Close to Home

As my stocking feet move through the hall to Albert’s closet, I am keenly aware I am doing something unforgivable. Reaching onto the shelf, I peer at the tiny letters on the pharmaceutical bottles, looking for the sedative that starts with Z. Here it is. I can smell the persimmons ripening in the next room on the windowsill. Peeking past the threshold and around the piano, I see the ridiculous sign duct-taped below a procession of rotund, orange fruits awaiting their fate. Scrawled in black sharpie, the sign reads, “Do not partake in the persimmons!”

I stifle a chuckle and look around to make sure no one is awake. My roommate Theo plans to make persimmon bread with them, so he doesn’t want to share with the rest of us. Why does he think they are his persimmons? They belong to this household. And why do I find myself rooming with such an antisocial persimmon hoarder? Our 62-year-old autistic charge, Albert, is way easier to live with than Theo. I guess this caretaking roommate situation attracts some odd ones. But at least we don't have to pay rent.

I stand in my Hello Kitty pajamas just outside Albert's bedroom. As usual, his snoring could wake the dead. Maybe this is the worst thing I have ever done, or at least one of three. I am planning a loathsome act, but my body keeps moving towards its goal as if I am someone else.

The thing is, all of my Valium is gone, and I can’t stop obsessing about the fiddler. My feet and legs won’t stay still. My breath won’t slow down, and frankly, I’m stuck in a languishing black hell of despair. I keep wondering why he stopped loving me all of a sudden, even though it was months ago. Seeing the picture today in the Bay Guardian with his new band— Jed with his small, misshapen head, high cheekbones, and bushy eyebrows—I was reminded how lonely I am inside. I need to relax. Just half of one of these should knock me out. Am I really doing this? Yes, I am.

I’ve never done anything like this before, but I have imagined it many times. I need to get out of this feeling, just rest for one night. God forgive me.

I push the top of the plastic childproof lid, twist, and open. Four white ovals fall into my shaking hand, and I close my fist around them, twist the cap back on, and carefully place the bottle back on the shelf, making sure it is facing the same way. I didn’t mean to take four, but they just fell out, and I wanted to do this thing as quickly as possible. But Albert will notice if anything is different, just like he remembers how long traffic lights last at specific Berkeley intersections and what the weather was like the day you were born, if you were born after 1960. It was overcast and windy, with a 20% chance of rain on my birthday in Berkeley.

My genuine fondness for Albert seems to justify what I am doing right now. As if he were a beloved uncle, I imagine he will forgive me. But that’s pure crap, and part of me knows this. For a moment, I listen to him snoring in his room beneath the posters of the sexy 80s beer girls in miniskirts. I don’t think he will miss four pills, will he? Either way, this is shitty of me.

The bare light bulb above me illuminates my crime like a scene in a high school play. An untalented cast member, I act out the role of the drug thief badly. Anyone who saw this play would know I have no promise as an actress. Stilted and unnatural, I play the villain like I didn't study for it. Which I didn't, except in my head. But this is not just an act. I am a criminal of the worst kind, creeping about the house of an old autistic man who trusts me.

Now, I tiptoe back up the stairs to my room. It smells of self-tanning lotion, beer, and old creamy coffee thickening in mugs. Last month, I moved up from Albert’s basement to this sprawling master bedroom with a deck and a bathroom of my own. This was my lucky break because I had so many memories lurking in the basement to torment me. Memories of Jed. Like, I remember how we inhaled nitrous oxide from professional whipped cream canisters he bought from a baking store. He showed me how to inhale the gas from a balloon one night after my shift with Albert. Even though he'd already broken up with me, I wanted him to come over. Why would he propose this strange activity with me if he didn't miss me, didn't still love me, I reasoned?

We surrendered to the dizzy euphoria of the gas and lay back on the cheap single mattress, spent canisters littering the floor like shells on a battlefield. But I was in heaven just lying beside him again.

We moaned with pleasure beneath the low ceilings and dead-moth-covered light fixture. We melted into one being and found each other’s sweet spots. I remember his irresistible smell of beeswax, bow resin, and Old Spice. I can still feel his sinewy, hairless torso pouring itself over me amid the musty old books and sounds of the washing machine on the spin cycle on the other side of the wall.

God, I miss his corn silk hair brushing over my back and his soft, baggy jeans unbuttoned below his boxers. Jed’s eyes have not grown up, just as he has not developed much body hair, even though he is 26. His eyes are still a boy’s, and they held me with a rare vulnerability.

Damn it, I need to escape this feeling of emptiness, even if just for a few moments. It has not left me since he left me. All I ask from this pill is just one night’s sleep without the dreaded clutching shadows.

Turns out, my new normal is this constant, simmering panic. But I am dying within it like a slowly cooking lobster. I've been submerged in it since the morning after we did coke in the women's bathroom of Lucky 13, then devoured each other like well-paid porn stars on the drummer’s foldout futon after our show.

I was scared to do cocaine, but that night, he said, “Come on, Baby. I want to feel it with you. It might be fun to sing high.” So, we did and became powerful gods together on stage as we played and sang to the audience of mere mortals. But we were the ruthless kind of gods—the kind who don’t care about anyone else. Our sex afterward was like the end of the world. And it turned out it actually was the end.

In the morning, we took the bus back to the Richmond district and to our favorite breakfast diner way out by the beach. Jed chewed his ketchup-soaked hashbrowns over the gingham tablecloth with a dead man’s eyes, the back of his small, flat head reflecting in a giant jar of pimento-stuffed olives.

He looked into my face, and for the first time, I couldn’t find him in there. And I wondered, does he also have a head injury like his father? Is that why his head is so misshapen? That’s when he said he didn’t love me anymore. The seagulls screeched and stole food from each other on the concrete table outside the window. The rest of the gulls taunted me with their mimicry, screaming, “He doesn’t love you, he doesn’t love you.” Then, they flew off toward Stinson Beach. I can’t stand seagulls.

Stinson Beach: Before I drift off into oblivion, I want to tell you about that exquisite day last summer when Jed and I decided to be brave and venture out to the nude section. We were young and fearless and filled with joy after band practice. Jed’s Irish roommate Furlong handed us a little packet of treasures and released us onto the beach, high on the very best MDMA: the purple ones with a peace sign stamped on top. When we took off our clothes, we felt like models in a Maxfield Parish painting, thin and willowy and youthful. Especially compared to the rest of the overweight, hairy beach people. It surprised us that we were suddenly children, and it made us laugh as if we might actually be very old people who had suddenly found themselves young in a dream. We hadn't realized how we would look, all pale and hairless against the amber sand. Everyone stared, but we didn’t care. Men with tattoos holding hands, young frat boy types, and startled couples who thought they were the prettiest. Try again, couples, we thought simultaneously, laughing like naughty runaways.

I could feel the wind flowing heavenly between my thighs, tickling my nipples, my long hair flapping at my back like a horse's mane. And the warmth of Jed’s hand in mine, his fingers calloused from fiddle chords, felt like home and endless possibilty.

We chose a spot to lie down, and he drizzled me in soft sand as we smiled into each other’s eyes, listening to the Pacific tenderly tease the shore. Touching our eyelashes together, we laughed silently, only a twitch of humor in our eyes revealing that we were actually butterflies, and somehow, we both understood this. When he whispered in my ear, his voice was amplified and dreamy, like the sound inside a shell. I rested my head on his warm shoulder, brushing my lips over his salty collarbone.

That day, the sun reached down and ladled us with all the love left in the sky. But I know now that it forgot to save enough for later.

The moonlight floods my waxy room tonight, making the yellow walls greenish and undulating, a forest of mushrooms at the end of time. I put the pill on my tongue, head for the tiny mint-colored bathroom that hasn't been updated since the 50s, and flick on the light. In the mirror, I see the face of a sinful woman through the speckles of toothpaste. I am a bad person, yet I am glad this pill will release me into oblivion. On the surface, though, I appear innocent enough. Maybe even beautiful to some. I seem to become beautiful only when I am well-loved. Jed played me into the most beautiful creature for a couple of years before all the speed and coke and meth made him hateful and dead-eyed.

Ever since that morning at the diner, I’ve fantasized about plastic surgery. I want to change myself completely. I want to change the color of my hair, the shape of my nose, the color of my skin, the contour of my breasts. I want to be someone else because the other me is Jed’s girl, and she’s gone. So, I am a ghost.

Jed was a lost boy who came to San Francisco to find me and music. He ran like hell from so many demons in Spokane. His dad had fallen off a cliff, had a head injury that made him psychotic, and then killed himself with a revolver. His mother remarried and started a country family band with Jed, his half-brother and sister, and robot of a stepdad. Abuse and horror ensued. I tried to tuck Jed into my nest. I wanted to protect him like the brave pelicans fostering the gasoline-soaked hatchlings after the oil spill. Maybe he was still angry with the teenage bully back in Spokane who forced him into the tire swing. Maybe he wanted to take it all out on me in the end, steal something important from me so he wouldn’t feel like a victim anymore.

The blue-green eyes stare back at me as they have from mirrors for 26 years. I imagine how I might look with brown contact lenses and hair dye. A nose job? As I plan my plastic surgery, I wonder why I do not feel remorseful yet about taking Albert’s medication. I fill a smudged glass on the sink with water. Clinging to the Ivory sludge on the soapdish, a short, blond hair summons my attention. Jed's. I pull it off and flick it into the toilet like a poisonous spider.

Swallowing the pill with a cool gulp, I stare at myself some more, planning the new shape and size of my breasts, looking forward to sleeping soon, to forgetting. Looking forward to the kind, warm man in my bed who is patient with my grief so far. But he’s got to get sick of it soon. Hell, I’m sick of it myself. My new boyfriend, Raul, moves about his life undamaged and fearless. Not an oil-soaked pelican, but a raptor in flight. I am confused as to why he has chosen such a bereft and melancholy girl like me. He will figure out how jaded and glass-half-empty I have become sooner or later. But for now, he is a lovely, warm comfort who likes me well enough, I think.

The old pine floor sighs and creaks beneath my feet, scolding me like a mean sister. I walk past the bed where Raul sleeps and out the door onto the deck. The night is cool and luminous around me. The yard hums with life below, and I see a dark bird lift its wings from a persimmon branch and fly off toward the bay. I can see the glimmers of Berkeley below, the pier jutting out into the water where Jed and I kissed and held onto each other like kites about to blow away.

Oakland pulses in the distance. Mount Tamalpais looms into the dark, oily sky. I can see the arch of the Bay Bridge and even the Golden Gate Bridge disappearing into the night clouds as if I am already dreaming. The intricate cluster of city lights twinkles like an expensive brooch hanging on the lapel of Market Street, where I know Jed is playing fiddle with his new band. I imagine him feeling up hot bartenders and flirting with their new singer. Oh god. Please let this sedative kick in.

The dark water beckons and stirs, bathing the beaches in a deathly black oil. So tempting those endless waters are for sad poets and pelicans. The midnight shroud of time washes around the cities and islands. I think I can see the shadow of Alcatraz way out in the water, and it reminds me of Jed and his little brother playing Beatles covers for the Fisherman’s Warf tourists waiting to board the whale-watching schooners. My mantra returns heavily, with unwavering desperation: Why did he leave me? I am unlovable.

I remember how we strode through the galleries in Union Square, gusts of our young madness and desire flapping against our bodies, our loose clothes clinging to lean limbs that couldn’t untangle themselves from one another. He made me climax on a cream-colored leather sofa in one of the high-end galleries, surrounded by jagged paintings in prime colors. Did they have security cameras? we wondered as we laughed and drank tequila on his fire escape later, the frying smells of the taqueria pillowing around us.

Like windblown children, we flew along the San Francisco sidewalks, caught in a magnificent dream in which we followed only our own rules. The more time and olive oil on hand, the happier we became. The more transcendent our lovemaking, the more messes we made of everything. But we were part elfin when he murmured the poetry of his thoughts to me as we fell asleep, our feet comingling in the way that made me know I could never leave him. Those murmurations were only half-anchored in this world. Half anchored like his wild fiddling under the spell of the warm lights and lamb stew at Foley’s. Why would he turn his music, Norwegian eyes, and long, sweet torso away from me forever?

Not to worry. Albert’s strong sedative will overtake me soon, and I will finally sleep deeply and escape the loveless world, at least for a time. I breathe in one last dollop of night air and glimpse Sweet Cakes, my bunny, literally jumping and twirling below in the ivy. If a bunny can dance in the moonlight, all is not lost. I open the door to the bedroom, lift the quilt, and slip inside the sheets beside Raul. He smells of cinnamon, IPA, and faint cigarettes. His manly heft comforts me, and the shape of his head is solid and beautiful, like a Viking's. He slides his furry arm around my waist, and I wait.

Though I am grateful for Raul, I feel nothing but a mounting fear, so I put my hand in my pajama pocket and take out two more pills, pop them in my mouth, and spontaneously wash them down with Raul’s longneck on the nightstand. The warm beer lingers in my mouth as I close my eyes and listen to the sounds of Raul's breathing. A distant car honks down on Montclair Ave. An owl calls to its lover from a neighbor’s backyard, but there is no response from its mate. The heat vents make strange sounds like scuttling waterfowl inside the wall. I gulp down the rest of the beer before I begin to sink into a vanquished half-sleep, welcoming all the poisons into me for their mighty party.

All of a sudden, I wake with vivid anguish alive inside me. My dreams writhe and twist themselves into a bleak, searing consciousness. But the feeling of the dream has been eclipsed by some kind of soul-thieving trick. I try to escape it by yanking myself further awake. But the nightmare bares down, keeping me prisoner in a false, neutered version of my dream. My mouth is parched. I have to pee desperately.

“Raul, help me,” I say. The digital clock screams 3:58 AM in red. An insatiable thirst seizes and chokes me. My bladder may explode. I lunge for the bathroom and release what seems like gallons of pee from my dissociated body. Something is wrong with my brain. My thoughts are someone else’s. I don’t like this person trying to be me. With horror, I realize it is not just a dream. It is real.

“Help me, please, Raul,” I moan from the bathroom again, a quiet panic mounting.

Raul’s muscular form rolls over and breathes heavily. He is hot and moist, and now I am back beside him, leaning over him. He smells grainy and pungent, like a rabbit hutch. I think I am going to vomit. He does not wake up.

I moan louder. “Raul, help me!”

He grunts and twists. “Hmmm? What?”

“I took Albert’s sedative. But I feel sick. I think I’m going to be sick.”

Raul sits up and shakes himself awake. “What?” he shouts. The burgeoning anger in his voice alienates me. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I know, I know. I'm an asshole. I just wanted to take a half of one because I, because I—”

“How could you? Why?”

“Because I was so anxious, I couldn't stop my thoughts. But, I— ”

“What the fuck? Have you lost your mind?”

I have never seen Raul so angry.

“You stole his medication?” he says.

“Yes.” I am ashamed, in a strange empty way, and crying.

“You took half of one?”

“No. I took three.” Raul stares at me in horror and doesn’t move for a second or two.

“Jesus. He is an autistic man in your care. Do you realize how serious this is? What were you thinking?”

“I don't know.”

I am crying but don’t feel any clear emotion. It’s almost like I'm pretending to cry, but the tears are real, and I sob uncontrollably, like a young goat in complicated labor. I am brimming with grief, but having no soul now, I remain halfway impartial. It’s part of what is suddenly wrong with my brain.

“Alfred is 300 pounds at least. You are, what, 100, 105? Are you trying to kill yourself?” Raul shakes his head and wipes the sleep from his eyes.

“No,” I say, whimpering. “Please help me. I think I might have taken the wrong pills. I feel so weird. Like, my thoughts are being cut off.” As I say this, the thought slices off in mid-thought. The meaning within the words is reduced to the simplest, most basic association, devoid of nuance as if my soul rips out of me repeatedly with each thought. Ideas emerge, and then an invisible villain inside me zaps them of meaning.

Raul stares at the floor, stunned. “Okay, okay, but what the fuck? So, you took three of what you thought was a sedative. What do you think it is?”

Immediately, I understand my mistake. “I think I took Zyprexa," I say. "Albert takes a sedative when he gets anxious or starts flapping, but maybe I took his antipsychotic by mistake.” When I say this, I am sure it is true. I mixed up the Zyprexa with the Xanax. Damn it. What have I done? In my haste to close the bottle, I forgot that Xanax starts with an X, not a Z. I took a triple dose of Zyprexa, an antipsychotic for a 300-pound man.

My heart thumps violently. I feel the drug trying its best to sabotage my thought process. It's working overtime on my petite body, like it thinks I am psychotic and wants to stop each thought from creating itself.

“Help me, Raul, I plead. "Help me, please.” I don’t want to tell Raul I took my last two Valiums a couple of hours before the Zyprexa. With gathering dread, I realize it might kill me.

“Raul," I say sheepishly. "I took some Valium earlier. I might need to go to the hospital.”

“Oh my god. Oh my god," he says, hurling the blankets off the bed. "How many, exactly, did you take? Holy shit!” Raul grabs my shoulders, sits me up in the bed, and shakes me.

The kitschy chandelier above the bed glimmers gold in the lamplight, and I imagine we are in a Miami hotel lounge drinking pina coladas. But then, my take on the scene ends abruptly. The drug must think this observation is psychotic, so it puts an end to my thoughts. I cannot enjoy the sensory poetry of the moment because of the Zyprexa. The drug is at war with my creativity. I imagine I must write a story about this, but then that thought is sliced off as if the drug believes the notion is psychotic. The Zyprexa is a spy who wants to stifle creative thought, a Soviet spy who wants to control my thinking for evil purposes. But, the drug swiftly robs me of this scenario.

Clearly, I'm not drunk. I'm sharp as a blade. But I'm nauseated and marooned in the lobotomized hell of Zyprexa. It swoops in with each thought, slices it off, yanks it away from me, and flings it out of existence. Zyprexa steals my soul out of every thought.

“I took two Valium at about seven," I say, falling back onto the duvet and staring at the cottage cheese texture on the ceiling. "But they didn’t seem to do anything.”

Raul leaps out of bed and rummages in his jeans for his phone, gasping for breath. His face is flushed, his eyes incensed. I watch his lovely tan forehead beneath a chestnut shock of hair. I notice how it glistens like the dark glass from a Dr. Pepper bottle, but then this thought is sliced off because it is too poetic for the drug to allow. The Zyprexa rushes in to save me from my own poetic musings.

The drug can’t think, I remind myself. How could it make me soulless? But it feels like it's punishing me. Then I realize, of course, this is my penance. It's punishing me because I stole medication from sweet old Albert. My soul must be vacuumed out of me.

Raul squints at his phone, then searches the internet for a number. “I’m going to call an emergency poison line,” he says. Then, he looks at me differently, his left eye twitching. “Should I call a suicide hotline?” With a gesture of sad shock, he scribbles numbers on the back of a college loan statement. He doesn't know me. I don’t know myself.

“No, I wasn’t trying to kill myself! I just wanted to relax. I promise.” I cry in long, barn animal sobs, folding over the bed. I begin to hyperventilate. My hands tingle with sharp pinpricks. I knead them, grasping for an anchor to pull me back into myself.

Raul is on the line with someone from the suicide hotline.

“My girlfriend just took a bunch of medication,” he says in a flat, hostile voice.

“But I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” I yell from the bed.

“Yes, here she is.” Raul hands me the phone. I take it from him reluctantly, wiping mascara streaks off my face onto my pajama sleeve.

“Yes?” I say nervously. “Just so you know, I’m not trying to kill myself. I think I took the wrong thing. Zyprexa. I meant to take Xanex.”

The man on the line is the antidote of the drug for a few minutes. He speaks to me in a friendly, calm way. I love him. But the love is severed by the drug. The man does not scold or berate me, even when I say the medication is not prescribed to me. This is a great relief after Raul’s disgust and gall. The kind, intelligent man asks me how much I weigh, how many milligrams I took of the Valium and the Zyprexa. Did I drink any alcohol? He says I should drink as much water as possible and call 911 if I get sicker.

“Could I die?” I ask, and Raul’s face crumples in the lamplight. But the word “crumples” is suddenly yanked away. I thought it about Raul’s face because the word is comforting poetry amidst this purgatory, but the Zyprexa whisks it away. The man tells me I will probably be okay, but the feeling might last throughout the next day. The idea that this will last even five more minutes horrifies me.

For the rest of the night, I am hellishly wide awake. Each thought becomes lobotomized as I try to think. Nothing can complete itself into any meaningful conclusion. Every observation becomes deadened and desiccated. The violets in the tiny glass vase I picked in the yard earlier have no beauty. When my mind tries to enjoy them, the drug destroys my mental description of them and their subtle beauty. Love and art become efficiently snuffed out of each thought. I try to remember Sweet Cakes dancing in the ivy, but the thought ends with no epiphany.

It is morning now. I cannot get enough water into my body. I pee every five minutes, gallons, it seems. We are scheduled to visit the Museum of Modern Art with Raul’s visiting Aunt Eleanor from Maryland.

“Should we cancel?” Raul asks. “We need to get you feeling better.”

“But I can’t stay here having each thought lobotomized,” I say desperately. “I have to do something to distract me. Maybe we should go.”

So, we drive silently across the Bay Bridge to the MOMA. Then, as we stroll through the museum with Raul’s aunt, I imagine I might appear normal to her in my suede high-heeled boots and green sweater dress. But, in reality, I am a different person with truncated thoughts that go nowhere. When I look at a Rothko painting, I only see ugly shades of paint smudged on a canvas. When I see a Frank Gheery, I see pointless silly scrawls in pink and orange. And then I have to pee again, five times, ten times. I go to the drinking fountain and drink until the people in line behind me begin to fidget and heave sighs of annoyance. I smile at Aunt Eleanor and say some of the right things: “Jasper Johns so perfectly embodies the minimalist movement of that time, don’t you think?” But the Zyprexa keeps me from seeing anything as beautiful or meaningful because it assumes those thoughts are psychotic.

At last, I begin to feel sleepy on the drive home. Before I doze off, as we cross over the bay, I watch the industrial machines that inspired George Lucas to create the Imperial Walkers for Star Wars. I am happy that the Zyprexa lets me enjoy the Imperial Walkers a little longer than I expect it will. The sun dims and we listen to Purple Rain on the radio as my eyes close. I remember seeing that movie at the Burnsville Town Theater when I was 14 and wondering what it would be like to dance with Prince. Thankfully, the drug does not interrupt this memory and lets me listen to the song in cautious reverie. I pray this means I might have part of my soul back, at least for now.

I sleep. As we stop at a light on Telegraph Ave., my eyes open to see Raul’s face staring down at me. I am shocked by the concern in his eyes, by how much he seems to genuinely care about me, even maybe love me a bit. He does not say anything. Before he shifts gears, he puts his large, warm hand on my knee and squeezes gently. He nods his head and looks back at the road. We speed past the long-legged Philippino college girls and incense vendors. We pass Cody’s Book Store, and I remember eating a chocolate chip cookie made by Wolfgang Puck after his cookbook reading.

The cherry trees are beginning to snow their petals down on the sidewalks like a pale magic carpet. I want to ride it to a place where my thoughts are free again. I don’t even care if it is a place without Jed this time. I notice that this thought is fully allowed to form and ebb, which is a good sign on all fronts. I think the Zyprexa has begun to loosen its choke hold. At the next light, Raul looks into my eyes, and I imagine we are close to home.