Blackouts and Breakdowns (15 page)

“Ok, Jason,” I said. “That would pretty much just rule out women and midgets, so I think I will be just fine.”

Jason could obviously see where this was going.
After he left, Jeff and I continued drinking and I guess I had about three too many cocktails when he asked me to come home with him. I told him that I had a very strict policy on going home with guys.
That was, I would not go home with a guy if I had to walk up more than five flights of stairs to get to his apartment.
He told me he lived in a sixth floor walk-up.
It was settled, he would have to come to mine.

We hooked up that night and it was amazing.
The next day, I had class so I had to run off. That evening he called me to tell me that he was by my apartment and the sun was setting over the Hudson River and he wanted to see it with me.
This was only day two, granted, but so far so good. Besides, the holidays were coming up and it’s always nice to have a beau around Christmastime.
I had my eyes on a pair of Louis Vutton rain boots, but figured it was way too early to stop dropping hints.
Things with Jeff were great for about a week.
We cooked dinner for each other, hung out all of the time and really enjoyed each other’s company.
But once week two rolled around, Jeff began asking questions that made me start thinking that something was up.

One night after we had sex he asked me: “What’s the absolute worst thing that you have ever done?”

I had to think about this one.
Telling Jeff about outing Sebastian to his parents was a little too dramatic a tale for week two of a relationship.

“Ummm…I don’t know.
I once stole a sweater from a department store.”
Which was a total lie; unless by saying once I meant twenty-five thousand times. I had a brief addiction with stealing things that weren’t mine a few years beforehand, but it had passed, and again these fun facts about my past were better saved for a conversation in year two or three of a relationship.

“Oh,” Jeff sighed as he grimaced.
Was he expecting me to say that I had murdered someone at one point?
Did this guy get off on these sorts of things?

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” I asked.

He told me that he couldn’t tell me.
I became scared.
Was this seemingly nice pianist a serial killer?
Fearing I may be murdered in my sleep, I told Jeff that I had a paper I needed to finish and that he had to leave.

Shit!
It was only day nine of the relationship and I was already suspicious that my new lover muffin was a psycho killer who wore his prays skins over his own after he killed them.
I, of course, must jump to the most ridiculous of conclusions.
Later that night, Jeff called to explain.

“Sorry I was so weird before,” he said as I listened on the phone.
I think I was only half paying attention to him because there was a really good rerun of
Melrose Place
on but here is what I remember:

“I asked you what the worst thing you had ever done was because I have done something bad in my past.
One night a few years ago, when my ex and I were living together, a fire started in the apartment below us.
It was awful – we could not get through our door so we had to climb out of our window and down the fire escape.
On our way down, we saw that our downstairs neighbor, who was an older woman, was trapped in her apartment.
My boyfriend went down to the street to call for help while I tried to help our neighbor out of her apartment.
I tried to help her but couldn’t and told her to stay and wait until the fire fighters got there.
But help came too late and she ended up dying in her apartment.
I couldn’t help her and I have felt awful ever since.”

Now I felt awful.
What a hero Jeff was.
What a shame he couldn’t help that woman.
How terrible he must have felt to feel so powerless.
Now I felt like a complete asshole.
Not only had I stolen thousands of dollars worth of merchandise from department stores all over the New York metro area, I was also too lazy to walk up the six flights of stairs to Jeff’s apartment, let alone try and help a 150-pound geriatric out of a burning building.

“That is nothing to be ashamed of,” I said.
“You did the best you could have done, but you couldn’t have prevented the inevitable.”
At this point in the conversation, my Tylenol PM was kicking in so I had to get off of the phone.
I said goodnight and hung up.

“There has to be more to the story than that!”
Tom said the next afternoon over a plate of scrambled eggs.
On days when I did not have classes in the afternoon, Tom and I would meet up for lunch and roam the city discussing important topics such as the goings on of the ABC soaps and whatever happened to the careers of people like Bonnie Franklin from
One Day at A Time
.

“I really don’t think so Tom,” I said as I gracefully scarffed down a tuna melt.
“He seemed to be on the verge of tears when he was explaining what happened.
I really think he is fairly heroic.”

“I don’t know,” Tom replied.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this one.”

I stopped eating.
Tom had suspicions about Jeff.
This was not good.
This son of a bitch had practically predicted Sept. 11 and Gillian’s untimely demise on
All My Children
.
If Tom had a bad feeling about something, it was usually not a good sign.

“But it’s almost the holidays!
I could really use a boyfriend right now.”

“I’m just telling you, I have a bad feeling about this guy.
You know I am always right about these things.”

Damn it!
I knew Tom had to have been right and that there had to be more to this story than what Jeff was telling me.
But, before I cut him off completely, I decided to do some more digging.
I called Jeff and he asked me if I wanted to come over for dinner – I accepted.

When I got to Jeff’s apartment, it looked beautiful.
There were candles lit and a fabulous looking dinner had been made.
I had just scored some weed and in my usual fashion of keeping things classy, I asked Jeff if he wanted to smoke.

“Uh, no thanks. I can’t,” he replied.

“Oh no.
Anyone can.
I’ll show you how to,” I said as I began to roll a joint and begin a pantomime demonstration of how to smoke a j.

“No Mark, I know how to smoke. I just can’t.
I have court ordered drug tests once a week.”

Fucking Tom was right again. I mean normal people do not spend their Friday mornings peeing into a cup in front of an officer of the court.
I was really beginning to get worried now.

“Care to elaborate?” I asked as kindly as possible as I poured two thirds of a bottle of red wine into a 7-11 Big Gulp cup.

“Well I was going to tell you the second part of the story,” he said.
I knew there had to be more to Jeff’s heroic adventures than he was letting on.
Perhaps he accidentally set the fire, which would have been totally understandable.
Or he was a pyromaniac, which was definitely not acceptable.

“I told you about the fire,” he said as if I had completely blocked out the previous nights conversation. I gave him the
yeah-dumbass-you-did
look and he continued:
“Well after the fire, my boyfriend and I moved downtown but things had changed.
Shortly after we moved, we ended up breaking up and I was beginning to become afraid of sleeping at night because that’s when the fire had started.
Anyway, someone told me that if I took crystal meth, I could stay up all night and sleep some during the day.”
I really didn’t like where this was going, “I was all alone after my boyfriend left me and I started doing crystal all the time.
Then one night, a few months ago, I was on a date and the police came into my apartment.
They confiscated all of my computers and drugs and had me arrested.”

I thought there had to be a huge part of this story missing.

“Were you selling drugs?” I asked.

“No.”

“What the hell were you doing then?
Why did the police take your computers?”

“Well, apparently I downloaded some child pornography while I was high on crystal.”

I guess I wasn’t taking this one home to meet the parents.

“Ummm…ok,” I murmured. I sat there, staring at his face and all I saw was one huge red flag.

“I didn’t mean to,” he said.

“Well there is a huge difference between someone who is ten and someone who is twenty, so please explain to me how you
didn’t mean to.
”

“I was high.”

If I had not used that excuse so many times in the past, it wouldn’t have worked.
And considering I still had half a glass of wine left and it would take me a good ten minutes to get down the stairs of his apartment, I decided I would let him explain.

“When I was high on crystal, I didn’t know what I was doing half the time.
I don’t really like child pornography, but I just didn’t know better.”

Don’t really like?
That’s not really the excuse I was looking for.
I chugged my glass of wine and left.

“You’re dating kiddie porn!”
Tom shouted the next day at lunch.

“Not funny,” I replied.

“Ha, ha, ha.
I told you so!”

“Yeah, I know.
I just feel really bad.”

“Why?” Tom asked, looking confused.

“I don’t know.
I guess with the fire and everything.
It’s just a shame.”

“It’s disgusting is what it is,” Tom replied, “And the fact that you look sixteen years old yourself isn’t a really good defense for his case.”

At that point I did look like I was sixteen years old.
By age twenty-two, I really didn’t look like I could have been out of high school.
I guess I have really good genes.
But years of excessive tanning and heavy drinking have since changed things.

“I guess I really can’t date him anymore, huh?”
I asked.

“No shit!”
Tom replied.
“And what the hell were Jason and Mark doing setting you up with this guy anyway?”

“That’s a great question.”

The next day, I met Jason and Mark for drinks and filled them in on what Jeff had told me.

“What the fuck were you two doing setting me up with kiddie porn?”
I asked drunkenly.

“I didn’t know any of this,” Jason replied.

“Well, when we were working in Chicago, he was kind of up all night every night if I recall. I thought he may have had a drug problem, but didn’t think it was that bad,” Mark said.

“What the fuck makes you think that would make a good candidate for a boyfriend?” I asked.

“I don’t know.
It had kind of been a while,” Mark replied.

Apparently, I was desperate enough, in my friend’s eyes to date a drug-addicted pedophile.
I left Mark and Jason and reminded myself never to let friends set me up with anyone ever again.
Jeff called later that evening and I told him that I was not going to be able to see him anymore, for the obvious reasons.
He told me that he understood and that it was all right because he was seeing someone else anyway.

Excuse me?
When did twenty-eight year old, crystal meth smoking, child pornography enthusiasts become a hot commodity?
My secretary must have forgotten to drop that memo on my desk.
The “kiddie porn” debacle left me even more jaded than ever before.
A few months later, I heard that Jeff did in fact go to jail and was there for a year and a half.
A few years later, I was enjoying a lovely lunch by myself, reading a newspaper (aka Soap Opera Digest), when a gay couple sat down next to me.
I eavesdropped on their conversation for a bit and then put my newspaper down only to find the gay couple was Jeff and his boyfriend who looked like he as about thirteen years old.
It’s nice to know that the justice system does in fact work and that some things will never change.

There is nothing – I mean nothing – I love more than a good old-fashioned night of binge drinking, and that’s exactly what Jason and I did the night he and his significant other, Mark, broke up.

“Good riddance!” I said.
“He set me up with kiddie porn.
That’s reason enough to break up with him.” Jason and I were finally single together, for the first time in years.
“Mothers, lock up your daughters!
Mark and Jason are painting the town drunk tonight!”