Long Past Stopping (10 page)

I looked around the crowd to find Jake, but he had already reappeared in his old spot right next to me.

“Finally. So what happened? You guys were talking forever.”

“I don't know,” I muttered.

“What do you mean you don't know? Did you get her number, or ask her to go out?”

“No. I don't know how to do that.”

“What the hell were you guys talking about for so long?”

“Stuff,” I said. While Jake was trying to get information out of me, someone grabbed me around the waist from behind. When I turned around to figure out what happened, all I saw was a blur of people dancing.

“What was that?” I asked Jake.

“I don't know, it happened so fast, but I think that was Heather.”

“Heather? What was she wearing? Was it like a white lacy thing?”

“Yeah. That was her. Oran, she just gave you a hug from behind.” He said it as if a “hug from behind” were a thing I should somehow know about.

“What should I do?” A flood of longing, excitement, anxiety, loneliness, and, finally, depression hit me.

“Cranberry! She just came up to you and gave you a hug from behind! Are you crazy? Go outside and find her! Now, man!” He said the whole thing loudly and slowly to make sure I could understand him.

“Uh…I'm sure she's gone by now,” I said, contrary to everything I was feeling. I did want to run after Heather and tell her that she was the cutest girl ever, and that I had a crush on her from the moment I saw her, and I couldn't stop thinking about her, and if she just gave me a chance…but I couldn't fucking move.

“Did you hear what I said?” His voice was getting louder. “Go! Go now, Cranberry! I don't see you going!” I had never seen him so frustrated before. “Ahh! Jesus Christ, you're killing me, man.”

“Maybe I'll call her tomorrow,” I said, depressed and confused. I wanted her to hug me again. It felt nice. Damn.

Jake lowered his head in total defeat and said, “Un-fucking-believable, man. Un-fucking-believable.”

 

I
DECIDED I WAS
going to call Heather, I just wasn't sure when. First of all, I had to get my shit together and stop smoking dope. It was a good incentive. I hardly ever ran into her, so I knew it was just a matter of time before some other guy wouldn't stand there like an idiot the next time she felt like hugging someone and running away. What the hell was wrong with me? Before I got the chance, though, I ran into her and Sean at the Casanova.

“Hey, Heather, it's good to see you. Twice in one week even.”

“Yeah. Well, I don't usually come here, but we just got out of rehearsal and…hey, you want to get something to eat? I'm starving.”

I wasn't hungry, but I wasn't going to let her run away again.

“Yeah, where do you want to go?”

I didn't even say hi to Sean. We just started heading back out the way I came in.

“I don't know. I just want to get out of here. I don't really like this place.” She seemed agitated about something. We started walking up Valencia, and I asked her if she had made it home okay after the wedding. She looked at me kind of suspicious. “Uh, what do mean?” she asked. It would have been a perfect opportunity to ask her about running out of the wedding the way she did, but I dropped the ball.

“Oh, just 'cause you said you were pretty drunk. That's all.” She seemed relieved that I didn't bring it up.

We were coming across Seventeenth Street, and Heather said, “Hey, do want to go in that alley and make out?”

Holy shit. I was stunned. Even I couldn't fuck this one up.

“I can't think of a single thing in the whole world I would rather do,” I said.

We didn't talk for a while after that. We just hid in the dark, making out, oblivious to the legendary reek of Clarion Alley. There were also some incredible murals in there, but at night it just smelled like rotting trash and urine. I lost my sense of time, but at some point I said, “Wow, you have no idea how long I have been wanting that to happen.”

“Really? Even at the wedding I couldn't tell at all. Me, too, though.”

“Ever since the first time I saw you. It was your first show with Sean, like three years ago,” I said, remembering how mesmerized I was by that train wreck of a first show.

“I got you beat. You were one of the first people I noticed when I moved to San Francisco. You used to serve me coffee at the Art Institute Café.”

“No way. I would have noticed you.”

“Nah, I was just this shy little punk-rock girl. I had a shaved head and I just lurked around. I didn't talk to anyone.”

“Shit. I feel bad that I don't remember,” I said, trying to visualize her with a shaved head.

“Hey, I've got another confession to make. At the wedding, that was me who hugged you and ran out of there all crazy. I was just so frustrated. I didn't know what else to do, so…”

“I kind of figured that out, but I wasn't sure,” I lied.

“Wait. That's not the confession. I was so frustrated from talking to you that on my way home I walked into the Casanova and grabbed some random guy, and…” I waited for her to finish. “I can't believe I'm telling you this, but I took him home. I just didn't know what else to do. That's why I needed to get out of the Casanova and looked at you strange when you asked me if I got home okay. I thought maybe you knew.”

“I didn't have any idea. Well, I'll take it as a compliment, I guess, but I wish you would have taken me home instead.”

“Me too. Believe me. But tonight I have to go home alone,” she said.

“What? You mean I basically got some random guy laid the other night and now you have to go home alone?” I said, pretending to joke. I mean, who else could this happen to but me?

“Yup, but don't worry. I'm not going anywhere.”

“You just said you were going home.” I was joking this time, and she laughed. I didn't try too hard to get her to change her mind for two reasons. One, I never tried too hard, and two, I hadn't brought any dope with me. I would have gladly traded spending the night with Heather for a morning of being dope sick if that's how it was going, but she was determined to leave by herself.

“Okay, but promise me you won't go in any bars on your way home,” I said, giving her a final kiss goodnight.

“I promise.”

I watched her walk down the street till she disappeared. Then I started home down Seventeenth Street. I needed to avoid the Casanova because I couldn't stop smiling. I didn't want to freak anyone out.

I was still smiling the next day, and for the next week, and the next month. For the first time I could remember, I was pretty psyched. I had an amazing girlfriend, and I started my first recording job the day after I finished soldering the last of the three hundred cables. The first band was two black guys of questionable sexual orientation, and even more questionable musical skill, called Rocket Science and the Nigger-Loving Faggots. With a name like that, you didn't need to be good. Their lack of
skill ended up working to my advantage anyway. Since the drummer seemed to think the microphones were actually tiny little drums, I got an extra two days of work just trying to mute all the mic hits out of the mix. I ended up making twice my rent in the first four days of business. With my new smile, and a rate of fifteen dollars an hour, getting clients wasn't a problem at all.

What I couldn't understand was how the better things kept getting, the more I seemed to hate myself. It didn't make sense, because I'd always believed that if I just got this, that, or the other thing, I would be fine. I had the girlfriend, the recording studio, my music, my friends, and…I was a junkie, and a lying piece of shit.

As long as I was working, or playing music, or hanging out with Heather, I was fine. I had somehow managed to believe my own lies enough to convince myself I was doing great, until I started getting goose bumps, my nose started running, and I had to excuse myself to go get high. I dreaded it. Every six hours I would face the most hateful, venomous, self-critical motherfucker on the planet, as I hid in the bathroom, smoking enough dope to get well. Coming out, I would completely forget all about it and jump right back into whatever I was doing, oblivious that I had just been doing heroin. It was the only way I could keep the act going. I was actually the worst actor in the world, but I had figured out that if I believed my own lies, I could fool anyone.

My version of reality was questionable before I ever started using dope, and now it had split off into two distorted versions of itself: the one where for the first time in my life I felt comfortable enough in my own skin to talk to people and be witty, and charming, and tell them how great everything was going, and the one where I was in my room, chain-smoking Pall Malls, looking at pornography on my computer, doing dope, and telling myself what a fucking piece of shit I was until the inner dialogue got so brutal that the only way to shut it up was to smoke enough heroin to pass out.

I didn't have a plan for when these two realities collided. The first time it happened, I had broken one of my rules. I had a whole bunch of rules. One of them was not bringing dope to Heather's house. As a result, I would wake up sick, in a puddle of sweat every morning, as if I had literally taken a shower in my sleep. I don't know how she put up with it. Twice, though, I ended up at Heather's house with dope on me because I hadn't planned on going there, and as long as I had it with me, there was no way I could keep myself from doing it. I knew women faked orgasms all the time and got away with it, but I had never faked one before, and
aside from my bad acting skills, there's another far more obvious problem with men faking orgasms than women.

The first time I did it, she didn't say anything, but it made me feel fucking awful. I told myself I was a terrible person, which was nothing new, but I was used to only allowing myself to feel that way in the privacy of my own room, not in my girlfriend's bed. The second time I tried faking an orgasm, she brought it up and I was caught totally unprepared. For all the rules and systems I had set up not to get caught, I hadn't come up with a plan if I did. My two realities had collided, and it was as if I was as surprised as anyone else that I was a junkie.

“Hey, I wanted to ask you this last time, but what happened?” Heather asked after I had recovered from my lame act of being out of breath and relaxed.

“What?” I asked. I had heard her, but I needed time to come up with an answer.

“What just happened?” she asked again.

“What do you mean?” I was starting to panic.

“You did that once before as well.”

“Did what once before?” I was racking my brain, but I couldn't come up with anything even remotely like an excuse.

“You know…didn't finish?”

“Uh…well…shit…Oh man, you're going to hate me.” I was looking for the right words. How do you tell your girlfriend you're addicted to heroin?

“I'm addicted to heroin,” I said, and immediately started crying uncontrollably. As much as I was afraid she would kick me out then and there (I wouldn't have blamed her if she had), it was a relief to finally tell someone. Although my orgasm had been an act, the crying was real and fucking pathetic, and I couldn't stop. I hadn't expected to break down like I did, but keeping it a secret was killing me. Heather was staring off into space with a totally blank expression.

“I should probably leave,” I blubbered. “Really, it has nothing to do with you. You shouldn't be involved.”

“How long has it been?” she finally asked. She was scrunched up in the far corner of the bed, against the wall.

“I don't know. Maybe five months now, something like that. I fucking hate it. I just got physically addicted is all, and I've been too stressed out and busy to quit. And I'm just smoking it,” I said, as if that somehow made it better. It sounded better to me at least. I believed every word I was saying.

“Okay, listen. You don't have to leave, and I don't hate you. I'm actually relieved that you told me. I thought it was something much worse. But you have to stop. I don't know what I can do, but I'll help in whatever way I can. You have to take this seriously, even if it means getting out of town for a while. It's way more important than your bands or your studio. I'm serious. You have got to quit soon.”

I was amazed she didn't throw me out. Jesus, I would have broken up with me years ago if I knew how. And she even said she would help. I started to regain my composure a little.

“Hey, what could be worse than what I just told you?” Because I really couldn't imagine what that could be.

“Nothing. It doesn't matter.”

“What is it?” I said, and with that she burst out in tears.

“I thought it was because I was too old,” she cried. I didn't know what to say. It would have never occurred to me that she had been thinking that. I always forgot that she was a few years older than me because she definitely didn't look it. Why didn't I see it? What else would she have thought? What a selfish asshole I was.

“Whoa. Heather, I'm so sorry. I had no idea. That couldn't be further from the truth, I swear.” But I knew it wasn't going to help. It wasn't the issue.

She kept crying, and I decided I was going to get clean for real. It was dawning on me for the first time that no matter how much of a secret I kept it, my drug use was affecting other people. I didn't really care about myself, but Heather didn't deserve any of this. If I couldn't do it for myself, at least I could do it for her.

 

W
ALKING HOME THE
next morning, I noticed a small sign on the door of this fancy-looking acupuncture place on Valencia Street that said acupuncture for heroin addicts, $5, 7–9 a.m. It was unnerving. I wasn't a big fan of signs from God, but I couldn't ignore it after what had happened last night.
Why had I never seen it before?
It was about eight o'clock, and, despite a ton of apprehension, I walked in.