Idiot Read online

  But then, a few hours later he called back:

  “Hey Laura! Come out to New York so I can shoot you!”

  “I can’t just come out to New York. I’ve met you once!”

  I’m not that impulsive. But apparently, he was. He started calling . . . every day. Multiple times a day.

  It was always variations of: “I’m in New York, I still want to shoot with you! Come out here!” over and over again.

  My family was starting to get annoyed. On one particular day, Damon had called four times, leaving a voice mail each time, as if we needed to be reminded what his call was regarding. My family had just sat down for a formal TV dinner and then . . . RINGGGGGGGG—

  My dad, mom, and sisters all glared at me.

  Colleen took a bite of corn on the cob. “I wonder who that is?”

  My dad grumbled, “No one. Touch. That. Phone.”

  RRIIIIINNNGGGGG.

  We kept eating in silence until my dad got up, picked up the receiver, and yelled, “STOP CALLING, YOU PUNK! . . . mhmmm. Right. Fine.”

  He hung up the receiver. “Some brand-new, never-heard-before information. Damon wants you to go to New York.”

  I know what you’re thinking. “This dude sounds crazy, Laura! Block his number!” Hey, I hear you loud and clear. But at the time I thought Damon was harmless. It was flattering, really, that he wanted to photograph me! Not a red flag at all.

  A few days later, Colleen and I got into a huge fight. I had worn one of her favorite shirts and “covered it with red wine.” I replied, completely factually, that her stupid face was the very reason I DRANK the red wine so who’s really to blame here. . . .

  Now, I have NO IDEA WHY, but our civil, factual conversation turned into a yelling match. It wasn’t my fault! A.K.A. it was completely my fault! But suddenly, in the middle of it all, Colleen yelled this:

  “I wish you would just leave!”

  I clenched my jaw and said, “Well I don’t want to be here!”

  “You know what?? You should go to New York. Just fucking GO. Just LEAVE.”

  “Fine!!! I will go! Can I borrow money for a ticket!”

  “Yes! Gladly!!”

  It took me a second to realize what I had just agreed to. Shit. She bought me a one-way ticket to New York and I said the most menacing “thank you” I could muster up. I packed a bag, including her wine-stained shirt just to salt the wound a little. I guess I was going to New York.

  I called Damon back. “Okay, I’m coming. I’ll be there in a week.”

  There was a long pause on the phone . . . until I heard him say . . . “What??”

  He really wasn’t expecting me to come. Whatever. It was going to be fine!

  A week later, I passed my parents on my way out. My mom was reading in the dining room and my dad was sitting in his La-Z-Boy, watching CNN with a clenched fist.

  “Bye, Mom, I’m going to New York to be a model.”

  “Okay honey, have fun!”

  My dad chimed in, too. “You’re going to kill it; you’re gorgeous.”

  I yelled louder, for my sister to hear. “BYE, EVERYONE. I’M OFF.”

  She yelled back. “Don’t fuck it up!”

  I had one suitcase, one plane ticket, forty dollars in my pocket, and a napkin with Damon’s address written on it. I was off.

  Here’s what I DIDN’T have: a cell phone or any kind of plan.

  Looking back, I am now fully aware of how dangerous this was. This impulsive girl who hopped over to New York without a second thought is WAY DIFFERENT TODAY. Now, my idea of “dangerous” is binge watching Netflix until two a.m. because I might not get my full eight hours. (Good sleep is better than sex, you guys.)

  But eighteen-year-old me was desperate for adventure. Which might just be a nice way of saying batshit crazy. Jury’s still out.

  When I climbed off the plane at JFK Airport, I was basically a bright-eyed suburban girl hopping off a plane in the big city, carrying a big suitcase and even bigger dreams!

  I was ready for my musical number to start. Hello angry people at baggage claim! Hello strange smells where they shouldn’t be! Hello homeless person squatting on the curb! The kindness of the city was everywhere! A friendly-looking middle-aged man with an exotic accent approached me, offering to drive me to my destination in his unmarked taxi. Shucks, how lucky am I!

  I enthusiastically said yes as I politely asked him to watch my suitcase while I used the restroom. As I was peeing (and probably humming show-tunes to myself), I looked around the bathroom stall. Someone had written SUCK A DICK, GEENA on the wall. I suddenly noticed the traces of piss on the floor, the highly questionable brown smear on the stall door. Oh God, it’s disgusting here. Oh God, I let a random man watch my bag. Oh my God, oh my God. I wiped my vag and ran out as fast as I could.

  He was still there, bag in hand. Whew. Great! This, of course, was a sign that nothing bad would ever happen to me! I hopped into his unmarked taxi and read the address of my—now wrinkled and torn—napkin, “Twenty-Second and Ninth, please.” Damn, I sounded official.

  When we arrived, I asked the cabbie if he would let me borrow his cell phone.

  I nervously called Damon.

  “Hey! I’m outside your apartment.”

  I anxiously waited in the backseat and looked around the busy street. Was that guy Damon? Nope. Was . . . that guy? It suddenly hit me . . . I didn’t remember what the fuck he looked like. He was definitely white. He had black hair. Or wait, was he blond and it was just dark outside? And . . . two eyes, for sure.

  A twentysomething-year-old guy with disheveled hair and a beautiful face ran up to the cab, in shock. It was as if HE couldn’t believe I’d actually come. And he was wearing . . . bright red lipstick. Umm . . . lipstick? Now I was the one who was shocked.

  “Laura!” he said.

  He kissed my cheek, getting lipstick all over it. What had I gotten myself into?

  We walked up four flights of seemingly never-ending stairs, and he opened the door to the smallest studio apartment I had ever seen. It was smaller than an elementary school bathroom. No furniture. Just a gross twin-size mattress on the floor.

  The studio was decorated with wine bottles, ashtrays, and one green light. Which looks VERY MENACING, I MIGHT ADD.

  I tried to diffuse my nervousness with a joke. “You okay? You’re looking a little . . . GREEN HA-HA!”

  “What? No, I’m fine,” Damon said with concern.

  “I’m talking about the light.”

  “Oh, no. I’m not sick. It’s just the light.”

  Right. This was going to be rough.

  He picked up one of the wine bottles. “Want a drink?”

  Oh thank God. Don’t mind if I do!

  Soon enough, my drunk, naïve, Midwestern ass thought the green light was very, very cool; the apartment was cozy rather than suffocating; and the Frank Sinatra playing on a cassette player was intentionally hip rather than a random thing that Damon found on the street. This place was awesome!

  I asked the man for whom I moved to New York why he was wearing lipstick. Maybe he was gay? Maybe the fact that I had no choice but to sleep on the same tiny mattress with a guy I’d met only twice wouldn’t be a big deal, because he likes men! Maybe I had nothing to worry about!

  He told me he had just come from an abandoned church-turned-nightclub lipstick-launch party. Apparently, Amanda Lepore, a famous transgender model, was launching her new lip line and insisted he try a shade.

  Oh, and remember when he said he was a photographer? I now learned that he meant he was a . . . drug sharer . . . who accepted money in exchange for his good will. And he also took pictures occasionally. You might be thinking, “That’s another red flag, for sure!” But that only made me like him more because, free drugs! I was getting drunk regularly, smoking weed daily, and dabbling in cocaine; so as an addict, I was attracted to other addicts. Like Damon! He didn’t judge me, criticize me, or tell me, “Hey maybe you shouldn’t be smoking weed for brea
kfast.” Or, “Do you really need that sixth glass of wine? Your teeth are disturbingly purple.” Damon understood my purple teeth.

  He also understood my need to numb out any uncomfortable feelings that might have caused slight pain. God forbid I would feel human emotions, right? I didn’t actually have the courage to sit through uncomfortable feelings without getting high until I was twenty-four. That’s normal, right? And to stay on this track, I made sure to only hang around with other unformed, self-sabotaging delinquents so that there was absolutely no one around that would encourage me to be a fully functioning, productive adult. He was the first on that list, the first full-blown addict that I had gotten close to. And we were sure to enable each other.

  Our awkward conversations and public drunkenness soon became love. It didn’t really matter if we had much else in common. Bonding over our absolute inability to drink alcohol in moderate proportions was good enough for me.

  Within three days of being in New York, Damon was telling me he loved me and I was saying it back. It was love at . . . uh . . . tenth drink.

  There was truly never a dull moment during my two-month stay in the Big Apple. Damon would take me to these crazy underground clubs and we’d run around the streets of New York and take pictures and get drunk. And then there were darker moments where I would sit in his green-light apartment while he’d sneak away to handle his business as an, ahem, self-employed street pharmacist. We’d pay for everything in cash, and when someone’s name was required on any document, we’d use mine instead of his. I began to wonder if there was a warrant out for Damon’s arrest, so he couldn’t leave a paper trail.

  So, just to reassess the situation, I was an addict dependent on drugs and alcohol to feel okay, and I was also dependent on another addict for food and housing. Then things between Damon and me started getting more and more toxic.

  I didn’t have anything or anyone in the city besides him. When I tried to make friends or meet other people, he would get possessive and furious. We’d often get in these huge alcohol-induced fights after he tried to tell me what to wear or what to do or who to talk to.

  “You’re too controlling!!” I’d scream.

  “You’re too out of control!!” he’d scream back.

  We were both right. One night, I added to the usual screaming match: “I want to go back home to Chicago!”

  He clenched his fists and leaned toward me a bit like he was going to lunge at me. I hadn’t seen him so mad before. I got scared and flinched. I think he noticed because he didn’t lunge at me. He immediately ran out into the middle of the street, laid down on it like a maniac, and screamed, “I’M NOT MOVING UNTIL YOU KISS ME!”

  We were so fucking dramatic. I wanted to assert a bit of power, so I sauntered over to him VERY slowly.

  Don’t look at me like that! The roads weren’t very busy at three a.m. I kissed him and we both got out of the street.

  Also just want to point out quickly that my prefrontal cortex, the brain’s RATIONAL part, was far from developed, so none of those bad decisions were actually my fault. Doesn’t that make you feel so much better about the shitty decisions you made pre-twenty-five? If you’re reading this and under twenty-five, remember, it’s not your fault. Nothing is ever your fault. If you’re reading this and over twenty-five, get your shit together and fix your credit. Seriously, you have no excuse. Right on your birthday, the line is DRAWN.

  Damon was getting . . . weird though. To say the least.

  His encouragement for me to pursue modeling had started out as just a series of compliments on my appearance, but it was quickly becoming a sort of obsession for him. Like I said, we would go around the city, taking pictures. But he started to become almost manic about getting the right shot. I felt a spike in my confidence at first, wanting to go along with his ideas. The more he told me I could do this as a career, the more I believed in myself. But when I sought out any other photographer to shoot with or get jobs with, Damon would become furious with me.

  While I was out one night I met a photographer, Lavan. I loved to shoot with him because he was creative and kind and stable (what a concept!). It was nice to have an actual friend in this city. Lavan and I would go to fancy hotels in the middle of the night and shoot in their lobbies and hallways. I’d wear these long gowns (that I would return immediately to the store) and we’d stay out late, shooting across the city.

  When I was with Lavan, I could relax a little. It also finally gave me a chance to call my parents. I still didn’t have a cell phone and, a lot of the time, Damon didn’t let me use his. He never wanted me calling my family. Yep—some of that sweet, sweet isolation. There were red flags galore.

  I’d get home late and again Damon’s blue eyes would be bulging out of his head with anger. How dare I betray him? He was convinced I was cheating on him, always. I told him we were just shooting! He was being ridiculous.

  I yelled at him, “You know, real models don’t get jobs by just shooting with one photographer-slash–drug dealer!! I need to network if you want me to get jobs.”

  If you want me to get jobs. It never occurred to me that I was basically just doing this because he told me to. I still wanted to be an actor. I didn’t give a shit about modeling! What the fuck was I doing? But I didn’t really have time to soul-search about my choices, because Damon grabbed me by the arm and yanked me toward him.

  “You only need me.”

  Do you hear that? It’s a chorus of beautiful angels singing YIIIKKKEEESSSSSS! RUN AWAYYYY! At the time, I couldn’t hear them.

  He’d grab me so tightly that purple bruises started to show on my biceps. When he saw them, I think he felt bad, because he bought me a cell phone.

  Soon after that, he sent me to an agency where he had some connections. He was ready for the rest of the world to see my face, I guess! He thought I was beautiful!!! And also he thought I could make him some money. #romance!

  But, you guys, I wasn’t doing too hot. I was getting high every day. I had never been so far from my actual dreams and I was working hard to numb my feelings of discouragement. I had completely lost sight of my goals. They were being eclipsed by the ones Damon had for me.

  I showed up at the modeling agency. They took one look at me, snapped a Polaroid, and told me they’d be in touch. Okay, I did it. That wasn’t hard. You know, modeling auditions were way easier than acting auditions. I didn’t have to memorize anything or interpret anything. I didn’t have to search the casting director’s face for any hope that I did a good job! I could do this! Maybe I should do modeling.

  As I walked home from the agency, I got a call from Damon. He probably wanted to hear about how it went!

  “Laura, the agency called me.” He was mad.

  “That was fast! Do they want me to come back in for a meeting?”

  “Why the fuck did you show up with bruises on your arms and a stain on your shirt?”

  I was stunned.

  Apparently the agency had called him right after I left, appalled by my appearance, bruises up and down my arms and, yes, a stain on my shirt. (Was this karma for stealing Colleen’s shirt??) Wine is hard to get out! I thought that it was normal for meetings to be that short. But really they had just wanted this crazy chick to get the fuck out of their offices without causing a disturbance.

  “You gave me the bruises, you fucking asshole!”

  “Well you should have chosen a different shirt!”

  He hung up. What the FUCK. I was so humiliated. I felt so gross. I walked down Park Avenue, my head hanging low. Then a cracked-out homeless lady sitting on the corner of the street pointed at me and yelled, “You think you’re pretty! YOU’RE AN UGLY BITCH!” I mean, her timing was arguably impressive.

  I was completely defeated. I crawled back inside Damon’s world. I mean, it kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? I had nothing. I felt like nothing because he had taken everything away from me. ALSO I LOVED HIM. Completely unrelated, have you heard of Stockholm syndrome? But no matter how much our spirit
s are crushed, we keep fighting and longing for more even if it’s subconscious. It’s human nature. I kept meeting with Lavan, my only friend in the city, to have moments of normalcy, however fleeting.

  There was one night that Damon was painting a shitty nude portrait of me as we guzzled wine. We did this a lot, actually. Our tiny studio apartment was covered in weird, off-putting paintings of me. It looked like the den of a serial killer who was plotting to kill me specifically. The green light did not help!

  We heard a knock at the door of his dingy fourth-floor apartment. Followed by SOBBING.

  “Damon?!” a crying woman yelled out. “Damon, I love you! Open the door! You told me you loved me!” She kept banging on the door while sobbing hysterically. “This is MY apartment too!”

  I looked at him wide-eyed and he put his pointer finger over his mouth and mimed for me to be quiet. “SHHHH!!”

  Wait a second. He was my boyfriend, and this random woman that I had never heard about just said that . . . this was her apartment? What the fuck was going on? Also, I WAS STILL NAKED.

  So I did the most obvious thing to do in that situation. Laughed my ass off!

  Not because I found this funny, but because I WAS UNCOMFORTABLE. Also, did I mention that I don’t like emotions? Somehow this discomfort was permeating my drunken numbness, which is impressive seeing how my teeth were VERY purple from wine at this point.

  The woman outside heard me laugh. She went quiet. I covered my mouth. It was eerie.

  Then she started BANGING ON THE DOOR WITH ALL HER MIGHT.

  “Damon, I need you! YOU SAID YOU LOVED ME!! DAMONNNN!!!”

  Eventually it became silent. Meanwhile, I had put on some goddamn clothes. She had given up and left. When it finally seemed safe to talk again, I asked Damon, “Who the FUCK was that??”

  Damon sighed, “My ex-girlfriend, Natalie. She’s fucking crazy. She doesn’t matter, I swear. I only love you.”

  Okay, that wasn’t what I asked, but okay. Good to know he loves me. I let it go.

  Unfortunately, Natalie did not.

  Another night came that I had plans to shoot with Lavan. Damon and I got into this huge fight before I left, which was typical, but Damon tried to step it up this time. I was trekking down the four flights of stairs, gown in hand, and he was following me, yelling—