Problems (19 page)

On the way home, I think about the moment I had a line of spit drooling from my mouth after gagging on him when he thrust too much and too hard, and he wiped the spit from my lips and said, “Look at what a mess you made.”

I e-mail him when I get to my apartment.
If you want to see me again, I'm down for it
.

Three quick bags of dope get me so high I'm sick. I nod at the computer. I feel fucking great. Tomorrow or the next day, I am going to get clean. I feel prepared for it, mentally.

I go to a group job interview at Urban Outfitters. The interviewer asks what we would do if a coworker was stealing. Everyone gets really cheesy about how stealing makes everyone look bad. I tell a story about an old coworker who changed the price of a pile of books to ninety-nine cents apiece, when in fact the store didn't sell any books for ninety-nine cents. I don't get the job.

I am doing about six or seven bags a day. That's sixty or seventy bucks a day, but then I also am paying for Val's shit. I am supporting both of our drug addictions by turning tricks. God, it sounds so much worse than it feels.

I can make two or three hundred bucks a day hanging out with these dudes, or $7.50 an hour.

My biggest fear is they'll look at me and think,
Oh god, she's not that hot
.

Only one time did I meet a guy who was a jerk. He took me to the movies. He talked dirty. We fooled around in the theater, and then he said, “I'll be right back. I have to go to the bathroom.” He was gone for a while, so I went outside. That's when I saw his text: “I'm sorry but I had to leave. I can't pay you when I wouldn't do you for free.” I knew what had happened. He had gotten off in the bathroom. Instead of just screwing me out of my money, he had to make me feel like shit too.

I see Jimmy the next day. We meet at the Time Warner Center. I am running late. I am always running late. I give him a hug.

Once inside, we make out. I'm not into kissing, but I don't know what to do with him. He isn't naturally dominant. It's so much easier when they tell me what to do. Like with the banker: just do as you're told, and then it's over and you get paid. I kind of hate when it's up to me, but I like that he's gentle.

He tells me I'm pretty.

Afterwards, he says, “You know there's no other way in the world two people like us would be in the same room together.”

I see this advertising executive who wants head at the office. I can't believe how fucking cool his office is. The guy is bald. He is funny, easy to talk to. He likes big girls, so I don't feel self-conscious about my body. He comes in like five minutes. He gives me 150 bucks. Afterwards, I tell him how badly I want to work in advertising. He tells me this has been his whole life. I am sick with envy. I want him to help me. This won't work if I'm not clean. I have a reason now. I have something to not fuck up. I have something I don't want to regret.

When I get home I think about it and text him. I say I'll give him head, but instead of money maybe he can help me and give me advice. He doesn't respond.

* * *

“Ogden, I can't seem to stay clean.”

“Jesus, Maya. I thought you straightened up at the psych ward. What happened?”

“I don't know. I'm doing less. I'm on this cycle where I clean up, get money, and then I think I'll do it once and then three weeks go by.”

“Have you thought of going to meetings?”

“Meetings?”

“It really helped my girlfriend when—”

“Did you say girlfriend? How old is she? What does she do? I thought we agreed you were going to spend the rest of your life celibate, punctuated by nights of inebriation and regret you fucked things up with me?”

“Ha. She's forty-four.”

“Whoa, what happened? Did you fall in love with your girlfriend's mother?”

“Very funny. She's had a tough life. She's—”

“Please stop. It's not that I don't care, it's that I really don't care. I'm, like, the best thing that happened to you. What would you do if I sneaked into you house, hid in your closet, and then climbed into bed with you?”

“Call the police.”

“Yeah, that's what I thought.”

“Anyway, sweets, it's been over a year. Why don't you try rehab? It can't hurt.”

“Yes, it can. It will hurt a lot.”

“How long do you want to waste your life doing this?”

“No, don't. I'm okay.”

“You tried stopping on your own.”

“And I have, like a bunch of times! Like, I can do it, okay? Things have been hard, with Peter leaving and—”

“That was a year ago.”

“So what? It was my life! Do you get that? I'm not like you! I don't jump from person to person like a frog on a lily pad!”

“This is the guy you spent a year complaining into my ear about.”

“Yeah, well, I used to tell you everything. Remember?”

“Yeah, I do remember.”

“Did you always worry about me?”

“Yes. I worried. You told me you were using then—”

“So what the fuck did you think was going to happen after you fucking ditched me?”

“Please, calm down. Do you want me to hang up?”

“You hurt me—”

“Do you want me to hang up?”

“Oh, I'm sorry, are you actually having a feeling? You loved me.”

“I didn't ditch you. I've always been here for you.”

“You don't miss sleeping with me?”

“Do you want me to hang up?”

“Stop saying that.”

“You got me, okay.”

“We'll be friends. I'll always be there for you, okay?”

“Will you meet me?”

“I can't tonight. Maybe for coffee.”

“For a drink?”

“For coffee.”

“Why can't it be like it used to?”

“Because you're a drug addict, Maya. And I'm an old man. And we both know it's time you got your shit together.”

“I need money.”

“For what?”

“Rehab. I need five hundred bucks.”

“Where is it?”

“What do you care? I guarantee I won't fucking call you for a month. Isn't that what you want? You want me to leave you alone?”

“No, that's not what I want.”

“You talked to me for seven minutes when I was in that nut house.”

“I'm sorry my entire world doesn't revolve around you.”

“I'm sorry I'm not one of the dumb white girls you bend over backwards to take care of. You're a fucking cliché.”

“You're so fucking original.”

“I miss you. I love you. Why won't you see me?”

“I told you, I'll see you tomorrow.”

“I don't want coffee. I want to get a drink. You would fuck me if I was still married.”

“Maya, c'mon. Please stop. Please just stop.”

“Will you visit me in rehab?”

“Sure.”

“Can we fuck?”

“No.”

“Do you miss me?”

“Sometimes.”

“Why won't you see me?”

“Because I think I can be more useful for you as a friend.”

“Yeah, you always struck me as the selfless type.”

“Maya, it was a time bomb.”

“You didn't have fun?”

“It wasn't fun seeing you high, passing out. It wasn't fun seeing you broke all the time. Seeing you cry. That wasn't fun.”

“Like you cared.”

“It broke my heart.”

“Then why did you leave me? Why did you just fucking leave me?”

“I didn't leave you, Maya. I'm here. I'm right here.”

“Why won't you help me?”

“I'm trying to help you. That's all I've ever done is try to help you. I think you should go to rehab, okay?”

“Why can't you get me clean? Like, I could stay with you?”

“I'm not an expert. I can't help you the way professionals can.”

“You would do it if I were a dumb white girl.”

“Yeah, that's why I have so many dumb white girls strung out in my house. C'mon. You don't think I care about you? I've e-mailed you. I've called you. I've checked up on you.”

“I'm scared.”

“What are you scared of?”

“That it's too late. What if it's too late?”

“It's not. You're still young. It's too late for me. It's not too late for you. You're going to be okay. But you have to try.”

“You just want me to go away. Would you be relieved if I died?”

“Jesus, how can you say that?”

“I just wish you would try. I wish you would come over here and throw all the drugs away and threaten to call the police. But you don't give a shit.”

“I do give a shit. But that wouldn't work. If you wanted it, you would go and get it. You can't make someone stop anything.”

“But sometimes it is nice to act like you give a shit.”

“This is me giving a shit. If you take a drug test in two weeks and it's clean, I will give you five hundred bucks. How's that? And I'll take you out to dinner or a movie or whatever you want, okay? I don't know how to help you.”

“What happens if it's not clean? You'll leave me?”

“No, I'm not going anywhere. I'll be your friend, no matter what.”

There are tedious things that for some reason are insanely pleasurable when you're on dope. For me it was plucking hairs. I would sit there for hours, staring at the computer screen that continually played cartoons, and go over and over my face with tweezers. I
would take pleasure in the mess of hairs I pressed onto my fingers. I would take an Epilady and watch as it plucked the hairs out of my legs and my thighs. I would go over and over the same skin. My face would feel tender. Bright red spots would appear. When I had an ingrown hair, I relished it with pleasure. With tweezers I dug through skin and found the buried hair and felt that sick, weird pleasure of plucking it out and then staring at the twisted black end of it. It was not obvious to me that this was an insane way to spend the majority of my time.

I spent a lot of time in front of the mirror. I stopped and posed and took my clothes off and put them back on. I liked seeing my cheekbones. The softness had fallen away, and now there were only bones. I liked to touch the bones. I liked to try on clothes for hours even though I had no one to meet. I didn't need food. I didn't give a shit about food. As a lark, I would get a burger or a slice of pizza. Eating was purely a recreational activity: the sensation of peanut butter on the top of my mouth, the salt and toughness of meat. Sometimes I would wake up starving or so thirsty I actually would get up to get water.

My skin started to break out. I'd never had acne as a teenager, and then these mysterious pimples in tiny groups appeared around my face. I thought about how hard it was to take a shit. How maybe I was rotting from the inside out.

Dope makes time still: you watch the same cartoons, you lie in bed, you stare and don't move as everything around you becomes thick with dust or rots in the fridge. The trash piles up. You don't look up.

Being high is like having a nice, warm, cozy embrace. Sometimes it's fun to make your bed and to feel like everything is really fine; you have dope, you are okay, and even a have a few bucks left after
a pack of cigarettes for a slice of pizza, and that's all you need. That's all you will ever need.

I wished there were a way I could turn tricks without the drugs. But the timing was always bad, and if I got sick, then I couldn't see anyone for three days. I went through this same bullshit with Elizabeth, where she was always talking about timing and her plans to switch to this or that, or taper down, and now here I was with the same bullshit.

Just fucking stop using and be sick for a week. Nothing will change
. The third day I could at least go out and see a guy if I wanted to.

One of the greatest myths of addiction is that it's interesting. It's the most boring thing anyone could ever do. There is a slight glamour in the beginning, a feeling of doing something wrong, of indulging in a weird world populated by ghosts who used to be struggling musicians but don't make music anymore, or writers who never write. And then your whole life is getting high and being numb, and there's absolutely no reason to leave your bed except to get more money. Your life becomes a triangle of elemental needs: get money, get drugs, get home.

All the characteristics I used to think were part of Elizabeth's personality were actually just junkie tendencies. The way she never cared about being alone. The way she never called me. The way she saw the world in this cold stare. The way she never talked about being lonely. I confused her addiction with strength. Dope is a tease. It makes you not want anything else. There's no freedom in the end, it's just another jail.

There are cycles you get stuck in, and sometimes you have to go around the cycle way too many times. If you're lucky, you find a way to step out of it, and you never feel like it was easy. You feel grateful that somehow you got the fuck out of that mess.

This is the way heroin addiction works: You take four classes thinking you will keep yourself busy, but then you mess it up because you're always high. You get high partly because you think just being in school takes care of that all-consuming dread you are stuck with. You don't know the logistics of how things get fucked up, but they always do. You can't leave the apartment till you get high enough that you feel good but not so high you're sick—and for whatever reason, however you plan it, nothing ever happens how it's supposed to; you end up missing way too many classes and fail. And so then, what's the point of getting clean? To return to a mostly empty life? So you think,
The damage is done. Might as well do this a little while longer
.

You buy three bundles after you've been clean for two grim weeks and think,
Fuck it. This is a perfectly reasonable thing to spend money on. I'd rather feel content and warm than have new clothes I'll probably never wear. I don't need more stuff. I don't need to waste money on going out to eat with people who aren't that interesting anyway. Maybe this is what I am, and I should just embrace it
. In a documentary about your life, the narrator will say, “She was a heroin user for most of her life.” You try it on. You think,
Maybe this is an option
. How many different ways can you look at the same thing and come away with a completely different understanding of what is happening? It is all in the way you frame it. In one life, you are having an adventure. In another life, you are living a constant crisis. In another life, you are okay. In all of these lives, if this is just a step out of the right direction, and you end up with a real job and a husband and kids, then it really doesn't matter much. If you end up doing this forever, then it really will be a crisis. Time is the only way to see the truth, to know if this is a way toward interesting stories or a way toward a ruined life.