter wasn’t as final as I thought it would be.
CHAPTER TWELVE
May 2010
Wyckoff Housing Projects, Brooklyn
When I wake up, I don’t clean my teeth or make myself a cup of coffee. I don’t look at a clock or worry about being late for work. I just roll off the inflatable bed I’ve been crashing on at my friend Joe’s place and grab the pipe wrapped in a sock in my sneaker. It’s been eight hours since my last hit so I feel like shit—I need to clear my head.
I don’t have any crack but there’s enough residue left for a decent hit. With a thin piece of metal, I carefully scrape the res down the sides of the glass. Once it gathers on the screen—a bit of copper kitchen scrubber—I push the charred nub to the other side of the pipe, grab my lighter, and flick it with my thumb. It doesn’t light. I flick it again and notice the gas is almost out. On the third try it catches so I move the low blue flame to the end of the stem, sucking in the warm smoke.
Holding my breath, I wait a few seconds for the payoff—a rush of euphoria so exhilarating it demands every cell in your body pay attention. My ears start to ring, the craving disappears, everything is fucking brilliant. I’ve
got about ten minutes before the comedown, enough time to find my dope and get straight.
It takes me a minute to remember where I hid a couple of baggies before I fell asleep, paranoid another junkie will steal my drugs. I’ve got so many hiding places—between the pages of a book, inside the fuse box, under the sink—I can’t always keep track of them, but today I’m spared that frantic search. Reaching behind the radiator cover, I pull out what’s left of a bundle, unfolding a small glassine baggie stamped “Get Fucked Up.” I’ve been collecting these baggies for years, all marked with different dealers’ brands, like “Ace Of Spades” or “Crooklyn.” Sometimes I photograph them, but lately I’ve been more caught up in taking pictures of myself. After setting the self-timer on a digital camera to take a photo every ten seconds, I prop it on a shelf, then carry on with my routine.
I open the baggie and tap the powder into a spoon, then find a packet of distilled water and tear it open with my teeth, dribbling the water onto the dope. This time the lighter catches right away. Holding the flame under the spoon, I’m practically salivating with anticipation as the dope dissolves and the water heats up and bubbles. I add a bit of cotton to the spoon to filter out whatever the heroin is cut with—quinine, crushed-up painkillers, sometimes shit that can fuck you up if you’re not careful.
With a new needle from the exchange around the corner, I insert the point into the cotton, then pull in the liquid—slowly, trying to savor the moment. Flicking the syringe to get rid of any air bubbles, I set about finding a vein. Mine are large and still easy to stick—no need to tie off. I just cross my right leg over my left upper arm to make the vein pop. Avoiding the skin bruised by track marks, I jab the needle, pull back, plunge.
Within seconds, any regrets about being an addict are gone—the pain I’m in, the pain I’ve caused, all those feelings swept away by the warm bliss of the heroin rush. As the dope moves through my system, a sense of calm overtakes everything else. I love it and I hate it, but it’s utterly efficient at making everything seem just fine. It’s not strong enough to make me nod out, but it gets me level. Now I can face the day.
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