Fast Girl

To all those with any form of mental illness, whether diagnosed or not, and anyone whose differences cause them to be misunderstood, with the hope that we are moving toward a time of greater understanding and compassion for all

I
was shaking, still riding the rush. The appointment I'd just left was in one of the fanciest suites at the Wynn. I loved my new condo at the Trump, looking out over the mesmerizing Vegas Strip with all of its bright lights that never slept, but I wasn't ready to go home. I was on fire. I was a winner. I owned this city. I wanted to go out and play. I knew where I was going. I followed my usual path through the Fashion Show Mall, my stilettos clicking on the polished marble floor. Everything around me seemed to pulse and throb, like the blood in my veins. My body was still glowing with pleasure. I wanted more.

This is way better than winning a race,
I thought
. This is better than competing in the Olympics. If only my friends, all my fellow runners, could feel what this is like, they'd get it. Why are they still running races? If I'd only known how amazing this felt, I never would have wasted all that time.

My old life still waited for me in Wisconsin, but I went home less and less these days. I was Kelly now, one of the most highly sought-after escorts in Las Vegas. Suzy, the former professional athlete, the realtor, the wife, the mom—she had disappeared.

I flashed back to the luxurious penthouse suite where I'd spent the past two hours, all sleek furniture and dim light, the shades drawn against the heat and glare outside. It had been my first appointment with this handsome client, but I'd walked in and given him a kiss straightaway, letting my mouth linger on his, my body pressed against him. I wanted him to feel like I was his mistress, like I'd been aching to see no one but him all day. He seemed a bit surprised by how forward I was, but I could tell by his smile that he was pleased. My strategy had worked.

Coming out of the bathroom, where he'd left twelve hundred dollars in cash waiting for me on the vanity, I paused to let him admire me. I was wearing nothing but my six-inch black Louboutins, a black lace bra, and a G-string.

“Holy shit” was all he could mutter.

I smiled, basking in his praise.

“Could you turn around for me?” he continued. “Your body is so fit. What do you do?”

“I was a gymnast in college,” I said, using my favorite lie
because it seemed to match my petite but strong frame. And, I had found, it was always a turn-on for my clients.

My head was already buzzing from the glass of pinot noir I'd sipped in the hotel bar before coming upstairs, and his compliment intensified that warmth. So would the glass of wine resting on the bedside table. I felt incredible, ready to go to work. Confidence, power, these were the forces that propelled me now. I took my client to the bed, showing him that I was the one in charge as I stretched him out on the crisp white sheets. He lay there naked and ready. Making my face stern, I straddled him and grabbed his arms, pinning them back over his head with a force that surprised him, holding them there amid the sliding stacks of pillows.

“Do not move your arms,” I said with a sly smirk. “Even when I release you. Don't move until I tell you to.”

He liked it. I could tell. He was becoming more and more aroused. Ceding control turned him on, a contrast from his daily life as the CEO of a major corporation.

“You're incredible,” he said. “You've got the best body I've ever seen.”

I HAD EARNED THE TWELVE
hundred dollars for two hours of my time, two hours spent doing something I loved. The crisp bills sat in my Louis Vuitton purse, a bag bought for me by another client. The hundreds were like a secret power source, propelling me forward. The confident clip of my walk on the marble floor of the mall made men look up and stare as I passed. An older gentleman with a thick wave of white hair and a well-tailored dress shirt followed me
with his eyes. He could tell I was an escort. I could tell he was rich. I loved the power these men had. The wealthier they were, the more important their jobs, the better. It was good to be desired, and even better to be desired by a successful man, to have him choose me as his favorite and request me the next time he came back to Vegas. I could tell this man had already decided that I would be well worth the money it would cost to take me upstairs to his suite. I liked this, too, this secret language I'd learned to speak with my body in the ten months I'd been coming to Vegas, a language that this man, and many others at this point, could understand.

I thought of my next appointment, later that night. By then I'd be buzzing that much more, a smile beaming from my face, showing off my high cheekbones and telegraphing the fact that I was
fun,
the kind of wild girl who could make your dreams come true, not like your wife. That's what my clients always said to me: “I wish my wife were like you. I wish all women were like you.” I had worked to achieve a good body, and I loved the praise and knowing I was likely the best sex they'd ever had.

Now that I'd devoted myself to sex, my need to be unsurpassed in the bedroom had replaced that need on the track. But this was even better, because I'd hated the competition necessary to win a race. Everything about being an escort was enjoyable. Although I cared about being at the top of the escort world, too, I never felt that winning made me better than other women, either the other escorts or the wives back home. I was friendly with many of my fellow escorts. I loved trading tips with them. And, believe it or not, I actually felt
sorry for the neglected wives and encouraged my clients to think about buying their wives a vibrator, trying some of the things we did together back home. I was doing something I loved and getting paid for it. Why shouldn't I try to help other people in the process? I paused at the window of the Louis Vuitton store. I had all the money I could ever imagine, and I could do with it whatever I wanted. I felt like I should treat myself. Why not? I deserved to be rewarded for my skills, didn't I? I didn't give a single thought to anyone else—my husband, our family.
I think I'll buy that two
-
thousand
-
dollar purse
is what I thought.

I pushed through the doors. The attractive, well-put-together saleswoman looked up and immediately came over to help me.

“I'll take that one,” I said, pointing at the purse that had caught my attention in the display.

“I love that purse,” she said. “We just got those in last week.”

She eyed me up and down, just like the man I'd passed, and I could tell she knew how I earned my living, too, but I didn't care. I could feel her admiring how well my dress fit me, how polished my hair and makeup looked. I took the roll of hundreds from my purse and handed twenty bills to her. She didn't even flinch; she just wrapped my purchase in feathery tissue paper and tucked my new purse into one of the store's fabric bags. I floated out of the store and toward the hotel bar, another step toward the high.

With every visit to Vegas since I'd become Kelly, my appearance changed drastically. I was focused on achieving
what I thought was the ideal look for a top escort. I was now the number two most highly sought-after escort in Vegas, with my sights set on becoming number one, and I needed to look the part. Of course, as soon as I'd found out the rankings existed, I'd become fixated on rising as high as I could. The positions were determined by ratings given to escorts by their clients, with those coming from well-known “hobbyists,” or men who made a point to visit every top escort in Vegas, carrying the most weight. I asked most of my clients to review me and sometimes even gave them a little extra time for free, ensuring a positive write-up. Naturally my rise up the ranks had been fast. Not fast enough for me, of course.

My extensions had gotten longer and blonder, and now my platinum hair cascaded perfectly over my shoulders. I saw a Vegas doctor for Botox, lifting and smoothing my face. I got face peels in Beverly Hills, too, but wore more makeup than ever, popping in at high-end cosmetic counters for professional consultations before sessions with my clients. The beautiful, long false eyelashes I wore gave me a more seductive look. My well-manicured nails were bright red. My trips to the spray-tan salon made my bare limbs look kissed by the desert sun. The tight dresses I wore kept dropping in size, due to my lack of appetite on days like this, when all I wanted to feed was my high. Today, I wore a clingy bright red dress by my favorite designer, Hervé Léger. It fit me like a second skin.

I didn't want to go back to my old life. Not now. Not ever.

W
e always played on the nature trails near the Wisconsin River, which flowed right below the house where I grew up in Stevens Point. My friends and I were walking together beneath the overhanging oak trees one fall day, looking for fallen branches to build a fort in the shape of a tepee. This would be a fort for girls
only,
where we could hide out. If the boys came by, they'd need to know the password, which we wouldn't tell them. As we continued our search, I shivered in the cool air and looked toward the train tracks, hoping to spot some more building materials and thinking that if I ran a little bit, the motion might warm me up.

“I'm going to go look for some better wood,” I said, and took off.

My friends nodded, and we split up to cover more ground. As soon as I rounded the bend, I began to run. This had been my intention all along. I'm not sure why I lied to my friends. It didn't matter. I was flying.

I gathered speed, my sneakers crunching the dry leaves beneath me as they flew over the uneven path with its divots of dead grass, scattered acorns, and twigs, my steps falling with such certainty, I didn't have to look down. Running faster and faster, I discovered a totally new feeling: a perfect mix of euphoria and peace.

When I ran in gym class, I always landed on my toes, instead of on the balls of my feet, like most runners, and so I often thought of myself as a ballerina when I ran because they were always up on their toes, too. But on this day, even though I was running in the same way as usual, my body felt different. I wasn't running because my gym teacher had told me to. I was running because my body was compelled to, for the sheer pleasure of it. Nature seemed so clear to me, the trees swaying in the breeze above me as I passed through the grove where they grew. My stride was so effortless that I picked up my pace even more, my biggest smile on my face. I forgot why I was in the woods in the first place, forgot everything, and began to run like a galloping horse. I was now the horse and didn't ever want to stop. My arms pumped back and forth, my breath visible in white puffs that gusted out of my mouth into the crisp, cold air. I'd already run about a mile when I remembered that I was supposed to be gathering
sticks for our dream fort. Suddenly I was afraid my friends would worry about where I was and what I was doing. I had to get back to them quickly. I also knew that I couldn't tell them that I'd run off pretending to be a horse. I heard them calling my name in the distance. I turned back in their direction, and the horse began to pick up the pace again, to a blazing speed now. This was incredible.
Am I really as fast as I feel?
I had no idea, but I knew that I'd found something new to love.

It was such a relief to discover running. I had a very active imagination that made it nearly impossible to concentrate on reading or school, or even on one project at a time. I could never sit still. I always had to be moving, whether I was skiing, mowing the lawn in summer, shoveling the driveway in winter, or cleaning the entire house and scrubbing all the floors while my parents were at work. Our parents instilled a strong work ethic in all of their children, and I was the model child. I always wanted to make my mom and dad happy, like many children do, so I put my need to move into doing things that would please them. But I found as I grew older that constant movement kept my mind empty and at peace, too. If I was still, anxiety and self-doubt crept into my head. I could only stop the motion when I had completely exhausted myself.

Running made me feel better than any other movement, and it seemed I was good at it. I come from a very active and athletic family, but my father was especially gifted. A ski jumper and pole-vaulter in high school, he loved to tell us kids how he'd tried to vault over the fence surrounding his school, only to get his leg caught on the barbed wire. Having
grown up poor in rural Wisconsin in a home made chaotic by his alcoholic father, my dad joined the navy as a way out. As an enlisted sailor, he took up boxing, eventually competing in the navy's Golden Gloves amateur boxing competition.

It seemed like he was always jumping over—or off—something; his only fear was of jumping out of an airplane, which he vowed never to do. After leaving the service, he went to college, where he met my mom. When they were first married, my parents were so poor that they lived in a trailer and could only afford tuition for one of them. My dad decided they should flip for it to see who would stay in school. Heads, my mom would stay in nursing school and become a nurse. Tails, my dad would continue studying industrial design and become a graphic designer. The outcome was tails, and so my mom prepared to drop out. However, one of her professors was so impressed with her natural abilities as a nurse that she offered to loan my mom her tuition money so she could pursue her dream. My mom had a long career as a nurse, drawing on her natural nurturing tendencies, which were also evident in the way she raised us four children: my big brother Dan, who was six years older than me, my sister Carrie, who was one year younger than him, my sister Kris, who was three years younger than Carrie, and finally the baby, me.

My sister Kris was my best friend. Although she was only a year older than me, she loved to mother me. We were inseparable for most of my childhood. Because Carrie was quite a bit older than us, closer in age to Dan, she mostly hung out with him, except for when our parents asked her to babysit Kris and me.

When we were growing up, my dad was always the fun guy, so fit that he didn't have a lick of fat on him, who went out for all kinds of behavior most people would consider risky. I had inherited my inability to sit still from my dad; he was always go-go-go. My brother Dan and I were always right there with him, pushing ourselves to keep up. I also shared a love of making art with my dad and Dan, and I enjoyed the fact that this was a common passion that brought me great joy and peace of mind, not anxiety.

Dad's energy and daring often made for an unusual, even remarkable childhood. He had a saying he repeated often, which became our family motto:
Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.
And we had a poster in our house emblazoned with these words. He was the dad who scrambled up to the highest branch of an oak tree to hang a swing for us. He was the guy firing up his snow blower at ten o'clock at night in a snowstorm, insisting that all of us kids come out and help him. And because he had so much energy, he'd stay outside late into the night clearing our neighbors' driveways, too. I always felt lucky that my home life was so different from my friends'; they mostly just sat around watching TV with their parents. Not us. My dad liked to get out in the snow as much as we kids did. There was a toboggan run with rental sleds right near our house, and we didn't even have to convince Dad to take us. It was his idea. He volunteered to build us snow forts, too, tunneling into the huge mounds of snow in our yard until he had cleared out chambers big enough to hold me and Kris and all of our friends. He used to build the walls so thick that I was scared they would come crashing
down on us, but I never admitted my fear to my dad. I wanted him to think I was as brave and strong as he was.

Dad was friendly and talkative, always full of stories and a desire to help people. He often did odd jobs and repairs around the neighborhood. He seemed to be good at everything he tried, and his strength and competence meant that I felt protected when I was with him. But he also liked to push the limits to the extreme, and a part of me was frightened during our adventures together. My father had a great love of sailing, and we often took our sailboat out on the weekends to Lake DuBay, a small lake in central Wisconsin. I was not a big fan of all of the preparation required, so I usually played on the shore while he worked on the boat, sinking my feet into the sand or splashing in the waves. When we did go out together, I never really paid much attention to the actual sailing part, preferring instead to jump into the lake and enjoy a swim while trying to avoid the dreadful seaweed that my imagination transformed into long nightmarish tendrils that could twist around my body and pull me under.

One day I clambered onto the boat with my father, his best friend, and the man's son. My father's friend wasn't any more experienced a sailor than I was. The trip began smoothly enough, even though the lake was strangely deserted for a summer day.

We loaded our supplies, and then my father took control and motioned to me.

“Sit over there, Suzy,” he said.

I did as I was told, used to being instructed on where to be and when to duck my head so I didn't get knocked into the
water by the boom. As we passed tall pines on our way out of the bay, the skies began to turn gray and the whitecaps started building. The water was even rougher ahead. The gray sky was changing to black, and the wind had become so strong that when we hit the open water, the boat took off like a cannon blast. I had to grab onto a rope and brace myself to avoid falling over.

“Tighten your jackets!” my dad yelled through the gusting wind.

He was the only one without a life jacket, but there was a flotation cushion by his feet, which I kept an eye on as I tightened my own vest until I almost couldn't breathe. I saw fear in my father's eyes, something I had rarely seen before, but he had decided we were going to go sailing, and so, sailing we would go. Once my father had something in mind, there was no stopping him. My dad's sense of determination lasted for a few minutes, and then, with the boat bucking beneath us, even Dad had to admit that this was no day to be out on the open water.

“We need to come about,” he yelled, meaning we needed to reverse the boat in order to escape the storm that was about to engulf us and quite possibly tip us over.

I'd experienced what it was like to go under once before, when my father had given my brother control of the boat's rudder. Dan had made a sudden sharp turn, and the boat had flipped. The next thing I knew, I was submerged in the water with the sail pushing my body down. I panicked and fought with the fabric, trying to release myself, but it was wet and heavy, and it wouldn't let me go. At that moment, I
remembered my father telling me to always swim down—without panicking—if something like this should happen, as it was the only way to free yourself from the sail. I was determined to survive and found myself kicking my legs hard, until I was clear of the canvas. As my lungs burned, I finally spotted the light of the sky above me. When I popped up, I took the biggest breath I could. I wanted to see my dad because he was my protector. And there he was, pulling me back aboard our boat with his strong arms. Despite the happy ending, the experience scared me, and now here I was, in trouble, on the same lake that had once nearly taken my life.

The waves were coming in over the side of the boat now, the sails whipping around us, as my father struggled to turn us back toward the bay. And then, just like that, my father was gone. I looked back and saw him bobbing in the water, the angry waves covering his head. He was an extremely experienced swimmer, but the fury of the water was unstoppable on this day. My father was in danger. I noticed the flotation cushion was still near me in the boat, but I sat paralyzed with fear until we were too far away for me to reach him anyway.
Why didn't I throw it to him?
I berated myself.

As the boat sailed itself toward the shore, my father became smaller and smaller in the distance. He seemed to be trying to swim to the nearest shoreline, but that was a half mile away, and he would have to swim directly into the wind and waves. Neither his friend nor I had any idea how to turn the boat around to rescue him. Terror and helplessness gripped me. I knew my father was going to drown, and I could do nothing to help him. I could barely see his head bobbing out
on the lake.
Had he already drowned?
Panic engulfed me like iron claws. Then I saw a motorboat racing toward where I had last seen him. I prayed they would get to him in time. Just when it seemed that my father was gone forever, the boat reached him. An enormous sense of relief washed over me as I watched them pull him up and out of the water, saving his life. My protector was safe.

My father's friend managed to regain some control of our boat until the speedboat that had rescued my father pulled alongside us. Even in his weakened state, Dad was able to scramble on board. With tears in my eyes, I watched him struggle to lower the sails and finally slow us down enough to ease us back to land. I could see how much the experience had shaken him up, but it did nothing to mellow him. My dad couldn't stop either.

Dan, unlike me, had no trouble keeping up with my dad. We lived near a small ski hill, where my dad was a member of the ski patrol, and we skied every weekend during the winter. I loved to ski, but I was nowhere as talented as my father, who still had the confidence of the youthful ski jumper he had been, and soared down every slope with ease. Dan was really good on the slopes, so good that he was soon racing competitively. It was easy to tell from the look of pure joy on his face that he loved the speed and the adrenaline rush of skiing. In order to emulate both of them, I found myself on the expert hills during our family ski trip to Colorado. Only, I was not a daredevil like them, and I didn't have their skill set, either. In way over my head, I was so terrified to go down the steep slope that I had to slowly slide sideways down the hill on my
butt. The moguls became my safety nets, because each one held me for the time I needed to catch my breath and gather the courage to slide down a little farther toward the welcome flat ground below.

I didn't have the same daring personality as Dan, either. As much as I thought I wanted to be like him, and shared his love of art, I didn't chase the rush of dangerous activities the way he did. The older he got, the more erratic his behavior became and the more difficult it became to admire him, much less emulate him. He was quite serious about his high school girlfriend, and when she died of a rare condition called Reye's syndrome, he was devastated. He went to Minneapolis to look for her, even though he'd been told she was gone. He couldn't let her go and truly believed he could bring her back. Her death became a turning point for Dan. As his grief intensified, his mood swings and aggressive behavior worsened, and he was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder and given shock treatment and lithium. After the treatment, it was as if his true self had been lost, and Dan was never the same again. When my dad lived on the edge, he always clung to some level of control over the situation and himself. I knew my dad would protect me. But now with Dan, it became hard to know if he would stop before hurting himself—or me.