Dangerous When Wet: A Memoir (19 page)

His look of maniacal anticipation morphed into merely maniacal. “That’s it?! That’s it?! Man, you
lied
to me!”
Lied to him?
We had jumped into a cab one minute after meeting each other.
This relationship is based on lust, not trust.

I was scared, but I tried to calm him by grabbing at his crotch to remind him of the other reason we were in the bathroom. Too late. His pants were already going back up. “We can still have some fun, right?” I said weakly—no—pathetically.

“Fun?! Man, I’m straight!”
Great. I have picked up a genuine coke whore.
“Get out!”

I did.

Back on the street, dawn was breaking. The birds were chirping against an anemic morning sky—an in-between blue as if it were backlit by a fluorescent tube. Nothing is worse than a Disney sound track of birds tweeting to remind you that another day is starting and you haven’t gotten over the wreck you’ve made of the last one. You can’t hold back the dawn.

I wandered the streets for a while, not wanting to arrive home and face Michahaze before he left for work. Finally, around seven
A.M
., merely twelve hours since my night began, I decided to head home on the subway. I had no money, so I jumped the subway turnstile, feeling like trash—or as Mama Jean would say, “Not even trash.
Garbage!
”

As soon as I got to the empty apartment, I made myself a screwdriver. I stared into the drink and started to cry. I thought of the only sober person I knew, or, rather, the only person who was like me and now sober: my former boss Jack. I picked up the phone and called him at his office. I blubbered and blabbered into the phone. “Jack, I can’t do this anymore.”

“Jamela, you don’t have to.” He left work and came to my apartment. He sat with me as I drank my second screwdriver and smoked.

I looked at the drink. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, precious angel. You need it.” I told him how bad it had gotten—the constant all-nighters, Father John and the clap (well, his, not mine), getting rolled repeatedly. Perched on the edge of the sofa, he drew deeply on his Benson & Hedges cigarette, and when I got to the part about the coke whore telling me he was straight, Jack exhaled a dragon’s puff of smoke and laughed hysterically as he fanned the smoke away. “I’m sorry, darling.” He put his hand on my shoulder and rubbed my back. He stopped laughing and curled his lips over his teeth. “But you have to admit it’s funny. We have to laugh at this stuff, ya know.”

“I know.” I simultaneously laughed and groaned with my head in my hands.

“Can you not drink tomorrow, honey?” he asked. “Today is a wash.”

“Yes,” I said without hesitation.
Where did that come from?

I didn’t drink. And I didn’t drink the next day, when Jack took me to my first sober meeting. I loved it. Well, I was freaked out by everyone standing in a circle and holding hands for a closing prayer. When that happened, I looked at Jack with eyebrows raised. He whispered, “I know, honey, but you get used to it.”

I loved the stories I heard other sober drunks share, many of which were worse than mine—getting fired, suicide attempts, detoxes, rehabs, jails, prison.
Jesus Christ! Maybe I’m not so bad after all.
At the gay meetings every other story seemed to involve debauched tragedy and humiliating loss at the Rawhide.
Nothing good ever came out of the Rawhide.

Thirty days went by and I didn’t drink and I came home to Michahaze every night. He told me he still loved me and I told him I loved him. But I didn’t tell him what I was learning at those meetings. I didn’t tell him that the one thing I was supposed to do perfectly was not drink.

I asked Jack if he would be my sober mentor, and through an exhale of smoke and emphatic left-right nods of his head, he said, “Oh, God no! Darling, you need to find someone who’s not a friend. If I were your mentor, we’d both end up back in the gutter.” So I found someone in the fellowship just like Jack to mentor me.

*   *   *

Like the best little boy that I wanted everyone to think I was, I wanted the world to know I was sober. I started with Mama Jean, of course. I heard other sober people say that their parents reacted in disbelief, couldn’t handle that their children were alcoholics. Mama Jean? Her head came through the phone when I told her. “Well, thank
God
! Oh, I’m so proud of you.” I didn’t go into any of the gory details, and remarkably, she didn’t ask. But when I was in Beaumont for the usual Thanksgiving visit, she couldn’t contain herself for long. After a day of pushing for more details, then retreating, she finally burst out, “You didn’t end up drunk in Harlem, did you?”

Well, no, but I did pick up a straight coke whore on the street,
I almost said. Instead I answered, “Oh, no, of course not. I just decided I’d had enough.”

“Well, okay,” she said, clearly not satisfied. She didn’t push, but she gave me the same look as when I told her how Michahaze and I first met in Central Park.

I also told Liz. She listened patiently with a beatific smile on her face. When I finished, she put her hand over mine, winked, and wished me all of her love and support. I would learn that it’s not a good idea to share news like that unless you’re sure that you’re done with drinking, or rather, that drinking is done with you.

I had about fifty sober days under my belt when Michahaze and I took a vacation in the Caribbean. I’d been told that it isn’t a good idea in early sobriety to take trips, go to parties, hang out in bars, basically do all the things you used to do when you drank. But I didn’t listen. I’d be fine. I could handle it on my own. Two days into the vacation I ordered a beer. I don’t even like beer.

“You know what? We’re on vacation. I don’t have that many days sober anyway,” I told Michahaze and myself. “I can always get sober after vacation.”
What’s one day off from Lent?

Michahaze looked skeptically at me with his head cocked and his lips pursed. After a silence he said, “Are you sure about that?”

When we returned, I went right back to meetings and started a new day count, but it was hard not to drink. And I couldn’t let go of my persona as a drinker. I felt that it was the one thing I did exceptionally well. People were used to seeing me with a martini in one hand and a cigarette in the other. It made them happy. It made me happy. Of course, they rarely saw how the rest of the evenings played out.

I’d read that if you’re going to be in boozy situations (such as a work function), to bookend the booze event with a sober meeting before and after. I inverted this advice. I drank before
and
after the meetings.
At least I am still going to meetings.

I did one of those bookends at a pre–sales conference party. I drank at home, went to a meeting, and drank at the party that night. I had a ball. The next morning I was still giddy from the night before, so I decided to keep the buzz going. I had a pop with my morning juice before heading to the sales conference, at which I was presenting on the dais. I wasn’t prepared, but I wasn’t worried. I was always quick on my feet and superb at winging it. I started with a “Titties up, girls!”—a line stolen from Jack—and threw in some off-color jokes. I didn’t hear a lot of audience response over my own laughter. Still, I thought I had aced it.

After the conference I left with Liz. We stood on a corner in the black and brisk winter night under a streetlight whose harsh rays shone down like a policeman’s flashlight. As I told her that I was off to one of my sober meetings, I could swear she was giving me that signature look of hers: head cocked in disbelief, eyes narrowed, eyebrows raised. “Really?”

“Yes.” I really was.
Maybe I didn’t ace the presentation.

On the way to the meeting I had a quick pop. The love I had for the strangers in those meetings had begun to sour. Through the fog of booze I saw them as whiners who used the meetings to find friends and talk about their problems. I had plenty of friends. I knew what my problems were. Besides, I wasn’t as bad as they were. I was functioning. So I zigzagged on that path—dial on/dial off—but kept going to meetings.

Then Michahaze and I went to Rio de Janeiro. Unlike the last trip, this time I made the premeditated decision to drink. I even told Michahaze that I was going to do so. “How can anyone go to Rio and
not
drink? It would be a sin not to have
caipirinhas
in their native land.” He said okay but looked at me with grave concern. I wiped the concern from his face with “This will be my last hurrah. After Rio I’ll roll up my sleeves and figure out this sober business when we return.” I didn’t have this conversation with Mama Jean.

A couple of days into the trip I woke up naked and alone in the bedroom of a strange apartment. I got out of bed and walked down the hallway. Snapshot of the day before:

Visiting the towering Christ the Redeemer that stands watch over Rio and having my picture taken by Michahaze.

A crowded gay bar with Michahaze.

A crazy carousel of gorgeous Brazilian men.

Meeting a tall one. Well, many, actually, but one in particular.

Withdrawing cash from an ATM for coke.

I don’t remember doing coke.

Then black.

As I reached the end of the hall, I could see the flicker of television light competing with morning sun rays. I could barely hear the TV, but the broad, repetitive sounds of
beep!
and
bonk!
told me cartoons were playing. The hall opened into a living room. There was the TV.
Yes, cartoons.
There was the watcher. A nine-year-old boy. He looked up. There was me, standing as naked as Christ the Redeemer’s Father made me, still not remembering how I got there. I retreated back toward the bedroom, and the gorgeous Brazilian from the bar met me in the hallway.

He explained that I was really drunk the previous night.
Oh, really?
I was on a quest for coke and left the bar to pull money from an ATM. He intervened and brought me to his place.
Oh, Christ the Redeemer! What about Michahaze?

“You’re an angel…” I struggled for his name. I always forgot the names.

“Fernando.”

“Truly an angel.”

And the little boy? He was the son of Gladys, Fernando’s roommate.

I called Michahaze and barreled over the worry in his voice, already turning the event into a wait-until-we-tell-the-folks-back-home-about-the-time-I-entered-starkers-while-a-little-boy-was-watching-cartoons funny story. After profuse apologies, I smoothed it over by pointing out the positive side: we now had some Rio insiders to show us around.

My indiscretion was packed away with all the other indiscretions in a closet fit for a hoarder. The rest of the trip was like a travel ad for Rio: a montage of drinking, dancing, drinking, dining, fucking, drinking. Not only were the Brazilians the most beautiful race of people I’d ever encountered, but they were as free and casual with their sexuality as bonobo monkeys.

On one cokie, “inside Rio” night with Fernando and Gladys, I found myself in lip-lock with Gladys as Michahaze and Fernando danced across the room. I almost took her up on her offer to have sex.

“Oh, please,” she pleaded. “Besides, you have red hair like me?”

Not exactly
.
You have dyed-red hair like Mamou, Mama Jean’s mother, who is also named Gladys, which is starting to creep me out.

She gave me sad puppy-dog eyes. “It would be fun.
Please
…?”

Why not? I’m in Rio! Why not have sex with a woman!
Then I remembered that on coke I couldn’t penetrate quicksand, much less a woman. “No, it would never work,” I told her apologetically, and it was the literal truth. “But let’s dance!” I whisked her onto the dance floor into the oblivion of night.

Rio was liberating. I realized I would never be able to have that much fun and adventure without booze, so I decided to leave Aunt Joan’s dial in the on position and forget sobriety. This wasn’t a casual decision. I based it on a few hard facts at the time:
I have red hair. I’m a sodomite. I like to drink. Okay, I love to drink. That’s who I am: a redheaded, gay, functioning alcoholic. As long as the word
functioning
is in front of
alcoholic
, I’m okay.
I saw this as a healthy form of self-acceptance.

NINETEEN

Where Have You Been, Lord Randall, My Son?

“Do you smoke?”

“Yes.” I pulled out a pack of Lucky Strike Lights.

“No. I mean this.” The stranger with no name held up a smoke-stained glass pipe with a white pebble in it as he stood close to me in the dark of the plywood buddy booth at Les Hommes.

“Oh.”

Crack wasn’t on the agenda that night. It was never on the agenda the handful of times I’d done it, but when someone offered, I was never in a condition to refuse. After a few rounds of postwork Beefeater martinis, I’d popped into Les Hommes merely looking to get my rocks off, not to smoke rock.

I answered, “Sure. Why not?” as some specific why nots came to mind.

Because we might get caught.

Because we might get thrown out.

Because we might get caught, get thrown out, and get arrested.

Because coke is merely recreational, but crack is ghetto.

But the courage from the gin inside me and the sick thrill of watching my new blond friend take a drag off the pipe—his googly eyes lit by the flame of the lighter and the blue flicker of the booth’s porn video screen—made me accept his offer.

With his jittery left hand he held the pipe to my mouth and tried to light its tail with the flick, flick of the cheap lighter, the kind they sometimes give you free with a pack of cigarettes. “Damn! This thing’s a piece of shit.”
It’s free for a reason.
“What are we going to do?”

“Shhh,” I said, paranoia setting in before the first hit.