Don't Let Me Die In A Motel 6 or One Woman's Struggle Through The Great Recession (16 page)

“
Fuck this.”

I gunned the truck’s engine;
threw it in reverse and
made a squealing U-turn on the hill.
I would do it.
I would drive
up
to Encino Hills an
d then Mulholland, to plunge, past
the view that E.T. saw, over the
ridge
toward the warm lights of the Valley.
There was no one on the road
this late
.
They
were all at home with their families
.
They were raising another
Rachel
doing backbends to
I Love Lucy
; they
were nurturing another Amy who would become a Regent’s Scholar.

Mulholland
Drive
was winding
, a rollercoaster for the brave
.
It was
lined with
scrub-brush on
faded
hills
, and it was
wild:
there were rattlesnakes, coyotes,
and tarantulas.
We’d
discovered
all three, when I was a kid.
And nicer animals, like deer.
I sped on, glad to have made a decis
ion,
to complete my fall by
literally
falling.

There
was my spot, a dusty turnout.
Lovers stopped their cars here, and some of them had been killed.
Welcome to
Los Angeles.
The grid of lights
below
stretched to low-slung hills,

and I could see the freeways,
cars red streaks and white
;
and green splotches of neon
that swayed
like
glitzy
palms.

Who would care when I was gone?
Not Aurora – she would move on to the next Mom.
Not Nigel
–
he was too obsessed with Aurora.
Not Rachel, awash in money.
In fact, it would be a relief:
the
one
person she couldn't
control
would be
gone
.
I idled toward the ridge, and felt a kind of thrill.
I would be a folk hero!
Emblem of T
he Great Recession!
“Mr. President,
could
you
comment
on
Amy Wolf, who killed herself when she couldn't find
a job
?
She was an MGM, you know.”
“Order the lasered M&Ms. . .”
“Get that picture of her on the beach.”
“She was a hell of an Access
developer…”
“Did you hear that she
totaled
the
B of A’s
truck
?
Boy, are they pissed!”

I prepared to fly off the embankment, a Thelma without a Louise.
As you’ve probably
guessed by now
, something stopped me.
I don’t know what it was.
I don’t know if
it
was the
life force
described by
Ja
ck London, whe
n
a man crawls through
the snow
, half-mad with hunger,
and fights a wolf to
the death
.
I don’t know if it was
an
intervention, perhaps
by
a
long-gone relative who didn’t
like
what they
were seeing
.
In my mind
it was G
randma, since we’d been especially close,
and I had felt her presence
before
,
when the blackness had taken hold.
To this day, I
have no idea
.
Only that
the
urge
to harm myself
died
.
I wa
s determined
to survive,
even if
it meant ducking
that bucket of snot.
I drove
,
the heaviness lifted
,
down Encino Hills, then
turned onto
Hayvenhurst,
passing
a
huge
gated e
state. Hell, there were worse fates.
I could have been a Jackson.

I
promised you sex with
multiple partners
, and I don’t intend to disappoint.
*
Be forewarned:
I don’t mean threesomes, foursomes,
or
orgies. I mean sex with eight different partners – not
at the same time
(Sorry).

After my
hillside epiphany
, I
was still depressed, but
feeling much lighter
.
I continued to look for jobs,
but
with the Holidays approaching
,
this
was a
Ho Ho No
.
Aurora went off to school – I drove her there and back – David sat and
hated
his mother, and I found a
fun
new hobby:
S
ex.

I didn’t
know
it at the time, but I’ve read
since
that depression can
kindle
mania
in a
specific
area:
for me, it was getting laid.
As far as
my sexual history
goes
:
it was pretty god
d
amned boring.
Believe it or not,
when I’d gotten married
at thirty-eight, I was still a virgin (does that qualify me to
be Queen
?)
and I’d
been with only one man –
Nigel
– in the course of my entire life.
I wasn’t exactly
slutty
–
I was no Hollywood
actress
, changing
partners
like
roles
,
the subject of star charts in PEOPLE limning my galaxy of
lovers.

Even so
, with nothing to do
all
day, with no
plots
of suicide
to busy me
, I started to
trawl Craig’s List, M4W
(Men For Women)
.
The first ad I answered was from a
very
weird guy
–
no less than
three-hundred pounds – who claimed he gave great oral sex.
I
can’t
speak to this, since all h
e did was come over, lie down on
my bed, and talk about Mort Sahl.
Now I like
Mort as well as anyone,
but
I wasn’t in the mood for a
chat
.
I put my own
ad on Craig’s List
with this
subtle
title
:
Looking For A Guy Who Loves To Give Oral
– w4m – 49
(OK
, so I lied about my age).
As you can guess
, I got about
sixty
responses
, all
from guys
claiming that they
lived to
pleasure their part
ner.
Let
me tell you something about men, since I am
now
,
to quote Hendrix
, Experienced:
this is blatant
B.S
.
Most guys could care less about going down on a woman:
what they
really
want, no duh, is for women to go down on
them.

The first respondent I chose was a guy from Canoga Park.
I figured I should get to know the neighbor
s
.
He
seem
ed enthusiastic
, and
his
picture
(face only!)
was cute
.
The next day, I ushered David out
side
,
put a towel over the bird cages,
and had my first
real-life
tryst.
This guy was
good
– he had a fit, athletic body and a very robust cock.
We exchanged oral
sex
, and I told him, after some thought, that as
long as we were there
, we might as well do The
Deed
.
We did, doggie style on the inflatable bed, and it was good.
He came over about four more times:
it was very erotic, like a
R
omance
with Fabio on the cover, since my
instructions
were to wait for him, naked.
He seemed intent on trying different things
:
he had me push hard against his cock while I assumed a position not unlike
a
n egg
.
This was the first lover I’d ever had –
at the ad
vanced age of fifty
! – and it was the only thing to look
forward to in days blighted by
no work.
I started to ask this guy
some
questions:
what
kind of job did he do
?
He
told me he that he was in The Biz
,
and, finding those were my roots
, it must have hit
too
close
to home.
He changed his email address, and I never
saw
him again.
But
it really didn’t matter
:
by that time, I had a parade of guys
from Craig’s List
.
What was good about being a woman, in need of straight men’
s services, is that you
didn’t have to pay them!
They
were more than happy to take off their clothes for free!
And put them back on without whining, to head
out
the door
cheerfully
.

What about protection, you ask se
verely, in your best schoolmarm
voice?
Most of the time,
I used it
.
Didn’t you feel dirty? – from the
Boston
Catholic League.
Actually, no.
All I felt was desire – that, like a man, I needed to get it
now
– or my vagina would explode.

There were some bizarre encounters.
As with Enrique, a Latin
hottie
, whom I drove all the way to Long Beach to
see
(a cut body was well worth a tank of gas!), and who wanted me to wear “fuck me” shoes while we did it.
I had to steal them from Aurora, and in the midst of his thrusting, I yelled (I had seen a lot of porn), “Fuck me harder!”
He did, so much so that a trickle of blood emerged from you-know-where.

This freaked Enrique out.
He pulled out, pacing the cheap hotel room where he’d gone to escape his girlfriend.

“See, I was in the Mexican army.
My unit fought
narcotraficantes
, and I’ve seen a lot of
blo
od
.”
This man –
a chiseled vision of hunkiness
– was almost shaking at the sight of
it
.
So much for my Dream Date.
In my haste to
depart
, I
forgot
the Fuck Me shoes.
I had to tell Aurora s
ome story, then
buy
her
a new pair at
Nordstrom Rack.
My career as a s
lut was starting to get expensive.

After that
,
there was The Storyteller.
Another Latino from Long Beach (what is it about that place?!) he had to relate, at length,
why
he wanted to fuck me.
When he’d been a boy, his nanny had seduced him:
she’d been
zaftig
, with a hairy pussy –
etc
.
Like Eliza Doolittle, I w
anted to shout “No more words!”
Frankly, I didn’t
care about the backstory
.
I just wanted to get nailed.
I drove again to Long Beach (is this deductible on your 1040?) to his photographer’s studio (I know, romance novels again).
He was small, but really muscled, like a perfect mini-Arnold.
I had to stay quiet, since someone lived next door.
After we were done, he dismissed me
like a bored waiter.
There would be no post-coital snuggling in the world that I had chosen.
Like a guy, I threw on my clothes and got out.