Idiot

by Laura Clery

  I also knew that I really liked Stephen. If I went on a date with him . . . I was pretty sure I would want to keep dating him. Was I even ready for that? I kept putting him off, but Stephen was so kind and persistent. He called and asked if he could take me to dinner. I checked my calendar. . . . I was free, so I agreed to go.

  And then . . . my agent called. “Laura, the producers scheduled a last-minute table read tomorrow for a pilot.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Yep. Eight a.m. I’m having a production assistant bring by a new script for you. You should be getting it . . . about now.”

  KNOCK KNOCK. I opened the front door to see a nineteen-year-old boy with a large manila envelope in hand. Damn, my agent was good. “It’s here,” I said.

  “Great. Study it, and I’ll see you tomorrow. You’re going to do great!”

  Shit. I looked at the script. It was forty pages. I needed to study this so that I would do well tomorrow. Don’t forget, I know what happens when you don’t do well at the table read. They fire your ass and hire a fucking extra. Being that extra was awesome, but I’d rather not experience the other side of it. I called Stephen to cancel. I felt bad—I had already canceled on him twice. But this was important; this was my career.

  “Hey Stephen, have you left yet?”

  “Yeah, I’m on my way!”

  Damn it. Okay, I wasn’t going to cancel on him if he was already on the way to pick me up. Traffic in LA is no joke. I thought quickly.

  “Okay well, I can only stay out for one hour. I have to study for this table read I have in the morning. I hope you understand.”

  “No problem, Laura! See you soon!”

  Damn his good-natured flexibility. A few years later he confessed to me that he hadn’t actually left yet. He was standing in his kitchen during the call. He just knew I was going to cancel again so he lied. Sneaky, but also effective.

  He took me to a sushi restaurant where they have a really good vegan roll. They sat us next to the bar, so the two vegans on a date got to watch fish get butchered while we ate. Then I spilled sauce all over the waitress. I was nervous! Not only was this a date, but I was so anxious about the table read. I think it was getting to me. I got kind of quiet.

  “Are you all right?” Stephen asked me.

  “I don’t feel great. Will you tell me some funny stories?”

  So he did. He rattled off one about the single day he worked in a furniture store before getting fired, and one about a local convenience store he used to frequent in London where when he’d check out, the guy behind the counter would always, no matter what, ask if he wanted “anything else?” For some reason, Stephen and his friends were determined to get this guy to stop saying “anything else?” After every purchase. So the next time Stephen bought a banana, he said sternly, “I’ll get this banana and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING else.” There was a long stare-off between Stephen and the guy behind the counter. Then . . . “Anything else?” the guy behind the counter replied. He told me story after story, each more hilarious than the next. I was laughing my ass off, then I had a scary thought: Is he funnier than me? Oh shit, I’m supposed to be the funny one in my relationships. I was so worried about it that later on I called my mom, all butthurt. “Mom . . . I think he’s funnier than me.”

  To which she replied, “Oh no, Laura, is he sweet and sensitive, too? How terrible for you.”

  “I’m the funny one, Mom! I’m the funny one!”

  She didn’t have any sympathy for me regarding this amazing guy I had met. Early on, I would even try to suppress my laughter when he told a funny joke. Like seriously, comedy is my job! He’s the music person—it’s not like I ever got on the piano in front of him and told him I was a musical genius. Why did he have to be so good at everything?

  Fortunately, my silly jealousy was hard to keep up when I was laughing this hard. Also, his humor is one of the things I love most about him. Besides, I maintain that I am the funnier one in the relationship.

  We finished dinner and went outside, waiting for the valet to bring Stephen’s car around. I noticed he was shaking. He was so nervous. He looked at me and asked, “Can I kiss you?” Oh my God. No one had ever asked me that before. What the fuck do I say? I should be coy. No, I should be . . . flirtatious. I squinted my eyes halfway closed, which was my best attempt at a sensual expression. “What do you think?” I growled. Pretty dope, right?

  He leaned forward a bit, then stopped. Oh God, I had confused him. “Um. Does that—uh . . .” Stephen stuttered. Finally, he leaned in for a nice, soft kiss.

  From that moment on, I didn’t see Ben again.

  Falling in love with Stephen was sweet and perfect. Since we were both sober, we decided to go café hopping instead of bar hopping. We walked along Ocean Avenue in the afternoon and went from one café to the next, getting coffees and juices and different pastries at each one. I told him about my parents; my sisters; and about the fact that ever since I was little, I’ve woken up at three a.m. every night to eat a green apple. I still do that for some reason.

  At the end of one of these dates, he asked if I wanted to come back to his apartment to watch a movie.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Yes, but do not try anything funny with me!” I was a changed woman, you guys. With him, I didn’t want to mess anything up. We had gone on several dates by now, and I wanted to take things slow. Super slow, like the tortoise who won that race or whatever? I just mean I wasn’t fucking him yet.

  We got back to his apartment and he put on Dr. Strangelove. I think he was trying to impress me. No shade to Stanley Kubrick, but I was more in the mood for something like Happy Gilmore. I’m sorry! Sometimes I have to turn off my brain. This was just really dry and really boring. I looked at him. “This is terrible.”

  “It’s really bad, isn’t it?” he replied.

  We put on another movie called Bad Timing. It still wasn’t Adam Sandler, but it was good enough. When it ended, it was really late.

  “You look tired,” he said to me. “Just spend the night. I don’t want you driving all the way home this late.”

  I thought about it. I felt so comfortable with him at this point, and I really was tired. “Okay, I could do that.”

  I went to sleep easily in his bed. At three a.m., I heard something in the kitchen. I got a little scared and drowsily scanned the room . . . I opened my eyes a bit and noticed Stephen wasn’t in bed anymore. Then I saw his figure walk into the bedroom, out of breath . . . and he set down a green apple on my bedside table. I smiled and fell back asleep.

  In the morning I found out that he had driven to three different convenience stores at three in the morning, looking for an apple for me. (And absolutely nothing else.) “They were all closed, but finally I found one that was still open and carried apples. Tough combination, it turns out!”

  It was the sweetest thing. The apple, I mean. They were in season at that time.

  But yeah, obviously we had sex after that. I’m not a monster.

  I was totally and completely in love. I started to feel more carefree than I ever had been since I got sober. It was like he was teaching me how to have fun and let loose. Before, letting loose meant risking my life.

  Time went on and I finally achieved six months completely sober. I felt like I could do this thing called life. I could do anything! I felt so loved and in love. Every week I would go to my meeting at The Log Cabin. Every morning I would get on my knees and ask God-as-I-know-it to keep me sober for the day. Every day I would talk to other sober people to stay grounded. I was working through the 12 Steps. I was on Step 8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. ’Twas a very long list. . . . But yeah, eight out of twelve seemed pretty good. I felt like I was almost done.

  But “being done” doesn’t ever happen with addiction. If I wasn’t actively focused on recovery, my addiction would creep up and become my solution to life’s problems. They say in AA that anything you put before sobriety, you’l
l lose. I heard them . . . but I didn’t feel like losing anything was possible now. Slowly, I started putting Stephen first. I didn’t really notice it. As time went on, I started thinking to myself, If I can go six months without picking up drugs or having a drink, then I can afford to miss my weekly meeting. I can stop getting on my knees in the morning and asking my higher power to keep me sober. I can stop talking to other sober people.

  I stopped for eight days, but those tools were what quieted down the voice of my addiction. By the eighth day of not applying those tools, the voice of my addiction started to get very loud. It wasn’t even a particularly bad day. Stephen and I didn’t have a fight; I didn’t get a rejection; I didn’t lose a job.

  I was at my apartment trying to write, but I had writer’s block. Jack was at work. Damn it, what do I write, what do I write? Then I figured out the solution. Oh, I know what will help. Some of Jack’s weed. It was like an out-of-body experience. I went into Jack’s dresser drawer, pulled out his stash of weed, and smoked it. I coughed heavily. It had been a while.

  Well, fuck. Now I had smoked weed and ruined six fucking months of sobriety. I might as well go buy some beer. I got some beer and drank it. Well, I’m already drunk. I might as well buy some cocaine.

  I had deleted the numbers of every drug dealer I knew, but no one is unreachable in the age of Facebook! I found one of my old connects, hit him up via Facebook messenger, and picked some up.

  I snorted some cocaine. I might as well smoke it, too.

  Now I was finally cracked out of my mind—jittery and shaking like the crackheads you see on the street. I didn’t even feel good. The shame still seeped through the numbness. How the fuck was it doing that? The weight of my situation came crashing down on me. I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling and feeling meaningless. I ruined my sobriety. I ruined my life. I might as well die.

  I went to the drug store and bought some sleeping pills. I took seven pills. I didn’t care if I lived or died. If I didn’t wake up, then I didn’t wake up. Who fucking cares? I knew that the mix of uppers and downers had the capacity to stop my heart. It’s very dangerous to take them together. That’s how Heath Ledger died. I knew this and I didn’t care about the risk. But still, if I really wanted to die, wouldn’t I have taken the whole bottle? Come on, Laura, commit for once!

  After I took the pills, I went from cracked out to knocked out. I was supposed to see Stephen that night for a date. When I didn’t show up, he kept calling and calling me, with no answer. Immediately he knew I had relapsed. It wasn’t like me to not show up to a date without calling.

  Jack got home from work, saw me passed out on my bed, and just assumed I had fallen asleep. The next day I woke up and my whole body hurt. I saw I had twenty missed calls from Stephen. I called him immediately.

  He answered, but there was only silence on the line. Eventually he spoke. “You relapsed, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.” I wished more than anything that I could have said no. I wished that I had just fucking lost my phone, or gotten a concussion, or gone into a coma. Anything but this.

  He sounded so disappointed. In the most gentle way possible, Stephen told me that he couldn’t be with me if I wasn’t sober. No matter how much he loved me and wanted to take care of me, his sobriety had to come first.

  I had to fight the voice that told me it was useless to go back to my sobriety. The voice said it was hopeless to try again. That it was pointless to want to live. I went back to Alcoholics Anonymous to try again. They say that you aren’t supposed to get sober for anyone else in your life besides yourself, but . . . I couldn’t bear to lose Stephen. So I went back to The Log Cabin, even though I felt like I wasn’t worth shit.

  As I entered, I saw this woman across the room. She had this huge presence. Even before I talked to her, I could tell she was a force of nature. She was this curvy girl in a tiny, tiny dress and she was glowing. I mean, her contour game was strong. I felt pulled toward her and sat down next to her. We started talking and I found out her name was Kristal. I don’t know what it was about her, but I found myself telling her everything. “Yeah, I relapsed but I’m back now. It’s fine. I’m only twenty-three. I’m young.”

  She said, unflinchingly, “If you don’t take this seriously, you’re going to die.” She was facing me dead-on. She wasn’t smiling. She didn’t feel sorry for me. “You’re not too young to die.”

  “I—” I held her gaze. “Good morning to you too.” She didn’t laugh at my joke.

  “Last week I buried a girl just like you. A funny, pretty blonde. She was twenty-three too. OD’d in her bathtub. You’re not invincible. This will take you down just like it took her.”

  When she said that, it hit me. Something about Kristal and the way she spoke to me got through. I believed everything she said.

  “I’m afraid of you. Will you sponsor me?” I knew she wouldn’t let me get away with anything. She nodded yes, and I was completely recommitted.

  I spoke to her in person or on the phone every single day. I started the steps over again. I gave it everything I had. I did it like my life depended on it, because now I truly knew that it did.

  Kristal helped me take inventory of everything in my life: every defect, every fear, every resentment. I wrote it all down in this thick yellow journal, that—by the end of the inventory—was as battered as I felt. Kristal made sure I was thorough: tackling, investigating, and dealing with everything inside myself. Kristal just gave and gave to me, without compensation or condition.

  Something shifted in my mind and changed how I perceived the world. I felt like I finally woke up, like I could see the world more clearly now as a place of love instead of a place of survival or of fear. I focused on living through serving others, rather than for myself. My new mantra was trust God, clean house, help others.

  Trust God meant that I needed to trust the power of the universe/penguins and stop trying to run the fucking show. Ultimately, I don’t have control over everything in the world, or really much at all. Accepting that brings peace.

  Clean house meant that I needed to check in every day with myself to ask: Am I resentful? Do I owe amends? Have I been selfish, self-seeking, dishonest, or afraid? If so, what’s a better way? It meant making sure that my side of the street is clean. It’s also about recognizing the good in my life. Seeing what I can be grateful for around me.

  Help others . . . that’s pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it? It’s so simple, but it’s a huge part of my sobriety. I started giving to others what was so freely given to me. Kristal, this force of nature in a tiny dress, gave hours and hours of her time to me to teach me how to live without drinking. So I did the same for others. In all parts of my life, I tried to focus outward rather than inward.

  This was a huge shift for me. I had been so self-obsessed. Completely consumed with what I could get rather than what I could give. Everything was about MY NEEDS. I needed scar cream. I needed to be successful. I needed the lead role in the pilot. This self-absorption led me to be completely riddled with fear—I might not get what I needed, and I could even lose what I had. It made me miserable. When I made my day about being rigorously honest and giving, I felt happy.

  I feel blessed that I had the willingness to change. It doesn’t happen unless you’re willing, and there are so many people around me that succumbed to their illnesses. I don’t know why I’m still alive. I mean, you read the previous chapters—you know what I was up to. But thanks to Kristal and a swift kick in the ass, I have a design for living now that works for me. If I don’t do it every day, I get sicker.

  One of the many slogans in AA is: “You can’t get clean off yesterday’s shower.” One day with no shower: tolerable. Two days: yuck. Three days: you’re just plain offensive.

  Trust God, clean house, help others. Every day.

  As I got more and more days sober under my belt, Stephen and I started seeing each other again. He was cautious, and I completely understood. He didn’t know if I was going to stick wit
h the program. I had proven myself to be unreliable. All I could do was keep going and keep proving to him that I could live a sober life.

  * * *

  On my thirtieth day of sobriety, I got a call from Peter, the director I harassed at that coffee shop. “Laura, I’m doing a movie in New York with Jason Bateman and Olivia Wilde and I want you to be in it. I don’t have complete say in casting, so you just need to make a self-tape audition, and make it good. I can get you the job.”

  I sent in the self-tape . . . and booked it! But there were some conditions.

  “We would love to have you on set. The only thing is that it’s an indie.”

  “That’s . . . fine? Right?”

  “Well. It means that we can’t afford to fly you out here or put you up. If you can make it to New York and find a place to stay for a month, then you have the job.”

  Okay, well, I had no money to do that. I had blown it all on drugs. So I figured that was that. I couldn’t do it. I told Stephen, and he couldn’t believe I was passing up an opportunity like this.

  “But . . . you love Jason Bateman!”

  “I know!”

  “Can I give you some money to go?” he offered. I frowned—I really didn’t want to make him give me money. “You have to do this, Laura. It’s your career.” I hugged him. I didn’t know what I’d do without Stephen—and I was only going to take the bare minimum, no more. My oldest sister Tracy, who I haven’t spoken enough about in this book, also lent me money to make sure I had enough to eat during the month of shooting. Tracy was always like a second mom to me growing up. As irritating as she found me, she was always there to help. No questions asked.

  Okay, now I had the money to buy a plane ticket and pay for food while in New York. There was no way in hell I could afford a hotel for a month. I posted a Facebook status: “Who the hell do I know that lives in New York?” I got one response—from Claire, a girl I haven’t talked to since we did speech together in high school.