For weeks I couldn’t watch TV shows or films involving prison. I had nightmares about unprovoked arrests that had me howling in my sleep. “Ssssh,” Kari comforted me, held my head.
To expunge the felony, the state offered first time drug offenders a twelve-month diversion program called TASC. Short for Treatment Assessment Screening Center, the program required random urinalysis, substance abuse counseling and group sessions. If compliant, the state would erase the charge because it would never officially convict me. I asked the clerk on the phone two or three times about the issue of job applications: “Just to be clear, if I complete the program, I can check no on the felony conviction box, right?” Yes, he said, but if my pee came up dirty and didn’t quickly get clean, I’d be kicked off TASC, hit with a $1,200 fine, charged with the felony, and remain on probation. If I violated that probation, a judge would determine whether to sentence me to prison for up to 3.75 years. Mandatory urinalysis was the best thing that could happen to me. Without the threat of imprisonment and fines forcing me into treatment—diverting me from recklessness—I’m not sure how long I would have kept avoiding treatment. I do know this: I am the statistical exception. Arrest worked for me, but for most people, criminalization doesn’t lead to sobriety, it leads to a life in prison and continued crime, and unfairly affects people of color and low-income populations.
Before my first visit to TASC, I hid in my parent’s spare bedroom and called a clinic I’d seen advertised in the Phoenix New Times. I understood the basics of how methadone programs worked—basic chemistry, the long lines—but I asked the doctor a litany of questions anyway, about costs, frequency of visits, what to expect and if it was secret. When the doctor asked why I had decided to utilize methadone, I mentioned TASC and how I needed to avoid dope sickness. He warned that those weren’t the best reasons. “This isn’t nicotine gum,” he said. “You could be on this for years.” I wasn’t thinking in terms of years. My calendar measured the hours between hits and the days left until the next score. He said, “You have to want to live clean.” I did want that. I also wanted to get out of all this trouble without anyone knowing much about it.
I went to the clinic the next morning before Kari went to work. The tiny building sat on a shady side street in a rough part of town I grew up avoiding. People lined up at one window inside, and I checked in at another. A middle-aged nurse with blonde bobbed hair led me into a back room. She was the doctor’s wife. They co-owned the clinic. Their son ran the front desk. She sat me on an examination table, took my pulse and heart rate. “How much do you use daily?” she said. As I told her about how things had gotten out of control, I admitted how desperately I wanted my life back. I started to cry. I hadn’t cried in months, not after my arrest, not even when apologizing to Kari.
“Do the urinalysis results matter?” I said, sobbing into my shirt. She said they did. “Good,” I said. “I need them to matter.”
She explained that they were going to get me on a small dose first, based on how much heroin I used, and slowly increase the milligrams until they found the amount that stabilized me. It was an inaccurate science, and I might feel some discomfort in the interim. Discomfort was the main reason I was there. It was a junkie’s least favorite word. “Part of the process is hanging in there,” she said, and instructed me not to use to compensate. She left and came back with a tiny cup of clear liquid. I drank it down. It would take about thirty minutes to work.
After paying her son at the front desk, he told me he’d see me tomorrow. “Hang in there,” he said as I walked out the door. “And don’t use.”
I drove down the street in the early morning darkness. I parked by some rundown old houses with brown front lawns and hung my arm out the window. Stars showed overhead, cosmic dust dimming at the advance of the sun. This has to be the end, I thought, death feeding new life. After thirty minutes watching the horizon light black to blue, I still didn’t feel a thing. So I mixed up a small hit from what remained of my heroin, refusing to believe that the nurse had given me enough.
You can do a few things with a secret like mine. You can tell it to everyone at once, and unload the biggest burden you’ve ever carried in one explosive discharge. Or you can disclose it piecemeal, one apology and admission at a time. First you tell people, Hey, I was a heroin addict, then a few months later say, Oh, and I was on methadone too. As anyone at a bar in a strange town will tell you, sometimes it’s easier to admit your secrets to people you’ll never see again than it is to admit them to the people you know.
How much and for how long Kari bought my lies and excuses remains unclear. But one night out of the blue, at a restaurant, she broke up with me. I was shocked it had taken her so long to come to her senses, and envious of her willingness to do what I was too afraid to do.
“I still don’t know what Kari knows or where the wedding ring went,” I later said to Francine. Even though Emily Post said it was customary to return the ring, I had called Kari from Portland to tell her that if she didn’t want the engagement ring I understood, but the ring was a gift. I thought letting her decide what to do with it was the “adult” thing to do. Really, I just felt guilty for betraying her.
Finally, to lighten the mood, Francine asked how I liked Oregon so far: did I miss Arizona? Was I glad that I moved?
I sobbed. “The smartest decision I ever made besides getting sober was moving up here.” I loved it all: nearby hikes, numerous bookstores, the high rate of literacy, the focus on recycling and biking, and mass transit. Portland was a city of youthful dreamers, a place where artists and progressive thinkers cultivated their left-wing predilections and welcomed whatever weirdo moved into their midst. It was liberal and socially conscious—nothing like Phoenix.
“Well it wasn’t always that way.” Francine said that when you mapped voter registration in the state, you saw that Portland was essentially a Democratic island in a conservative sea. All of Oregon’s liberal hot spots were in the Willamette Valley cities of Portland, Corvallis, and Eugene. “The rest of the state is Republican,” she said, “farmers, ranchers, loggers, conservatives.” She told me about a sign that settlers placed at a fork in the Oregon Trail during the Gold Rush. The sign said “To Oregon,” accompanied by an arrow, and stood near a cairn of gold quartz that marked the route south to California. It was designed to filter out both poor illiterate whites and black travelers, so that only those able to read could follow the sign. The literate and “respectable” folks went to Oregon, the reckless adventurers and illiterate rest ended up in California. She said, “Pretty ugly beginning to what became a really great place.” I hoped I would turn out the same.
That morning I went home and showered. I pet my cats, waited two hours for the methadone to digest before I ate breakfast, then I went to work. I repeated this routine every week for six years, and in 2006, I got off methadone. In 2010, I celebrated ten years heroin-free. Soon I’ll celebrate twenty. I’ve privately apologized to my ex-fiancé and her sister for my enormous betrayals, and I’ve confessed my addiction and arrest to friends because transparency, I know now, strengthens rather than weakens such bonds. As French writer and diarist Anaïs Nin said, “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” Yet I still can’t admit to having been on methadone. All these years later, I’ve told no one but Rebekah, my wife. Not Kari, not my family or friends. At first I didn’t admit it because I felt ashamed. Now, having come clean about heroin in general, I find myself withholding about methadone because I’ve waited so long to confess, and the longer I wait, the more deceitful I feel. The same internal debate plagues me from long ago: if I admit it now, won’t everyone wonder what else I’m hiding? Worse, won’t they question everything I say? Then there’s the guilt. I feel as guilty for continuing to conceal it from everyone as I do for sneaking to the clinic behind Kari’s back in the first place. Admitting to my other secrets felt liberating and morally correct, but unlike Nin’s courage, mine seems to have its limits.
After I mov
ed to Oregon, Kari and I talked occasionally on the phone. Months passed. We quit calling. Months turned to years. It’s as if I hoped time would expunge my history. Maybe you don’t need to come clean to be clean, but my conscious has always felt burdened because part of me believes that the people you wrong this deeply deserve an apology. But maybe I’m projecting. Maybe I’m imagining that because I need forgiveness, Kari needs an apology. Maybe I’m confusing my need to confess with Kari’s need to know the truth. Back when we were twenty-five years old, telling her I was on methadone seemed imperative, but she’s a mother of two now, married to a good man and enjoying a career. Even though we’re still in contact and on friendly terms, I doubt she spends time thinking about those years. Even if she does occasionally reflect on them, what good would knowing I was on methadone do her now? Or maybe I have it wrong: maybe the need to be honest supersedes the fragile relief of an incomplete portrait of reality. Until I come clean, the answers will remain unclear.
That morning after meeting Francine, the only things that were clear to me were what I had done and what I still needed to do. So I showered and rubbed my tired eyes and walked south from my apartment toward the closest light rail stop. I walked past rows of tall elms and maples to my local station. Yards filled with ferns lined the sidewalk. Low clouds stretched infinitely overhead. I drew deep breaths of the moist air, relishing the smell of the temperate zone, the taste of dirt and chlorophyll. Then I stepped onto the light rail, and the doors closed behind me.
WORKS CITED
Here is a selection of works I utilized during the writing of this book. My thanks to all the authors whose research, ideas, and enthusiasm contributed to my own.
BOOKS
Abbey, Edward. The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West. Plume, 1991.
Anderson, J. Seth. Downtown Phoenix. Arcadia Publishing, 2012.
Carpenter, Bill. Uncloudy Days: The Gospel Music Encyclopedia. Backbeat Books, 2005.
Daum, Meghan. My Misspent Youth: Essays. Picador, 2015.
De Mente, Boyé Lafayette. Japan Unmasked: The Character & Culture of the Japanese. Tuttle Publishing, 2006.
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Ellis, Edward Robb. The Epic of New York City: A Narrative History. Basic Books, 2011.
Erickson, Hal. Television Cartoon Shows: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, 1949 Through 2003. McFarland, 2016.
Gopnik, Adam. Through the Children’s Gate: A Home in New York. Vintage, 2007.
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Hess, Alan. Googie: Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture. Chronicle Books, 1986.
Hess, Alan. Googie Redux: Ultramodern Roadside Architecture. Chronicle Books, 2004.
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Kazin, Alfred. A Walker in the City. Harvest Book, 1969.
Kerr, Alex. Dogs and Demons: Tales From the Dark Side of Japan. Reprint ed., Hill and Wang, 2002.
Lankevich, George J. American Metropolis: A History of New York City. NYU Press, 1998.
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ARTICLES, ESSAYS AND WEBSITES
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Dreams of the Atomic Era” in Cincinnati Review; “A Secondary Landscape” as a Future Tense Publishing chapbook; “The Stoned Age” in The Normal School; “Land Speculation” in North American Review; “The Burden of Home” in the Paris Review; “Leaving Tatooine” in River Styx; “Tillage” in Saranac Review; “Tragedy of the Commons” in Alligator Juniper; “It’s Really Something You Should Have Examined” in Passages North; “My Manhattan Minute” in Bayou under a different title; “Ancient History” in New Ohio Review; “Between Disappearances” in Black Warrior Review and Tablet; “Every Supper the Last” in Third Coast; “Hey Cowboy” in Fourth Genre; “’ra-di-kl” in Hotel Amerika; “A Reckless Autonomy in The Smart Set; “(Be)Coming Clean,” a shorter version, in Louisville Review.
CREDITS
If you type enough, pages accrue, but this book is the result of many people’s effort, generosity, love, and trust. First, thank you to the magazine editors who believed in these stories and helped improve them: Nina Mason, Kevin Sampsell, Thessaly La Force, Matt Roberts, Sophie Beck, Steven Church, Marcia Aldrich, David Lazar, Amanda Giracca, Kim Groninga, Elissa Cahn, Barry Grass, Wayne Hoffman, Randolph Bates, Jose L. Torres-Padilla, Jeff Fearnside, Ellyn Lichvar, Jason Wilson and Jesse Smith, John Bullock and Damien Cowger, and Shanie Latham and Richard Newman. Many thanks to Powell’s alumni Diane Brodie and Mary Winzig, who let me housesit when I needed a quiet place to write and a reminder of who I was. And an extra large, special thanks to Diane for the manna from heaven that got me through a strange time; you went above and beyond. My thanks to Brigid Hughes, David Leavitt, and George Singleton for the example and encouragement along the way, even when they didn’t know they were encouraging me. Thanks to Julia Wick and Mark Armstrong at Longreads for their support, and for being so engaged in storytelling and literature, and open to experimentation. You are truly good eggs.
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