When the Messenger Is Hot (14 page)

So in a rush to pee and get this guy off my back, I agreed to go to a movie with him later (
Fine
, I think was my response) and he called about four more times to confirm, and the last time he called he asked if it was okay if his nieces (who happened to be in town) came along and I was thinking, Oh how cute, that they'd be like, eight or something, but they were college students, and they
were
cute, but in an eighteen-year-old way, and they came on our date with us, and I never really did find out if they were just — more dates or something. Backup. We went to a midnight show of
JFK
at the Paramount, and it was actually kind of crowded for a midnight showing of a three-hour movie, and Jake couldn't find a seat he liked, and we moved about three times before he was satisfied, and between the “nieces” and the moving it wasn't the best of dates even for me, and by the time the movie was over the temperature outside had dropped to about four degrees, and it was three-thirty in the morning and I could think of nothing I'd ever wanted more than to be under my covers, in my bed, alone, and I was certain that my eagerness to get home would be apparent enough to my date that he would see no reason to call me again. It did finally occur to me that the girls probably
were
nieces, because they very graciously offered to get in a separate cab and leave us alone, but I was just like,
Not necessary
. So then I did go home to bed and slept in because the next day was Saturday and Jake called around eleven to tell me I was a really a good sport about the nieces and the seat-moving and he'd really like to go out with me again. Which I found to be completely baffling, but he wouldn't let me off the phone until I agreed to a second date, and by then I just didn't have it in me to fight anymore, and assumed that sooner or later we'd end up getting married because I'd be too exhausted to argue about it. Plus also, really, at this point, and this is the part that is supposed to somehow tie into how I ended up in Alcoholics Anonymous, I just thought, this is the best I'll ever do.

So we went out again, and no one came with us on our second date, and he brought me a little bunch of wilted flowers, which I have to say a lot of my other bad boyfriends never did, although having seen all the talk shows I did already know that abusive stalking boyfriends were like that, saying really nice things and bringing flowers and on alternate days channeling evil aliens and making the front page of the
News
. On this particular date, though, Jake took me to a Texas kind of place I really liked, and I didn't so much mind that he was eating with his hands — he had ordered fried chicken, but it was like his napkin wasn't even there, and the grease was all over his hands and his chin and it didn't seem to bother him at all or concern him that this would detract from the preexisting slim chance that I would ever kiss him, which was very far from my mind from the beginning. I just didn't want to. And again, the question of his possibly being a compulsive liar came up, because he started telling me that he loved me, on the second date, but he'd say it with a sort of smirk and then take another bite of chicken, and then with a mouthful of chicken he'd say,
But then again I'm really gay, so it probably won't work out
. And you know, this not being really funny, it was hard to say if this was just his sense of humor or what.

I somehow managed to avoid kissing Jake for a few weeks; I just didn't want to, and it was actually a sort of inadvertent lesson in that thing I guess some women do that makes men like them more, except it didn't carry over into any of my other relationships, because if I want to kiss someone I just do, I can't just not kiss them because of some plan. In fact, generally things happen extremely quickly with me, because if I really like someone I really like them and I sort of just know they're going to be my boyfriend for a few months (the psychic thing) and if I don't really like them I won't even go on a date with them. I just think, what's the point of that? He didn't complain about it and didn't even ask about it for weeks; I'd say maybe he was used to it except there's always someone who will sleep with a celebrity, no matter what kind of mental problems they have.

Then it was Valentine's Day and he gave me this big valentine like the kind you make in grammar school, with a big doily, and candy hearts glued on it and a poem, “Roses are red, violets are blue, I know I said I was gay, but I like you,” and he brought me a bag of cookies, even though he had chocolate on his fingers and I knew he'd eaten one on the way to my house, and I figured it would be ridiculous not to kiss him at this point, even though it still wasn't anything I had any compulsion to do, and then the actual kiss was kind of unmemorable, and a little chocolatey, but he didn't try to have sex with me or anything, which made me wonder if he really
was
gay, except that he had kids by about four different women and was stalking at least two of them. Then one time after that I went over to his apartment, which was remarkably nicely decorated in a totally girly kind of way (it kinda looked like
my
house), which I point out not to say that it made me think he was any more gay, just that I saw the overstuffed couch and a couple of cool flea market items and found it endearing that he had a real homey kind of decor. Unfortunately, we were kissing and it still really didn't do anything to make me want to have sex with him, and something possessed me to bite his lip, which he got kind of mad about. It wasn't a playful bite. He had a right to be mad, but in the middle of kissing him I saw this stack of valentines, and a bottle of glue and the candy hearts and I was a little bit jealous and mad myself. Which is inexplicable, really, because I never had any romantic feelings for him, but I thought he should have romantic feelings only for me. I went home and I was again figuring, Oh he just won't call me, and I'd get out of the whole thing without having to break up with him, but that wasn't what happened. I only lived right around the corner but when I got home he'd already left me two messages apologizing and saying that he wasn't serious with any of those other girls like he was with me and not to forget that he really liked guys anyway. I told him to stop calling me and he kept calling back until I relented again and agreed to be his girlfriend. He said he'd break up with all his other girlfriends which I didn't know if it was a joke or what, and I was just like,
Fine
, again,
let me get some sleep now
.

Then, to what I thought was about to be my great relief, he went off to do a movie in Chicago, which I thought would give him a chance to find some other girl to bother, except it didn't, he called me at work from the plane,
from the plane
, and what happened instead of my being relieved of him was that some little part of me started to like him just then, which if you think about it I should have known would be the easiest way to get rid of him, except what I was hoping was that I could somehow break up with him both without pain and without breaking up with him. Nobody ever called me from the plane before. He called me from the plane to ask me to come visit him in Chicago.

So I did, I made a reservation (and if there's any remaining question about Jake having mental problems, he was almost dumbfounded that I was able to phone the airlines entirely on my own, which apparently he was incapable of doing, like it was a disorder or something) and I flew to Chicago, stayed with him in his room at the Drake (another thing he saw fit to be angry about,
wasteful
he called it, even though he wasn't paying for it) and sure enough he was mostly really mean to me, telling me what to wear, going out without me I don't know where and coming back really late, explaining my whole life to me in some kind of bizarre language I couldn't interpret (
You don't act
, he'd say,
you re-act
.) and blaming the bad sex on me, which I'm sorry, it was totally not my fault that I couldn't breathe (and therefore couldn't move to even try to satisfy him) because he was crushing me. We fought the whole time and I was about to change my reservation when he took me to an “open” meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, which means that friends and family members of alcoholics can come and I guess understand. And what I came to understand at this meeting of A.A., was that I was an alcoholic, that everything that was wrong with me was because I was an alcoholic. All those things that made no sense to me suddenly made sense, and when they said,
Not to embarrass you but to welcome you, is this anyone's first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous
, I raised my hand and I said,
My name is Alice and I'm an alcoholic
, and people were clapping, like I'd done something really fantastic; they said,
You are the most important person here
, which I didn't question, and afterward they kind of swarmed me, and handed me coins, these coins they give out in commemoration of the accomplishment of not drinking for a day, and I belonged somewhere. I was the most important person somewhere.

Unfortunately, I didn't live in Chicago at the time, and I didn't have any way of knowing if my importance in Alcoholics Anonymous there would carry over to New York, but it did, and I heard more and more people saying things I understood, about not fitting in, and having bad relationships and problems with money and stuff. Of course there was also a lot of talk about drinking, and how they couldn't stop on their own, no matter how hard they tried, and all the bad things that happened, car accidents, jail and all, and I didn't really have any stories like that because I'd only been drunk one time. A few weeks after I got to college I went to the campus bar with some people from the dorm and had seven apricot brandy sours in a couple of hours and became very drunk, and liked it very much, and not having ever been drunk before I thought for sure I must be an alcoholic if I liked it so much, and so I quit on the basis of willpower. But they tell you, especially if you go to beginners meetings, to identify with the feelings, and not the facts, and I very much did identify with the feelings. Plus there were so many cute guys it was unbelievable, and that got me to do what they call a ninety and ninety, which means you go to ninety meetings in ninety days, which wasn't any problem for me since by this time I'd left my horrible job and was unemployed.

The other miraculous thing was that all these great things started happening almost immediately; without even trying, I fell in with what I was sure was the coolest bunch of people, who were artsy but not pretentious, mostly actors, mostly very cute guys. (There are suggestions in A.A., one of which is that the women stick with the women and the men with the men, when you're new, and there were a couple of women in the group so that it didn't look so bad that I was hanging out with a lot of guys, but there were times when I went for coffee after the meeting and it was me and like, eight mostly really cute guys and, frankly, a lot of people didn't follow that suggestion so I didn't feel all that bad about it.) And I mean, I was telling all these people the total truth about my drinking story, and not one of them told me I was in the wrong place. I would describe the feelings I had, before, during, and after the drinking, about how I felt uncomfortable around people, and how that time when I drank I felt exhilarated, how it seemed so stupid that I hadn't figured it out before, that a few drinks could make you feel like a debutante, and how remorseful I felt afterward. Okay, a lot of people told me I was in denial. I'd share my story and someone would come up to me after the meeting and say,
Keep coming back
, kind of sarcastically, like I'd remember the real story sometime when the fog lifted. But mostly, the people I liked, the people I made friends with, they totally understood, and they said it's not about how much you drank, it's about why you drank, and that anyone who's stopping to wonder if they're an alcoholic is usually an alcoholic.

In New York A.A., at most meetings the chairperson asks if anyone is counting days, and if you have been sober for less than ninety days, you can raise your hand every day and say,
I have thirty-five days, thirty-six days
, however many you have, and what happens is that everyone claps and cheers and whistles, every day for the ninety days, and also, in New York the meetings are mostly pretty big, so you end up having a couple hundred people cheering for you and who wouldn't love that? Then, after you get ninety days, you get to qualify, if someone asks you, which means you get to be the speaker and tell your drinking story. I have no problem talking about myself and wasn't the least bit worried about telling my story, and I know I talked for too long that first time, which you find out later is not uncommon for newly sober people. I felt like if I explained everything about my life leading up to the time I got drunk, along with everything after up until the time I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, and how it was just miraculous that I was able to feel the belonging, that I had this fantastic group of new friends I'd never had before, that people would really understand, which they did, because a lot of them came up to me afterward and said it was a great qualification and they totally identified and said they also had
high bottoms
which is not what it might sound like but means actually that you quit drinking before things got totally out of control.
You don't have to take the elevator all the way to the basement
, was what people told me in reassurance that I belonged.

Jake and I had a typical sort of nonbreakup right after I got into the rooms of A.A. I didn't get a big explanation and I was a little upset that he didn't want to share the experience of sobriety with me, but I think he was following the suggestion of not getting involved with newcomers, even though we were previously involved and I don't think that's the rule. I got over it pretty fast because before the end of my first six months I started to have a big crush on a guy named Brian, who was having his first anniversary at the time. We started out just being really good friends, and we talked about everything but a lot about god, who he seemed to know for sure was looking after me even though I was never so sure, and I liked that he believed that.
If you're having trouble seeing god
, he said,
just look in the mirror
, which made me just about weep, and by the time we slept together he had a year and he said it was okay that we didn't follow the suggestion because for a newcomer, I was very advanced in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was very upset of course when he came over all dressed up a few weeks after we started sleeping together, asking if he could borrow fifteen dollars because I totally knew due to my being slightly psychic that he was on his way to a date (forget that it's hard to imagine where he was going to go on his fifteen-dollar date in New York City), and I was of course kind of miffed that he'd come try to borrow fifteen dollars from me to go on a date with someone else. But I do have to say, overall I felt that my experience with Brian was a positive one because of certain things that took place sexually that I had never really enjoyed before, which I attributed to my sobriety and my ability to experience the feelings of satisfaction that I had previously not allowed myself to have. So I don't really have regrets about that.