For the Love of Money (5 page)

The day I received my fat envelope from Columbia, Ben received a thin one from Princeton. Devastated, he applied to every other Ivy League university. They all rejected him, except for Cornell. Crushed, he accepted.

The next year, three college wrestlers—Billy Saylor (Campbell University), Joseph LaRosa (University of Wisconsin), and Jeff Reese (University of Michigan)—died cutting weight. Reese was cutting the most. He was trying to shed 17 pounds in a day, to make the 150-pound weight class.

CHAPTER
7

There's a Bomb in My Stomach

¤

I
arrived in New York on a red-eye flight with a suitcase, a laptop computer, a hundred bucks in my pocket, and a warning from Dad that no more money would be forthcoming. He'd taken out loans to pay for tuition and room and board and said I'd need to find a job to cover living expenses. My room was barren, except for the wall I covered with Absolut Vodka ads.

I was desperate to carve out a place for myself at Columbia, to belong. In high school, the noon bell would ring and I'd join the stream of students headed to the parking lot, keeping a hopeful eye out as students merged into groups of threes and fours and drove to a fast-food lunch. Sometimes, I'd catch an invite, but usually the crowd would thin, and at the last possible moment I'd turn purposefully off toward the locker rooms. I'd circle back and head toward the empty halls of the school building where I would find a quiet corner, pull out a book, and read until lunch was over. If I heard footsteps coming, I leapt to my feet and walked purposefully down the hall, as if I had somewhere to be.

But at Columbia, I figured, the students would be nerdier, so on a relative basis I might actually be cool.

I lived in a two-room suite with a shared bathroom, but the
two a cappella singers who shared the other room were rarely there. I started spending time in the small lounge at the end of the hall. I'd sit there, folding laundry or reading a book, hoping to meet people.

“In the lounge again, eh Sam?” people would yell down the hall. They'd laugh, then go into their rooms. By the end of the first month, I hadn't made a single friend and was lonelier than I'd ever been.

One day I was talking to a scrawny, quiet guy who lived down the hall from me, and I told him I was good at shooting pool. He said, “My roommate Edward plays pool; you should meet him.”

I was nervous but so desperate for a friend that I marched into the room they shared. Edward was standing at the window.

“I hear you play pool,” I said. “Any good?”

“Better than you,” he said.

The subway ride to Amsterdam Billiards was awkward, but at the pool table, after a few beers, we loosened up. Edward was sarcastic and hilarious, and I spent the evening doubled over with laughter.

Edward was a night owl, the kind only college schedules permit. It was not unusual for him to go to sleep at dawn and wake at four in the afternoon. Nights found us in my room, me sitting in bed, him with a chair pulled up, playing cards. Hours clipped by; we might play a hundred hands in a night.

For dinner Edward and I would go to
JJ
's Place, the snack bar across campus where we could charge food to our parents' bill. Edward was thin, but he was an eater. He'd order a bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke. I'd get something ­healthier—a turkey burger or a chicken sandwich. I was worried about making weight, even though wrestling season hadn't started yet. I was trying to cut to 140 pounds, 5 pounds
lighter
than I had wrestled in high school. I figured that since
I wasn't really skilled enough to be a college wrestler, I should wrestle the smallest guys possible.

Sometimes I'd badger Edward into buying pitchers of Rolling Rock at The West End, a dive bar across the street from campus (“Where Columbia drinks its first beer!” their tee shirts read). We'd sit at the bar, and I'd show off for Edward by staring menacingly at other guys in the bar until they looked away. After three or four pitchers, we'd stumble home, laughing.

Soon we were drinking every night.

It's tough to lose weight as a daily beer drinker. I'd wake up hungover, with a vague memory of having eaten cookies. After those nights I'd vow not to get drunk again. Then, after I was drunk again, I'd vow not to eat while drunk again. But I always would. So I tried something new. When I got home from the bars, I started sticking my finger down my throat.

By throwing up, I could drink and eat all I wanted—two pitchers of beer, then pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage, and a milk shake from the diner on the way home—and feel fine the next day. I felt like I'd discovered a magic trick. As I started to do it more and more, I learned some things. Pizza is one of the hardest things to throw up because the dough is so dense. It's like vomiting up rocks. Milk makes everything easier; throwing up ice cream actually feels sort of pleasant. I began to perfect my technique. I put toilet paper in the water so no one could hear the splash. I wiped down the bowl quickly and efficiently. I puked right before taking a shower, so the bathroom would smell soapy.

Now, at
JJ
's Place, I ate more than Edward. I tried to be casual about it. Edward ordered a bacon cheeseburger; I ordered a double bacon cheeseburger. He got fries; I got cheese fries. I always bought some sort of dessert, a muffin or a cookie, and a large container of chocolate milk. Sometimes I got a full box of Entenmann's cookies. “For us to split,” I'd tell Edward and
then proceed to eat all but two. I was terrified Edward would suspect, but he never said anything.

The moment we left
JJ
's Place I started counting the minutes. The longer it took from when I finished eating to when I booted, the more calories I absorbed. It was a race against the clock. To avoid suspicion, I'd hang out with Edward for a while. We'd go back to my room and play cards. “Just a few hands,” I'd say. “I need to study.”

He always fought me on it. He had the entire night looming and didn't want to be alone. We were each other's only real friends. He'd beg me to play another hand or two.

Things started to get dicey. One night, after barfing in the bathroom, I opened the door and ran smack into my suite mate, Sebastian, standing there with a toothbrush and a towel. I thought I had the suite to myself. He looked irritated.

“What took you so long, man?” he asked.

I hadn't showered and was afraid it smelled.

“Nothing, man, nothing. Just a little sick. Sorry about that,” I said.

Another night, Edward was in my room playing cards and I couldn't get him to leave. “Okay, last hand,” I said. “This is it. I gotta get to sleep.”

“Stop,” he said. “You don't even have class tomorrow.”

I had in my belly a Philly cheesesteak, curly fries, a chocolate-­chip scone, and a quart of chocolate milk. There was a ticking bomb in my stomach. I played another hand.

“Alright, bro, I'm tired,” I said. “Last one.”

“Stop,” he said. “You're fine.
Five
more.” I was afraid if I pushed him, Edward would sense something amiss. I tried to appear calm while my mind broke into full-blown panic.
You can't afford this.
You'll gain two or three pounds.
I couldn't focus on the cards. Minutes flew by. We'd eaten over an hour ago. I didn't even feel full anymore—the food was already digesting. Edward was giving me weird looks.
Fuck.

The staccato thoughts reached a crescendo; it felt like my head might short out like an overstuffed electrical socket. I tried to will Edward to leave, but he just lit another cigarette and blew out perfect smoke rings, like he didn't have a care in the world.

So I did the only thing I could do. I resigned myself to the situation. I decided I wasn't going to hurl that night. It would build credibility, I told myself. I dealt another round of cards and settled in. I felt gross and resentful, but I knew I'd made the right decision. I was protecting my secret.

When wrestling practice started, I was clearly the worst wrestler on the team.
But at least I was skinny.
At the first tournament of the year, the Ivy League Invitational, my first match was against a Harvard wrestler ranked third in the nation. He pinned me in forty-five seconds. In my second match, the captain of Princeton's team ripped my right shoulder out of its socket, and I was out for the season.

I told myself I didn't need to throw up anymore, that my weight didn't matter, but I couldn't stop. I'd go to
JJ
's Place determined to order a healthy meal, but I'd find myself grabbing a box of cookies, several baked goods, and, of course, milk. I'd eat hurriedly in the dark back booth. Once the food was inside me, I'd start imagining the calories becoming love handles. I'd feel an uncontrollable urge to purge and I'd rush back to my bathroom and lock the door. Soon I was upchucking at least once a day, sometimes two or three times. I knew it wasn't sustainable, yet I felt powerless to stop it.

One day I was watching
TV
in the lounge with Edward, my neighbor Sabrina, and a vegan hippie named Jessica. Jessica and I started arguing about what channel to watch, and rather quickly it got heated. “You're such a bitch,” I said.

“At least I don't throw up every meal,” she retorted.

I couldn't speak. All my defense mechanisms—my sarcasm, my stoicism, my ability to laugh things off—were neu
tralized. I gaped. I was ashamed. I stood and walked into my room.

Edward came in a few minutes later.

“Are you all right, man?”

I looked up at him with tears in my eyes.

“I don't think so,” I said. I felt diseased. For the first time, I understood that something inside me was broken.

I was too embarrassed to stay around campus, so I called Ben and asked if I could come visit. He was having a tough freshman year, too—he'd already gotten in several fistfights—and was happy to hear I was coming up. That night Edward and I boarded the bus to Ithaca, a six-hour ride. Edward was excited to meet Ben—I'd often bragged about how smart and tough Ben was—and peppered me with questions. “Who is older? Can you read each other's minds?” Two hours into the drive, he asked, “Have you ever hooked up with the same girl?”

I was quiet. Edward sensed a story. “What happened?” he pressed.

I knew I shouldn't tell him. Emma and I had managed to keep our tryst under wraps for two years. But in truth, I was dying to tell someone. And I didn't like the way Edward's eyes lit up when I talked about how smart Ben was. I told him the whole story.

When Edward and I got off the bus, Ben was waiting. I introduced Edward, and Ben introduced his new girlfriend, Jen. Ben also introduced a skinny, fresh-faced girl from Rochester named Kirsten Thompson. She was all arms and legs, with frizzy hair that exploded out of her head like an Afro, and clearly shy. I liked her immediately.

The first night, Kirsten and I exchanged looks from opposite sides of the group. The next night, we talked quietly on the perimeter. During a snowball fight, I tackled her. Later that night, I kissed her.

She had a roommate, so we couldn't be alone in her room.
Instead, I pushed two couches in the lounge together to make a sort of bed. Anyone could walk by, so we didn't hook up. We talked, then fell asleep in each other's arms. I slept for fourteen hours. In the morning, Kirsten and I went for breakfast.

I didn't want to return to Columbia. I felt safe with Ben. And Kirsten seemed a gift from God. Edward agreed to skip classes for a week to stay at Cornell.

A few nights later we went out to Ben's favorite drinking spot, an old Irish pub called Rulloff's. I stood at the bar with Kirsten and Jen, while Edward and Ben floated off to a table. An hour later, I looked over to see Ben and Edward engaged in intense conversation. As I walked to the bathroom, I wondered what they were talking about.

When I came out, Ben was gone. Edward's head was in his hands. I walked to the table and sat down.

“Where's Ben?” I asked.

Edward kept his head in his hands. He seemed very drunk. Suddenly, I knew.

“You told him about Emma,” I said.

Edward's head dropped deeper into his hands. I stared at him, dumbfounded.

“What could you possibly have been thinking?” I said. I called Ben from a pay phone. He didn't pick up. I kept dialing. Ten minutes later his girlfriend answered. “Ben wants you to leave,” she said. “He's in my room, so you can pick up your stuff from his room and go.”

It was two in the morning. Edward and I fetched our luggage and stood silently in the Ithaca cold until the 4:00 a.m. Short Line bus arrived. As we settled into our seats, Edward's eyes continued to seek mine in apology. I ignored him. I looked straight ahead and thought about Kirsten. I hadn't even said good-bye. I knew I might never see her again. I knew it would be years before Ben forgave me.

CHAPTER
8

The Boy with the Dragon Tattoo

¤

A
fter freshman year of college, Ben stayed at Cornell, but I went home for the summer. It would be the last time I ever went home.

During second semester, I'd befriended another freshman wrestler, a heavyweight named Francisco who loved to party. We'd become drinking buddies, then drug buddies. I now smoked weed every day. I was still throwing up, but not as much. I'd used a combination of willpower and sleeping pills to cut back. Hungry at night, instead of eating, I'd take two Valiums to knock me out. But I still yacked from time to time. The second day of the summer, home alone, I ordered an extra-large cheese-in-the-crust pepperoni pizza and two dozen chicken wings, ate them, and then vomited in the toilet.

One night I was smoking a joint in the backyard when Dad came out. He looked at me, looked at the joint, and then asked if he could have a drag. I looked up at him in surprise.

“You remember how your friend Nate Robertson used to stop by all the time while you were in high school?” he asked. I nodded.

“He was selling me pot,” Dad said.

I felt a dull ache in my chest as I registered that Dad and my friend had kept a secret from me for years. But I didn't
protest. I didn't want Dad to get mad, go inside. Sometimes it felt like the price of being with him was getting my feelings hurt.

Dad didn't talk to me like a son. More like a fishing buddy. The summer before, when I worked for Dad's public relations firm, he'd told me during one of our drives home that Stacy, an attractive young woman he'd hired to answer phones, sometimes gave her boyfriend “Altoid blow jobs,” where she'd put two Altoids in her mouth and then go down on him.

“It's an amazing feeling,” Dad said. “Apparently.”

I'd known it was weird for Dad to tell me that and to be talking to Stacy about stuff like that. But I loved that he was giving me a peek into a world he kept hidden from the rest of our family. Dad and I had an unspoken understanding—I'd stolen his porn magazines for years, and he never said a word. I smiled conspiratorially and never looked at Stacy the same way again.

I got a job as a bicycle messenger on the Disney Studios lot. It was a good job—fresh air, riding a bike all day. But there was one problem—our family only had two cars, which meant I had to carpool with Mom. I would drop her off at the clinic, then drive to Disney. After work I'd pick her up and drive her home.

Mom had always been late. Growing up, it wasn't unusual for Ben and I to be kicking dirt on the baseball diamond, the stadium and parking lot empty, an hour after all the other kids had gone home.

Each morning I'd be standing at the front door. “Mom, we were supposed to leave ten minutes ago.”

“Almost ready,” she'd yell back.

After work it was even worse. I'd call her as I was leaving Disney and ask her to meet me outside. When I arrived, there'd be no sign of her. I'd wait in the car, stewing.

When she got in the car I'd say, “Mom, I've been waiting
twenty minutes!” I tried to keep my voice calm, but when I finished I'd be shaking. She'd say one of her patients took longer than expected. We'd ride home in a toxic silence.

One night, I was in the living room reading, and I could hear Mom and Dad arguing in their bedroom. Mom was trying to sleep. Dad wouldn't get off his cell phone.

“Tony, can you please be quiet?” she said. He didn't answer her.

A few minutes later, Mom tried again. “Tony, I'm trying to sleep,” she said. I could hear the anger in her voice.

“Leave me the fuck alone, Linda,” Dad spat back.

“Go talk somewhere else!” Mom barked.

Dad ignored her. For a few seconds we listened to him talk into the phone.

“Fuck you, Tony,” Mom suddenly shouted. The bed creaked. I imagined her turning away from him, enraged.

I hunched over in anticipation. I knew Dad was going to retaliate—I just wasn't sure how. He hung up the phone. For a moment there was silence. Then the bed creaked as Dad stood up. A few seconds later, he charged past me into the kitchen. I heard the freezer open and ice cubes hitting the bottom of a pitcher. He stormed past me going the other way, this time carrying a pitcher of ice water. He walked over to Mom's side of the bed and pulled the covers off her. When he dumped the pitcher of ice water on her, she screamed. I'd never heard anything like that scream before. It was animalistic.

When they fought, I'd always sided with Dad. But hearing him douse her, warm in bed, with freezing water was the single worst thing I'd ever witnessed. I wanted to comfort her, but I didn't.

For several days, I went out of my way to be kind to Mom. But she kept making me late to work, and by the end of the week my resentment had returned. On Friday, I called her after work and said I'd pick her up in ten minutes and would
really appreciate if she were downstairs when I arrived. She said she would be.

When I got there, she was nowhere to be seen. I called her number. When I got her voice mail, I became furious. I called back three times before she finally picked up.

“Sam,” she said, exasperated, “I'm coming down.”

“You said you'd be waiting,” I said tersely.

“Oh fuck off,” she said.

Suddenly, I was angrier than I'd ever been. Blood pounded through my temples. She
never
respected my time. She ­
always
put herself first. How
dare
she treat me like that. By the time she walked out, twenty minutes later, I was a boiling kettle. As soon as she got in, I jammed the accelerator, and the Mazda minivan shot off down the road. As she fastened her seat belt, I let loose the torrent of words that had built up inside me.

“Mom, I've had enough of your shit,” I said. “I'm sick of always waiting for you. I'm sick of you wasting my time. I'm sick of all of it. This is the last time that happens.”

As I talked, she was silent. I had to keep my eyes on the road, but I kept glancing at her to make sure my words were affecting her. She stared straight ahead, but I could tell by the set of her jaw that she heard every word.

I was looking at the road, about to change lanes, when a clenched fist slugged me in the side of the head.

I looked over at Mom, shocked. She looked like a demon. Her face was bright red, making vivid the white hairs on her chin. Her eyes were wild. Her jaw quivered.

“Mom, what the fuck?” I shouted. “I'm driving!”

She turned in her seat so that she was facing me directly. Wham! Wham! Wham! She unleashed a series of punches. We were in the middle of traffic going about forty miles an hour, so I had to keep my eyes on the road. I hunched my shoulders to my ears and raised my right hand to block her
punches. One hit me square in the neck. One landed on the meat of my upper arm. She hit me on the top of my head.

My rage was gone, and I was simply terrified. Mom didn't seem to care if she killed us both. The car next to me honked as I faded into its lane. I veered back into my lane. Mom's blows slowed. Her chest was heaving with exhaustion. There was a break in the traffic, and I yanked the wheel to the right and pulled us off the road.

“Mom!” I screamed.

That attack was beyond anything she'd ever done. I started crying. “Mom,” I begged. “Are you gonna let me drive us home? Will you promise not to hit me while I'm driving?”

She didn't say anything. With tears streaming down my face, I pulled back onto the road. We had a fifteen-minute drive ahead of us, most of it on the freeway. I was scared she was going to start hitting me again. But what came next was even worse. Mom had gone somewhere deep inside herself. When she spoke, it was in a voice I'd never heard before.

“You are an ungrateful shit,” she said, “just like your father. You are a terrible son, a terrible person. I wish you'd never been born.”

For the next fifteen minutes she didn't stop talking. She listed all the things she hated about me, the ways I'd let her down. At first I responded with sarcastic protestations. “Yeah, really, Mom? That's really what you think of your own son?” But mostly I stayed quiet and listened as my mom told me how much she detested me.

When we pulled up to the house, I jumped out of the car and rushed across the lawn. Dad opened the front door. When I saw him, I started sobbing.

“What happened?” he said.

“Mom kept punching me while I was driving,” I said. “And then spent the whole drive home telling me how much she hated me.” I could hardly breathe.

He looked stricken. More than anything I wanted him to stand up for me.
Do something. Protect me.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

Which meant he wasn't going to do anything. Mom had gotten into the driver's seat and I heard her peel away. I went into my room and lay on my bed, exhausted. I felt like a satellite adrift in deep space, connected to nothing, cold and alone.

In the last week of summer, Edward came out to visit me, and Ben came home for a week. I was anxious about us all being together, but Ben ignored us, kept to himself.

That Friday Edward and I decided to go to a party across town. We were waiting to be picked up by some guys I knew from high school when, at the last minute, Ben said he was coming. He sat in the backseat, silent, looking out the window. I think he just needed to get drunk.

At the party we went our separate ways. A few hours later I was very drunk when I saw Ben getting in an argument. The guy stepped toward Ben; Ben head butted him in the face. I rushed in to help, but someone pushed me and I toppled backwards over a bush.

By the time I got up, Ben was being pushed back toward a gate at the rear of the backyard by people trying to stop the fight from escalating. Others were trying to calm the friends of the guy Ben had head butted. I ran to Ben, and he and I were suddenly pushed through the wooden gate, which slammed closed behind us.

We found ourselves in an alley that ran behind the house. Edward had come out of the gate before us, and was relieved to see we'd made it out safely. But Ben was screaming taunts over the fence, trying to open the gate to get back in.

“What are you doing, dude?” I hissed. “Let's get the fuck out of here.”

“Fuck them,” Ben said. The shouts behind the fence were
growing louder, and I could hear people frantically trying to quell the fury of what now sounded like a mob.

“There are like thirty guys back there,” I said. I looked to Edward for support, but he was fading into the shadows of the hedge next to the street.

“I don't care how many there are,” Ben said and then ripped off his shirt. His thick muscles rippled under the red-and-green dragon tattoo that covered his right arm from elbow to shoulder. He'd gotten that tattoo right before college, and for the first time I saw it as more than just a symbol of toughness. Fighting thirty guys wasn't tough—it was crazy.

The gate swung open and a cadre of drunk, angry men streamed out.

The first three went for Ben, and I saw him snap back the leader's head with a left jab to the chin. The next four guys through the gate went after me, and I started backpedaling as I threw punches to keep them at bay.

My punches were connecting, and I kept my feet moving. I wasn't getting hit too hard, but then a punch connected with my temple, and I went down but scrambled to my feet before anyone could get ahold of me.

I heard tires screech behind me, and I glanced back and saw the Nissan Pathfinder we'd arrived in lurch to a stop, perpendicular across the street. The back door flew open, and the guys we came with screamed for us to get in the car. Edward and I scrambled in. Then I looked for Ben, and I'll never forget what I saw.

He was moving backwards, with five guys after him. There was one guy in the lead, and all of a sudden Ben leaned in and hit him with a hard left hook to the body. He must have hit a kidney, because all of a sudden the guy collapsed to his knees and dropped his hands. And without even pausing, Ben pivoted on his left foot, putting all his weight into it, and
slugged the guy in the temple with his left fist. A sharp crack rang out, like wood being split.

The other guys pulled up short. The brutality of the punch stopped them in their tracks. Ben dropped his hands, stood up tall, and started walking toward them.

“Ben!” I screamed. “Get in the car.”

He looked back at me, and it was as if I had woken him from a dream. He looked at the guys, who were still backing away, looked down at the guy on the ground, and then hustled over to the car. The door slammed, tires squealed, and we were gone.