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- Herausgeber: Modern History Press
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
Jessica needs a fix.
Vacillating between a desire to get high and a yearning for a substance-free life, she finds herself alternating between cocaine and yoga, dependence and freedom. Will she be able to let go of her self-abuse and find sobriety one day, and one breath, at a time? An addict who once disappeared into crack dens, she now seeks solace at yoga studios. As Jessica attempts to create a path to recovery "on the mat" and in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, she grapples with one unanswerable question: "Is recovery worth it?" Yoga Cocaine traces one addict's journey from the unknown of addiction to the unknown of recovery.
"A raw, compelling, artfully crafted novel, Yoga Cocaine takes us on a deep dive into the shadowy world of addiction. This novel powerfully illuminates what's available to us when we commit ourselves to the redemptive path of recovery. Even if you've never struggled with addiction, you will be shaken, moved and inspired."
--Kezia Rene'e Lechner, author of Close to the Bone: An Uncommon Love Story
"Yoga Cocaine is a heartwrenching story of a woman failing at what seems like an impossible mission: getting sober. Its intense, matter-of-fact voice draws us into Jessica's world, walking us through her journey in a way that helps us to see into the mind of an addict and understand how long and hard a journey it really is."
--Selina J. Eckert, author of This Cursed Flame
"Jessica's experiences could put any fraternity guy to shame, yet you feel for her and root for her, despite her nonexistent moral compass. Through yoga, and some serious diversions, she undergoes a powerful, poignant transformation. Yoga Cocaine is an emotional roller coaster ride of despair and recovery. It's a must read for anyone who's ever dealt with addiction or loves yoga."
--Heidi Doheny Jay, author of Confessions of 400 Men
"For anyone who has known addiction and sobriety - or wondered about it - Yoga Cocaine is a powerful, painful, hopeful, inspiring and addicting story that you won't be able to put down. Pick it up now and dive in."
--Lisa Kohn, author of To the Moon And Back: A Childhood Under the Influence
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Praise for Yoga Cocaine
“We all lose our way at some time in our lives, and if lucky, we awaken, our hearts soften and we manage to find our way home again. A raw, compelling, artfully crafted novel, Yoga Cocaine takes us on a deep dive into the shadowy world of addiction. This novel powerfully illuminates what’s available to us when we commit ourselves to the redemptive path of recovery. Even if you’ve never struggled with addiction, you will be shaken, moved and inspired.”
Kezia Renée Lechner, author of
Close to the Bone: An Uncommon Love Story
“Yoga Cocaine is a heart wrenching story of a woman failing at what seems like an impossible mission: getting sober. Yet, she doesn’t give up, instead finding ways to keep trying and learning how to be a better version of herself, with help and a lot of yoga. Its intense, matter-of-fact voice draws us into Jessica’s world, walking us through her journey in a way that helps us to see into the mind of an addict and understand how long and hard a journey it really is.”
Selina J. Eckert, author of This Cursed Flame
“Jessica’s experiences could put any fraternity guy to shame, yet you feel for her and root for her, despite her nonexistent moral compass. Through yoga, and some serious diversions, she undergoes a powerful, poignant transformation. Yoga Cocaine is an emotional rollercoaster ride of despair and recovery. It’s a must read for anyone who’s ever dealt with addiction or loves yoga.”
Heidi Doheny Jay, author of Confessions of 400 Men
“For anyone who has known addiction and sobriety—or wondered about it—Yoga Cocaine is a powerful, painful, hopeful, inspiring and addicting story that you won’t be able to put down. Pick it up now and dive in.”
Lisa Kohn, author of
To the Moon and Back: A Childhood Under the Influence
“Yoga Cocaine combines 12-Step Recovery with mindfulness techniques—always a perfect marriage. Highly relatable and clearly written, it makes a helpful contribution to recovery literature. This work embraces all the messiness and magic of the path to enlightenment. Namaste, Daralyse Lyons. Thank you for your beautifully imperfect perfection.”
Richard A. Singer Jr., author of
101 Tips for Recovery from Addiction
“For most of her life, Jessica has been hurting and knows the most reliable way to escape her demons is through drugs, alcohol, sex and… yoga. In the moving Yoga Cocaine, Daralyse Lyons plunges her reader into the rocky world of addiction and recovery, where honesty and friendship (and a decent frog pose) carve the pathway toward hope.”
Sarahlyn Bruck, author of Designer You
“An edgy, gritty narrative about the challenges of addiction and the healing power of yoga, with guidance for everyone on how to incorporate yoga practice to aspire to our better selves.”
Jacqui Lipton, author and literary agent
Yoga Cocaine
By Daralyse Lyons
Modern History PressAnn Arbor, MI
Yoga Cocaine
Copyright © 2019 by Daralyse Lyons. All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lyons, Daralyse, author.
Title: Yoga cocaine / by Daralyse Lyons.
Description: First edition. | Ann Arbor, MI : Modern History Press, [2019] | Summary: “Jessica has multiple addiction issues, including cocaine, marijuana, and alcohol. After her latest suicide attempt, she makes a wholehearted leap into an Alcoholics Anonymous program. However, her recovery will be long, lonely, and extremely challenging... and with a little help from yoga, she just might get clean and find a healthy relationship”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019042165 (print) | LCCN 2019042166 (ebook) | ISBN 9781615994847 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781615994854 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781615994861 (kindle edition) | ISBN 9781615994861 (epub)
Classification: LCC PS3612.Y5744 Y64 2019 (print) | LCC PS3612.Y5744 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019042165
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019042166
Published by
Modern History Press
Tollfree 888-761-6268
5145 Pontiac Trail
FAX 734-663-6861
Ann Arbor, MI 48105
www.ModernHistoryPress.com
Distributed by Ingram (USA/CAN/AU), Bertram’s Books (UK/EU)
The excerpts from Alcoholics Anonymous are reprinted with permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (“A.A.W.S.”). Permission to reprint these excerpts does not mean that A.A.W.S. has reviewed or approved the contents of this publication, or that A.A.W.S. necessarily agrees with the views expressed herein. A.A. is a program of recovery from alcoholism only—use of these excerpts in connection with programs and activities which are patterned after A.A., but which address other problems, or in any other non-A.A. context, does not imply otherwise.
The Twelve Steps of Cocaine Anonymous
1. We admitted we were powerless over cocaine and all other mind-altering substances—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Table of Contents
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part II
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Part III
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Part IV
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Part I
Pose
Child’s Pose (Balasana)
Kneel on your yoga mat, touching your big toes together beneath you. Separate your knees a hip’s width apart and lower your buttocks down onto your heels. Relax your torso completely as you fold forward, over your thighs. Allow the gentle curvature of your spine to dictate the position of your arms, which can rest alongside your body or stretch out in front of you.
Prayer
Serenity Prayer
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Promise
“Nearly all have recovered. They have solved the drink problem.” (Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book, p. 17)
Step One:
We admitted we were powerless over cocaine—that our lives had become unmanageable. (Easy Pose)
1
I’m not exactly Zen. Sure, I do yoga. I chant and bow a reverent Namaste to Sati, my beautiful, waif-like yoga teacher, but last night I did a line of coke off the backseat of a toilet and this morning I woke up awash in my own vomit. So, no Zen zone for me.
The worst part of being hung-over in yoga is that, before last night, I had a week sober. Still, I’m here. I’ve dragged myself to Sati’s class on a crisp March Friday morning, unrolled my wilted mat, and plastered on my emptiest, most vacant, expression.
“Stand in Tadasana.” Sati is a fucking fruitarian. She reeks of patchouli.
As I stand at the top of my mat, my body swaying, in spite of my brain’s instructions for it to stay still, I don’t feel sturdy, like a mountain. I feel like quicksand—a bottomless pit of need.
“Be the pose,” my teacher says. “Embody your most enlightened self.”
Enlightenment, my ass. She can keep her patchouli and her fruitarianism. I’m here to sweat out toxins, so I can stop feeling like an animal carcass that’s been decomposing in the noonday sun. I breathe. My mind drifts back to last night in a bar in Center City—the straw, the white confectioner’s sugar (as sweet and addictive as candy), the heady rush. That was Nirvana. This is a room full of middle-aged white women with the bodies of twenty-year-old girls.
I’m thirty-two, too old to be doing coke, too young to stop.
Shit. Everyone else has stretched their arms toward the sky and I’m still standing at the top of my mat. I reach up too late, fold forward several seconds after my Sun Saluting peers. I don’t catch up ‘til Chaturanga.
“Lower your body into a pushup.”
That reminds me… I left my push up bra in the backseat of some stranger’s car last night. I didn’t have sex with him. He wanted to. I did too. Until I puked.
I got out of the car to clean myself in the bar’s gender-neutral bathroom, and, when I returned, the guy had disappeared, taking my bra with him.
“Downward Dog,” Sati says. “Or, if your body, not your mind, has a desire to flow, take a vinyasa.”
I don’t flow.
She materializes behind me and adjusts my hips. “Nice form, Jessica.”
I catch another whiff of campfire, mint and charcoal and fight the impulse to hurl. It was a bad idea to come to this power-yoga-masquerading-as-Mt.-Airy-crunchy-granola class. I should’ve stayed in bed and slept through the hangover, and the regret.
The woman in front of me is wearing oversized underwear. It bunches over the top of her spandex. I try not to giggle, but laughter leaks out of me. Like sweat.
I hope my sweat doesn’t smell like beer.
One time, I went to a hot yoga class the day after a bender and flooded the room with the noxious scent of skunk piss, with the accompanying undercurrent of rubbing alcohol. Luckily, everyone there was too “enlightened” to confront me.
I’m such an addict. But, no matter how many times I fail, I keep going to meetings and coming to yoga because my sponsor assures me that, if I do, at some point, my life will amount to more than a series of disappointments.
“Utkatasana,” Sati says. “Padangusthasana.”
I’m craving euphoria. It doesn’t come. Yoga is a poor substitute for cocaine.
2
“I’m not going out with you, Jimmy.” I glower across the counter.
He looks back at me. Big brown eyes, a pockmarked face, a slightly crooked smile. I wish he’d see that I’m too good for him and stop asking me out. Alright, maybe not the me I am now—this me is working for $7.25 an hour at a lame Mt. Airy coffee shop—but the me I’m going to be. After I quit.
I hand Jimmy his cappuccino. I’ve been working at the Free Café for six months now (five months past when I thought I’d get my life together). Jimmy works down the street at his parents’ deli. Like I’d ever date some minimum-wage sandwich-pusher. The only reason I’m living in coffee hell is because I was fired from my last three legit jobs. Apparently, it’s frowned upon to get high on company time, make out with coworkers, and steal money out of petty cash.
My not-so-secret admirer looks as forlorn as a puppy that’s been turned away, treat-less, after begging for scraps. “Jessica, I’m a nice guy who wants to take you out on a date. You could do worse.”
“For sure,” I reply. “That’s what I’m waiting for—worse.”
I’m only half kidding. I have a thing for assholes. Or, rather, asshole’s things have a thing for me. Sober or shitfaced, I walk into any room and dysfunction finds me. That’s part of the reason I haven’t been to an AA meeting in a couple weeks. The last time I went, I met Garrett. He had four days sober. I had four minutes. We fucked in the bathroom.
Before AA, I had a few sessions with a therapist because I knew something was wrong and didn’t know how to fix it. After several appointments, some of which I arrived to mildly intoxicated, or missed altogether, she told me I was “unpredictable” and “lacked emotional integrity.”
Predictably, I fired her. Well, actually, since I lacked the integrity to tell her, I stopped showing up.
Now, I have April—my infinitely patient sponsor.
A few weeks ago, I heard this guy say in a meeting that, every time he sees his golden retriever, he thinks about how the word dog is God spelled backward, and how knowing that draws him closer to his Higher Power. The last dog I had, I sold to a neighbor kid for fifty bucks for drug money. April behaves kind of like a dog. She’s always happy to see me, and, every time I call, she comes. I called her this morning, which is why, when I look up from wiping down the counter, she’s walking through the door.
Jimmy slinks out, leaving my sponsor and me alone. Now, she’s free to lecture without worrying about breaking either of our anonymity.
“Jess.” April’s tone is parental. “You have to call before you pick up. Not after.”
April does yoga too. She got me into it.
“Why do you always call after?”
I don’t answer her question. We both know why I don’t call before getting high. I don’t want to be talked out of it.
“You can choose your rock bottom, you know. You don’t have to lose everything.”
What else is there to lose? Last year, at Thanksgiving, my mom and stepdad disowned me for getting drunk and smoking dope. Well, not really. They disowned me because, in a fit of paranoia, I threw the turkey out the window, then dove under the table and screamed “It’s gonna explode!” I thought the poultry was a bomb.
I wasn’t wrong about an explosion. My stepdad blew up.
He screamed at me so loud the table shook. When I finally crawled out, Mom was crying and my sister—who is younger than I am, but more mature than I’ll ever be—whipped my car keys at my face and told me to get out.
Seeing Chloe lose her composure almost made it worth it. Almost.
“Fuck you!” I shrieked as I stumbled out the door. “I don’t need any of you!”
My triumph was short-lived. I tripped on the front stoop, fell headfirst into a rosebush, and puked onto the grass.
The Chinese food delivery man who arrived half an hour later with a roast duck—Mom’s last-minute solution to the turkey predicament—saved me. Ping (that was his name) helped me up, walked me to my car, and gave me a bottle of water.
I’d have thanked him, but I was too fixated on my memories of the children’s book Mom and Dad used to read out-loud to Chloe and me. “You have the name of a duck, and you’re delivering duck,” I said, over and over, between fits of giggles.
“You no dribe ‘til you no drunk,” the delivery guy cautioned.
“Duck!” I clutched my aching abdomen. Between the belly laughs and the puking, it had gotten quite the workout.
“I no time this.” Ping wagged a disapproving finger in my face.
I leaned my dizzy head against the steering wheel.
A horn blast. Dwight standing at the door.
“I back, one minute.”
Ping finished his delivery, checked on me one last time, then left. “You no dribe,” he reiterated. “You danj’ous lady, ve’y drunk.”
I spent the next few hours sobering up in Mom and Dwight’s driveway before heading home to sleep the rest of the holiday away.
“Jess…?”
The counter is now sparkling. I’ve been ceaselessly scrubbing the same spot.
My sponsor’s expression is equal-parts pity and love. All she wants is for me to be sober. I bite my lower lip to keep my eyes from betraying me. No way will I allow myself to cry. Just as I’m about to reply, my coworker, Tina, comes in to start her shift.
“Hey, you’re like Jess’ friend, right?”
Tina is a shy, smiley girl who wears pigtails and uses the word like as a verb, noun and adjective. Her nails are pumpkin orange today, despite it being nowhere near Halloween.
“I should get back to work.”
April lowers her voice so my Valley Girl coworker won’t overhear. “Want to go to a meeting after your shift?”
Not really, I think, but what comes out of my mouth is “Can we go to a women’s meeting?”
I don’t want to risk running into Garrett.
I haven’t told April about Garrett. I’m not looking to get a reputation. I already have a reputation. I’m looking to undo it.
3
When my shift ends, I hurry home to shower, eat, stare at my kitchen wall, and try not to obsess about how pissed I am with myself that, once again, I forfeited my sobriety or that, in spite of my self-recrimination, I’m still longing to get high. I wait until the last possible second before heading out the door.
At 6:59, I walk into the Church of the Nazarene and slide into the empty chair beside my sponsor. I’ve calculated my arrival like I calculate so many things in life. 6:59 is the perfect time to get to a seven o’clock meeting. This way, I don’t have to make conversation, which I’d have to do if I were early, and I don’t draw attention to myself by being late.
The only thing I can’t seem to calculate is what will happen if I take a drink, or succumb to an urge to use. Every time I pick up, I think, This time will be different. This time will be worth it.
April squeezes my knee.
The Chestnut Hill Friday Night Women’s Meeting used to be her home group back when she was single and lived seventeen miles away, in South Philadelphia, but drove here every week to escape the possible shame of someone from her neighborhood recognizing her.
I don’t care about that. I live three miles down the road in Mt. Airy and I’m pretty sure everyone in my neighborhood knows I’m an addict. I just don’t want them to know what a failure I am at trying to quit.
The meeting leader reads the traditions. When she gets to “The only requirement for AA membership is the desire to stop drinking,” it’s all I can do to keep myself from running out. As much as I want to want to stop—and to be rid of the consequences—the truth is, I don’t. In fact, I’d give anything for an ice cold beer right now.
“The floor is now for sharing.” I raise my hand at the same time as some perky, pink-cloud divorcee. The meeting leader calls on her.
“Hi. I’m Amber, and I’m an alcoholic. I’m so grateful right now, because…”
What follows is a stream of verbal diarrhea about kids and playdates and feeling present and living life on life’s terms and how even her ex-husband has come to respect her. Bo-ring. The next sharer is much better. She talks about how life still blows, but how it blows less now that she’s not doing blow. Her irreverence makes me laugh, which is good because I have trouble concentrating—even here, amidst who are supposed to be “my people.”
I wish I had the capacity to be mindful off the mat, but, most of the time, I can’t even be mindful on it. Still, I do my best to tune in. These women seem to have figured out how to enjoy life enough not to want to go through it numb. My only hope is to learn from their experiences.
Next to me, my sponsor’s right hand rises while her left remains neatly in her lap, its pinky-adjacent finger adorned with the spectacular platinum and diamond noose of commitment.
April met and married Howie after she got sober. He only knows her as dependable.
“Hi, I’m April and I’m and addict and alcoholic.”
“Hi, April.”
“I’m grateful to be here tonight—grateful to be sober, period. A decade and a half ago, I was having sex with men for crack and about to be evicted from yet another apartment. Now, I’ve got almost fifteen years sober.”
The women clap and cheer, lavishing their approval on someone who no longer needs it because she has the confidence that comes from nearly 5,475 accumulated drink-less, drugless days.
“My life today isn’t what I’d ever have imagined. The highs aren’t as high, but they’re sustainable. And, as for the lows, my worst day sober is a million times better than my best day using.”
When it’s my turn to share, I stumble through my introduction. “I’m Jess-Jesse-Jessica. I’m an alcoholic and an addict.”
The room erupts in a chorus of “Hi Jessica!”s
I don’t know why they’re so chipper. It’s not like I’ve got anything profound to say. Everyone in this church basement has more abstinence, and more wisdom, than I ever will.
“I’m in a fucked up place,” I admit. “I’ll get a few days, or a week. Then, I find myself picking up again. I want to have hit bottom. I mean, I’ve lost my family, friends, jobs, money, and self-respect, and, most days, I wake up and wish I hadn’t, but, even though I hate the person drugs and alcohol have turned me into, I can’t tell you I won’t drink tomorrow.”
Several heads nod. A few of the old-timers murmur that I should “keep coming back.”
“Sorry to be a downer,” I tell the room. “Thanks for letting me share.”
And then it happens. That familiar sensation washes over me. That sensation I get during every AA meeting, and at the end of every yoga class.
It feels like Shavasana. It feels like home.
4
After the meeting, April walks me to my car.
My keys jangle in my shaky grasp.
“Promise you’ll go home?” It’s part question, part command.
Despite the momentary reprieve, my thoughts have turned to liquor. I don’t want to get drunk, but one drink wouldn’t hurt. I could get a martini. Or a piña colada. Something girly with hardly any alcohol.
The first person to give me alcohol was my stepdad. Initially, I didn’t like the taste. But I liked sharing a secret.
Don’t tell your mother.
“Jess?”
I study the scuff marks on the insoles of my boots. When did those get there?
“Jess…?”
For once, I win the fight against my inner addict and tell April the truth. “I can’t make that promise.”
She reaches out her hand, palm up, the underbelly of her wedding and engagement shackles gleaming in the darkness. I give her my keys then follow her to her BMW. Climb into the passenger seat. Put on my seatbelt. It’s a familiar routine. April will drive us the twenty-seven traffic-free minutes to her stately Colonial on the Main Line in Wayne, just 3.9 miles away from where I grew up—also on the Main Line, in Bryn Mawr, where Mom and Dwight still live in the container of my memories. Tonight, I’ll sleep on April’s couch. In the morning, I’ll eat breakfast with her husband and their smiling six and eight-year-old daughters and pretend not to be wigged out by their cookie-cutter suburban lives.
April makes perfect pancakes and her girls refer to me as “Aunt Jess” and ask to braid my hair and wonder out loud why I don’t have a husband.
“You’re pretty and nice,” they tell me. “You should at least have a boyfriend.”
I was ten when my stepdad offered me my first beer. We sipped in tandem while watching the Eagles play the 49ers. When the Eagles won, Dwight called me his “lucky charm.”
In the morning, on his way to work, Howie will drive me back to this church parking lot and I’ll have amassed exactly twenty-four hours.
“Thanks.”
My real dad died when I was five and Chloe was a few weeks shy of two. He had a streak of white in his hair, in the front, and, after he was gone, I used to watch Maxwell Sheffield in The Nanny and pretend he was my dad. Once, hours into a Nanny marathon, Mom told me to turn off the TV and I dissolved into a sobbing pile on the floor. It took her forever to get me to explain why I was so upset.
“I can’t turn Daddy off!” I finally wailed, after an hour’s worth of coaxing.
But Daddy hadn’t had an English accent or three blazer-wearing offspring. Just messy, unhinged me, my perfect baby sister, and a wife who was very much alive.
“Don’t thank me.” April hits the button on her key fob, unlocking the doors. “Just get sober, then pass on the miracle to another fucked-up addict.”
“Like me.” I climb in and slam the door.
She slides into the driver’s seat and gently closes hers. “Like us.”
5
I meet Oliver at the Saturday Serenity Meeting on the first Saturday in April. Looking at him, I can’t help but think of sailing regattas and country clubs. But, to hear him tell it, before he got sober, he was more Motley Crew than J. Crew. He raises his hand and, when the meeting leader calls on him, talks about how he has nearly eleven months sober and how, when he’d first dragged himself through the doors of AA, he’d been an unwashed, angry mess.
“It didn’t matter though. In AA, the uglier you are, the more love you get.”
Everyone laughs. He’s right. Twelve-Step fellowships are a conglomerate of misfits.
After eleven months of sobriety, Oliver is no longer disheveled. On this crisp, spring night, he’s wearing a button-down polo shirt, Ralph Lauren khakis, and a friggin’ cardigan. He’s way too straight-laced to ever be my type, but his share about redemption struck a chord with me. More than anything, I want to be saved—from myself.
After the meeting, Oliver approaches. “How are you?”
“Fine. You?”
“Good.”
I don’t say anything.
“I haven’t seen you at this meeting before.”
He’s cute—in an unremarkable, boy-next-door kind of way. “I haven’t been to this meeting before.”
“So, how long have you been sober?”
“Long enough.” Eight days. “Congratulations on your eleven months.”
“Thanks. Want to help me celebrate?”
I lean in, the way I would if I were at a bar, trying to entice a stranger into buying me a drink, and whisper low, so only he can hear me. “What do you have in mind?”
“You’re so fucking hot!”
I’m not sure who’s more surprised by the outburst—me, Oliver, or the old guy at the coffee pot who snarls his disapproval.
Oliver claps a hand over his mouth and turns a deep shade of burgundy. The old guy mutters something about AA not being a pick-up joint and how, back in his day, thirteenth-steppers got what was coming to them. I bite my bottom lip to keep from laughing.
“I can’t believe I said that.” Oliver’s voice is a whisper now. “You seem like a great girl. I just don’t know if I’m ready for a relationship. You are sexy though. During the meeting, I couldn’t stop looking at you and fantasizing about–”
I cut him off. “What makes you think I want a relationship?”
“Um… Well… I… Um… We…”
“You’re pretty hot yourself.” I hand Motley Crew Makeover ten digits, scribbled on a scrap of paper. Halfway through the meeting, I pre-wrote my number just in case. “Text me. We’ll see where it goes.”
An hour later, I’m on the couch—a Bioré Pore Strip on my nose—watching Mr. Belvedere on ANT when my cellphone pings.
I just thought about you.
Yeah? What were you doing?
Jerking off.
To keep it interesting, I wait ten minutes before replying.
It’s easy to be bold via text.
Oliver tells me he wants to fuck me. I tell him I want to lick him—flaccid and erect. We pick a date. Establish a time.
Do you want to meet for dinner or something? he wants to know.
No relationship, I remind him. I’m not interested in making small talk, just in fucking.
And in forgetting I should write. Sex is a mode of escape for me. It fills the empty spaces.
For a while, my stepdad and I had a good thing going. He’d give me money for clothes and alcohol to bring with me to parties and cover for me with Mom when I stayed out past curfew. After all, the boys my age were hopeless. They never knew what to do with their lips and tongues and hands. Not like Dwight.
Before I even have a chance to knock, Oliver opens his big, wooden townhouse door. I fight the urge to laugh. Is he really wearing an olive green sweater vest?
Hard to reconcile this Mr. Rogers look-alike with the sex-obsessed pervert who’s been sending me What’re you wearing? texts.
“Do you want a tour?”
“Not really.”
“Want to watch TV?”
I shake my head.
“Can I get you something to drink? Orangina…? Cream Soda…? Fanta…? Perrier…?”
I interrupt him before he can rattle off any more beverage offerings. “I’m not here to get a tour of your place or make conversation. I’m here to fuck.”
I hadn’t realized a jaw could come so unhinged without serious, surgical intervention. It takes Oliver a full thirty seconds to collect himself. When he does, he pulls me close and presses his lips to mine. I open my mouth, inviting him deeper. As our tongues tangle, I can feel his expanse of well-muscled chest beneath his ridiculous sweater.
We stumble awkwardly up the stairs to his bedroom, tripping through what should be an easy ascension because neither of us wants to stop kissing long enough to look where we’re going. When we reach his bed, I push him down and let my lips descend, tracing Oliver’s midline with my tongue, until I arrive at the center of his sex. Then, I take him into my mouth and feel the pleasure-wave that sweeps through his body, threatening to pull him under.
I am a drug, powerful and thrilling.
“Oh, God!”
Why do people call out to God during sex? If there is a God, which I’m not sure there is, do we really want to call His attention to the fact that we’re fucking? And, if there isn’t, then isn’t calling out “God” the equivalent of being in bed with one guy and accidentally screaming someone else’s name?
“Hold on.” Oliver pulls me up by the shoulders, reaches into his bedside table, and takes out a condom.
I slip out of my underwear and unhook my bra. It’s been a while since I’ve had bedroom sex. The last few times have been in backseats or bathrooms. Or in alleys, like feral cats. But here Oliver and I are, two virtual strangers, naked and sober.
He rolls on. Or tries to. The condom won’t adhere to his shaft.
He smiles at me, mildly abashed. I smile back. His penis pulsates, keeping rhythm with his heartbeat, as he pulls out a second condom and…
Oops. It slips off too.
His smile falters. “What the hell?”
I want to tell Oliver that he needs to dry off his junk, so the rubber has something to cling to, but advising a guy about prophylactic application is like trying to give him driving directions, so I sit, unmoving, on the edge of the bed and wait for him to figure out what I already know.
Another condom—the last one—this time snatched furiously from the same bedside drawer. Another failed attempt. The three, useless condoms form a pile of wet rubber on Oliver’s bedroom floor.
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him.
And it doesn’t. Not to me. Not in this moment anyway.
I take Oliver into my mouth again and lick, suck, kiss, and caress until he forgets about the wet, wilted schlong shields and writhes in ecstasy, overpowered by desire. I climb on. Straddle him. Gyrate—slowly at first, then faster.
Beneath me, Oliver is equal parts sexy and pathetic.
Why do men, even grown men, always make that stupid little-boy face when they’re coming? A few weeks after I turned fifteen, my stepdad and I started fucking. I look at the headboard to avoid making eye-contact.
“Yeah, Jesse. Just like that.”
Jesse? Really? Dwight used to call me that, and Daddy before him. Only, I liked it coming from them.
I ride Oliver a little longer. Not too long. Fifteen seconds. Maybe twenty. Until a look of panic sweeps across his face.
“Oh God!” He shoves me off with one hand and reaches between his legs with the other.
Four swift motions. Semen squirts onto the sheets.
Great. I wanted to be fucked, and now I have been.
I almost laugh, but Oliver’s expression is that of an abused puppy and I can’t bring myself to do anything but pet him. “It’s okay.” My tone jizzes reassurance. “It was good for me too. Really. These things happen…”
But it isn’t okay. It’s like showing up at a yoga class and finding out the teacher is a no-show. Or driving all the way to your dealer’s only to discover that he’s been arrested—again—and your supply is cut off.
“Look,” I tell Oliver, “no hard feelings, but I’m gonna go.”
“Stay.”
For once, I’m grateful for boundaries. “Remember, we agreed. Just fucking.”
“Can I see you again?”
Is he kidding with this shit?
“I think that might be too relationshippy,” I say, pretending our terrible sex isn’t the reason for my refusal.
It’s a relief to get back to my car, where I can finally let my laughter out. I giggle and guffaw and chortle and chuckle until it doesn’t seem funny anymore. Then, I beat the steering wheel with my fists and yell until I’m hoarse. But I don’t let myself cry.
6
Within an hour, I’ll be slurping straight from the bottle, but, since it’s only my first drink of the night, I haven’t yet turned into a catastrophe. Friday April thirteenth—unlucky and un-sober. Or, maybe, an auspicious beginning to a new and different way of life.
I don’t need AA. My problem isn’t alcohol. It’s coke. As long as I stay away from that, I’ll be fine. Besides, I don’t feel like going to a women’s meeting tonight and, after Wednesday’s debacle, the last thing I need is to run into the cardigan-wearing condom-klutz.
I swivel around on my barstool—martini in hand—and survey Arnie’s Alehouse for prospects.
A tall Asian guy with an inviting smile is talking to some woman—probably his wife or girlfriend—and, while I’m not above hooking up with someone who’s taken (in the bathroom, while their significant other waits, patiently, and cluelessly, for them to return), it isn’t my first choice. There’s a scruffy-bearded, beer-bellied, flannel-wearing fifty-something who can’t stop eye-fucking me. Pass. I like older guys, but not if they’ve let themselves go. This dude has a Ketchup stain on his t-shirt.
Before I can despair about the lack of prospects, I spot five well-muscled former frat brothers in Delta Psi t-shirts and Men in Black shades striding through the swinging double doors.
The tall one lifts his sunglasses and winks in my direction. So what if it’s the wrong time of year, and day, and weather, to be wearing shades? I see those sexy green irises and feel a familiar flutter rise up from within.
Will he approach me? Should I approach him?
I pretend to be interested in the drink in my hand, the game on TV, the conversation of the couple sitting next to me. Are they really talking about traffic?
Careful, Jess. Play it cool.
Ever since Dwight gave me my first beer, alcohol has been my lubricant. One drink and I’m ready. Willing. Pliant.
It takes fifteen minutes for the stranger with the slightly crooked smile, shaded emerald eyes, and frat-boy t-shirt to approach. From his trying-to-be-cocksure swagger, I can tell that, like me, he’s a pretender. “Hello.”
“I like your shirt.”
“Do you?”
“Are you in a fraternity?”
He smiles. “I used to be. We’re way past our UPenn years, but, sometimes, when we get together, nostalgia wins out.”
“So, you’re nostalgic…?”
“You’re not?”
No. More like tormented by the past.
I lean toward him, drop my voice an octave. “I can be…”
“About what?”
“About tonight—if you play your cards right.” It’s a great response. The kind of response I’d never think of sober.
He takes his glasses off, revealing those piercing green eyes again, and I notice that his lashes are striking, and oddly feminine. Women pay a fortune to have lashes like his.
“I’m Patrick.”
“Jessica.”
He grins. “Like the rabbit.”
“As in Roger?”
“Is there any other one?”
“I guess not,” I concede. I don’t feel like Jessica Rabbit. I’m all angles and edges, whereas she was downright voluptuous. Still, I like to think we both ooze sex. “Your friends seem nice.”
Patrick’s former frat-brothers are staring. I wave across the room. They wave back. I’m glad I decided to take the train down to Center City to get out of my Mt. Airy enclave and meet someone new to do something old.
“Wanna join us?” Patrick asks.
I raise an eyebrow. I’m not above the occasional group thing, but five guys is three too many.
“For a drink,” he clarifies.
I drain the contents of my martini. “Sounds great.”
I’m no fool. He’s buying, and I’m broke.
Within a couple minutes, I discover that the five former frat-guys have long-since moved out of the area—Patrick lives in Delaware—but come back to Philly at least one weekend a year to reclaim lost aspects of themselves. And Patrick was right. He and his matching-shirt-wearing crew are nostalgic.
“Remember the time…” is an almost common refrain.
“Remember the time we stole wood from that guy’s lawn on a camping trip in the Catskills and he came outside with a rifle and threatened to shoot us?”
“Remember the time the basement flooded and Ruiz started crying?”
Ruiz pipes up. “You’d have cried too if your box full of signed Michael memorabilia got ruined.”
“Pussy.”
“Michael?” I ask.
Patrick traces my thigh with his fingers. “Jordan.”
I lean in so close I can see each individual lash, long and lush and supermodel gorgeous. “Remember the time you met a hot girl in a bar and took her back to your hotel room?”
My green-eyed guy leans in and kisses me. I resist the urge to press my body against his, and, instead, lean back to give him a view of my wonder-bra’ed tits and yoga-toned body.
“Get a room!” Ruiz quips.
“I already have one,” Patrick replies. “We’re planning on using it.”
Before we can make our escape though, the “brothers” insist we join them at a club.
“It wouldn’t be a Delta Psi weekend if we didn’t all go,” Joe says.
Patrick looks at me.
I don’t need convincing. Dancing is essentially clothed, vertical sex. “I’m in.”
“Good.” Chaz—a Rubenesque white guy with the jaundiced skin of an alcoholic and bigger boobs than mine—makes a phone call and, within minutes, the six of us are climbing into a dingy yellow cab.
“Why didn’t you call Uber?” I ask as I hurtle across the Delta Psi brothers and crash to the floor.
Does our driver even have a license?
“Chaz likes this asshole!” Ruiz shouts down at me.
I scramble off the floor and into Patrick’s lap. “Where are we going?”
The driver screeches to a halt, and I tumble down again. “Here!”
Amidst much laughing, Patrick half-carries, half-drags me out of the car.
“Dude, your driver sucks.” Joe says.
“Naha!” Chaz protests. “Akmal and I are like this.”
He intertwines his fingers while the frat guy whose name I can’t remember, even though we were just introduced, leans over beside the curb, and inhales and exhales several times to keep from getting sick.
“Go ahead!” he calls after us as we head inside the dimly-lit downtown Philadelphia dance club. “I’m right behind you!”
Evidently, we’ve arrived in the middle of a girls-gone-wild dance contest. Onstage, bootees of all shapes and sizes gyrate amidst boos and cheers and shouted obscenities. For the most part, it’s college girls looking to let loose, but there are a few older, sadder contestants.
