Wasted (7 page)

Regina, however, had girlfriends for eighty miles up and down Interstate 35, from Austin to San Antonio. Some of the girls were just friends. Others were just one-night stands, like Rosie Rulle. Others were for love.

Pam Carson was for love. Pam was gorgeous, young, and worshipped Regina. Regina loved young girls to worship her.

Carson had heard a lot about Regina Hartwell. Regina was rich, she was generous, and she was interested in Pam’s friend Fran Morgan. One January day in 1993, Pam was sitting alone in Fran’s apartment in San Antonio when Regina called long-distance.

That didn’t stop Regina from grilling Pam for an hour about Fran. “Well,” said the young Pam, “I’m not going to tell you much, but I’m just going to say, be careful, and just don’t get hurt.”

Carson knew that Morgan was a bit of a “money sucker,” and that she was more interested in what Hartwell bought her than in Hartwell herself. “Be careful,” said Pam.

“I’ve heard that you’re very cute,” Regina replied, “and I’d like to meet you.” Pam was a 5’7” tall, black-haired, blue eyed, fair-skinned beauty.

Regina later phoned Pam and invited her to Austin, and Pam accepted. But Pam and Fran got into an argument because Regina had told Fran that Pam had warned her to be careful. No longer trusting Regina, Pam didn’t talk to her after that. In fact, they just plain didn’t like each other, but, they didn’t really know each other either.

 

 

Regina Hartwell and some of her friends drove down to San Antonio to party in the Alamo city’s gay clubs. Carson was in one of the clubs with some of her friends, and her friends knew Hartwell’s friends. They all drank and danced together until closing.

Afterwards, everyone, including Regina, went over to Carson’s, and Regina and Pam talked long into the night. They got to know one another and learned they had a lot in common: loss. Pam’s sister had recently been murdered; Pam was grieving and drinking.

“My mother died when I was twelve,” said Hartwell. “I’ve never really talked to anyone about that. She was crushed to death by a hangar door. It wrecked me. I loved my mother more than anything. The only thing that was broken was her little finger. That was the only bone that was broken. My mother was so beautiful. I’ll never forget seeing her in the casket. I didn’t know how to react.”

Regina looked up at Pam. “It’s weird how we’ve both suffered losses so young,” Regina said. “A lot of our friends just don’t comprehend that.”

Regina was being real. Other times, she mouthed off or cut people down to hide her emotions. But Pam liked this Regina. They took each other by the hand and walked into a spare bedroom. They spent the night together. They didn’t have sex, but they did everything else. Pam found it to be a very good night.

 

 

The next day, Hartwell showed up at Carson’s workplace. “I’ve bought tickets to Europe,” she said. “I’ve gone to talk to a travel agent, and I’m going to take you and Brandy to Europe.” Brandy Wynne was an up-and-coming Austin singer and a good friend of Carson’s.

“No, I can’t afford it,” said Pam.

“Don’t worry, I’m going to buy it.”

“No, no, no,” said Pam.

Hartwell and Wynne went behind Carson’s back and bought the tickets.

Regina Hartwell began commuting to San Antonio to see Pam. Hartwell made the trek so often, she had to quit her job at a North Austin clothing consignment store just to have enough time to woo Pam.

And to woo her, Regina bought Pam everything Pam even glimpsed. They’d go to the mall, Pam would fleetingly admire a T-shirt, and Regina would buy it. She wouldn’t tell Pam about the purchase, however, until they got into the car.

Hartwell would step into her Nissan Pathfinder, shut the door, reach into a bag, pull out the gift and grin from ear to ear. “Look,” she’d say, pulling out another gift.

Carson would shake her head. “Regina, you didn’t have to do that.”

“I wanted to.”

 

 

Less than a month after they had begun dating, Regina’s birthday arrived, and Pam went to Austin for Regina’s usual birthday celebration, a party in a hotel suite. She gave Regina a lava lamp.

The following week it was Pam’s birthday. The day before her birthday, Regina picked Pam up at work and said, “Close your eyes.”

She took Pam to a hotel suite. “I’ve invited all your friends to come over tonight, and we’re gonna go out.”

But that night, before they went out, as they were dressing for the evening, there was a knock at the door. It was a delivery man with six dozen roses for Pam. An hour later, there was another knock at the door and there was another delivery, that time bunches and bunches of stuffed animals. Another hour later, champagne was delivered.

Then they sat down to dinner, and Regina said, “I have your birthday present.”

“You’re kidding me. What now?”

“Close your eyes.” Regina handed Pam a box. Inside was a gold and diamond tennis bracelet. The two girls had known each other less than a month.

God,
thought Pam,
I bought her a lava lamp for her birthday, and she buys me a thousand-dollar tennis bracelet. I’m a loser. Here’s this girl who’s coming down here, spending all this money, taking me out all the time, taking me shopping; I feel trapped.

She especially felt trapped to go to Europe with Hartwell. But Carson also liked Regina a lot; they got along. Regina made her laugh (at a vulnerable time), and they didn’t argue, not at all.

After a little over a month of dating, they finally consummated their relationship. It was then that Pam first noticed the dotted Swiss fabric of scars across Regina’s back.

 

 

“I wanta bring home a guy,” said Regina Hartwell.

“I don’t know about that, Regina. I’m kind of boring,” Carson answered.

“I just want to bring home a guy. You don’t have to do anything. I just think that would be cool. And you can watch.”

“Well, I’m not really into that.”

They settled for trips to Forbidden Fruit, an Austin sex-toy shop, and talked about moving in together.

“But you can’t bring your cats,” said Hartwell. “I’m allergic to them.” Her allergies bothered her contact lenses, and she was meticulous about her lenses.

“Well, if I move to Austin, you know I’m going to be very homesick without my cats,” said Carson.

“I’ll get you a little pet of some kind.”

“I want to name it Emmitt.”

They planned on moving in together upon their return from Europe.

 

 

Spring of 1993 came and the trip to Europe neared. Regina and Pam went to Houston to get Pam’s passport. They shopped at the Galleria, a high-scale shopping mall. Pam leaned across a railing and stared at the ice skaters a floor below, and Regina disappeared.

“Hey,” said Regina, excited, on her return. “I’ve found a whole roomful of Emmitts.”

They ran to Petland.

“Wouldn’t it be cute if we had a little puppy?” said Hartwell. She showed Carson all kinds of puppies. They narrowed their choices to two dogs in the same case—a pug, and a dachshund that looked like a Three Musketeers bar.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Hartwell. “I don’t know.” She was backing off from buying a dog after building up a puppy to Carson.

By then, Carson wanted that dachshund more than anything. That dog was Emmitt. “I’m not leaving this mall until you buy that dog for me,” she said.

So Regina bought Emmitt for Pam. It was a thousand-dollar dog.

 

 

But Regina Hartwell didn’t have the money to pay for a dog or a trip to Europe for four. Continuing her pattern of wooing the friends to “get the girl,” she had paid for tickets for herself, Pam, Brandy, and Brandy’s friend Carla Reid. She did so by requesting the cash from her trust officer, who gave it to her.

Hartwell then took Ynema Mangum, whom she still trusted, to the bank and placed Ynema’s name on Regina’s bank account so that she could pay Regina’s bills while Regina was in Europe. After Ynema’ s name was placed on the account, Regina turned to her and said, “If I die, well, whee, here you go.”

In May, Regina, Brandy, and Carla left for Europe. The plan was for Pam to join them later because she had to stay home for a while longer. She had to finish school and her father was ill.

But every day, Regina said the same thing. “I miss Pam. I’m miserable. I want to go back. I’m miserable.” After three weeks, Regina returned home.

In June, Hartwell flew back to Europe with Carson. Separated from Brandy Wynne and Carla Reid, they were together every day for five weeks, sharing an apartment in Milan without anyone else around. Every day, twenty-four hours a day, Regina and Pam were stuck together. Pam was ready to kill Regina.

Pam suddenly had doubts about moving in with Regina upon their return to Austin, but she kept hearing in her mind Fran Morgan’s words:
Oh, you’re just using Regina to go to Europe.

I’m not like that,
thought Pam.

But, it made her angry, and she refused to fulfill Morgan’s expectations. There was also another factor.

Regina Hartwell was dead broke and needed help. While they were gone, the rent money and bill money she had left her roommates had disappeared, but the bills remained there and unpaid. Her stereo had been pawned. Her house on Lambs Lane had been broken into.

Everything of value was stolen, including all of Mike White’s clothes. Trey Lyons’s clothes were left in a pile in the center of the bed—as if someone had interrupted the thieves in mid-burglarly. Bank statements were tossed about.

When White and Lyons cleaned up the house after the burglary, they looked at the statements. There were three accounts. One account had more than a million dollars in it. The other two had lesser amounts. When White added them together, the total came to more than $3 million.

But all of the cash Regina Hartwell was allotted for 1993 was gone—blown in Europe and on limos and on suites and roses and dogs and bracelets. She was behind three months in rent and bills.

Since Mike White’s clothes had been stolen, and Lyons’s had been left on the bed, everyone believed Lyons had been the burglar. Many considered Lyons to be not just a druggie and user of people, but also a fast-talking, very skilled, pathological liar. Some thought he stole often. Hartwell kicked Trey Lyons out, but he talked fast and hard and convinced her that Mike White had committed the theft.

White moved out, Lyons moved back in, and so did Pam Carson, to help her lover.

Mike White was arrested on a drug charge.

To this day, White doesn’t know if Regina Hartwell turned him in to the police. He does know that someone informed on him and that Hartwell liked to brag about things she may or may not have done. Regina bragged about turning him in to the police.

Regina Hartwell and Pam Carson moved to a house in the Travis Heights section of Austin. It was a two-bedroom, one-bath home with a big, wood-and-glass door that was covered with decorative wrought iron. It had hardwood floors, a small kitchen, a sitting room/sunporch with crank-glass blinds that opened to a beautiful, hilly backyard full of trees.

The women had two dogs, Spirit and Emmitt, a house full of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia, roommate Trey Lyons, and even closer access to the downtown club scene than they’d had before. Yet, Regina had less time in those days for barhopping. She had enrolled in Austin Community College and begun to work at the Bookstop bookstore.

But Hartwell was a woman of habit. She had four or five pairs of shoes that she wore over and over again. The same was true for blazers, and she only bought Gap or Gibraud jeans.

Her extravagances were T-shirts, cars, and perfume. She had a closet full of V-neck T-shirts. She went through almost one vehicle a year—the red 300 ZX, a Nissan Maxima rental, a Nissan Pathfinder, a pink Suzuki Samurai, a big Dodge Ram truck, and, later, a return to the Porsche 911 she had driven in high school.

She regularly went to Dillard’s department store at the local mall and bought three bottles of her favorite cologne—Bijan—at a time. She used a bottle a month, and her scent would fill a room long after she was gone.

That’s what Regina Hartwell wanted—for everyone to remember her long after she had gone. Perhaps that’s why the few clothes she had just disappeared so often—she gave them away to admirers so that they wouldn’t forget her kindness, generosity, loveability. Perhaps she didn’t think she’d need them. Regina Hartwell never thought she’d live past the age of thirty. That’d be too unlike her heros—her mother, Madonna’s mother, Marilyn Monroe. It’d be too unmemorable.

Living a quiet life in a quiet home with the woman she loved and a dachshund wasn’t memorable either. Constantly, rhythmically tapping out white lines on a bright, shiny mirror, in a disco with orgasmically pounding music and flashing lights, wiping the white dust from a Donna Karan blazer, clearing clogged nostrils with a slammer of Dom Perignon—that was more memorable.

The generous, tough, liquor-swilling, coke addict is what Regina Hartwell wanted everyone to see, to believe, because she thought it was cool and happening. Hanging with the so-called elite, the hip-hop crowd, the vampire people who came out only at night in black clothes and white makeup is what Regina Hartwell believed made her a better person, a more superior person.

Contorted truths of loveability are contrived in the mind of a child who rears herself. So Regina Hartwell and Pam Carson fought.

Often they fought about money.

“I’m sorry,” said Carson, “I don’t have the money. I give you all the money I have.”

“Why don’t you have the money?” yelled Hartwell.

“I give you my paychecks.” Carson didn’t have her own account; she and Hartwell just split their money.

“Well, if you hadn’t gone out drinking the other night, you’d have the money.”

“You gave me the money to go out. I’m sorry, but I don’t get a $1,000 a month free.”

“Well, I had to pay a price for that.”

“Well, I didn’t get any money when I lost my sister.”

 

 

What money Pam Carson had she worked hard for managing a video store. But with the managerial responsibility, she didn’t have as much time for Hartwell, and with the stress of work, she suffered migraines. Pam Carson just didn’t have the time or energy to party with Regina Hartwell.

So Regina found new party mates, Rose and Timothy Vreeland, a swinging married couple. The Vreelands were Pam’s and Regina’s friends. Then suddenly, Regina began referring to them as
her
friends. Just as suddenly, Regina was back into drugs, back out of work, back out of school, and back into ambidextrous sex. She had an affair with the Vreelands.

Ticked at Regina’s drugging and cheating, Pam went out with another woman. She also went home with that other woman, but nothing sexual happened between them. That didn’t stop Regina, though, from a jealous fury. Pam and Regina fought again.

“I’m leaving,” said Carson. She packed her things and went over to her friend’s house.

The next morning, Hartwell showed up at the friend’s. “I need to talk. I think I’m pregnant. I need you to stay,” she wept. “I’m pregnant. It’s Tim’s.”

“Are you sure?” said Pam.

“Oh, I know my body, and I’m pregnant.” Tears flooded down Regina’s face. “I need you. I’m really depressed right now.”

Carson felt bad for Hartwell.

“I need you to stay.” She wiped her cocaine nose.

Carson took Hartwell to get a pregnancy test, but deep down inside, she knew that Regina wasn’t pregnant. She knew that Regina lied to get her to stay. As many times as Carson had threatened to leave Hartwell, this time she was serious. And this time Hartwell knew that—that’s why Carson knew Hartwell had lied.

Pam Carson stayed.

 

 

Pam gave in to Regina’s desire to have a threesome with a man. “Why don’t we do it?” she said, and she and Regina brought home a guy. Pam thought they had all kinds of fun.

 

 

In February of 1994, birthday time and money time neared, and Regina Hartwell decided she wanted to buy her Porsche from her daddy. She and Pam Carson flew to Houston to get it.

“Please don’t tell him anything about me,” Pam pleaded the whole flight. Regina had told her about Mark Hartwell, and Pam was afraid he would verbally attack her. “Please, please don’t tell him anything about me.”

With a big smile on her face, Regina said to her father, “Well, Pam, she’s the youngest of twelve kids.”

“Oh, you’re a good Catholic girl, huh,” said Mark Hartwell, “a bee bumbler.”

Pam didn’t know what to say. She thought Mark Hartwell was a crude, arrogant bigot and sexist. He made her uncomfortable, and she couldn’t stand to be around him. She was so uncomfortable that she and Regina stayed that night in a hotel rather than be around Regina’s father.

 

 

For their actual birthday celebrations that year, Regina Hartwell played it low-key. She and Pam simply took some friends out to dinner. No hotel suite. No limos.

Regina was in a shockingly frugal phase. That phase lasted throughout the winter, the spring, and into mid-summer.

But in that spring, Pam Carson started seeing an old friend, Marion Casey.

“Look, Regina, you’ve got your friends, and I’ve got mine. I’m gonna see someone else,” said Pam. She and Regina still lived together, but Carson vowed to herself not to rub her affair in Regina’s face. After about a month, Carson and Casey had a falling out.

Hartwell took on her loved role as the good, comforting, consoling mother and was there for Pam. That tenderness created a bit of a reconciliation for the couple.

But Pam made it clear. “I’m still moving home, Regina. I want to go back to school. You and I are having so many problems, maybe distance would help.”

At the end of April of 1994, Pam helped Regina move into the Château apartment complex on South Lamar.

“Pam, I need to tell you something,” said Hartwell, as they toted boxes up the two flights of stairs to the apartment, a one-bedroom with gray carpet, pink tile, and a pink refrigerator.

“This is really going to freak you out, but I don’t have nearly as much money as everyone thinks I do. I’ve never really told anybody this, but I only have $285,000. That’s why I’ve been more frugal. I want to have children, and I really want to provide for my children. Don’t tell anyone. Please don’t tell anyone.”

Carson thought Hartwell was being honest for the first time in God knows when because she believed Hartwell wanted to put all games aside and get back together.

It didn’t work. Pam Carson moved back to San Antonio. She really did want to go back to school. She wanted to write, direct, produce; she wanted to make films. It was hard having dreams with Regina Hartwell by one’s side, controlling every move, even if she did control out of love and need.

 

 

But Regina Hartwell and Pam Carson continued to dance in and out of each other’s lives. They went down to the Gulf Coast together and took two male friends with them. On their return, Pam and Marion Casey, who both had moved to San Antonio by then, started to talk again.

“Are you seeing someone? Are you seeing someone? I know you’re seeing someone,” Regina panicked.

“No, I’m not,” said Pam. But on the weekdays, Pam saw Marion. On the weekends, she saw Regina.

Then Pam and Marion got serious again, and Pam confessed her returned affair.

Pam Carson and Regina Hartwell broke up one week before July 4th, 1994.

 

 

Regina Hartwell had a faint yearning for normality, so she enrolled again at Austin Community College, and she worked for two weeks as a receptionist in a mall hair salon.

She also slept a couple of times with a body-builder she’d met at one of the gyms she frequented. She had one or two other one-night stands with men. She was lonely; they showed her attention.

 

 

“Look at him,” said Jeremy Barnes to Regina Hartwell as they worked out at Big Steve’s Gym. “Boy, he’s cute. I could take him home.”

Barnes was a young, gay man whom Hartwell had befriended at the Château. He was a kindhearted, gentleman who had survived his own battles with drugs and the law. Just a few years older than she, he was working to get his life together. Hartwell respected him, and she loved him like a big brother. They made good laughs together.

Regina giggled at Barnes’s comment. “Well, that’s okay because I’ve already had him.”

Jeremy laughed back. He had never believed Regina Hartwell was completely gay. He thought she wondered if life would be easier if she were straight. Maybe it would be a normal life. If Regina were straight, then, maybe, she could have gotten along with her family.

Hartwell only told Barnes good stories about her mother—the contorted truths of kindness she had contrived in her mind. “We were very close. We were really good friends. But . . .” Regina’s voice trailed off, “I really wanted and needed a mother’s influence. Things would have been so much different if I had.”

She took another gulp of Shiner Bock beer. A bit dribbled down her T-shirt. Regina ignored it and stared out at the pool at the Château, a place where they had many of their talks.

They talked there and in his bedroom, friends chatting on the floor, or sipping coffee. That was their thing together. To sip coffee. To talk of dreams. Hartwell wanted to have a coffee bar. She would own it and Barnes would run it. That way, they could share coffee and talks everyday.

But Regina and Jeremy didn’t talk that much about her mother. He didn’t feel they needed to go to that tender place of pain because of how Regina felt about her mother. To him, there were a lot of childhood memories and feelings that just shouldn’t be spoken out loud. To talk about them, relived them, and, well, it’s best not to relive them sometimes. That’s what he believed.

Barnes wondered if that was why he and Regina bonded so well—they didn’t have to talk about those kinds of things. They just knew and understood what the other believed ... about loneliness, love, acceptance.

One day Barnes was playing some Christian music on his stereo when Hartwell walked in. He quickly punched it off, knowing her lifestyle, her partying to three, four, five a.m.

“Oh, no, no, don’t turn that off,” she said.

“But it’s Christian music.”

“It doesn’t bother me.”

From that point on, their bond grew stronger. Regina knew how he felt and from where he got his strength—Jesus Christ. And he knew who she really was—the little country girl who wanted to be noticed, but who couldn’t be if she were just a little country girl.

 

 

Regina and Jeremy argued only once, down by a railing at the Château. “You know what? I never can tell you anything without you arguing,” yelled Jeremy.

“Fine. You just don’t have to ever tell me anything again.”

Regina went up to her apartment and shut the door. Jeremy went to his apartment and shut the door. They didn’t speak for two days. On the third day, Jeremy was outside walking a neighbor’s dog. Regina looked out her window and saw him. She went outside.

“This is stupid. I love you, and we don’t need to be arguing like this. I’m really sorry.”

Jeremy started crying, Regina cried, and they hugged and made up.

 

 

Regina Hartwell didn’t have to think about her words. She knew what she wanted to say and got it out quickly. She also liked to have everything her way. And whatever she had to do to get her way, even if it meant paying for everyone, she would do it.

But if Hartwell didn’t like someone, she had enough friends that she could make everybody in the whole gay community hate that person. In spirit, at minimum, she ran the downtown Austin gay club scene. Money did that. Strong will did that. Hurt, rejection, abandonment did that. It made one tough.

If someone whom Regina didn’t like passed by her, she scrunched her face in a mask of disdain. But she could also love to the deepest pit of her lonely heart.

 

 

On July 4, 1994, Regina Hartwell jumped from bar to table to bar to table in Club 404 in downtown Austin. Nothing could keep her still. Madonna’s “Justify My Love” pulsated from a giant video screen. Strobe lights flashed and undulated in rhythm as if tripping on acid. Drag queens strutted in and out of the restrooms, their noses tipped with white powder. The room was pitch black.

Finally, Regina lighted at a table of partiers—young, trendy, beautiful partiers. Erasure flashed onto the video screen, then the Pet Shop Boys. Regina spotted Diva, the giant drag queen drug dealer. She jumped up to talk to him. He was more than six feet tall, stocky and looked—depending on the night—like a man dressed as a woman, or a gargantuan, ugly woman. Diva, despite numerous arrests for drugs, was a much better dealer than drag queen.