After Perfect (17 page)

Hustle was what I learned to do when the need for money became greater than the need for self-respect. The creditors were still looking for me, and I needed to earn more. I had just turned twenty-one, and I started thinking long and hard about the things my mother had said to me: “Get used to it.” “We don't have a choice.” My father had been arrested when I was at an age where your identity is still a blank slate—where teenagers go off to college and get to reinvent themselves.

I had been a “good girl” growing up, with the exception of the occasional bag of weed and sneaking in a beer or two at parties. I didn't drink and drive. I didn't have anything to hide from anyone, no shame to bear that I was aware of. But in Los Angeles, the line between right and wrong seemed to be fading every passing day, insidiously making its way through my impressionable self. When the nightclub wouldn't promote me to bottle-service girl because I had no prior cocktail waitress experience, I created a fictitious resume, went online, and found a job on Craigslist.

I parked my car in front of the pink dilapidated Mark Twain Hotel: half of it used as a flophouse, the other half for struggling artists who want to kill themselves—or so it looked. With my resume and headshot in hand, I marched up to Sunset Boulevard in gold hoop earrings, a black miniskirt, necessary Wonderbra, and spaghetti-strap tank top. Over the phone, Jerry had warned me that the office door didn't have an address on it. Jerry was the owner. The office was in between a bar and a newspaper stand that carried plastic Academy Awards and mini-license-plate key chains with random people's first names organized alphabetically.

When Jerry opened the door, he looked like a dirty sailor. His handlebar mustache curled upward from a ball of wax. He sat down in a swivel chair and leaned back to catch the breeze from a revolving floor fan, revealing his happy trail and beer belly. He wore a Corona beer T-shirt and asked me about my experience as a cocktail waitress. I lied to him about all the restaurants I worked at in DC and embellished my job at the nightclub. He asked me what I would do in different scenarios, such as: “If a customer asks you to take a shot with them, what do you do?”

“Well, I would ask you first, but I imagine the answer would be yes, since I would charge him for two shots instead of one.”

“Great.” He winked at me. “And flirting helps.”

I would start the next day.

T
he bar was in a run-down shack in Hollywood that smelled of beer, dirty sponges, and cleaning fluid. Modelo beer balloons and sports team pennants hung across the ceiling. It was home to drunken tourists who wore trucker hats and sleeveless jerseys. A girl named Kayla was the first to train me. She was a no-bullshit bitch from Southie (Boston) who flung a Corona belly shirt, apron, and rag at me on the first day and sneered, “Hurry up, princess, we're opening.” Kayla was black Irish and had five older brothers. Her dad died when she was five, and she was raised by her Irish immigrant grandparents. It was like she could smell the good breeding on me. I asked her where the bathroom was so I could put on my new belly shirt. “Red door in the hallway,” she said, counting cash and smacking Bubblicious gum. The bathroom walls were bright green. It smelled like a Porta-Potty, the aura of shit combined with the kind of cheap air fresheners hung in cars. I breathed out of my mouth as I heard Bruce Springsteen's song “Born to Run” come on the jukebox.

“S
hoot this every hour,” Kayla said, handing me a shot of tequila. “The night goes by twice as fast.” I took a swig and shoved a lime slice into my mouth.

“And this is Jimmy, our bartender.” Jimmy looked like a rugged version of Brad Pitt's character from
Thelma and Louise
; a toothpick seesawed up and down in between his teeth.

“Nice to meet you.” I shook his hand, and it felt sticky.

“Does lil' miss here know the deal?” Jimmy shot Kayla a look.

“Gonna take her out back right now.”

Kayla pulled me into the back alley by the dumpster and whipped out her black checkbook full of cash.

“Do you need money, or what?” Kayla was impatient.

“Um, yeah, I need money,” I said, not understanding what she was getting at.

“Here's the deal: Jerry sells Patrón, but it's really Jose Cuervo, upcharging customers for shit tequila. Also, we don't get legal breaks here, and we work seven- to eight-hour shifts. The whole place is a complete fraud. But, if you're like me, Jimmy, and the rest of the girls here, and need money, and can't afford to look for another job, then this is the deal: when your customer sits down, you walk up to them, and you ask
up front
: “Cash or credit?” If they say
cash
, go to Jimmy, whisper the order, then pocket the cash. We pool it at the end of the night, and split it with Jimmy. You dig?” This was a rhetorical question.

“So . . .” I was about to reiterate what she said to me in simpler terms, but then stopped myself when she took a long, hard look at me. “Yeah. I got it,” I said. I wasn't conscious that what I was doing was wrong regardless of whether the entire business was fraudulent. It was as though some giant blank spot inserted itself into my brain, creating a moral blackout for the sake of survival, not wanting to have to choose between a meal and putting gas in my car.

“You fuck this up in any way, and your ass will be fired before you finish training. Get to work.”

F
or the next week, I emulated each girl that trained me. After Kayla, it was Colleen. A bleach blonde from Missouri, she was grieving the death of her older sister, who had been killed by a drunk driver. Colleen could drink any of us under the table and when she did, that's when she'd talk about her sister. Then there was Alana. Tan and from the Bronx. She loved telling me about her boyfriend and how the only reason they were together was because they were serial cheaters. She drove a motorcycle to work. The last girl to train me, Fiona, was tall and lanky, and raised on a marijuana farm up in Humboldt County, California. She always brought bags of brownies with her to work. “Here, you want one?” she'd ask. I'd shove it into my purse and save it for a hard night. She wore neon glowsticks around her neck. I was always surprised at how much cash she reeled in.

I watched how each girl teased and flirted with the male regulars, tickling them under their chins, taking shots together, sitting on their laps when it got slow. I understood quickly why taking a shot every hour helped get you through each night. At only 105 pounds, I managed to shoot nearly seven shots a night, gliding past tables, teasing and throwing my head back and running my hands through a customer's hair, believing that I could make more money by using my femininity and sexuality. I felt an intense power when I did, but I was naive and had no understanding of
false
power—that even power could lie. But how could it when it felt so real?

Exacerbating my disillusioned life, I received a letter from my father at around the same time. It was about a tequila company he was starting from prison. How apropos, I thought. Instead of Patrón, it would be called “Matron Tequila: The Mother of all Tequilas.” They already had 170 acres of agave plants near Puerto Vallarta. He even enclosed a map, as if it were my own personal treasure map, with arrows and a dot leading to the property. It was paper-clipped to an old Patrón ad, cut out from a magazine. He crossed out the
P
and wrote
M
. Below “The World's #1 Ultra Premium Tequila,” he wrote: “The Mother of All Tequilas.” And at the bottom where it gave the website address, he put a line through it with his pen and wrote “MATRON.COM.” He told me I'd be able to buy a house in Beverly Hills before I knew it. I owned 2 million shares of common stock in the company, which would be doing its public offering (IPO) in about eighteen to twenty-four months. And it would trade between seven and eleven dollars a share, which meant that if it were to trade at its highest—at eleven dollars a share—we had the potential to earn $22 million dollars. And if that were the case, Dad said he'd buy a new airplane and keep it in a hangar in Santa Monica next to Tom Cruise's, “We can sing Scientology songs with Katie and Tom!” But first, in order for this to happen, he needed me to be his “law clerk” for a few things. “The first thing you need to do is get the disk . . . download ‘My Documents.' Then you need to do the following . . . Find the ‘Certificate of Incorporation,' and make three different Certificates of Incorporation for me.” My father enclosed an edited document in his letter, an example, of the changes I needed to make. “Pay close attention to my edits and notes . . . send me four copies of each edited Certificate of Incorporation. You'll also need to find the ‘cover letter' or ‘Delaware cover letter.' Edit the letter as I've indicated . . . Oops, I almost forgot, also, send me a copy of the ‘Business Advisory Agreement' . . . P.S. In case you didn't know, ‘MCC Trust' represents the first initials of you and your sisters . . . With a little luck, I'll soon be flying you and Josh to Aspen for lunch! . . . XOXO Dad.”

I couldn't remember where I had put my father's disk—whether or not Josh had it somewhere or if it got lost in the storage unit. I was late for work the day I was looking for it. Most days and most nights, I was somewhere else. Floating through fantasies, through fields of agave in Mexico, dreaming of the Mother of All Tequilas while serving my patrons Patrón. Once on a busy night, a jock in a New England Patriots jersey walked up to me and said, real close to my face, “You are the worst, most horrible cocktail waitress I have ever had. Ever. In my life.” Later, when I picked up the bill, instead of leaving me a tip, he left a little note that read “Suck It, Bitch,” and below it, a PS with a tiny drawing of a penis. I was slacking and lazy and trapped in my entitled thinking that my father was coming home to save me. I knew I was a bad waitress. Sometimes I would hustle and work hard, and other times I just faded into the fantasy of a future with my father and all that he was promising. I never brought in as much money as the other girls did. It was as if I was genetically predisposed to failure and a bad work ethic—one half of me believing that when my father would come home, everything would go back to normal; and the other half uncertain, desperate, and unaware of how I craved love and attention, flirting with endless strangers under the guise that it would make me feel financially safe.

As a result, my relationship with Josh was falling apart. He would come into the bar with friends, and I couldn't help but want to make him jealous, pushing the envelope on purpose, testing his love for me. And Josh was picking up on it. “I feel like you always need attention from other guys, Christina. Am I not enough?” I couldn't explain it other than it felt like he was becoming, in some way, a threat to my survival. I wouldn't be able to hustle with all of his questioning and jealousy. Yet I wanted him to prove to me over and over again that he loved me in spite of my unconscionable behavior; even though it would never feel like enough.

I didn't know what the meaning of love was without the need to be saved, and I knew Josh couldn't save me. It was the push-pull of wanting to be saved and wanting to take care of myself all at the same time. My moral compass was spinning in unknown directions, and a war was beginning inside me between love and independence. I didn't believe the two could coexist together.

I drove to Josh's apartment after work one night and told him I needed a break. I told him how jealous he was acting, how he made me feel trapped, that I was miserable and needed to free myself.

“Oh yeah, Christina?” he fired back. “Is being with other guys part of your
liberation
process? You were never as invested in this relationship as I was. I have given you and your family my heart just so you can throw me away.” He was right. Josh had given us so much. Helping my mother out around the house, holding me through night terrors, making me laugh, paying for meals—taking care of me. Loving me wholeheartedly while I had one foot out the door, ready to run.

I yelled back and told him I couldn't do it anymore. With the loss of my identity, projections of love, and trying to figure out how to become an independent, young woman, there was nowhere in my severed and rewiring of brain circuits that I could fathom committing to anything but whatever it would take for me to survive. I felt we didn't have a fighting chance at staying together as we—on top of everything else—continued watching our parents' marriages fall apart with zero evidence of lasting, healthy love.

I slammed the door of his apartment. In tears, I walked outside in the pitch-black night and wondered if I was making the right decision.

M
ara's graduation weekend was a President Bush lovefest, with Texas pride swarming the Southern Methodist University campus. The elephant in the room for us was palpable: our father wasn't there, and not because he was dead—which is the only reasonable excuse for a parent to miss a child's graduation—but because he was in prison. And God forbid anyone brought it up. There were moments when I had the urge to blurt out “My dad's in prison!” Just to stir everyone, to see how they might respond. It was a dare I told myself to do, but in the end, I was too afraid to do it.

In the months leading up to Mara's graduation, she had called me to ask how I would feel living with her and her boyfriend, Brian, in Los Angeles. We realized that with our combined bad credit, the two of us wouldn't qualify for a lease. I had missed Mara so much—through all the years we had been apart since she'd left for boarding school when I was just a freshman in high school. I agreed, and a few months later, I was moving my cocoon of childhood furniture for the fourth time into a lovely two-bedroom apartment in Beverly Hills. Brian generously said I could pay only $600 a month in rent because he knew I was struggling.