Idiot Page 11

  I actually never saw it, but one of my friends was studying abroad in Spain and called me to tell me she had seen me on TV. Pretty cool.

  I mean, I got lucky booking the first audition I ever went on. In an instant, I was making money and became SAG eligible. My first thought was WOW! THIS IS EASY. I would come to realize that making it as an actor was far from easy. But having my foot in the door felt amazing.

  Rudolf was this huge positive influence in my life. With his help, I had stopped using hard drugs, stopped partying like I used to, and started to get healthy.

  There was really only one bad thing about dating Rudolf. It was Comet’s mother.

  Rudolf had adopted Comet with his ex-girlfriend as a last-ditch effort to save their relationship, I’m sure. It didn’t work, but it did successfully keep her in the picture. After Rudolf and I had moved in together, he told me, “Laura. Today at ten a.m., my ex-girlfriend will be coming over to pick up Comet. She would like to meet you if you are comfortable with that.”

  This was so weird. I didn’t want to meet his ex-girlfriend. I didn’t get why I had to. “You do not have to if you do not want to,” he repeated. But she wanted to meet me?

  “What’s her name?” I asked.

  “Sugar.”

  Stop it. Rudolf and Sugar? Were they gonna go save Christmas?

  I said yes, partly because I didn’t know how to say no to things and partly because I wanted to see if she was prettier than me. I sat on the couch nervously, holding Comet like a hostage.

  At ten a.m. she walked in. She was tall, but not as tall as me, with long brown hair and crazy eyes. Her eyes looked like she was trying to move things with her mind at all times.

  She walked straight past me.

  I hung on to Comet like I was an insecure adoptive mother, prepping him to meet his birth mother. “I raised you! I cared for you when she didn’t want you!”

  I told myself, Laura, calm down, this is your house. You live here now. She wanted to meet you. She’s going to be nice.

  “Rudolf, dear, make me some tea.”

  She stalked back into the living room and sat directly across from me, still frozen on the couch. She targeted her crazy eyes at my soul.

  “So, Laura. Will I ever get to see what Rudolf sees in you?”

  What? I didn’t know how to respond to that. I didn’t know how to do this! I composed myself and willed myself to answer the question. Show her who’s boss, Laura.

  “Probably not.”

  Damn it! Not a great answer. She looked smug as she decided I was an idiot.

  Rudolf walked in with the tea. I gave him a look that said spill that fucking tea on her. Then he handed her the tea. Come on, Rudolf. Whose team are you on?

  She sipped some tea, pinky out, ready to jab someone in the eye with all that class.

  “It’s hot,” she complained.

  “It’s tea.”

  I laughed. Because I laugh when I’m uncomfortable out of my mind. She glared at me, as if I had just laughed at her funeral and she was deciding the best way to haunt me for the rest of my life.

  I clarified, “Tea is supposed to be hot.”

  She put her cup down.

  “Laura, are you accusing me of not knowing what tea is?”

  The crazy eyes looked like they were trying to telepathically slam my body against a wall. “Do you THINK I don’t know what TEA is?” she repeated.

  “I . . .” I looked at Rudolf. He was sweating, speechless, not expecting this to have gone so badly. Poor Rudolf expected the best from both of us. But really, WHO WOULD HAVE EXPECTED that a current girlfriend meeting an ex-girlfriend could have been tense? *millions of hands raise*

  “Laura knows you know what tea is, Sugar! It’s dried leaves steeped in—” Rudolf stammered.

  “I have to go.” I stood up. I ran like I always do. I didn’t know how to talk to her. I knew how to escape. I went straight to my sister’s house. Oh God, Rudolf and Sugar were going to exchange Comet every two weeks.

  Two weeks later I was out at a café with my sister. Rudolf called to say that Sugar was coming over to get Comet again, and that I should stay out for thirty more minutes if I didn’t want to run into her. I said okay, thanks for letting me know, and hung up the phone.

  My sister stared at me. “Let’s go.”

  “Why the hell would we ever do that?”

  “I want to meet the bitch who made my sister cry.” And she was off walking toward my apartment. I followed her.

  We waited on the porch steps, and my anxiety was increasing. I didn’t want this. Nope nope nope. Colleen, on the other hand, was psyching herself up like a boxer before a prizefight.

  “Can we go, please?”

  But it was too late. Sugar stalked up the walkway, glaring at me with the anger of a thousand rich white ladies demanding to speak to the manager.

  “Hello, Laura.”

  I ignored her.

  She got louder. “Hello, LAURA—”

  Colleen popped up and said “Hi, I’m Colleen,” in what I’m sure she imagined to be a very menacing tone. To anyone else, she sounded friendly. Sugar smiled and shook her hand.

  “Finally, someone with some class.”

  Colleen looked at me and used her pants to wipe off the hand Sugar had touched.

  Rudolf was walking over to us from his car. When he saw all three of us on the porch, he moved his legs much faster. Sugar broke the silence.

  “Rudolf, why did you invite me over when this stupid bitch was here?”

  That was IT. NO ONE calls me a stupid bitch except me to myself in the mirror.

  “You need to get the fuck out of my apartment now!” I yelled.

  Rudolf was sprinting over at this point. She looked at me with her crazy eyes. Classic Sugar. However, she took classic Sugar to another level by hissing:

  “I’m gonna break your legs.”

  What the fuck? I was terrified. I stepped back, and she quickly grabbed my head and yanked out a chunk of my hair. MY HAIR. She started to wave it back and forth, rhythmically chanting, “I’m gonna make sure you never walk again.”

  At this point I was screaming, “You’re the devil! You’re the devil!”

  Rudolf finally found his words. Unfortunately, they weren’t very good ones. “Sugar, NO. NO, Sugar. You give her back her hair. You cannot do that Sugar, give Laura back her hair.”

  I swung open the door to the apartment and ran inside. I locked myself in the bathroom. Comet ran inside there with me at the last minute. I glared at him.

  “Why did you do this, Comet? Make Sugar go away.” Comet just stared at me with his little eyes and then slumped over to the side and licked his asshole.

  The messy and unsatisfying epilogue to this story is the following: Two weeks later, Sugar called Rudolf and told him she was going to kill herself, so he had better come over and pick up the dog. She was very unstable. Rudolf rushed over to find Sugar with a knife pressed to her own throat. He called the police, and she went to a mental institution for a while, until she got out and started breaking my car windows every so often.

  I never spoke to her directly again because obviously conflict avoidance always helps with everything. Right? *nervous laughter*

  I mostly tried not to think about her. But when I did, I wondered what Rudolf ever saw in someone so needy and unstable. Maybe he thought he could help her, kind of like . . . he was trying to help me.

  Life eventually settled down again, and when it did, so did Rudolf and I. We got into this lovely, positive . . . stifling rhythm. We got up early. We exercised. Rudolf was close with Colleen and we had these lovely dinner parties that were healthy and fun. Colleen moved into a studio apartment down the street from us. I was getting my career on track because of him. He was so brilliant and sweet and encouraging and everything was right. But it didn’t feel right at all.

  He wanted kids and a family. He wanted us to start a life together because I was the one for him. But in reality, I didn’t know w
ho the fuck I was yet. I was nineteen, for God’s sake. He was thirty-seven. I was not having kids yet. The more he pushed for stability, the more I’d pull away. I knew I wanted to break up with him.

  Unfortunately, my nineteen-year-old brain didn’t know what words to use to break up with someone, or how to say them. So instead I avoided the problem, hoping he would break up with me eventually. My drinking worsened. My drug use worsened. My escapism worsened. As much as we wanted it to, addiction doesn’t just go away by ignoring it. As much as he and I both wanted me to just be healthy, I was still an addict. And I was finding ways to hide it from him.

  It wasn’t a conscious decision, but I knew that the part of me that Rudolf hated the most was the part of me stuck in my addiction. He tried every day to squash that, and he even got me to stop hard drugs. So if I were to amplify that deeply impulsive, unhealthy, toxic Laura . . . he would have no choice but to leave me. Deep down, that horrible part of my brain thought that this was what I deserved.

  I would stay out all night, and in the morning Rudolf would be upset, but he would quickly forgive me. He knew something was wrong and he wanted to help, but I felt myself being pulled away by the hand of my addiction.

  One night I came home at eight a.m. to him blasting “(You’re the) Devil in Disguise” by Elvis. He wasn’t even home. He just had it on repeat, loud enough for all the neighbors to hear. I remember thinking this was way more embarrassing than the fact that I was coming home at eight a.m. multiple nights a week.

  That was his worst. Rudolf was a sweet, sweet man.

  I tried to zero in on a way to break up with him, but I couldn’t think of one thing he did wrong. And that’s the only way to break up, right? To be deeply betrayed by a horribly toxic person so there’s nothing left to salvage between you two?

  Since Rudolf was not going to be that person, I would have to step up. What a cross to bear, what a sacrifice. You’re welcome, everyone.

  I was out one night on Sunset Boulevard and I met an Irish guy. His name was Kevin. Or Devin. We were both very drunk.

  “Wanna go to Mexico?” he asked after thirty minutes of talking to me.

  “Ummmm. Yeah, I do. Let’s go.”

  I picked him up the next afternoon. In the cold light of day, I tried really hard not to regret everything I’d ever done to lead me to this moment. He had an angry face, with eyebrows that looked perpetually mad. He sighed like everything took way too long for him. He had a weird scar next to his eyebrow that looked like he got a bad piercing, felt self-conscious about looking gay, and then took it out.

  Maybe I was projecting a lot of bad things onto him, but also he sucked. He was so condescending. On the way down, he found a bag of ecstasy in my glove compartment and became infuriated.

  “Do you KNOW how much trouble we could get in for having this when we cross the border? Do you KNOW we could go to Mexican jail? I’m throwing this out.”

  Can we ignore for a second the fact that I forgot I had a bag of drugs in my glove box? Kevin was a prick. Of course I would pick the worst guy in the world to trek into another country with. I swerved my car, trying to grab the bag back from him.

  “DON’T THROW AWAY DRUGS. DON’T! I’ll put them up my vagina if I have to.”

  He threw them away. I wanted to punch him in the face.

  We kept fighting about everything. Where to actually turn (MapQuest was not in business, you guys), what music to play on the radio (I wanted hip-hop like a sane adult and he wanted Nine Inch Nails), and whose soda got to be in the cup holder (my car, my drink). There were some red flags.

  But I kept driving.

  We stopped in San Diego for the night at some seedy motel near the beach. I’d had enough of him at this point. I wasn’t trying to get out of my near-marriage so that I could fight like a married couple with this random asshole. Ugh. He got some whiskey for us to drink in the room. It was becoming clear that we both had issues with alcoholism. But as much as I loved to drink, I hated being there with him more.

  “I’m taking a walk,” I told him.

  Kevin didn’t answer; he was either swigging some whiskey down or giving me the silent treatment. I slammed the door on my way out.

  The beach was cold and dark, so I couldn’t even see how beautiful it was or reflect on my life or some shit. It was just pitch-black. I kept walking.

  A guy approached me. He was wearing a snapback with a muscle tee and boardshorts. Finally, the San Diego party I wanted.

  “Um, hey. Me and my buddies are having some beers in the garage over there. Want to join?”

  Okay, let’s see here. A strange group of men in a garage . . . at two in the morning . . . near a pitch-black beach . . . with beer. Beer!

  “Hell yeah, I do.”

  He motioned his arm like SCORE as he led me over to the two other guys in the garage. That’s right, I WAS a score. I deserved to be hanging with guys more fun than fucking Kevin.

  I sat down with the two other guys, both of whom were also in muscle tees and boardshorts (come on, guys, the sun went down seven hours ago). Bro #1 handed me a beer.

  I sipped it. For the first time, it didn’t feel good. It didn’t put me at ease. It wasn’t strong enough. I drank faster. I grabbed another, gulped it down, not realizing it was empty until I was shaking the bottle over my mouth. I lowered the bottle, embarrassed. I felt the guys looking at me.

  I looked around the garage. Zip ties. Pliers. Duct tape. These things are always in garages, right? I’m being paranoid, right? Bro #3 was smiling at me and breathing through his mouth.

  What the hell am I doing?

  I looked down at my legs. I didn’t have pockets. I didn’t have a key to my motel room. I didn’t have a phone. What the hell was I doing here?

  “What time is it?” I asked, feigning genuine curiosity rather than looking for a distraction to GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE.

  “It’s just three o’clock, dude-brah,” said Bro #1 or #2. The creeping, warm buzz was taking me over and the Bros were meshing together into one Super-bro.

  I needed to fight the buzz.

  As the world started becoming the round, warm, spinning place that I liked, I smiled at Bro #1, #2, and #3, and slowly placed my bottle next to me on the floor. No sudden movement. No sudden movement. Be subtle.

  So obviously, I fucking sprang up like a jack in the box and RAN. Bro #1 ran over to the garage door closer and smashed the button.

  The door started rolling shut. FUCK.

  My Liam Neeson senses kicked in and I fucking slid under the door before it closed. I kept running.

  One of the Bros slid after me just before the garage door shut. I prayed it was the mouth breather, because maybe he would keel over from an asthma attack. Wait, does mouth breathing correlate with asthma? FOCUS, LAURA!

  Something whizzed past my head and shattered on the concrete. He had hurled his beer bottle, just missing my head. I ran. I ran as fast as I could. I didn’t look back to see if he was there. I didn’t think.

  I made it back to the motel, so out of breath I could vomit. I was shaking. I hurriedly pushed the doorknob. Fuck—the key. Kevin had the only key. I banged on the door with all my might. I screamed. “OPEN THE DOOR! OPEN THE DOOR NOW!”

  No answer. I hit harder, over and over again. My knuckles were raw, my voice was hoarse. He wasn’t answering. Where the fuck did he go?

  I leaned against the door, any semblance of hope drained from my body. Okay, let’s assess the situation. I looked around. The Bro chasing me was nowhere to be found: he either gave up or got distracted by something shiny. There was no lobby or receptionist to talk to. So glad we chose the shittiest motel ever. Fuck.

  I looked across the street. There was another motel with the light on, a receptionist on duty. I wiped my fucking eyes and walked across the street.

  It was a sister motel to the one I was staying at. The receptionist got out a key, walked across the street, and unlocked my door for me.

  There was Kevin, laying on
the bed. Pretending to be asleep.

  PRETENDING.

  TO BE.

  ASLEEP.

  I yanked him out of bed by the ear and smacked him. I’m sure the motel receptionist backed out of the room, not wanting to have to yet again deal with two alcoholics having a domestic dispute at three a.m.

  I told him I wasn’t going to Mexico anymore. I was not. I was DONE. I didn’t tell him what happened. Kevin claimed he was really sleeping. He said he was sorry. He told me we had to go to Mexico, that it would be fun.

  I don’t know what part of my brain believed him, but the next day in the morning, we were back in the car, driving to Mexico. Maybe I knew that crossing the border would be crossing the line for Rudolf.

  The worst part is that it wasn’t even fun.

  I know what you’re thinking. “Oh, Laura, wasn’t the worst part of this every other thing that happened?” NO. The worst part was that it fucking sucked balls and I was with someone I didn’t get along with and we fucking threw away my ecstasy.

  Kevin might have had fun, I don’t even remember. I made my way to a payphone (because this was the 1800s) and called Rudolf. He answered on the first ring and didn’t even ask who it was.

  “Laura. Where are you?”

  “I’m in Mexico.”

  There was a long pause. We both sounded so tired.

  I dropped Kevin off at the airport and had to talk myself out of purchasing a flight to anywhere other than Rudolf’s apartment. I went home.

  Rudolf opened the door and I got what I wanted.

  He told me to leave.

  Yay.

  * * *

  After that, I did end up booking a flight somewhere else. But it wasn’t to some far-off place to escape. I went home to Chicago. My mom had cookies waiting for me. I ate four cookies that I definitely did not deserve.

  Years later I found out that Sugar was from a town ten minutes from my own. We grew up next to each other. We probably passed each other at Target, picking up bath towels with our moms. I found out that she had moved home, too, after hitting rock bottom. She committed suicide in the house she grew up in. She was trying to escape, just like me.