Guts: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Giant Disaster (4 page)

See what I mean by new and exciting? And it’s not even over yet! The cherry on top of this glorious morning is when you get to take the overcrowded forty-five-minute train from Dobbs Ferry to New York City with a broken heart and the most stomach-churning hangover of your life, all while sitting in your own feces.

Man, I love this town. No wonder the population’s booming!

By the way, I didn’t make any of these up. They’re all things that really happened to people I know. If your face is burning with shame or recognition, don’t feel too bad. More than likely, almost everyone you know has spent a nice chunk of time in Schultz-ville.

Or if you were really lucky like me, you had a lovely time-share, right on the beach.

The longer I lived there, however, the worse I felt. And looked. Besides my fat face, double chin, sallow and acne-prone skin, and the fact that my teeth were constantly stained a gorgeous grape color, I soon began to suffer from a lethargy so profound that sometimes the act of brushing my teeth felt like a long day at the office, and I’d fall, winded, back to sleep. Then it started to take me forever just to pee. Eventually it took a twenty-minute ritual of deep breathing combined with the faucet on full force and the latest issue of
O
magazine. Unfortunately, these exhaustive efforts usually resulted in a depressingly sad little trickle.

Plus there was that constant heartburn. Now, the heartburn I’m talking about has nothing to do with those commercials featuring balding, shame-faced men being scolded by their nagging wives for eating too many meatballs. This heartburn meant
business
. The only way I can describe it is. . . imagine a thousand splinters in your throat. Or a hundred paper cuts being doused with lemon juice. Or being forced to listen to Sarah Palin discuss foreign policy. Let’s just say it was
exceedingly
uncomfortable. I told myself I must have developed an allergy to some unknown substance (not alcohol, never alcohol), such as MSG, tomatoes, or peanuts.

Listen, I wasn’t a complete idiot. Oh, okay, I was. But I can remember saying to myself quite a few times,
“This cannot be good, Kristen. In fact, I think this could be very, very bad.”

But most of the time, I was far too busy enjoying the amenities of Schultz-ville. Which, by the way, goes by a lot of different names to a lot of different people. For example, in the Midwest, it’s known as Schlitz-ville. Augusten Burroughs calls it
Magical Thinking
, and for Carrie Fisher it’s
Wishful Drinking
. My shrink likes to call it denial, but I’ve told her it just doesn’t have the same cozy ring as the others. I don’t think it really matters
what
name you call it; the important thing is that we all know how to get there. If only leaving were as easy. Unfortunately, the longer you stay in Schultz-ville, the road out becomes harder and harder to see. Until eventually, it vanishes.

But what did I care? While there, I didn’t waste my time thinking about icky things like
going to rehab
or
dying.
I would simply crack open my second bottle of merlot and revel in the lonely luxury of being able to concentrate on truly meaningful and challenging things, such as mastering the increasingly difficult and decreasingly rewarding art of “feeling better.”

I became a master of this delicate and oft-misunderstood life skill. I’ll admit, it’s not as lofty as curing cancer, but the dedication it takes to procure drugs, understand dosages, obsessively count pills so you know exactly when you’ll run out, and keep track of
which
doctors know
what
story,
what
pharmacy has filled
which
prescription
when
—well, I think it’s fair to say healthy amounts of organizational prowess, intelligence, and people skills are needed to be as successful at drug addiction as I was. I was also a pretty damn good liar, which didn’t hurt. Somehow, I managed to keep my addiction a secret from everyone (other than those who really knew me, but most of the time, even they only had niggling suspicions or a vague feeling that something was off).

And, I mean,
you
didn’t know, did you? You never saw any
TMZ
footage of me leaving Bungalow 8 with white powder on my upper lip, right? And that’s not luck, my friends. That takes some skill. (It was mostly luck.)

I may have been adept at addiction, but unfortunately, this also meant that for many years I was a card-carrying member of what is referred to as “functioning addicts,” which, trust me, are the worst kind. Because we’ve devoted so much time and energy toward keeping our addictions alive and happy and well fed, by the time we’ve made that oh-so-subtle shift to “nonfunctioning addict,” our brains are so fried we’re unable to grasp the concept that things have shifted drastically, and not in our favor. We have absolutely no ability to see the desolate disaster our lives have become, how many family, friends, and lovers we’ve lost, or how close to death we actually are. Judgment has disappeared along with everything else good in our lives, and
we cannot stop.

To me, it felt like I was speeding on the Autobahn toward hell, trapped inside a DeLorean with no brakes. And even if I
could
somehow stop, I’d still be screwed, because there’s no way I’d ever be able to figure out how to open those ridiculously stupid, cocaine-designed doors.

It was indescribably awful. I felt no hope, no joy, no nothing.

Only a powerful and all-consuming hatred for my own guts.

Which is especially fascinating when you take into consideration that my guts hated me right back, a neat fact I became aware of only when they blew themselves up in a brutal and shocking act of revenge.

Well played, guts. Well played.

In 1967,
my beautiful parents had been blessed with a gorgeous and brilliant blond boy, so they rolled the dice, knowing that a darling, well-behaved little girl would be the perfect addition to their charming, sunny family. Too bad that what they got was a loud, cantankerous, funny, moody, weepy, dramatic, temperamental, ornery, and occasionally truly awful little girl with a fondness for both drooling and screaming
“No!”
at every opportunity. Eventually my parents did get their sweetheart of a daughter, my beautiful younger sister, Julie.

But it was too late. The Freak had landed. In her very own DeLorean.

“. . . And then you’ll all walk, single file, into the church for the graduation ceremony!” Sister Anita breathlessly finished, her face aglow with excitement.

Right on cue, Sarah Smith shot her annoying hand into the air. “How will we know the order of the procession?” (She was not only charmless, but wore a scoliosis back brace
and
had a lisp. So she pronounced it “prothethon.” We ate lunch together every day. Not by choice.)

I’m sure Sister Anita must have found Tharah Thmith to be as irritating as the rest of us, but because she was having a passionate love affair with Jesus, she instead replied, “Well, isn’t that a
wonderful
question, Sarah! You’ll be entering the church according to height. Shortest first, meaning the girls, of course! And then finishing with the tallest, you boys.”

Uh-oh. That finally got my attention. I looked up from my notebook, where I had been drawing a bunch of different eyeballs. All the air had left the room, and everyone, even Sister Anita, was suddenly wondering the same thing:

Where the hell do we put the Freak?

It was a beautiful and unseasonably warm April day in 1980, and we were discussing the details of our grade-school graduation. I had just slogged through a painful, confusing, and mostly pretty unhappy eight years at a Catholic grade school, located in a gorgeous and wealthy suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In a few months, to my everlasting relief and excitement, I’d be attending a
public
high school, which meant no more endless hours spent in the hideous beige-brick church (conveniently attached to the hideous beige-brick school), no more nuns who thought I not only had “terrible social skills” and an “unpleasant disposition” but that I also was “very difficult to teach.” (They left out terrible bowler, serial arsonist, mouth-breather, and kitten killer.)

My parents had the best of intentions when they sent all three of their kids to this school, which was renowned for its academic excellence. What they couldn’t have known was that it was also hell on earth if you weren’t friends with the “in” people, didn’t wear the “in” clothes, didn’t have the “in” haircut, and weren’t blessed with a perfect chin that would jut out charmingly whenever one would utter such bons mots as “Eau my Gaud, Stacy. Can you
even believe
she wore that sweater
again
? It is
the
ugliest thing I have
ever
seen.”

Looking back, I do find it a bit fascinating that such a large percentage of this supposedly religious school’s student body was made up of kids whose behavior I’m quite sure would’ve bummed Jesus out. Unfortunately, after eight years, instead of a top-notch education all I left with was a boatload of self-esteem issues and a seething dislike of Catholicism. Not quite what my parents had hoped for, I’m sure.

Of course, not
all
of the kids were awful. Many were downright lovely, in fact. And I do have some nice memories of my time spent at this school. For instance, one year I WON the science-fair contest with my best friend, Heather (one of the lovely ones). She and I spent an entire afternoon figuring out how to make paper from scratch. I’m still a bit lost as to why we won, but it was the only time in all of grade school that I felt kind of smart. (Even if I did nothing but dramatically read aloud the directions from some book as I ate Fig Newtons.)

If you’d like a crack at winning
your
science fair, here’s the recipe! Simply ask Heather’s mom to mash wood chips in a blender until it almost breaks, add some other gunk, have her bake it for a long time, and then lay the whole mess out to dry on the deck. The end result should closely resemble a stucco ceiling. Triumph!

My brother was a few grades above me, a brilliant, shy, sensitive virtuoso violinist, and I absolutely, unabashedly worshipped him. Regrettably, this was not a feeling shared by his classmates, and he was tortured so viciously, so relentlessly, it must have really done a number on him. But that’s just a guess. We’ve never spoken about it. All I know is bearing witness to it sure did a number on
me.

Because for years, I saw him verbally attacked, punched, slapped, tripped, shoved, and once even hung up on a tree by the band of his underwear. My heart just broke for him, over and over, but I was never able to tell him this without sounding like an irritating younger sister. Eventually, I learned not to discuss it with him, or anyone else.

Everything changed one dark and miserable autumn day when I was around nine. I was daydreaming my way through some boring class when the whole class was jolted by a scream of pure terror coming from outside. My blood immediately ran cold.
Was that my brother?
We all ran to the huge window overlooking the football field and, despite the teacher’s protestations, pressed our faces against the glass.

At first, my mind couldn’t understand what I was seeing. But within seconds I realized that it was a mob of four or five boys attacking someone. The frenzy had whipped up a large mass of dust and dirt, and I remember the kid part of my brain thought,
“Pig-Pen,”
at the very same moment my newer, growing-up brain thought,
They’re killing my brother.
I’d never seen him being assaulted like this. I honestly thought he was being murdered, right before my eyes. I was incapacitated, unable to move or speak.

“Oh, my dear God!”
the teacher cried as she ran for help, which broke the spell. One of my classmates giggled nervously, and at that moment my grief and fear thankfully crystallized into a swirling ball of volcanic rage.

The “Pig-Pen” incident was the catalyst for a completely impetuous and ill-advised decision, the first of many I made (and, yes, would continue to make) throughout my life. It was maybe a month or two later, at the end of recess. The bell had rung and most of the kids had dutifully filed back indoors. I was dawdling along as usual, lost in thought. Then, just as I reluctantly started to yank the door open, I saw a reflection flash in the glass of someone far behind me. There was no mistaking who it was, Danny, usually called “Sully” Sullivan, hockey player, choirboy, and my brother’s most dedicated tormentor. He was a massive, stupid, doughy kid with bright red hair, freckles, and laughing pooh-colored eyes that masked his budding psychosis. Despite the cold November day, he was wearing shorts and was clearly returning from fetching a wayward football. As he plodded gracelessly across the cement toward the doors, I became aware that we were alone.