Acrobaddict (21 page)

The drive back was easier. I was alert and fresh, ready to push the pedal to the floor in the fast lane. We got the mushrooms and coke, and after a few pit stops along the way to do more lines, we made it back to college.

I don’t remember the rest of that semester. I remember people looking at me like I was completely fucked up, and if they said anything I just flipped them off and shouted, “Fuck you!” I was out of control, and the time came to leave the team. I couldn’t use drugs and continue to train. Gymnastics was taking up the precious time I needed to drink and do other drugs.

I was devoid of all human emotions, and it actually wasn’t difficult to quit. I called the coach and started an argument. I don’t recall the words, only his confusion and anger. I remember being very clear that I could no longer do gymnastics and felt no remorse over that decision; after all, my gymnastics was the only thing truly standing in the way of my happiness.

Every moment without drugs was agonizing. A long time ago I had given everything over to gymnastics, surrendering my heart and body to its torture and beauty. Gymnastics had been everything I wanted, and I had given it everything I had. But now I had a new love—a love I loved even more deeply than gymnastics. There was only room for one, so my beloved gymnastics had to go.

It felt good to walk away from a funeral I was happy to miss. Not a single teardrop fell as I left behind all those first-place trophies and grand Olympic dreams. I was relieved it was over. The relationship between my sport and my drugs was painfully close—both shared the common bond of destruction. Training hard was as painful as a bad hangover. Both destroyed my body, and since I had to choose one, I chose drugs.

With all my free time dedicated to my new love, it didn’t take long to reach disastrous new highs and lows. I think only a week had passed since I had quit the team, but my boundaries dropped dramatically and I bordered more perilously between sanity and insanity after taking too many pills. Toward the end of that long drug run, Nick passed out from the pills, fell back, and hit his head against a wall so loudly that a student two doors down came in to see what had happened. His head was bleeding, and I made him go to the medical center. My love, attacked by my other love—drugs were trying to take him down, and I would do everything I could to not let that happen.

It was 11:00 p.m. when we went to the medical center. As I waited for him to come out, I started a conversation with a girl. She was quiet, skinny, and smart-looking, with red hair and glasses that were too big for her face. I was so relaxed and intoxicated that I became completely intrigued by talking to a stranger, and told her everything. I told her about all the drugs, the rehabs, Darren, Nick, and the buying and selling. It actually felt good to get it all out. She listened contently to my confession, like a high priestess. I felt a weight lifted, and I started to cry as I filled in every detail of my life. I was so fucked up I couldn’t contain my emotions, and just wept and hugged her. I loved her patience. It felt like she gave me golden wings. I don’t remember her name, but I left the medical center completely absolved of my sins. It felt so good to tell another human the truth about what was really going on.

The next day there was banging on my door. I could barely open my eyes and vaguely remembered the night before. Nick was in my bed, and I opened the door to my school counselor, who instantly barged
in and yelled, “What the fuck is going on?” She collected herself and said, “You have to meet me in the dean’s office in an hour. You need to shower and get dressed.”
What the fuck had I done now
?

I didn’t even wake Nick up. I walked in the office and sat down. The vibe was different from before. This was serious, and their expressions left no doubt that I was in trouble—big trouble. The dean began reading from a legal document. They were expelling me for not completing the rehab program and because they had heard I was selling drugs.

I instantly reacted. “Selling drugs! No, I’m not! Why do you think that?”

The dean didn’t even look up, and started reading from another paper. It looked like a woman’s handwriting. It was a letter from the resident assistant of a dorm and went into long detail about things I had never told anybody. I turned white.

The priestess I had made my confession to the previous night wasn’t my savior after all; she was a resident assistant, and worked for the school. Her job was to make peace and bring order to the dormitories. Typically, they were geeks, and the girl I had befriended the previous night had turned me in.
What a fucking bitch
.

It was true; I was guilty. “Okay. How long do I have to get my stuff out of here?” He said, “One hour.”

“One hour! You can’t fucking kick me out in one hour. Where am I gonna go?”

“I don’t care, but if you don’t leave, the police will escort you off campus!”

“Where am I gonna go?”

“Call your parents.”

My parents were certainly not going to pick me up, bail me out, or let me live with them after this.

I said, “Fuck off! Both of you! You are so fucking stupid!” and slammed the door behind me.

I went back to my room and packed a bag of my most important possessions. I didn’t think they were serious, that they would actually kick me out, but as I packed, the campus police opened my door and watched me. They were going to escort me off campus. As the cops led me off, I saw a guy from the soccer team and yelled, “Tell Nick I’ll be at the park!” My dorm room was still full of many of my things, but there was no way to bring them with me.

I went to the park half a mile down the road to figure out what to do next. A horrid, quiet pain crept inside me as loud city sirens mixed in with the cold winter breeze. I couldn’t believe I had no place to go, no place to live, and no way to contact anyone. Two hours ago I had been safe and warm, asleep in my bed with Nick, and then all of a sudden I was shocked into a new reality. I sat on the dirty green grass and cried.

21

BLOOD

B
LOOD AND THE STILL-BEATING HEART ARE CENTRAL ELEMENTS OF SACRIFICE, USUALLY A RELIGIOUS RITUAL THAT INVOLVES THE KILLING OF ANIMALS OR HUMAN BEINGS, SUPERVISED BY PRIESTS.
I
T HAS BEEN A FEATURE OF ALMOST ALL PREMODERN SOCIETIES AT SOME STAGE OF THEIR DEVELOPMENT.
A
SACRIFICE WAS TYPICALLY OFFERED TO FULFILL AN OBLIGATION TO THE GODS.
T
HESE SACRIFICES WERE KNOWN AS
blóts
,
AND THE BLOOD WAS CONSIDERED TO HAVE THE POWER OF ITS ORIGINATOR.
A
FTER THE CEREMONIAL SLAYING, THE BLOOD WAS SPRINKLED ON TEMPLE WALLS, ON STATUES OF GODS, AND ON THE PARTICIPANTS.

I waited all day in the park for Nick. I wasn’t sure if he got my message or if his friends finally knocked some sense into him to be finished with me and my disasters. As the sun set and I began to give up hope, Nick appeared in the distance, bundled up, with that adorable smile on his face as if to say, “Joey, what the fuck have you done now, you crazy bastard?” I loved that smile and will never forget it. Nick was there, and everything would be okay.

He sat beside me on the frozen grass and we talked about a plan to sneak me back into his dorm room. By now everyone knew of my expulsion. My school ID picture was on the desk of every dormitory’s door guard, but I managed to walk by concealed in the center of a “penguin’s huddle” of Nick’s friends.

In Nick’s room I felt safe and relieved, and planned to get as drunk and pilled out as possible to forget that hellish day. In my drunkenness,
I plotted my revenge against Staunton College. I believed I was innocent and the school had infringed upon my civil rights. I drunk-dialed a lawyer, explaining that my entire case was hearsay. He told me that I didn’t have a case and would have to accept what had happened. In my deepening delusion I came up with another idea to call the dean and plead with him to reinstate me as a student. I called from Nick’s room, so drunk that I didn’t consider that caller ID would come up with the last name and room number. The dean’s assistant answered. “I know you are in Nick’s room. The police are on their way to escort you back off campus.” I begged her and told her I didn’t have time to get my things out of my room, but she didn’t seem particularly sympathetic.

I hung up the phone and ran back to the park. I had a week’s worth of pills left and took them all. The higher I got, the easier it was for me to live in the gutter. All my nighttime fears became comforts in the illusion of Klonopin. I, the Klonopin King, reigned from the throne over the enchanted land of heaven in my delusory state of mind.

Again, I had nowhere to go and no one to call. When holding drugs I was everyone’s best friend, but when the pills and powders were gone, they forgot my name. I was terrified. I didn’t have a plan for the next day, and I would soon be drugless and homeless.
I have no place to go. I have no place to go
, repeated over and over in my head, a ruby-shoeless-demented-Dorothy, fighting off the truth as my tears cascaded down my cheeks. Truth was not allowed in my Oz; I just needed my ticket back to a drug-filled euphoria.

Night rolled into the park and so did two friends I used to party with, who pleaded with me to stop using. This just made me defensive and angry. One of them handed me the harshest letter I had ever received. She wrote that I was destroying the beautiful light within me, and that she could see my inner glow withering from my drug use. She said with sincere honesty, “Joey, go home. Try to reconnect with your parents. Just go home. The battle is over. Look at where you are!” I hated her for saying that. I was unaware of much of what she wrote, since my pills hit me while I read the damn letter. At that moment I believed I was in a beautiful, lush park surrounded by a
city of opportunity instead of the broken-down neighborhood I was sitting in. I exploded in anger at them for their drug-friend hypocrisy. They left after seeing they couldn’t dent my denial or comprehend my slurred words.

Nick came back, as I knew he would, with beer and weed. We devised yet another
brilliant
plan of action. His uncle was coming to take him home for a long weekend, and I could get a ride back with them. I made it back to campus for the long weekend and saw Nick waiting for me with his uncle outside his dorm. He had to run back in and grab his bag. I had only a vague recollection of meeting Nick’s uncle in Maine due to the concussion, pills, and alcohol, and was now embarrassed standing there alone while making small talk. My embarrassment grew as two campus police approached us. A residential assistant must have seen me crossing the large parking lot near his building and then called the police.

“Mr. Pu-
tan
-yano,” one said, deliberately mispronouncing my name.

“Yes.”

“You’re not supposed to be here on campus.”

“I know. I’m leaving. I’m getting a ride to my friend’s place.”

Then Nick’s uncle chimed in, saying, “Yeah, it’s okay, guys. He’s coming with me.”

Nick had not told his uncle what had happened; however, Nick’s uncle figured things out and proposed that perhaps he should drive me back home. We naturally challenged him on that idea, and then he asked why I couldn’t go home.

I said, “My parents won’t let me live with them anymore,” omitting the detail of not being able to stay drug-free for more than a moment’s time. Instead, I brought up old memories of my parents, turning them into monsters to convince Nick’s uncle that I could not go home. It was true my parents had problems with alcohol, relationships, and each other, and I had valid points and deep pain to crucify them to this man I barely knew, but my parents were doing the best they could. I knew in my heart that I could not go home, and remembered
the many times I had tried to. I was so far from the human I used to be that both my parents made it clear on more than one occasion that I was not welcome in their homes.

Nick’s uncle called my dad. After the conversation he turned to us and said I could go home, and that my dad wanted me to come home. I was pissed. This was not the father I knew—the heavy-handed Italian-American who was embarrassed by my clothes, my body piercings, and my nihilistic “hate life” attitude. I knew he was bullshitting, trying to pull off the good parent act. I was everything my father hated. He must have been lying, faking his kindness, and I couldn’t figure out why. As soon as I arrived home, I knew he would tell me to leave.

I hated both men for making the decision for me. I didn’t want to leave Nick and go home, but I had no alternative. The thought of being without Nick was a punishment worse than sobriety and made me want to crawl deeper into a pillbox and numb out to the rhythm of nothing.