When I come to at about three in the afternoon, I expect to be borderline suicidal, but I actually feel strangely calm. I sit up in bed, knocking a sleeping cat—who’d been meowing with unabashed vigor a few hours earlier but had clearly given up and decided to catnap it on my shoulder—onto the floor. Last night is incredibly clear in my mind: saw Adam, felt rejected, relapsed. I’ve fucked everything up, I think, as I reach for a cigarette. Why the hell am I not hysterical about it?
Deciding not to smoke, I get out of bed and wander into the kitchen, where I have some toast. While my head doesn’t seem to be reeling as much from the experience as I’d think it would, my stomach is convulsing in what feels like somersault after somersault.
As I force toast down, I remember how Tommy used to say that a relapse starts long before you take a drink. When did mine start—when Justin told me he was using? When I climbed into the life-size champagne glass? When I faked doing a vodka shot? I guess there’s no way of knowing. Then a thought pops into my head: Clearly, I can’t drink without doing drugs. Somehow this feels like an immense relief because now I don’t have to wonder. In rehab, people kept calling alcohol the “gateway” drug because as soon as they drank, the gate for doing drugs would open. But since I tended to do coke first and drink later, I hadn’t had many alcohol gateway experiences.
Looking back over the night and realizing, with bizarrely amazing recollection, that I’d easily consumed a couple of bottles of wine myself, I start to wonder if maybe there’s something to this concept of my being an alcoholic, too. Riding back in the cab earlier this morning, I’d toyed with the idea of not telling anyone about my little Ecstasy and alcohol escapade, thinking that I’d just keep going to Pledges and still celebrate a year’s sobriety in six months. Apparently, people do that—they go out and don’t tell anyone and smile about how well their sobriety’s going—but they usually end up relapsing in a far bigger way as a result.
I realize that if I leave the house without showering or even brushing my hair, I can make the Pledges afternoon meeting. I probably look like death but since going to a meeting can help me escape that, at least for the time being, I allow necessity to trump vanity. Making progress already, I think as I slide a bra on under the wife beater I slept in and step out the door.
“My name is Amelia and I’m an alcoholic,” I say, expecting the people in the room to all swivel their heads in unison over the fact that I’ve finally surrendered to using the word “alcoholic” over “addict,” but everyone just does the smiley Hi-Amelia thing.
“I relapsed last night,” I say, and I see the whisperings that start up whenever anyone mentions the word “relapse.” When Vera drank, I remember leaning over to Justin and saying, “I could see this one coming from a mile away,” so I feel like I deserve whatever it is anyone’s saying. I realize my heart is beating incredibly fast, which seems strange to me, since I’ve shared a lot in this room and haven’t felt nervous talking in front of the group since my first day of rehab. “I didn’t really believe you guys when you said that being an alcoholic and a drug addict were the same thing,” I say and I notice a couple of people nodding with compassion. “So last night, after being blown off by the guy I like, I decided to go have a glass of wine with the guy I don’t like.” Several people laugh and, while I’m surprised that anyone could find humor in my fuck-up, at the same time it makes me feel like I belong. I’ve definitely shared things here that I’ve known were funny, and felt completely validated by the laughter it’s gotten, but I haven’t ever really talked about anything sad or wrong or that makes me feel bad. In fact, I’ve heard people laughing at other people’s hardships around here and wondered how things like having been suicidal or institutionalized could be so uproarious to other people—let alone to the person sharing, who always seems to join in the hilarity. But somehow, now that I’m the one talking, it makes sense: what I’m saying is illogical and basically crazy. And for some reason, in this room filled with people bobbing their heads and laughing, that seems okay. “Three and a half hits of E later, I realized I’d made a horrible mistake,” I finish and most of the room guffaws. I break into a smile—I can’t help it. “So I guess…I don’t know…I guess that’s it. I don’t know. And you guys seem to.” Everyone claps.
As the sharing in the room continues, people pat me on the back and women start writing down their numbers and passing them to me on pieces of scrap paper. As I tuck the phone numbers into my purse, I realize that I’d completely stopped reaching out to people here. When I was in rehab, I bonded like crazy with Justin and Robin and Vera and Peter and Joel and everyone else. But these days, with Justin and Robin both long gone, Vera always relapsing, and Peter and Joel only hitting the meetings every now and then, I’ve stopped. I now see that from the day I moved out of Pledges, I’ve essentially been acting like I was cured. Rachel always told me not to show up at meetings right when they started or leave right when they ended but I hadn’t really listened. Looking around the room, I realize that I don’t really know any of the other alumni sitting there—some of their faces are familiar and I know a few of their names, but I’ve tended more to look at them as audience members during my funny or profound shares than people I might befriend.
When the meeting ends, I decide to stand in line to thank the main speaker, something Rachel has always suggested but I’ve never done. It always seems so much like waiting in a receiving line at a wedding, where you’re only going to be able to say something the person before you already did. I’m probably just thinking about myself too much floats through my head as I wait in line.
I tell the woman—who looks like your average Valley housewife but had shared about her heroin addiction, multiple marriages, and former life in porn—how grateful I am to have heard her, and she gives me a hug. I feel tears stinging my eyes as we embrace and, while the tears aren’t, of course, surprising, the reason for them is: they’re tears of comfort and relief, not the more familiar ones of self-pity.
Different people come up to me as I make my way out of the room and I realize, with shock, that it’s twenty minutes after the meeting ended and I’m still here. As I’m hugging this girl with nine months of sobriety who tells me she “related to every word I said,” I see someone I hadn’t even realized until this moment was in the meeting, and my heart starts racing like an IV of cocaine has been injected straight into it.
“We need to talk,” Rachel says, and I nod.
“You need to start making friends at Pledges,” Rachel says, looking at me sternly. We’re sitting at one of the plastic tables outside a burger stand near her apartment in Culver City after leaving the meeting. There’s something about her that seems almost angry—a sort of schoolmarmish drone has replaced her typical singsongy lilt.
“I have friends at Pledges,” I say. I look up at her. “I have you.”
She looks me straight in the eye. “I’m not your friend,” she says. “I’m your sponsor.”
I feel a bit like I’ve been pummeled in the gut but don’t want to show it. “Okay, Miss Serious. I’ll make some new friends.”
She still doesn’t smile. “Amelia, this is serious. It’s about life and death. And sometimes I think you treat recovery like it’s an accessory—it helped you get your shit together and made you better and now you can go about pursuing your fabulous life again.” She picks up a fry and dips it in ketchup. “But it doesn’t work that way. You can’t show up at alumni meetings when you want, smoke cigarettes outside, and pretend that everything’s going to be wonderful and easy now that you’re getting famous.” She shoves the fry in her mouth, chews, and sighs. “It’s not about incorporating this into your life; it’s about incorporating your life into this.”
I want to object and defend myself but I see she has me so nailed that there’s no use in fighting her on it. Since getting out of Pledges, I’ve basically neglected everything I was taught in there—about how my day-to-day happiness and serenity depended on getting out of myself and being of service to other people, about going to meetings and connecting with the people there.
“Being sober has to be your primary purpose in life or you don’t stand a chance,” she says. “Do you get that?”
“Well…”
“My point is this: if you’re really committed to doing this right, I’d be honored to keep working with you. I think if you set your mind to doing this the way it’s suggested, there’s no limit to the kind of serene life you could live. But if you want to half-ass it, I don’t really want to be a part of it.”
There’s a tiny pause. “I want to do it.” When I say it, I realize I’ve never felt more certain of anything.
“That means sitting down to write about your resentments and fears and being willing to go apologize to the people you’ve hurt because of your disease.”
Every time she’s brought this up before, I’ve somehow diverted her attention away from it—usually by telling a funny story. I’d assumed that I’d been so sly that she hadn’t even realized I’d been purposely distracting her. Writing all this stuff down and having to face my entire past has always sounded wholly unappealing but somehow, right now, I look at it in a different way. I’ve been waiting a long time for people to ask me who I’m pissed at, I think. Possibly my whole life. “I’ll start today,” I say.
“And it means trying to live your whole life according to sober and honest principles.”
I nod.
“And that includes your job.”
I look at her as she polishes off her fries.
“Are you saying I have to quit doing my column?”
She balls up her empty wrappers and tosses them into the nearby trash can—a perfect shot.
“I’m saying that you have to try living your life according to sober and honest principles. In the same way that no one can diagnose another person as an alcoholic, no one can tell you what that should mean to you. It’s for you to decide.”
“Rachel, I want to do this.”
She picks up her keys and stands. “This is a lot to hear all at once. Why don’t you think it over and call me later.”
“But—”
“Call me, Amelia,” she says, as she starts to walk away. “I love you.”
At first I’m sort of pissed. Who the hell is Rachel to suddenly transition from cute, bubbly girl with a pixie haircut to a hard-edged slave driver? But when I get home and crack open the Pledges book for the first time since leaving the place, I start to realize that everything she talked about today is right from this book. And at some point I’d known that. What the hell had happened to my memory?
I continue reading and notice a sentence in the book that talks about how short our memories seem to be when it comes to changing the way our brains work, which is why going to meetings every day, or at least as often as possible, is so important.
The more I read, the more this book begins to make sense, and the guidelines start to sound like the ideal way to live a happy life. I never had any guidelines before, I think. I mean, sure, I’ve heard things like don’t lie and cheat and steal, but this other stuff, about looking for my part in every resentment I have, sounds almost like the exact opposite of the way I’ve been living. Resenting someone is like drinkingpoison and expecting the other person to die, I heard someone say in a meeting once. Another person chimed in that “expectations are resentments under construction,” and everyone laughed, including me. But now I’m really beginning to get it. Most of the things I’d spent most of my life pissed about—my parents not doing something, friends not being supportive, people not loving me enough—came about because I had expected so much from them.
Armed with that epiphany, I take out a notebook and start listing all the people I’m pissed at. As you can imagine, it’s a long list. I’ve heard people suggest that a good way to start is to write down every single person you’ve ever known because chances are that you resent them for something. And for me, that seems highly likely.
So I start by listing Mom and Dad, then friends from grammar school—these petty slights I’ve carried with me over the years—and move on to my life today. I take out old photo albums, dig up old address books, and even join classmates.com to jog my memory. When I start to write down why I resent them, I realize this project will take hours, if not weeks. But I want so much to have my slate cleaned, to get this all out on paper and face who I really am. The more I write, the more I see that I’ve already spent too much time in my life upset and angry.
The pen I’m writing with starts causing an indentation on my right pointer finger and I’m lighting about my twentieth cigarette since I started writing when the phone rings. When we first started working together, Rachel had suggested that I not screen calls because when someone’s calling, it’s probably the interruption I need, whether it feels like it or not. I’d nodded but continued screening, always making sure I answered when she called so she wouldn’t know.
“Hello,” I say, not even glancing at caller ID.
“Sweetie?” I recognize the voice immediately.
“Hi, Nadine,” I say. “What’s going on?” I don’t feel that anxiety I always feel when I talk to her—that I have to be so fabulous, so Party Girl, so “on.”
“What’s going on with you?” she asks, sounding alarmed. “What are you doing home on a Friday night?”
I glance at the clock: 9:30 P.M. I’d absolutely lost my sense of time and space and feel shocked that somehow day ended and night started without any acknowledgment on my part. I’d left Rachel at about noon. Had I actually been reading the Pledges book and writing for over eight hours? And was it really Friday night? I had no idea.
“I’m just home,” I say. “Reading, writing.” I glance at one of my cats, who’s asleep next to me. “Playing with my cats.”
Complete silence on the other end of the phone line.
“Nadine? Are you there?”
“Oh, yes, sweetie. I’m just surprised, that’s all. Not exactly the image I have of our Party Girl on a Friday night.”
“It happens,” I say. “More often than not.”
Again, Nadine doesn’t say anything. She never asked me what happened with Ryan Duran and I never offered up any information. I have the distinct impression that I’m devastating her, which feels wrong but also strangely necessary.
“Well, I was just calling to let you know that we’ve booked your View appearance for the week after next,” she says. “And also, I have some very exciting news!” Her voice is now about four octaves higher than when she first started talking. “I know there’s been a lot of talk about companies buying the rights to Party Girl and making it into a movie or show. But a little birdie told me that the VP at Ridley Scott has come to Tim with a solid offer. Honey, they want to make it into an HBO series for next season!”
“Really?” I ask. I know I should be thrilled—this is what everyone in Hollywood and beyond fantasizes could happen with what they write—but I feel bizarrely unaffected.
“Sweetie, you don’t exactly sound excited.”
“I am,” I say, trying to muster as much false enthusiasm as I can. “That’s terrific.” I can’t remember the last time I used the word terrific.
“Of course, since only a few columns have come out, they need to wait and read the next couple,” she says. “But he said—his exact words were, ‘If she continues to do what she’s done so far, I can’t imagine why we wouldn’t make the deal.’ Sweetie, they’d want to make you a consulting producer! And you could even be on the show. Tell me, have you thought about acting? There’s no reason you can’t be Party Girl and an actress.”
Something—or rather everything—about this conversation suddenly starts giving me a headache and I know that all I want is to be off the phone and lying down.
“That’s great, Nadine,” I say. “I actually have to get back to what I’m doing but thanks for calling to tell me that.”
“But sweetie—”
I hang up.