Prozac Nation (22 page)

Including the guy whom I'd actually slept with, who couldn't make sense of why I'd taken this private matter between me and him and turned it into a public spectacle. And I couldn't answer. All I knew, and I couldn't say this to him as we spoke long distance between my dorm room in Cambridge and his apartment in Washington, D.C., was that here was something that meant a lot to me, the one remnant of my body that I was saving for true love or for a better time when I wasn't depressed and when my relationships with men were more than just random, desperate gropings for something that didn't hurt the way the rest of life did. And instead, in truth, I gave it away.

Gave my virginity to a guy who didn't really care about me very much, who was asking me now how I could take this private matter and turn it public, but the truth was it had never been really private. He never really knew me, knew the inside of me, not just my flesh but the soft center deep down that no one gets to see. So as far as I was concerned, he had invaded my body with his, and it felt good and it felt interesting, but in the end it wasn't something private no matter how I tried to convince myself. It never meant shit. I wanted, so badly, for sex to happen the right way with the right person at the right time in the right place, until, one day, during my sophomore year of college, I discovered that the enchanted situation I was waiting for didn't exist for me. So I decided just to love the one I was with.

I gave it away.

But my dad and I—that was different. I decided within a matter of hours after accepting the
Oprah!
invitation that there was no way I could appear. My father, and whatever was left of my relationship with him, was still mine. And I would not give that away. But by the time I got around to calling Diane, the producer, she had already decided that what she really wanted—wouldn't this be great?!—was to have me and my father appear on
Oprah!
together so that we could share both of our perspectives “to help illuminate the issues and achieve a better understanding of what causes men to abandon their children.” And as she proposed this idea to me, I kept pointing out that I didn't even talk to my father and had no idea of his whereabouts, though based on the postmark on my birthday cards, I suspected he was somewhere in Virginia. “That's no problem,” Diane told me. “We have people who can track him down so that we can stage a reunion on television. How long did you say it's been since you've spoken to him?”

She didn't get it. Or maybe she did and decided to proceed anyway. After all, it was her job to get people to discuss their private lives publicly. The point that I failed to convey is that there was no way that I was going to see my father for the first time in years on national television. “I think that's a terrible idea,” I said.

At first, I was shocked that Diane could even suggest this family reunion, and then I realized that this is just the way of the world, or at least the way of
fin de siècle
America. Not only would the next revolution be televised, but so would every other little stupid thing. It was already happening: Television reunions between adopted children and their birth parents; encounters between a husband, his mistress, and his wife; discussions among killers on death row—in irons, via satellite—and the families of their victims; confrontations between incest survivors and their abusive relatives; meetings between a corrupt plastic surgeon and the women whose faces he deformed with wrinkle-reducing silicone injections that turned out to be toxic; a priest a rabbi a monk, and a minister (no, this is not the beginning of a bad joke) who have slept with members of their congregations. You could see all these events on simple, old-fashioned network television, all in a single day.

For so many people, or at least for the guests who were fodder for these shows, nothing seemed too sacred for the camera's lens. There was even a computer database listing the names of people who wanted to appear on talk shows, giving descriptions of their particular quirks, eccentricities, and handicaps. Many of the people who consented to talk about their private lives in front of millions of television viewers would say that they were sharing their stories as a way to comfort fellow sufferers, to raise public awareness, to give a voice to their pain. None of them would ever admit that it was all about ratings and voyeurism and lurid, grotesque curiosity. None of them would be able to see me and my friends sitting in our dorm rooms watching these shows in the late afternoon lull, laughing at their kitsch value. They'd all believe that what they were doing was good. In fact, Diane had originally tried to sell me on the whole
Oprah!
appearance by saying that it was a public service When it was just me I almost bought it; once she started talking about getting both me and my dad I knew this was all just show biz and it made me sick.

Still, Diane called me, day after day, and in the evenings at home. I didn't have an answering machine, so that weekend I went to my cousins' house to escape the ring of the telephone, the awful sound of the bell that was not my mother calling to say she still loved me, was not some man I was wild for calling to tell me how much he cared, but just a woman I'd never met and never would wanting to know if my personal life could be exploited for her purposes.

 

The rest of the summer, what a mess. I get myself involved with Jack, a police-beat reporter who works from four in the afternoon until midnight, so that means that I end up staying up the rest of the night to drink with him. We're so drunk, we barely even fuck. I spend a lot of time miserable and vomiting. I go through a tube of toothpaste a day. I realize that no matter how hard I try, I will never be an alcoholic. A drug addict, maybe. But all drinking ever does is make me puke.

Every night, I sit in my apartment waiting for the clock to strike twelve, petrified that Jack won't call me, that he won't want to see me, that he'll run off with someone else, certain that if such a thing does happen, I will have no choice but to climb into my little old-fashioned bathtub and burgundy-stain the hot water with blood from my own wrists. That's how desperate Jack makes me feel. He makes me feel like suicide. I barely know him, our whole affair amounts to only a couple of weeks, but I am positively obsessed from the start.

Sometimes as I lie on the floor in the dark by the phone waiting for his call, I try to figure out what in the hell has gotten into me. Why am I so afraid of not hearing from him? It wouldn't be so bad. I could get some sleep for a change. I could get started on reading one of the tomes I'd schlepped down from Cambridge in preparation for my junior tutorial. I could try
The Second Sex, I
could plow through
A Vindication of the Rights of Women, I
could figure out how the hell to free myself from this enslavement to men. Of course, Simone de Beauvoir was basically a fool for Sartre, and I seem to recall learning that Mary Wollstonecraft was over her head for—who was it?—John Stuart Mill, I think. But Jack is no Jean-Paul. In fact, if it weren't such a devastating thought, I could probably admit that Jack is no nothing. Pick a man, any man. Every guy I fall for becomes Jesus Christ within the first twenty-four hours of our relationship. I know that this happens, I see it happening, I even feel myself, sometimes, standing at some temporal crossroads, some distinct moment at which I can walk away—
just say no—
and keep it from happening,
but I never do. I grab at everything, I end up with nothing, and then I feel bereft. I mourn for the loss of something I never even had. I am a sick, sick girl.

God, do I ever want my mommy. Of course, my mom doesn't talk to me lately. It's just me, Jack, and the bottle.

One Saturday, Jack and I are supposed to see a matinee of The
Big Easy.
He's supposed to call but never does. Hours go by, I can't leave my house, there's no answer on his phone, and I feel that exact desperation that I had feared night after night. There are a million things I can do to pass the time, but I feel so trapped and frightened, too agitated to read or do anything useful, so I find the only alcohol that's left in the house, some really nasty smelling rum, and figure it's never too early to get started. And then I remember that Globe, this guy I know who's in an industrial/rap band and dates the police commissioner's daughter and also deals on the side, has left a whole stash of psilocybin mushrooms in my closet. So I eat them. All of them. Maybe ten grams, I don't know. By the time the stuff kicks in, I might as well be on Pluto.

I call all the people I know and talk to their answering machines. I go to the Sound Warehouse and buy—heaven help me—four Grateful Dead albums. I find Rusty and get stoned with him, even though I'm already 'shrooming. Then I decide that I really must walk. I walk for miles and hours, all the way to the slums of South Dallas, almost over to Oak Cliff. I walk through Deep Ellum, and even though I can't stop laughing and all the faces around me look like claymation, I manage to eat chicken-fried steak and biscuits with cream gravy at some little diner. I walk some more.

I inadvertently wander into a New Bohemians concert at a club near Grant Park. I hear Edie's voice, its lovely lilt, singing about circles and cycles and spinning round and round. I sit in the bleachers, I daze and doze to the sound of a voice and guitars and mandolins and percussions. I fade into what feels like thousands of strings. This is the happiest moment I've had all summer, this is the best place to be right here and right now, if only my whole life could
be words and music, if only everything else could slip away. No Jack, no mother, no work, no play, nothing at all. Why does every little thing, even the happy things, inevitably turn into a great big encumbrance? If only everything could be as pure as this moment. If only I could freeze into this place forever.

And then Edie starts singing “Mama Help Me,” all this stuff about crazy people, mean people, street people, and her voice is suddenly harsh, I am jolted out of my reverie, I remember who I am: I am the girl who took several times the normal dose of psilocybin mushrooms several hours ago, all because some guy I barely know didn't call when he said he would. I am the girl who has disappointed her mother. I am the girl out of perspective. I am the girl who needs to go home. “Where will I go when I cannot go to you?” Edie sings. “Mama mama m-m-mama help me, mama mama mama tell me what to do.
”

God, do I need help, I think, as I leave this outdoor club, this hippie version of a theater in the round. I get into a taxi—for once one is waiting, maybe there is a God—and as we drive along Central I feel wetness dripping down my face. Where is this coming from? I realize, sitting in the back seat, that I am weeping, that so much salt and water is pouring from my tear ducts, but because I am tripping I can't feel myself crying. At best, I can watch myself, sit alongside this vacant corpse of mine, and watch the roll of tears, but there is no sense of release because there's no one inside. I'm gone.
Knock-knock?
I've disappeared. I've come so close from so far, I hide behind this window and look at myself, look at a life I'd rather not see.

 

When I get home, David, the music critic from the
Dallas Times Herald,
is waiting on my stoop. Apparently, I'd had a date to go see Billy Squier with him several hours earlier that evening. When he couldn't find me after I'd left several messages on his answering machine reporting that I was “bottoming out,” “losing it,” and other such things, he got worried. He even called Rusty to see if he knew where I'd gone. When he couldn't find me, he went to the show but kept calling, and then after he'd filed his review, he drove around Deep Ellum looking for me. He kept bumping into people who'd seen me here and there, but he seemed to keep missing me. So he decided to wait until I got home.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

I am standing in front of him crying. “Do I look all right?” I ask in response.

“Not particularly, but one never knows with you.”

“Fuck you!” I scream. “Fuck everybody! What do you mean, ‘One never knows with you'? I'm a person like everybody else! I get upset like everyone else! When I cry, it's the same as when anyone else does. It means I'm hurting. Goddamnit, David! I'm really hurting. I really am.”

“Does this have anything to do with Jack?”

“No! Fuck you! I would never get upset over a man!” I start bawling even harder.

I sit down next to him on the stoop, and he puts his arm around me and pulls me close as I weep. “I'm really trying to be your friend,” he says. “But you make it hard. You stand me up when we had made these plans earlier in the week. Your response to every disagreeable situation is to take some drug. Look at you. Look at what a mess you are. Look at what you're doing to yourself. Clay and I both think you have a drug problem and need professional help.” Clay was the music editor of the weekly newspaper, the
Dallas Observer.

I look at him in shock. Why the hell does everyone always think the problem is drugs?

“David, what I wouldn't give to have a drug problem,” I say. “What I wouldn't give for it to be that simple. If I could check into a rehab and come out the other end okay, I'd be thrilled.” That was the line I had for everybody, and the sad thing was, like most stereotypes and clichés, it was actually true. I
did
do too many drugs and too much of everything, but there's a qualitative line that I never crossed, that intangible border that separates addicts—people who will need to detox to keep clean—from the rest of us who have our phases and binges, but lack the germ, the tendency toward chemical dependency. My problem always was depression, straight up. The drinking, the drugging, they were mere accessories to the crime. Freshman year in college, that long hot summer in Dallas—those were periods of excess that came and went, never to be repeated. But the vise of depression, no matter what, just wouldn't let go. “It's not drugs,” I say to David. “It's just, it's that, it's just that it's all so awful.”