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Authors: Kristen McGuiness

51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life (10 page)

BOOK: 51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life
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When we spoke on the phone a couple of weeks back, she asked me to write down any interesting dreams I had before I came to meet her. Oliver used to say, “If you want to lose anyone’s attention, start your sentence with, ‘last night I dreamed…’” So last night, I dreamed I was still dating Oliver, and we are out to dinner with two of my current friends, Nat and Reggie, who happen to be engaged, both in the dream and in real life. In real life, I am the bridesmaid in their wedding, so the bridesmaid/bride cliché is fully in play here. In the dream, however, it is Oliver who pulls out the diamond ring. He looks at me in full earnestness. And I look down, and I realize that he has gotten me some tacky modern number from the local mall jeweler.
 
“Will you marry me?” he asks.
 
I am upset that this man who I thought knew me so well has gotten me such an ugly ring. I want to say yes, but I am also in shock. He knows what kind of ring I would want. And the fact that he has gotten me something that I know even he would think is ugly tells me he really doesn’t care about this. Reggie and Nat eagerly await my response. But again, I can’t say anything. I am caught between everything I want and my fear that it’s not real, that it’s not going as planned, that if I say something, it might go away altogether. And so I sit there, frozen, until I wake up and wish desperately that I could go back.
 
“It’s a good dream, huh?” I ask Lidia, whom I like immediately. She is small, toned, with yoga arms and graying blonde hair. She sits opposite me in a chair, sipping tea in a pair of loose white pants and a white tunic. But she uses the word “fuck” enough to throw off the stereotype.
 
She nods, “You got a lot trapped in there, don’t you?” Like that perfect bolt of truth, it hits. I do have a lot trapped in there. And I can talk, and I can write, and I can do all the things we’re taught to do to get it out, but when I am forced to really speak, to really say the things I think, I just sit there staring dumbly at the person across the table from me.
 
I am told to choose a stone out of the twelve sacred rocks she lays out on the ground. I want to choose the big, shiny, round ones that look like crystal balls. But I always want the big, shiny, round ones that look like crystal balls.
 
Instead, I choose a grayish quartz that feels safe in my hand.
 
“Good choice,” Lidia tells me. The entire time I am going through “the ceremony” as Lidia calls it, I wonder why it was a good choice.
 
I lay still on the floor. I don’t cry. I barely emote at all. Lidia puts the stone on my sacrum. I can feel the tension flowing there before she even decides where to place the stone. She whistles, she blows, she passes magic wands over my body. I cannot help but hear the Woody Allen that lives somewhere in my psyche thinking, “So, it’s come to this.” I am becoming the California loony I always thought I’d be. But I let go of Woody Allen. I let go of daddies, and mommies, and being a secretary, and not having anyone, and all the bullshit that I like to wallow in to feel sorry for myself. I let the energy pulse through my body.
 
And I feel something in me pulse back.
 
Years ago, jacked up on booze and coke, I walked outside into a rainstorm and believed that there was so much energy in me that I could create balls of fire in the palms of my hands. The thing is, I still kind of feel that way. And as Lidia guides me with her stones and her blessings to the ancestors, and asks of the earth and sky and mountains to lead us through, down this path, I feel that energy course down my arms and into my palms once again. I feel spheres of power and hope, and I know that my path is so much bigger than RAD or Jimmy or Oliver or any who came before them. I know that my path is larger than 51 dates. I know that I understand very little and that all my words and alliterations and pretty poetry are just translations of a much larger source. And though that source feels deeply hidden, it’s there. And it’s real. And it’s what I need when I am sitting across from love, and I am terrified to respond.
 
And then Lidia puts away her stones and opens the blinds, and we are back in her house in Chatsworth, home to horses and porn stars and this strange magical woman sitting across from me.
 
12
 
Date Twelve: Love Is a Lot like Basketball
 
I’ve never actually seen a game of basketball, so I might be off on this, but I believe a rebound is when the ball is sent flying toward the hoop, with the hope and/or expectation that it is going to go in, only to bounce back out and return to play. In my life, rebound is just the easiest way to get over someone. And since my recent expected slam dunk with Jimmy Voltage wasn’t meant to be, I hope that my date tonight with Peter will put me back in the game.
 
I was complaining to my friend Ivan the other day that I was having trouble finding dates when he told me that he had been going out on almost a date a day by using the Internet. The Internet. Why didn’t I think of that? Here I had been trying to meet people the good, old-fashioned way, and all it was getting me was a bunch of my friends with their faces twisted up, thinking, until they say, “Yeah. I don’t know anyone that you would like.” I try to explain that I would prefer to make that decision on my own, but apparently it’s not even worth the risk.
 
Ivan is the friend who one would expect to become my perfect boyfriend at the end of this journey. We can talk about anything, we crack each other up, he’s there for me unconditionally, and we’re both sober. Unfortunately, there are just some men who will never be more than your friend.
 
Outside of Ivan, however, I am beginning to wonder whether I might be willing to date anyone. Anyone who can take my mind off the strapping electrician with whom I spend way too much of my time having imaginary conversations. I am a big fan of the imaginary conversation. I could claim it as one of my hobbies—a bit like talking to yourself but on steroids, mixed with a healthy dose of chardonnay.
 
A few years back, I once got so enraptured by my brilliant parting shot, my Oscar worthy speech to the mirror, that I forgot I was in my own apartment, alone. I walked dramatically across the length of my studio apartment, put my hand on the knob of the front door, and then stopped. I woke up from the fantasy and realized, “Holy shit. I’m storming out on myself.” To add insult to insanity, I was about to enter the hallway of my apartment building in a great big huff, wearing only a T-shirt and underwear. But that’s fantasy for you: it’s dangerous at its worst, downright embarrassing at its best. So I do what any self-respecting woman with a habit for talking to herself does. I go online, and I find Peter.
 
I’ve never dated a Peter before. The name is cute enough. Peter is an attorney from outside of Boston. He spent the last fourteen years in Chicago until last summer when he moved to L.A. for a job in Business Affairs at Fox. I don’t think people move halfway across the country at the age of thirty-seven without being prompted by something, and though he doesn’t say it, and I don’t ask, I’m going to assume it was a very serious breakup. She’s probably still bitching him out in the mirror.
 
Peter and I meet at a local coffee shop because we’re not sure how long this date is going to last. The holidays are coming, and the place is decorated with just the right amount of red and green and depressing all over.
 
“It’s hard to feel like it’s Christmas when it’s still seventy degrees outside,” Peter comments.
 
“How long you been here, again?” I ask.
 
“Eight months.”
 
“Oh, yeah. It still sucks at eight months. Give it two years. It takes two years.”
 
“In two years, will it still be seventy degrees in December?”
 
I feel for him, because coming out here with not much to hold on to, and an apparent taste for cold weather, was bold and brave, if not a little stupid. Peter looks like Clark Kent. He has a delicate nose, a sturdy jaw, and beautiful hazel eyes with thick dark lashes. He wears glasses and looks good in them too. Just like Clark Kent. And he’s hilarious. I don’t even think about what I would say to Jimmy if he walked through the door right now because I am too busy laughing. And then I remember the power of the rebound and that I have been here before.
 
When Oliver and I first broke up, I already had someone lined up to take his place. I didn’t mean for it to happen that way, but in the midst of my movie-star love for that man I met someone else who caught my eye. Sabbath was tall and lovely, with rich black skin that seemed to warm itself from the inside out. His parents were from Côte D’Ivoire, and unfortunately for Sabbath, had never heard of the Ozzy Osbourne band when they named their only son after the Lord’s Day. Sabbath was a fashion designer at a downtown studio and was good friends with my neighbor. I still remember watching him walk up to me and my friends at a party and not being able to take my eyes off this too-cool man with his Christian Dior glasses and his friendly smile. When Oliver ended it, my neighbor made the call, and I learned the power of rebound.
 
Sabbath fell in love with me. But I was too wrapped up in my alcoholism and my sad, sad sorrow over losing the greatest love of my life, so I failed to see who this rebound really was. I failed to see that Sabbath was one of the good ones. About two months into our relationship, Sabbath tried, like Oliver before him, to get me to quit cocaine. New Year’s had just passed, and though we were all on ecstasy, though Sabbath had joined us in the cocaine that night, I noticed that he had stopped doing it around 3:00 a.m. and by 4:00 a.m., he was ready to leave.
 
We returned to his house, and as I started doing some addict mathematics I realized that Sabbath was the last one holding the bag and that he should have more on him. I begged, I cried, and finally, I slipped into bed with him, shaking and whimpering as I did when coming down from cocaine. He pulled me into his chest. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
 
“Didn’t know what?” I choked.
 
“That you had a problem. I thought we were just having fun. I’m so sorry. We’ll never do that again. I don’t ever want to do coke with you again.”
 
“Okay,” I murmured into his chest. Because at that moment I didn’t ever want to do it again either.
 
But four days later I was doing it again. I went over to Sabbath’s house the next day, and he didn’t even need to ask. He could see it in my swollen nose, my bloodshot eyes, the way I cringed to even move. He didn’t say anything. He just got up and went to his bookshelf.
 
“I was going to throw this away,” he told me as he pulled out a CD.
 
“Huh?” I asked. I was hurting too much to really pay attention. And then I watched as he dumped a gram of coke on top of the CD cover.
 
“It’s yours,” he said. He pulled out a dollar bill from his wallet, rolled it up, and offered it to me. “But I don’t want to see you anymore if you do it.”
 
This was too big of a challenge for me on any night, let alone a night where I had woken up thirty minutes prior.
 
“You wanna keep partying, fine. But I don’t want a part of it, Kristen.”
 
I couldn’t move my eyes from the cocaine. It begged for me; it called my name; it knew me so much better than this man. I didn’t know what was more confusing: that I was being asked to fulfill some sort of ultimatum, or that Sabbath lied on New Year’s, and I could have done more blow that night. The fact that he was able to keep it without doing any was, at this point, staggering to me.
 
“What do you want?” he asked.
 
I wished I could say that I wanted him. That I wanted him so much more than the cocaine. But I didn’t. I wanted the coke. And there it sat, the answer to all my problems. To all my pain. So easy. And so free. My favorite kind.
 
“Keep thinking about it,” he sneered as he walked outside to smoke a cigarette.
 
To make such a clear decision, I knew, was dangerous. I was a good addict. I avoided any major moves that would have resulted in a loss of job or home or anything which might have harkened the dreaded process known as “intervention.” And though I wasn’t quite clear on why I needed to get up and go outside to join Sabbath, I knew that if I chose the line of coke right then, it would take that addict label Sabbath had given me and broadcast it across my life like the Goodyear blimp.
 
When I walked outside, he pulled me into a great big hug and kissed my head and told me that he would help me. And I knew he would. But I didn’t want it. He flushed the gram that night, but it didn’t take long before he was once again going home from parties alone. And he would cajole me and ask me again to stop when I would slip into his bed many hours later. Ultimately, he let me go when I moved home to Dallas to get sober.
 
When I came back to L.A., I stopped by his apartment, and we had a cigarette.
 
BOOK: 51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life
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