I turn off the burner, bouncing up and down, and open the cupboard again.
Booze.
I pull out a jug of Gallo, stagger underneath its weight. A little wine with dinner, the very thing, don’t you think? I pour it into a giant plastic Minnesota Twins cup and collapse with my mushrooms and tankard of wine at the dining room table.
I get absolutely shitfaced. I am shitfaced and hyper and ten years old. I am having the time of my life.
I lope up and down the hallway, singing Simon and Garfunkel songs, juggling oranges. I do my homework in a flurry of brilliance, total efficiency, the electric grid of my mind snapping and flashing with light. I am in the zone, the perfect balance between manic and drunk, I am mellow, I’m cool, cool as cats. I’ve found the answer, the thing that takes the edge off, smoothes out the madness, sends me sailing, lifts me up and lets me fly.
It’s alchemy, the booze and my brain, another homemade mood stabilizer, and it stabilizes me in a heavenly mood. I am in love with the world, gregarious, full of joy and generosity toward my fellow man. My thoughts fly, but not up and down—they soar forward in a thrilling flight of ideas, heightened sensations, a creative rush, each thought tumbling into the next. It’s even more perfect than eating and throwing up.
My future with alcohol is long and disastrous. But at first, it works wonders for me. No longer low, not yet too high. Just on a roll, energetic, inspired. I truly believe the booze is helping. I’ll believe this, despite all evidence, for years.
Eventually I stagger into bed and, for once, fall asleep.
1988
My moods start to swing up and down almost minute to minute. I take uppers to get even higher and downers to bring myself down. Cocaine, white crosses, Valium, Percocet—I get them from the boys who skulk around the suburban malls hunting jailbait. I’m an easy target, in the market for their drugs and willing to do what they want to get them for free. The boys themselves are a high. They have something I want. They are to be used and discarded. The trick is to catch them and make them want the girl I am pretending to be. Then twist them up with wanting me, watch them squirm like worms on a hook, and throw them away.
I find myself on piles of pillows in their basements, pressed down under their bodies, their lurching breath in my ear. They are heavy, damp, hurried, young, still mostly dressed. I don’t know how I’ve wound up here, and I want it to end, and I repeat to the rhythm of their bodies, You’re a slut, you’re a whore, and I want a bath, want to scrub them off, why does this keep happening? Why don’t I ever say no? There’s a rush when they want me, and they always do, they’re boys, that’s what they want, and once they’ve got me half lying on the couch, each basement, each boy, each time, my brain shuts off, the rush is over, I’m numb, I want to go home. The impulsive tumble into the corner, the racing pressure in my head always ends like this: I hate them, and I hate myself, and I swear I won’t do it again. But I do. And I do. And I do.
And then I am home in my bedroom, blue-flowered wallpaper and stuffed animals on the bed, stashing my baggies of powders and pills. If I hit the perfect balance of drugs, I can trigger the energy that keeps me up all night writing and lets me stay marginally afloat in junior high, accentuating the persona I’ve created as a wild child, a melodramatic rebel—black eyeliner and dyed black hair, torn clothes, a clown and a delinquent, sulking, talking back. In class, I fool everyone into thinking I’m real.
But then I come home after school to the empty, hollow house, wrap into a ball in the corner of the couch, a horrible, clutching, sinking feeling in my chest. Nothing matters, and nothing will ever be all right again. I go into rages at the slightest thing, pitching things around the house, running away in the middle of the night, my feet crunching across the frozen lake. I cling to the cold chainlink fence of the bridge across the freeway and watch the late-night cars flash by, my breath billowing out into the dark in white gusts.
DAY YAWNS OPEN like a cavern in my chest. I lie in the dimness of my room, the blinds shut tight and blankets draped over them. I weigh a million pounds. I can feel my body, its heavy bones, its excess flesh, pressing into the mattress. I’m certain that it sags beneath me, nearly touching the floor. My father bangs on the door again. Breakfast! he calls.
I crawl out of bed and slide out the drawer from the bed stand, turn it over, and untape the baggie of cocaine underneath. Kneeling, I tap lines out onto the stand, lean over, and snort them up with the piece of straw I keep in the bag. I sit back on my knees and close my eyes. There it is: the feeling of glass shards in the brain. I picture the drug shattering, slicing the gray matter into neat chunks. My heart leaps to life as if I’ve been shocked. I open my eyes, lick my fingers and the straw, and put the baggie away, replacing the drawer. I lift off, the roller coaster swinging up, clattering on its tracks, me flying upside down.
Humming, I take a shower and dance into my clothes—a ridiculously short skirt with a hole that exposes even more thigh, black tights, a ripped-up shirt. I pack up my book bag, pull out another baggie, pills this time, from the far corner of the desk drawer. I select a few and put them in my pockets, then spring into the day, a gorgeous day, a good day to be alive. Good morning! I call, sitting down at the table, bouncing my knee at the speed of light.
You’re in a good mood this morning.
I am! I am indeed. I watch my father scramble eggs, and then panic: what am I thinking? I can’t eat that. I leap to my feet. Gotta go! Can’t stay to eat! I punch my father on the arm as I run out the door.
But you need to eat! he calls after me. Get back here! You can’t leave dressed like that!
Bye, I call, setting off down the street, my book bag banging against my leg. The trees are in bloom. The sun is pulsing. I can feel it touching my skin. My skin is alive, crawling. Suddenly I stop. My skin is on fire. I drop my book bag, start rubbing my skin. Get it off! I am dancing around in the middle of the road. There are bugs on my arms, crawling up my neck, crawling on my face and into my hair, Get them off me! Where the hell are they coming from? I fall onto the grass at the side of the road, rolling, trying to get them off. My hair tangles and dirt grinds into my clothes. Finally the bugs are gone. I stand up, smooth my hair, and, much better now, skip down the road to school. It’s so annoying when that happens. But I’m not about to give up the cocaine.
No one knows about the powders, the pills, the water bottle filled with vodka that I keep in my bag. My friends are good girls. I am a tramp. I don’t know why they bother with me. I slouch in my seat in the back of the room, my arms folded, hiding behind my hair. The teachers are idiots. I hate their clothes, their thick, whining Minnesota accents, the small-town smell that clings to them: dust and tuna casserole. This whole town is a bunch of suburban clones, blond, blue-eyed, dressed in tidy matching clothes. Everyone looks the same. Everyone will wind up married, living in a mini-mansion with a sprawling, manicured lawn. There’ll be cute little identical children, and the men will golf and drink and slap each other on the back, old chum, and the women will lunch at the country club and listen to lectures about the deserving poor, the homeless children downtown. They’ll shake their heads with concern and volunteer for the PTA and at the Lutheran church, collect bad art and vote Republican, and hate people like me.
I have to get out of this town.
After lunch, I lean over