Memoirs Aren't Fairytales: A Story of Addiction Page 2

  I took my time painting my face, making sure my blush was blended with my concealer and my eyelids were smoky with dark shadow. Before I left, I ironed my dress and smoked a bowl.

  At the end of Jimmy's long driveway was a valet parking sign. All the cars pulling up were expensive looking. The rabbit would tag me as a party crasher, so I parked it a few streets away and walked up the side of the driveway, through the trees. Eric was working the front door with a clipboard in hand and had told me earlier to walk up behind a couple and pretend I was their daughter. I followed an older couple to the front door, and once Eric checked their names off the list, I was inside.

  The house was a palace, with stone pillars in the entryway, staircases on both sides of the room, and tall windows that ran along the back, overlooking Jimmy's private beach. Behind the house, was a big white tent where appetizers were being passed around by waiters in tuxedos. Paper lanterns and candles lit up the tent, and twinkle lights flickered from the surrounding trees.

  I waited in line at one of the bars and ordered a glass of champagne. I downed it, and the bartender topped off my glass before I stepped away. There was an empty table at the far end of the tent, by the beach, and I sat down to watch the ocean. I hoped no one would show up to claim this seat.

  “Are you a friend of Jimmy's?”

  A man with gray hair and glasses, dressed in a white suit sat next to me.

  “Yes—” I said and stopped. I had only met Jimmy once. “I know him through a mutual friend.”

  “Are you here alone?” He held his hand out for me to shake. “Bernie,” he said.

  “Nicole, and I'm here with a friend.”

  Should I have told him my real name? For all I knew, Bernie could be Jimmy's brother, and if I got busted, Eric could lose his job.

  “Is your friend male or female?” he asked. He eyed me up and down.

  “Aren't I a little young for you, Bernie?”

  If I wasn't at Eric's boss’ house, I would have told him to fuck off. I didn't date men who were old enough to be my grandfather.

  He put his hand on my shoulder and laughed. “My son is here and he's single,” he said. “Stay here and I'll go get him.”

  The band had started playing and the dance floor filled up. I wasn't much of a dancer unless I was really drunk, but I was into food, and dinner was arriving at the tables. In front of me, a waiter placed a thick steak, garlic mashed potatoes, and some type of vegetable that didn't look familiar. The tuna noodle casseroles Eric and I had been eating were like mystery meat slop in comparison.

  Bernie returned to my side. “Nicole, meet Jefferson, my son.” Jefferson had at least ten years on me. And like his father, he wore glasses and combed his frizzy hair to the side.

  Jefferson sat to my left and after shaking my hand, he dove into his plate. While we ate, he asked where I was from and what I did for a living. I said I was a first grade teacher, living in a loft in the South End of the city with a Boston terrier named Pork Chop.

  That was the life I'd always hoped for anyway. And it felt good to say it, instead of telling him I was an unemployed college dropout.

  My champagne buzz had peaked, but it'd soon be gone from all the food. I had a joint in my purse I was saving for when Eric got off work, but the party could last all night and into the morning so I decided not to wait for him. But I had to lose Jefferson first.

  Just as I was about to excuse myself to the bathroom, he pulled out an orange bottle of prescription pills and washed one down with his beer.

  “Am I giving you headache?” I asked.

  “Adderall,” he said and shook the bottle. The pills rattled inside.

  Adderall mixed with a couple hits of strong bud had always given me a wicked good buzz. In college, my roommate and I used the two to cure our hangovers.

  I held out my hand.

  “You want one?” he asked.

  “Oh yeah.”

  Since my champagne glass was empty, he handed me his beer, and I washed down the pill.

  “You want to sm—”

  “I want to show you something,” he said. “Come with me.”

  Wherever we were going, we'd have to smoke when we got there.

  We stopped at the bar to refill our glasses and walked up the lawn to the house. My feet were tired and sore from wearing heels, but the champagne was helping to numb them.

  Inside, couples were sitting on couches and standing in groups talking. Jefferson held my arm, pulling me around the crowds.

  The house was a maze of hallways and rooms, and everything was white: the couches and pictures, the sculptures, even the wood floors.

  After several turns, Jefferson stopped in front of a closed door. “Are you ready for some fun?”

  He looked like one of the guys in the computer class I took in college. And if he was anything like them, I figured we had different definitions of fun.

  There was a number pad next to the door. He pressed some buttons and the door slid open. The walls inside the room were covered in little glass tiles that sparkled in the candlelight, and the ceiling was mirrored. A swimming pool took up most of the room, and the lining was so dark the water was black. At least twenty people, men and women, were in the pool, floating in the deep end and standing in the shallow water. All of them were naked. And if they weren't hooking up, touching and kissing, they were watching.

  “Come on,” Jefferson said. He stepped into the room, loosening his tie and unbuttoning his shirt.

  Skinny-dipping? At Eric's boss' house? I wasn't into it. Jefferson wasn't attractive and neither were any of the men in the pool.

  “Real sexy crowd, huh?” Eric whispered in my ear.

  I hadn't moved from the doorway.

  “I bet that guy in the corner is really turning you on.”

  The man Eric was referring to had thick black hair covering his back and a belly the size of Santa's.

  I punched his arm, and we both laughed.

  “How did you get back here?” Eric asked.

  “That guy,” I said and pointed at Jefferson. Jefferson had his pants off and was pulling down his whitey tighties. “He said he wanted to show me something.”

  “Sick fuck,” Eric said. “Let's go, the fireworks are about to start, and Jimmy gave me a thirty-minute break to get some grub.”

  I waved goodbye to Jefferson, but he was climbing down the steps to the shallow end. His ass was so white it was practically shining.

  Eric took me out a back door, and we walked down to the beach, sitting in a spot away from the other guests. I lit the joint and took a drag. When I coughed, I handed it to him.

  “Whitey tighties gave me an Adderall,” I said.

  Eric exhaled a cloud of smoke and then looked at me. “Damn, lucky you.”

  “Sorry I couldn't score you one too. Take some extra hits so you can catch up.”

  The fireworks shot into the dark sky and exploded into bursts of color. The noise they let off was so loud I couldn't hear anything else. But there wasn't anything else to hear. Eric was taking pulls off the joint, and my brain was silent. Adderall and weed was a nice mix of calm, and the fireworks were little puffs of beautiful.

  After the grand finale, a firework in the shape of the flag, the beach cleared. The band was playing a slow song, and the waves were washing over my feet.

  “This is perfect,” I said.

  “Shit, I'm glad we escaped Bangor.”

  I agreed. And it didn't matter that we were broke and slept on an air mattress with only tuna and noodles in our bellies. I had everything I needed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A group of servers from Lucy's, the bar next door, came to Eric's club one night. They told Eric they were out celebrating because they were going abroad for the semester. I was on the bench out front, and Eric called me over. The girls said I should apply for one of their open positions. I did, and the manager, Mark, put me on for six nights a week with Sundays off. Eric had the same schedule. It was perfect.

&
nbsp; With my tips and our hourly wages, we could expand into different food groups and go back to buying half ounces of weed, instead of dime bags. We pooled our money and kept it in a pickle jar in the freezer. If there were something we wanted to buy, like a new pair of sneakers or a coffeemaker, we'd check with the other one first.

  My co-workers asked all kinds of questions about Eric and me, if we were dating, if we hooked up, and if not, were we related? I didn't know why they cared so much. It was like they had never seen a guy and girl be friends without benefits. I asked them, if Eric were a girl would they think I was a lesbian? That shut them up.

  Eric was a good-looking guy. He was tall and meaty with sea-green eyes and a pile of auburn curls. But hooking up with him would be like hooking up with my brother Michael. Eric protected me, even though he couldn't stop me from having nightmares. I was there for him too, in an I'll-take-care-of-you-like-your-mom-did sort of way. And that's just what I did the night we scored some free mushrooms. Eric couldn't stand the taste of shrooms. Neither could I, really, so I broke them up into small pieces and coated them with butter so they'd slide down his throat.

  We both had the night off, and we were going to the club to celebrate Craig's, one of the bouncers, birthday. Since shrooms took an hour to kick in, we smoked a bowl and left before we were too distracted with visuals to go anywhere.

  At the club, there was a line all the way around the building, but we walked to the front and didn't have to pay the cover. The bash was on the second floor in the VIP lounge, and tons of people had come to party. Besides the bouncers and Casey, a cocktail waitress we'd smoked with before, I didn't know anyone. Casey was also celebrating, and she put Eric and me on her tab. She'd graduated from Northeastern University and just gotten a job at a marketing agency, so this was her last week working at the club.

  I sat with Casey on one of the couches, sipped a vodka and Red Bull, and smoked a cigarette. When the cherry at the end of my cig started flickering like a sparkler and the bits of sparkles turned into shapes, I knew the shrooms had set in. Eric was tripping too. He was standing against the wall in the corner of the room, staring at his hands and moving them in circles in the air.

  The lights in the ceiling changed to a dark pink. Everything around me went warm like a fire was heating it. The lights above the DJ booth changed to green and yellow, red and blue. The colors danced through the smoke-filled room.

  “Come on, girl, let's dance,” Casey said.

  She pulled me to my feet and moved me through the crowd.

  The warmth of her hand made me want to see her face. “Casey,” I said.

  She turned around, standing only inches away. “What's up?”

  She was so pretty. Her eyes were giant emeralds, and her skin was creamy and swirled like soft serve on a cone.

  “Nothing, I…”

  “I need a potty break first, then we're going to dance,” she said.

  I watched my feet as we walked to the bathroom. My shoes moved over the floor and left black footprints whenever I lifted to step. People swished past me, blob-like and wavy, and then Casey opened a door and pulled me inside. The stalls looked like long hallways, and the neon overhead light turned everything green. Even my hands were green. I went to the sink to wash it off.

  The soap was purple, and rainbow bubbles floated into my face.

  Was my face green too?

  I looked up at the mirror. I had green skin with thick red veins popping out of my cheeks and purple lips.

  I touched my forehead.

  Did I really look like this?

  “Nicole, you ready?” Casey asked.

  She stood next to me, looking in the same mirror as me. But she didn't look like a monster.

  She looped her arm through mine and brought me to the dance floor. Strobe lights flashed, making the room black and then white. The faces around me were skeletons.

  The music felt like a massage. The beat went through my body, vibrating all the sensitive parts. I swung my arms over my head and watched the trails of colors that swirled as they moved. I grinded my hips against Casey's. She danced behind me and in front, and I tried to keep her pace.

  The eyes and teeth around us sparkled like icicles in the sun.

  “I need a drink,” Casey said.

  I didn't know how long we'd been dancing. It seemed like only minutes, but I was thirsty too.

  Back in the VIP room, Eric was on couch, holding an ice cube and staring at it. I sat next to him, watching his hand fill with dark blue water.

  “Did you bring any weed?” I asked. Smoking intensified the high.

  “No, you?”

  I checked my purse, but found only a few roaches, and we didn't have a bowl to smoke them in.

  Casey sat beside me. Her lips went around the straw and glowed like she was sucking on a light bulb.

  “Casey,” Eric said. “Do you have any bud?”

  “I do, but it's at my apartment,” she said.

  We had some at our apartment too, but our place was too far to walk.

  “It's last call,” Casey said. “You guys want to leave and go smoke?”

  We'd been here for four hours? Time had really slowed down.

  “Let's go to our place,” Eric said.

  “I'm parked in the lot behind the club,” Casey said.

  Eric and I had taken the train. With Casey driving, we could save the six bucks in train fare and buy some munchies. I was really hungry, or maybe I just wanted to chew something.

  I got in the passenger seat, and Eric climbed into the back and leaned forward so his head was between my shoulder and Casey's. She stalled twice before we got out of the lot, and the car jerked each time, sending my head into the dash.

  “Do you see the spiders?” Eric asked.

  The taillights on the car ahead were red daddy longlegs with big black eyes.

  “That's too creepy,” I said.

  I had a fear of spiders. Snakes also.

  “What did you guys take tonight?” Casey asked.

  Nothing around me was normal. I couldn't believe it had taken her this long to notice. Maybe she was too drunk.

  “Shrooms,” Eric said.

  She told us about the last time she'd tripped. She said she'd felt like she'd peed her pants, but every time she checked her panties, they were dry.

  My underwear did feel a little wet. I felt the crotch of my jeans and it was dry. They still felt wet. I had to get my mind off my underwear.

  When we got back to our apartment, Eric rolled a blunt. Casey flipped on the TV and found a station that was playing music and danced around the room.

  When the blunt was down to a roach, Eric said he wanted to take a shower and went into the bathroom. I wanted to take one too. Warm blue water and colorful soapy bubbles sounded fun. I'd have to wait until he got out.

  I sat on the floor, and Casey danced around me. She lifted my long hair off my back and held it like horse reins.

  “Your hair smells like cookies,” she said.

  She dropped my hair, and her fingers went to my scalp, scratching and rubbing the tender spots. My hands were in front of me, writing in the air with my fingers.

  “You know, I've always had a thing for you, Nicole.”

  I hadn't known her all that long and had only hung out with her a couple times, but she was cool. Pretty girls like Casey weren't usually nice. But she was.

  “Are you into all that?”

  “Into what?” I asked.

  She sat in front of me, and her hands touched my cheeks. Her lips went to mine, and I tasted the blue cocktail she'd been drinking at the club. Her tongue slid in and caressed, twirled and poked mine.

  “Girls,” she said after she pulled away.

  My underwear was wet again.

  I'd never been with a girl. I found them beautiful, but they didn't have that spicy smell and rough edge like guys did, and those were the things that turned me on. But there was something about Casey that felt safe. Safe like when I was aroun
d Eric.

  She held the bottom of my shirt and stared into my eyes. The emeralds were now sapphires. My shirt came up and over my head. She unhooked my bra, and the straps dropped off my shoulders.

  And then her lips were on my nipples, tugging them with her teeth and flicking them with her tongue. It was incredible. I didn't know if I'd feel the same way sober, looking down at a head of long, blond hair and painted fingernails, and be turned on like I was. Still, it felt incredible.

  My nipples became sore, and I gently pushed her away. She smiled, her teeth star-like, and arched her back. Her shirt was silk and melted into my fingers. I lifted it off and flung it onto the air mattress.

  At the club, her skin had swirled like soft serve, but now it flickered like fire. Red and orange flames shot from her stomach to her chest. My cold tongue started at the base of the fire, tasting her sweetness, and it warmed as I got closer to the tips of the flames.

  She moaned.

  Her nipples were smoldering rocks.

  Although I'd never been here before, I knew what I liked. I wanted to give her the same safeness she made me feel.

  I tickled and teased her boobs with my fingers. My mouth moved away from hers and landed on her neck, the spot where it dipped to her shoulder. Using a small chunk of my hair, I traced the circle around her nipple.

  She got on her knees and pushed my back to the floor, taking off my jeans and underwear.

  Her fire had spread into me.

  She knew where to touch me. The spot at the very top that wanted to be rubbed with just the pad of her finger. She didn't push too hard or soft, and she didn't tug or tap. She circled, and the faster her finger moved, the louder I got.

  Her mouth focused on my nipples. But she was softer than before, sucking just enough to give my body everything it needed to build.

  I gripped her hair and pulled. My moaning turned into a scream. And then my body rippled like an avalanche. I exhaled as the calm swept over me.

  “That was…”

  She kissed me. “Amazing,” she said.

  I was able to let go and have an amazing orgasm, like when I used my own fingers, but a girl getting me off was so weird.