Problems (16 page)

Then one night you go to Brooklyn. You think it's funny because for you, this is a desperate move. You imagine all these junkies at
NA
sharing their rock bottom story, and yours would be, “I knew I wasn't myself when the train left Jay Street and plunged deeper into Brooklyn.” The date consists of talking to a British guy. He ends up walking you back to the station. By then you kind of hate him. On the way back to the apartment, you talk to your mother, and she bothers you about seeing a dentist. You turn the corner down the alley toward the back entrance of your building. You feel your hair being pulled. Your mind is trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. Who could it be? You think,
This is not funny!
and then you are being thrown onto the cement. As you fall, you catch the eye of your assailant, a crazy-eyed young woman with a red bandanna. There are two fuzzy figures behind her. You are completely vulnerable lying there on the ground. You see cash has fallen out of your purse. Your mind tries to put together what is happening. This can't be rape because it's a woman. This can't be a robbery because no one is interested in the money. They are surrounding you. In slow motion, you see her big boot draw back to kick you, and you think,
This is going to hurt
. You know by the impact that this is serious. Your vision dims. You think about how in cartoons stars appear when someone is hit in the head. You wait for the pain, but there isn't any. Your hearing isn't working right. You see their mouths moving. Nothing. Then the murmurs fade in and out. “Oh shit!” you hear one of them yell. Something is wrong. The other two kick you, one in the gut, which makes you curl over, which sets you up to get kicked again in the head, and then you hear noise and register it as laughter. They run off. You stand up, and you are missing a platform shoe. Do you take off your other shoe, or do you look for the missing one? You hold one shoe and your bag, and they didn't even take
the fucking cash, so you have to pick it up. Your phone is probably fucked, and the battery is lying on the concrete. Now the pain hits you. Your stomach feels like it's bleeding. Your hand touches a swelling eyelid. Now the fear hits you; they could come back. You can't stop shaking. They could come back. You have never felt so vulnerable. Blood pours out of your knee where the stocking has ripped. You make it to the back gate, about ten feet from where you were attacked, and you call “help” through the gate, but there is no one around. It can't be past nine. Where are the dog walkers and the parents with their kids coming back from the grocery store or play dates? You are shaking, but you manage to put the battery back into your phone. You thank fucking Christ as the word “Sprint” swirls around. Douglass picks up after one ring. Once inside, you try to lie down and discover you can't. Douglass wants to go out and look for them. “They ran,” you tell him, hoping he will stop being a dude, put away his figurative cock that wants to protect you, and just be comforting instead.

Your vision is snowy, like the reception is all fucked-up. You touch the back of your head. The blood is cartoon red.

Douglass watched the news. “It's that knockout game. From the back you were wearing all black, so they thought you were Jewish. These young, stupid teenagers, mostly black kids, hit Jewish people in the head.”

“Shit, that's why they ran when they saw my face.” The fact did not bring any of the relief I would have expected. It only made me think,
If I were Jewish, would I be dead? What would they do to an actual Jewish person?
This then led to an uncomfortable quandary. “Should we call the police?”

“I don't know.”

I slept for the next two days, awakening only to snort a few lines. My stomach hurt. It felt like my ribs were broken, but if they truly were, I probably wouldn't have been able to stand it. The hardest thing to deal with was how ugly and stupid people could be. My attackers were sadistic and cruel. I wasn't a real person to them, but like an extra in
Grand Theft Auto
. All I could do was lie there. Sometimes I thought about taking a shower, but sitting up was a nightmare.

“You're so lucky you're a writer,” Elizabeth said as she lifted up a part of the floor. Like a piece of the fucking floor. One of the wood planks was cut in half, and she lifted it up. She pulled out a dusty antique box and started going through the stuff in it, putting the occasional empty bag to the side.

“I haven't written in forever,” I said. “I don't even think of myself as a writer.” I was thinking,
How did she do that? Could I just make a hole in my floor? That was so cool
.

“But you can write, you have a place where you can put everything. I don't know where to put things. You can make something out of all the ugliness.” She looked up at me. She had tears in her eyes. “What am I supposed to do with all the shit that happens to me?”

There isn't much you can maintain when you have to worry about scoring every day so you don't get sick. My life was a waiting room, a
TV
room, and then back to a waiting room.

When you're around other junkies, no one speaks while everyone is waiting. Come back after the dope arrives and no one can stop talking and laughing. Everyone talks excitedly about their plans, and no one talks about how addicted we all know we've become.

You could turn to another junkie and say, “I really need to stop.” And you will be met with a knowing nod and the words, “Yeah, me too.” Everyone always says it. Everyone probably means it.

Only one of my johns knew about my drug use. He talked to me about
NA
, and once when I snorted a bag in front of him, he said, “C'mon. Please don't do that. I don't want to take your ass to the hospital.”

There were no track marks to hide.

I got cash from dudes and then gave my cash to dudes who sold me drugs.

I wanted regulars. Every time I saw a guy, he talked about seeing me again, but I got used to not hearing back from them. I got used to never believing anyone. They wanted variety. That's why they contacted me to begin with.

Also, I wasn't thin and blond. I could have cleaned up if I was.

Men hate when you talk about your body. This guy Kevin said, “Shut up. I don't care at all.”

The more money they had, and the more money they gave me, the nicer and more respectful they were.

My days continued: getting high, either going out for a date or not, either getting more drugs or not. Sometimes I read.

Sometimes it felt like there was blackness underneath everything. Like a Rothko painting, how the blackness bleeds through. Feeling everything led to nothing, and there was nothing I could do about it. Day after day of being alone and numb and fucking strangers and having cash and blowing it all, and then knowing in a day or so I'd have plenty more. It would just go on like that till my teeth fell out, till I didn't even have the strength to pull myself out of it. No kids, no family, me alone except for the growing terror
my dreams weren't in the future but somewhere far behind me. I had to figure something out, because I knew this couldn't last forever—but whatever, if I didn't get a bag today, it would be fucking horrible, so I got another bag. I needed a break just from thinking about it.

One more day, and then I'll stop. Wait, I should taper down a little. Wait, I need to get Xanax first. Wait, I have a date in two days, so why shouldn't I use a little longer to make a lot more money?
Always thinking,
One last big score
. Go out with a bang.

* * *

I didn't mean to kill myself, but nobody believes me. I did a lot of dope, but not more than I'd ever done before. Maybe it was the Xanax on top of the dope and the not eating or sleeping. I never would have thought Douglass would call 911 on me, so I must have scared him.

I come to vomiting white shit on the floor of the living room. Then the ambulance shows up, and I try to tell everyone I'm really okay, but once I'm in the ambulance, the
EMT
leans in and says, “My advice to you is if you really want to get home, act normal.” She says this with an air of confidentiality, like she is relaying a secret code. I take the advice to heart and go with it.

I fool the doctor. He asks me about the nasty black shit they make me drink that has the consistency of paint, and I joke about why they don't sell it in vending machines. I think,
What would a person who isn't suicidal do in this situation?
Obviously, a normal person would go crazy, asking questions about why they couldn't go home, but so would someone trying to get home to off themselves, so playing “normal” means I'm not even freaked
out because I know I didn't do anything wrong, and so I'm just going to be chill and joke around. It's the fat, annoying nurse who sees through me. “What happened? So were you trying to hurt yourself?”

I don't know how the laws work, but I'm pretty sure the doctor isn't going to call the cops if I tell him I do dope. But I don't. I tell him I have anxiety attacks and took more Xanax than I should have, and also I drank some wine. I don't know if they will test me and figure out the truth. The nurse looks at me like she doesn't believe a word I'm saying.

The nurse is a short-haired, bitchy cunt. How can you work in health care and be on your feet all day and still be that fat? How much does this woman eat?

The nurse seems suspicious, and I'm pretty sure that even if it was an accident, she would still be suspicious. She knows there's more to the story.

I overhear the doctor and the nurse discussing me. The doctor sounds pretty sure it was an accident. The nurse is adamant it wasn't. The doctor compromises; they will put me on a normal ward (instead of the loony bin) but keep me for observation.

This is not good for a number of reasons. The most immediate one is I am starting to get dope sick. Maybe it's just knowing I will be dope sick, since it hasn't been that long since I used. But it will happen, and the anxiety makes me feel queasy and desperate. Douglass needs to get in a cab and go back home and get my shit and then bring it back before they move me to a room. I can't find my phone. I don't want to appear too anxious. When I ask about it, the nurse says I'll get a phone once a bed opens up. When will
that be? She doesn't know. Can I just have my phone back? She says she'll try. She won't try.

Hospitals are full of people trying to help people. There is not one person who can help you.

Can I just walk out? I decide to give it a shot. But then the curtain opens, and they are taking my blood.

“I have to pee.”

“This will only take a second.” The woman is already putting the rubber thing around my arm, pinching the fuck out of my skin when she twists it.

“Fuck.”

I normally look away, but this time I look right at the horror-movie-huge needle as it spikes into my vein. I sneeze. And then sneeze again. She tells me to sit still. I can't. I am in the middle of a hospital and am sick and nobody can help me.

When she's gone, I leave. I found my clothes under my bed, so the plan is to transform from patient to visitor. I walk past the dying people. Wives and husbands. A smattering of lonely old people. There is a gay couple. The dude looks like a poster for
AIDS
. Weird how
AIDS
seems kind of retro now—even diseases have a golden age, a prime, and then they seem played out. How annoying to get
AIDS
now, feeling like a song people remember being on the radio a lot but have since forgotten completely. His lover is holding his hand and whispering to him. All the other waiting people sit around like they've done this a million times before.

I don't get far. I stick to my story of how I'm feeling fine now, and so I wanted to go out just for a smoke, but the nurse goes and tattles on me to the doctor, and he is not entirely positive I wasn't trying to flee.

Over the following days I undergo a horrible, nasty withdrawal in the hospital. But finally they get ahold of my shrink, who tells them I need to be on Suboxone. At last, some relief. I sleep. The shrink also okays clonazepam, and they are generous with it. Then there's talk about where I'm going to go. My mother and Raj are there. I don't know when they came. I don't even know what the conversation is. I'm too out of it to stay awake longer than forty-five minutes. There is a twenty-four-hour period when I am almost asleep the entire time. Then there is a twenty-four-hour period where I can't sleep at all, and I have no visitors. I try to watch the television, but it's only loud enough to be annoying.

I can't focus but feel alert. The nightmare withdrawal symptoms are pretty much behind me. It's plausible I could be clean. I call my mother. She doesn't believe me. She says she's tired and doesn't know what to do. I get angry. She thinks it's reasonable I tried to kill myself, or at least stupidly
OD
'd. “I know you were taking . . .” She doesn't finish the sentence. Like there's a word that can't be spoken aloud. She won't say it. Which is weird, because she always has something to say.

I end up on a plane with my mother and brother. I keep thinking,
Sound normal
. But I can tell by the worry on their faces that I've scared the shit out of them. My mother tries to figure out where I'm getting the dope. She doesn't know Douglass has been staying with me. Thank god he was gone when they went back to the apartment before I was discharged.

There are thirty-four texts. Johns. Money.

It is so hard to know money is waiting for you, a lot of money, and every single problem you currently have—feeling like shit, wanting to die, guilt, anger, resentment, feeling soft, feeling vulnerable—could all disappear easily, and you really would be completely fine.

You try to stick with this thought process, but you know eventually you will feel this way again. You will be in this same exact position only more time will have passed, and so it's better just to clean up now.