Felix
When I show up on Jenna’s doorstep that night, I’m pretty sure I look like hell. I haven’t shaved in two days, and my face is puffy and my eyes red-ringed. A part of me doesn’t know what I’m doing here, much less what I’m still doing in the band, but the rest of me understands.
I’m doing what Jenna asked because I love her, and love means doing what you can even when it rips your heart out. It’s not something I would have thought myself capable of a few short weeks ago without risking my sobriety, but while I’m playing it safe and staying away from temptation, I’m not white-knuckling through. As much as it hurts, as much as I wish I didn’t have to know this about myself, I’m proud I can give her what she needs.
She’s too good for me, but maybe I’m not completely and totally worthless.
Ty answers the door, wearing a Lego Batman t-shirt over flannel pajama pants. “Hey. My mom’s upstairs. She says she’ll come down if we need her.”
I jam my hands in my pockets. “Okay.”
Ty is still standing in the doorway, not letting me in, and I wonder if Jenna was wrong about him wanting to see me.
“Are you a douche now?” he asks, his eyes narrowed.
I laugh despite myself. “Yeah. I guess I am.”
He looks confused. “Mom says you’re not like Mason.”
“I’m not. But I used to be, and your mom is worried that someday I will be again, and she’s trying to take care of both of you as best she can.”
He gives me a look of consternation and backs away from the door. Like, literally, he backs up all the way out of the hall, each step carefully measured. “Did you bring a picture of the hair?”
I wave my phone at him. “We can find all the pictures you need.”
Ty continues to back up through the house, only looking over his shoulder to get around the pointed triangular coffee table. He shows me where he’s already laid out the pages of the birthday surprise, and points to a panel where he’s drawn an angry-looking man with a cloud of eraser smears on top of his head.
“It doesn’t matter what I do,” he says. “I can’t get it right.”
“I have a feeling there’s a hairdresser somewhere who feels the same way. Maybe several of them.” I run an image search and we sit next to each other at the table, debating the various merits of the different hairstyles as if either of us has the artistic ability to render them with nuance.
“You should just say you’re sorry,” Ty says, still looking at the images on my phone.
“I did. She knows I’m sorry. But this is my fault, not your mom’s.”
“If you say you’re sorry the person is supposed to forgive you.”
I hold my breath, trying to think of a way to explain this so it’ll make sense to him. “Did you tell your mom that?”
“Yeah. She said it was complicated.” He frowns. “Adults always say that.”
“Maybe. But does your life seem simple?”
He hesitates for a moment, and I can tell this isn’t something he’s ever been asked.
I click on a picture where Trump’s hair appears to be unaffected by gravity. “We should try this one,” I say. “And yeah, it’s complicated. But I’m going to try to explain it, and I want you to listen, okay?”
Ty nods solemnly.
“Say you made a mistake,” I say. “You were at a shop full of glass cases with lots of fragile things in them, and you forgot, and you ran down one of the aisles. But you couldn’t stop in time and you slid into the case on the end and you knocked it over and you shattered everything inside.”
Ty looks at me with wide eyes, and I smile grimly. “Would your mom forgive you?”
He thinks about that. “Yes.”
“Would she still love you?”
This one is easier for him. “Yes.”
“Would she let you in the shop again?”
“Nooooooo,” he says.
I nod. “Your mom is going to forgive me for the things I did before I met her—”
“Drugs.”
I let out a breath. I hadn’t been sure how much Jenna had told him. “Yes, drugs. Which you should never, ever, ever—”
“I know not to do drugs,” Ty says. “Everybody knows that.”
I smile. “Except us douches.”
He picks up an orange pencil to try to approximate the free-floating hair.
“She’s going to forgive me for not telling her everything, too,” I say. “But sometimes something is broken, and you can’t fix it.”
“Even with glue?”
The corners of my eyes start to tingle, and I swear if I cry any more my lids are going to permanently seal shut. “Even with glue. Didn’t you ever break something that couldn’t be fixed?”
Ty’s pencil stops on the paper, and his voice wavers. “I had a Ninja Turtle, and his shell fell off. I glued it back on, and Mom even tried super glue which you’re not supposed to touch because it will glue your hand to your head, but she did it anyway for me and she still couldn’t fix it and then she said we had to throw it away.” He sniffles. “It was a Michelangelo, too.”
I’m not sure how much of his tears are for the Ninja Turtle and how much are for the situation between us, but I’m willing to bet it’s a mix. “Yeah. It’s exactly like that.”
Ty’s face crumples, and he glares down at Donald Trump.
“It’s okay, kid,” I say. “You’re going to have a dad someday.”
“I want you to be my dad.”
I nod. “I know. I want that, too. But I’m the one who messed it up. Not your mom.”
And I feel like I should give him some substance abuse message now. Just say no, kid. Don’t be like me. But he’s already told me he knows not to do drugs, and I also know there’s nothing some douche could have said to me at that age that would have made any damn difference when nineteen-year-old me was handed that pipe.
“I’m sorry, Ty,” I say.
He hands me the orange pencil. “It still doesn’t look right. You fix it.”
And since I can’t fix any other damn thing, I do.
I head from Jenna’s house straight to a meeting, because if I don’t, I’m just going to curl up on my couch at Gabby’s and cry and wish I was high. Maybe I’m going do that anyway—Gabby did buy me a Breakup Tub from Fong’s that I’m only halfway through—but it’ll still be waiting for me after the meeting.
I go to a meeting in West Hollywood near Gabby’s apartment. It’s a hardcore NA meeting, always full of former junkies. Some of the meetings I go to are more general—alcoholics, sex and porn addicts, even people recovering from things like being controlling or food addictions. The core attendees of this meeting are a tight group of recovering meth addicts who go bowling together on Saturdays and have their morning coffee together at Joe’s down the street.
A couple of them nod at me as I walk in—the bald guy with the Stones tattoos who’s the de-facto leader of the social group, and the facilitator, who’s a skinny guy in his early thirties who just passed three years of recovery from synthetic opiates.
The room is more somber than usual today, and the guy with the tattoos—Jeff—leans over to me as I sit down in the circle of chairs. “Did you know Ronnie?”
I remember Ronnie, a heavyset guy with a deep laugh who did a lot of heroin in addition to the meth. “Not, like, personally,” I say.
Jeff moves over a chair and puts a heavy hand on my shoulder. “He ODed yesterday.”
My stomach sinks. Ronnie wasn’t a friend or anything—I’ve always declined invites to coffee mornings and bowling. But there’s this thing about hearing about overdoses. Every time, I remember how easily it could have been me.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Yeah, we all are. Just wanted to give you a heads-up.”
That was a good call. The sharing will no doubt be all about that today, and it makes me feel bad that I want to whine about my breakup when these guys have lost one of their own.
I lost someone, too, though. And even if they judge me for it, I have to let that be real. The moment I start trying to avoid it, I’ll be headed back to the needle.
The facilitator starts the meeting, and already a couple guys look like they’re going to cry. Hell, I probably look like that, too, which may be why Jeff thought I might be friends with Ronnie. We read through the steps, and I listen. The step I’m working on always sticks out to me—right now I’m doing step four, making an accounting of everything I’ve done. It sucks, but I’m doing it, making notes on my phone whenever I remember something else.
I’ve added a lot over the last two days.
When we get to the sharing part of the meeting, the room shifts. Some people slouch in their chairs and cross their arms. These are the non-sharers, people who don’t want to be here or aren’t comfortable talking to the group. Sometimes also people who usually share, but today are too tired or embarrassed by their latest slip or just have nothing to say.
Some of the sharers lean forward on their elbows or rub their hands together, clearly composing what they’re going to say. Different meetings have different customs. Some expect you to go up to the front of the room to speak. Others let people talk from their seat. This meeting is arranged in a circle, and when it’s time to share, we go around to the left. A lot of people pass, but most of the regulars talk about Ronnie, and how his overdose is affecting them. It’s the opposite of a funeral, where instead of talking about the dead, they each share how much they want to get high to dull the pain, or how knowing he’s gone makes them never want to touch the stuff again. A big guy to my right breaks down into tears and says he keeps hearing “Spirit in the Sky” playing from his phone, which was the ring tone he had set to Ronnie, and so all day he’s just checking it over and over.
Then it’s my turn, and everyone looks at me. I almost pass, because I didn’t know Ronnie, but damn it, this is a recovery meeting and not a wake, and I’ve had a hell of a couple of weeks.
I have things to say.
“I broke up with my girlfriend,” I say. “I’m in love with her—like really, crazy in love, but it’s over now.”
Faces around the room crease in sympathy, and I have to look at the floor to continue. There’s a sign in the middle of the room, resting on the tile. What’s said here stays here.
But I know what I’m about to say is going to follow me around for the rest of my life.
“The first time I went to rehab,” I say, “it was because my family found out I was using. I got kicked out of school, and my parents knew why, and they told me I was going to get treatment, and so I did. The whole time I was counting down the days until I could get out and get back to the drugs and be happy again. And one day I was mouthing off to my therapist, telling her how pointless all of this was, and she pointed out and said, ‘there’s the door.’ I left, and I didn’t look back. My parents didn’t even know I was out before I found myself a dealer and got back on the needle.
“The second time I went to rehab, I thought I’d hit bottom. I’d sold something so important to me that I thought I’d never be able to part with it. I was ready to admit that drugs were a problem, but I still felt like without them I’d never be happy. Like I was resigning myself to this miserable life because the only joy I had in my life was also killing me.”
I take a deep breath, and dare to look up. There’s a lot of nodding happening. These guys have been there. They get it.
“By the third time I went to rehab,” I say, “I understood that drugs only made me happy for a little while, and then after caused me excruciating pain. They’d destroyed everything I cared about—my ambition, my family, my music. I was ready to accept that even the most boring life was infinitely preferable to going back on drugs.
“And then I met this girl.” I press my lips together, and it takes me a second to continue. “And for the first time in my life, I was really happy. Everything with her made me happy—being around her, giving to her, loving her, sex with her—all of it. It was better than drugs, because it was real.”
I want the story to end there, but it doesn’t. I’ve known guys who said they’ve lied to their twelve-step groups because it made them feel powerful, in control. If it stays in this room, then for one hour a week, they can be anything.
But I’ve always felt like the circle is a place for truth, especially truth that I hate.
“I told her I had a drug past,” I say, “but I didn’t use the words addiction, or rehab. I didn’t tell her I’m on maintenance drugs, or in therapy, or going to meetings. I thought I had good reasons for that, but now I think it was all BS. I lied for so long and now I’m trying to be honest but I suck at it. And when I told her the truth, she said she couldn’t trust that I was going to stay clean, and now it’s over.”
I’m getting a lot of sympathy from the room, now, which is what support groups are for, I suppose, but I still don’t want it. “I did this,” I say. “It’s my fault for using, and for taking two and a half years to be ready to get clean. I did bad things and I have no track record of recovery. Just sixty-five days, which feels like an eternity to me, but really, it’s nothing, right? And I get that. I don’t blame her.”
My eyes are starting to tingle, and I know I better finish up quick.
“But now I know that it doesn’t matter if I can’t outrun the past. I’m not going back to the drugs. Even if she’s gone forever, even if I never feel happiness like that again, even if it takes years to get off Suboxone and feel completely normal again—I’m never going back to the heroin.
“That was fake happiness, and I don’t want it. If I learned nothing else from her, I know real happiness exists, and I’m not accepting substitutes anymore, even if it’s never mine again. I’m an addict, and I’ll always be an addict, but I’m never going back to where I was.”
I shrug. “And I guess that’s it,” I say, even though I know how stupid it sounds to announce you’re done when you could just stop talking instead.
“Thank you for sharing,” the moderator says.
I want to leave. I want to walk out of the room to be sure no one says anything to me about what I said. If I have to hear from one person that they know how I feel, or that I’ll get over it, or that I should maybe keep the one-year relationship rule because this is clearly what it’s for, I’m going to have to sit in my car and grip the steering wheel again.
But I don’t leave. I sit through the rest of the sharing. I don’t really listen, but I stare at the sign in the middle of the floor.
What’s said here stays here.
I know what it means. I’m not going to repeat what anyone else says outside of this room. But what I’ve said has to travel with me. It has to be with me every moment, forever. I have to remember how I feel now, and that memory has to be enough to keep me from taking the easy way out, every minute of every day, for the rest of my life.
I know I shouldn’t be doing this for Jenna, because I have to do it for me. But for the first time I feel like I can do it for Jenna and for me, even if Jenna leaves the band and forgets me entirely. I can stay sober for me and her and Ty, and for Gabby and Dana and my parents and Ephraim and Katy. Not for one right reason, but for all of them.
When the meeting is over, I walk out without talking to anyone. And while I don’t know where I’m going, I know it isn’t back where I’ve been.
Between Phil and Alec, we somehow end up booking that performance at MTV’s Video Music Awards. Playing at the VMAs feels surreal in a totally different way than playing Carnegie Hall did. The New York performance was something I’d imagined my whole life that didn’t even come close to the high I got from the bumped-up dose of heroin I did afterward. Playing the VMAs isn’t something I ever would have thought to dream of, but any excitement or anxiety I might have had about it feels distant now, muted, like I’m an electric instrument that’s been unplugged.
Everything feels a bit that way, as if my mind has cut the cord because it can’t stand to be in pain anymore. I said I didn’t want any more substitutes for happiness, and I meant it, but I can’t help but be glad for this: it does seem that there is actually a limit to how bad a person can feel, at least all at once.
Alec texts me a few days before, saying I should practice because we’re not going to have a chance to get the whole band together before we perform. That should make me nervous, but really I’m relieved. I’m not sure I’m ready to see Jenna, to figure out what our relationship is going to look like now that even emotional intimacy is off the table.
And I really don’t want to see Alec, because as awful as I’m feeling, I may very well punch him in the face.
I arrive and check in and am ushered back to the band’s staging area, where Allison the costumer hands me a wardrobe bag. “This was supposed to be Mason’s for the European leg of the tour,” she says. “So I hope it fits. But you can’t go out on stage at the VMAs wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and I don’t care what Jenna says.”
I take the bag and retreat into the dressing rooms, where I discover the clothes meant for Mason include a pair of bright green pants, a sparkly and equally bright multi-colored jacket with sides too small to actually button, and a chunky silver cross necklace bigger than my hand. I check the bag twice, but there’s no sign of a shirt to go under the jacket, and I’m afraid there isn’t meant to be one.
Still, I’m not going to argue. I get dressed and put on my black boots and look at myself in the three-sided mirror.
I look ridiculous.
When I emerge, the rest of the band is there. Roxy’s pink hair is slicked down and she’s wearing enough sequins to cover Los Angeles like snow, and Leo is wearing a strange tie-dyed tunic under his alligator vest that makes him look like a hippy-medieval Crocodile Dundee, so I gather I’m actually supposed to be looking like this. Jenna’s clothes are a bit more her usual style, with the bling cranked up a few notches, and she turns and cringes at me. Her eyes linger on my bare chest.
“Is this how this is supposed to be worn?” I ask. “Seriously?”
“It was funnier when I picked it for Mason,” she says.
We give each other agonized looks that have nothing to do with the outfit. Behind her, Roxie is sitting on one end of a couch and Leo has perched himself far on the other end, with his knees together and tilted away from her. Roxie eyes him like he’s broken out in a pox.
I’m guessing Jenna’s assertion they were into each other has made him self-conscious.
On the other side of the room, Alec is on the phone, probably with Phil, or Phil’s assistant. “I don’t care what the traffic’s like. I need it now.”
Roxie gets up and motions for Leo to do the same. “Your damn vest is askew again,” she says. “Let me fix it.”
Leo crosses his arms, his shoulders hunching. “It’s cool. Allison will get it.”
Roxie slides around the back of the couch and puts her hands on his shoulders. “You’re a ball of tension. Let me massage you.” Her hands begin to knead his shoulders, and Leo bends over, his torso lying flat across his thighs, face buried in his knees, and lets out a guttural cry of distress.
We’re all staring at him. Roxie’s hands are still poised in the air where his shoulders were.
“What are you so stressed about?” Roxie demands. “What’s wrong with you?”
Leo lets out another cry. His voice is muffled by his tight pleather pants. “I’m in love with Roxie.”
Alec lowers the phone. Jenna raises her eyebrows and glances at me. Roxie just cocks her hip and looks confused.
“Wait,” she says. “Like, me, Roxie?”
Leo snaps up and spins around. “Do you know another Roxie?” he yells at her.
We all stare at them for one breath, two, three.
And then Roxie leaps over the couch and tackles Leo. She slams him sideways down on the couch with a knee on each side of his thighs, and kisses the hell out of him.
Leo digs his hands into her hair, destroying her carefully-shellacked hairstyle, and within seconds they’re hardcore making out.
My whole body is getting hot. Alec is right—it’s like being in a limo on prom night, only after my date has broken my heart. I’m happy for Leo and Roxie, but Jenna won’t meet my eyes, and I can’t handle it anymore.
I raise my hands in the air. “I’m out.” I turn to leave the room, meaning to go wait for the rest of them in the hallway.
“Felix, wait,” Jenna says.
And I turn around, because the truth is, I would wait forever for her. At this moment, four years feels like nothing at all.