“You ’ave bow’l movemen’ t’day?” she asked.
Or, we could always just talk about that.
“No.” How could I when I eat the equivalent of a saltine a day? At this rate, a poop might happen in July.
“Cheers.” And she was gone.
And that was the full extent of my human contact that entire day.
A few long hours later, I was beginning to doze off when I noticed that Papillon, a movie I’ve loved since I was a kid, was beginning. That’s the thing about English telly, they actually play old movies on their major networks. Papillon was made in the seventies and stars in the title role one of the most heart-stopping, gorgeous movie stars ever, Steve McQueen. Costarring with him was Dustin Hoffman, an actor I usually really like, but in this case he went a bit crazy in the “nutty accent, funny teeth, and kooky eyeglasses” department. Now, I’m the last gal to judge a scenery-chewer, but it’s almost as if he said to himself, Maybe if I whip out every single acting trick in the book, nobody’ll notice how sexy McQueen is. (Not a chance.)
Papillon is based on a book written by this French petty thief of the same name. The events he describes have since been called into question, but it’s a damn good movie regardless. Papillon, for doing almost nothing, gets sent to hell on earth, Devil’s Island, which at one time was a real French penal colony in French Guiana, South America. This place was so awful it makes anyone who kvetched about Alcatraz seem like a pussy. I was amazed to find myself smiling, because for the first time in almost two months, I could finally enjoy watching someone who’s life sucked way more than mine.
Papillon soon becomes obsessed with escaping (you really can’t blame the guy, what with the heat, the workload, them pesky ’skeeters, the occasional bout of leprosy, guards who relish torturing for the slightest infraction), but every time he does so, he gets caught, and more and more time is added on to his sentence. He’s also forced to spend so many years in complete darkness in solitary confinement that by the time he gets out, his hair is white, he can barely walk, and his teeth have fallen out. (Guess who’s still a fox?)
Finally, he and Dustin are sent to Pig’s Island, where they live in little huts and have pigs as pets. They’re left there without guards because the cliffs are so high that escape is deemed impossible. Pig’s Island always seemed pretty nice to me, if they’d just put up some curtains, give the huts a good cleaning, and maybe pick some wildflowers.
But Papillon doesn’t have time for a broom. He refuses to give up the dream of escaping. He will not be confined. Besides, Dustin’s scenery-chomping would try anyone’s patience. Eventually, Papillon somehow figures out by tossing a bunch of coconuts over the cliffs into the ocean that there’s one short lull in the tide, and that instead of smashing back against the rocks, one lucky coconut gently floats out to sea. So, he makes a coconut boat, figures out the timing, and floats to freedom and a life as a celebrated writer. Leaving Dustin behind to ponder why the hell he worked so damned hard if McQueen was gonna effortlessly steal the whole movie anyway.
I was at the coconut-throwing scene when I heard a loud bang. Because I’m from New York City, I almost ignored it, assuming it was just someone being murdered. Then, out of the corner of my eye there was a burst of orange. I looked up from my bed out the window, and I saw the most glorious, enormous bursts of color lighting up the Eye and the rest of the skyline. Fireworks. I could even hear the “oohs” and the “aahs” floating up from the celebrating crowd.
To this day I don’t know exactly why, but for some mysterious reason, this was the moment that sanity finally chose to break through the madness that had held me in its iron grip for so many years. With no warning, I was struck by this thought:
There are people in that crowd who are looking at the same fireworks I am right this very second who are STONE COLD SOBER. There are people in that crowd who don’t feel the need to touch their back pocket of their jeans constantly to make sure the six pills are still there. There are people in that crowd who are simply enjoying the spectacle, without wondering if they have one refill left at the pharmacy, or if they would have to call yet another doctor. There are people out there RIGHT NOW who aren’t imprisoned by drugs. They’re just with their loved ones and are just happy to be alive.
Grief overwhelmed me. True, real sorrow because I finally understood what I was. A selfish, self-serving, loathsome creature who did nothing to better the world. I finally truly felt the weight of all the pain I had caused, all the tears that had been wasted on me, all the gifts I had been given to me that I had just carelessly frittered away, and all of the thousands of hours I had spent obsessing about something as ridiculous, boring, and stupid as me.
I don’t want this life anymore, I thought. I can’t bear who I’ve become.
I squeezed my eyes shut and started praying. I mean really praying, for the first time since I was a little kid. I’m not sure to whom, it wasn’t to some guy on a throne, or his son. I didn’t believe in those guys anymore. But I prayed to someone or something out there in the universe wiser than me. I prayed to all the people I’d ever loved, and all the people stupid enough to love me back. I prayed to my dead dog Pablo. I prayed to the gorgeous fireworks outside my window, and all the lucky people enjoying them.
I prayed that somehow, someway I’d figure out how to do the impossible—build a raft out of coconuts and escape from my own Devil’s Island.
Thirty-nine years old.
Totally alone.
A wasted life.
Happy New Year!
twelve
PRETTY UGLY
new year’s Eve was my bottom, but it wasn’t the end. That would happen a few weeks later, due to the fact that I’m a stubborn control Freak. That, and of course since I was fucking crazy.
It was one fine morning in mid-January when my surgical team delivered the amazing news. My infection had almost disappeared, and I could finally officially leave! I couldn’t believe it. The nightmare is over. Then they informed me that I would be wearing a colostomy bag for the next month to help drain the remaining infection. My smile faltered. Then faded. A colostomy bag? Aren’t those for old people who’ve had to have their butts removed? Whenever I pictured a colostomy bag (which, trust me, wasn’t all that often), I had always assumed it to be an enormous blue bag attached to someone’s very old, very unhappy rectum.
Oddly, I was wrong. It’s actually way more fun. I was going to describe one to you, but I think Wikipedia’s definition is way cuter than anything I could rustle up. A quick heads-up first for all you idiots who don’t enjoy reading medical journals in your spare time: a colostomy bag is actually called an “ostomy pouching system,” which I think is much more elegant. Oh, and a stoma refers to an opening on the body (which in my case was located just below my left rib cage) and is not fancy medical lingo for “stomach,” which would have been my guess. So sit back, grab a snack, and enjoy!
An ostomy pouching system (also colloquially called a bag) is a medical prosthetic that provides a means for the collection of waste from a surgically diverted biological system. An ostomy pouching system collects waste from the stoma and allows the stoma to drain into a sealed collection pouch, while protecting the surrounding skin from contamination. Ostomy pouching systems are air-and water-tight and allow the wearer to lead an active normal lifestyle that can include all forms of sports, recreation, and even performing in a play.
I added the very end, just to make sure you’re still with me.
It basically looks like a quart-size sandwich bag with a circular, sticky ring so as to surround your stoma. One of the twelve-year-old doctors showed me how to tape it on myself, and I must say, nothing puts a spring in a girl’s step like sporting a darling, pus-filled “ostomy pouching system.”
I ended up spending a total of almost two months in that hospital. I had lost a whopping sixty-five pounds. When I looked in the mirror above the sink, I was so gaunt and ghostly white, I looked like I had been on Survivor: Greenlan
d. As I made arrangements to leave, they asked me to pay the bill. I’d been dreading this part for weeks, and I almost had a heart attack when I saw it. I couldn’t fucking believe it: everything—the surgery, X-rays, CT scans, the truckloads of morphine, antibiotics, and many other medications, the staff, the blech-filled pouch, the private room—everything, all of it ended up costing me a whopping two thousand pounds.
Which meant that, in 2007, I owed them a little over three grand.
You have to understand that for weeks I had been preparing to give the go-ahead to my business manager to clean out my bank account and pension, sell my apartment, all while agonizing over which treasured family heirloom to sell. I honestly thought it would cost me at least a million bucks. I had been aware that I was in a country that was renowned for its incredible National Health Service (known as NHS). The UK’s NHS ensures that anyone and everyone gets free medical treatment, regardless of who you are or what you do. I just never imagined it would apply to me, an American, pill-popping lush.
Recently, I decided to see what information I could find on the Internet about it, and I almost fell off my chair when I read that one of the few areas of medicine the NHS doesn’t cover is dental work. Which explains a great deal. (Personally, I would gently encourage them to revisit that decision.) This means that the only thing I was charged for was my private room. Jesus, no wonder Nurse Wretched had a bug up her ass. She washed my hair and tucked me in, and I paid her not one dime.
Discussing America’s health-care reform isn’t one of my favorite pastimes; however, I must say that I think our system sucks because, soon, the only people who’re gonna be able to afford to go to doctors will be the fucking doctors. Infuriating. I can’t imagine what would’ve happened to me if my guts had decided to blow up in New York City. Well, that’s not exactly true. I can imagine. You might very likely find me in the San Fernando Valley shooting porn for gentlemen who like their ladies tall, blond, and a bit long in the tooth.
After I giddily paid the bill, I knew I had one last important thing to do before I left. I knew I had to say good-bye to one very special person. With a heavy heart, I wandered around the wing and finally found her being rude to someone’s devastated family member at the front desk. I grinned and leaned against the wall to watch her for a few minutes, soaking in my last precious moments with her. When she had the balls to simply ignore the hysterically sobbing woman’s question, I felt all warm and fuzzy inside. What a lady.
I walked up to them, my pouching system sloshing noisily. “Excuse me.”
Nurse Wretched turned around quickly and glared daggers at my vagina, which was at her eye level. I watched as her tiny eyes slowly traveled upward until they met mine. She squinted up at me warily.
“Wot.”
“Listen, I’m leaving today.”
Silence.
“And I just wanted to thank you, so much. For putting up with me, and especially that time you washed my hair and tucked me in. Other than my mom, nobody’s ever done that for me before and I—thank you. Really. It meant a lot. I’ll never forget you.”
She kept staring at me. Then, for the first time since we met almost two months before, Nurse Wretched smiled at me. I was floored. To be honest, I didn’t think her face could even do that. It didn’t matter that she was lacking a front tooth and quite a few bottoms, I thought it was one of the prettiest smiles I’d ever seen.
Then, just as fast as it appeared, it was gone so completely I wondered if I had imagined it. She abruptly turned and walked away, the weeper hot on her heels, begging for answers I knew she would never get.
I finished out the last few months of the play. I was terrifyingly skinny, very weak, and I almost fainted a few times on stage, but I finished it. I wore an “ostomy pouching system” underneath my wardrobe for most of it, but I finished it. I managed to visit a few different doctors, which kept me cushioned in a sea of Vicodin. And I still didn’t stop to think about what I was doing. Denial. My Kryptonite.
Then, about three weeks before my return to New York, I got Laura’s e-mail.
My face still burns with shame when I think of it. Laura is one of my oldest, closest friends. She’s a brilliant costume designer, and her two young kids are the kind you actually want to spend as much time with as possible. (If you ever want to know what kind of a person someone is, just look at their kids. Or their pets.)
A wee bit of backstory. Many years ago, in the fall of 2001, I was performing in The Women on Broadway. During this time, Laura, who had just given birth to her second child, had to have a bowel resection, which was a surgery similar to mine. She even had the tube of blech coming out of her nose. (And yet of course, it was completely different.) Hers was a horrible twist of fate, while mine was most definitely not.
I visited her in her private hospital suite at St. Luke’s on the Upper West Side almost every day before the show, and between shows on matinee days. I helped her to the bathroom, with the baby, and with whatever else she needed. Therefore, when almost the same thing happened to me (well, at least as far as she knew), I was stunned and deeply hurt that she had only called me one time, right after I got out of surgery. For two months I would e-mail her and leave her messages, and I’d never hear back. I couldn’t believe she could be so cruel. My hurt stewed and twisted and curdled as I lay there with nothing else to do. Every time I’d think of her, it would sting and I’d weep from the betrayal.
Finally, a few weeks after I was out of the hospital, I wrote her an angry, hurt, weepy e-mail. I was not at all prepared for the response. I know it was much longer, with lots of other stuff, but these are the sentences that are burned into my memory:
Kristen, I think you’re a drug addict and an alcoholic.
I think you lie to everyone, all the time. We all know
what’s been going on with you. And I think your guts
blew up because of how many drugs you take. I love you, Laura
I sat on the edge of my bed, in my tiny flat on Cadogan Square, trembling, and felt myself disappear into a black hole of nothingness. My mask, ripped away. Laura tore it away. She’s a terrible person who hates me. How could she be so mean to me? Oh my God.
A second wave of paranoia and panic slammed into me. My friends know? Who? Have they been idly trashing me behind my back?
Nonononononooooo.
White-faced, I just sat there and stared at my feet for hours. How on earth could I possibly tell all my friends, my mom, my sister, my brother? All the people I lied to, all the people who felt just awful that this terrible fate had befallen me? If I told them I didn’t exist, that the person they knew and loved was just a mirage, then would I just become. . . nothing?
If I don’t exist, who am I?
“No, no, no. Ignore it, it will all go away. Just keep pretending,” he said sternly.
Oh, thank God, Mr. M, where have you been?
“Right where I’ve always been. Right where I’ll always be.”
I took five Vicodin, and I immediately felt much better. Mr. M helped me come up with a brilliant plan. I’ll just stop drinking or taking drugs, and when I get back, I’ll just ice them all out. Won’t they all feel fucking stupid when they see how wrong they were.
An English friend came to see the show that night. Afterward, we went to the Ivy, and despite my resolution of just a few hours before, I had three martinis, because that is what I’ve always done with a friend after a play. Always. I drank because I couldn’t fathom not drinking. My body wept in protest, my spirit crushed. But I drank anyway.
The next day I woke up, and I knew.
I WILL NEVER, EVER STOP. EVER. I WON’T “GROW OUT OF IT,” AND IT WON’T STOP ON ITS OWN. I WILL DRINK AND USE DRUGS UNTIL I DIE. WHICH WILL BE VERY SOON.
(Terrifying).
I needed to talk to someone. I called Marci in New York.
“Marci, I’m worried about my drinking.” Ooh! Maybe I can just be an alcoholic?
“Well, why don’t you just go to rehab
and get it dealt with?”
She said this in the same tone one would say, “You should put sunscreen on” or “Have you thought about putting that lamp over there?” Her simple, nondramatic answer piled on top of Laura’s bravery saved my life. Laura exposed the rot, and Marci made it sound like something solvable instead of impossible. They both, in their own ways, cajoled my illness from the deep cavern of shame and self-hatred it had been rotting in and brought it out into the open.
Yeah, why don’t I? People do it every day. Besides, my way isn’t exactly working out so good anymore. Suddenly, I could almost picture myself clean and better and whole. Maybe I don’t have to live as if I’m already dead. Maybe I can live as if I’m alive. I could hear Mr. M shouting angrily, but his voice got weaker and weaker. I immediately called a few places and finally reached the Meadows, a facility in Arizona. Before I could talk myself out of it (or Mr. M got wind of it), I booked a bed for the week after I got home from London.
And that, finally, was the beginning of the end.
A confluence of four events that had built into a perfect storm. The hospital, my Papillon realization, the e-mail from Laura, and the phone call with Marci. If just one of those things hadn’t occurred, I’m certain I’d still be using (on the off chance I was still alive, that is). But the fact that each had transpired, one after another, in the order they did, is what saved me.
My last days in London were consumed by a coconutsize ball of fear that had formed in the pit of my ravaged guts. But instead of trying to kill it, I took that goddamn coconut and used it to begin to build my raft. A sorry, poorly made, leaky fucker that still somehow managed to sail me all the way to rehab.
Guts: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Giant Disaster Page 12